Bewitched || P. Jackson

𝕊words make the perfect Pass The Parcel

"Excuse me? We're kinda in the middle of something if you don't mind." Nicki shook Jason's shoulder aggressively. "Jason!"

"Dude, time and place." With Leo's help, Ethan lugged the blonde to his feet.

Hey!" Leo squeezed his arm. "None of that, man. What's wrong?"

"This place..." Jason shook his head. "Sorry... It came rushing back to me."

"So you have been here," Piper said.

"We both have," Thalia said. Her expression was grim like she was reliving someone's death. "This is where my mom took us when Jason was a child. She left him here, and told me he was dead. He just disappeared."

"She gave me to the wolves," Jason murmured. "At Hera's insistence. She gave me to Lupa."

"That part I didn't know." Thalia frowned. "Who is Lupa?"

An explosion shook the building. Just outside, a blue mushroom cloud billowed up, raining snowflakes and ice like a nuclear blast made of cold instead of heat.

"Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Nicki suggested, having been silent throughout their brief conversation. "Where's Hera?"

Once inside, Jason seemed to get his bearings. The house was built in a giant U, and Jason led them between the two wings to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as Jason had described from his dream, two spires of rock and root tendrils had cracked through the foundation.

Ethan found himself searching for Nicki's hand for security. A longing pain burned in his heart as he imagined a young Thomas Asher in the very spot he stood.

One of the spires was much bigger—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high, and to Nicki it looked like a stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils, he could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist-deep in the earth. No, not stuck—rising.

On the opposite end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with so little space between them that Nicki doubted she could've gotten her arm through. Still, she could see inside. And in the centre of the cage stood Hera.

Leo dropped into the pool and approached the cage. "Hola, Tía. Little bit of trouble?"

She crossed her arms and sighed in exasperation. "Don't inspect me like I'm one of your machines, Leo Valdez. Get me out of here!"

Thalia stepped next to him and looked at the cage with distaste—or maybe she was looking at the goddess. "We tried everything we could think of, Leo, but maybe my heart wasn't in it. If it was up to me, I'd just leave her in there."

"Ohh, Thalia Grace," the goddess said. "When I get out of here, you'll be sorry you were ever born."

"Don't make empty threats," Nicki rolled her eyes. "Sparky's too in love with herself for that."

Hera turned to the black-haired teenager, "And Nicki Driscoll, the favoured demigod... Maybe I should smite you after all, it would save me a lot of trouble."

"Save it!" Thalia snapped, coming to Nicki's defence now. "You've been nothing but a curse to every child of Zeus for ages. You sent a bunch of intestinally challenged cows after my friend Annabeth—"

"She was disrespectful!"

"You dropped a statue on my legs."

"It was an accident!"

"And you took my brother!" Thalia's voice cracked with emotion. "Here—on this spot. You ruined our lives. We should leave you to Gaea!"

"Hey," Jason intervened. "Thalia—Sis—I know. But this isn't the time. You should help your Hunters."