𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ― j. grace ² ✓

two

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EIGHT LETTERS

CHAPTER TWO
[ A N N A B E T H ]

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ANNABETH WISHED SHE had an appetite, because the Romans knew how to eat.

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirits — Aurae — swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies. Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts — Lares — in togas and legionnaire armor. Around the edges of the feast, Satyrs (no, Fauns, Annabeth thought) trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change. In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs. O'Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits.

The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Annabeth vertigo.

All she wanted to do was be with Percy — preferably alone. She knew she would have to wait. If their quest was going to succeed, they needed these Romans, which meant getting to know them and building some goodwill.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the Gods) sat with Annabeth and her crew. Percy joined them with his two new friends, Frank and Hazel.

As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over and whispered, "I want to show you around New Rome. Just you and me. The place is incredible."

Annabeth should've felt thrilled. Just you and me was exactly what she wanted. Instead, resentment swelled in her throat. How could Percy talk so enthusiastically about this place? What about Camp Half-Blood — their Camp, their home?

She tried not to stare at the new marks on Percy's forearm — an SPQR tattoo like Jason's. At Camp Half-Blood, Demigods got bead necklaces to commemorate years of training. Here, the Romans burned a tattoo into your flesh, as if to say: You belong to us. Permanently.

She swallowed back some biting comments. "Okay. Sure."

"I've been thinking," he said nervously. "I had this idea—"

He stopped as Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the Romans and Annabeth's crew began exchanging stories. Jason explained how he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he'd gone on a quest with Piper, Natalia, and Leo to rescue the Goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick — she was equally annoying in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California.