Wild Heart ⋆ Riordanverse¹

xix. none the wiser

xix. none the wiser

*    *    *

"WHEN WE GET BACK, YOU SHOULD MEET MY MOM."

If, Thea's mind bitterly supplies. And then the rest of her brain quickly catches up to what he's saying. "Wait, what?"

"My mom," Percy repeats. "She's been wanting to meet you and Annabeth, but with, you know, everything there wasn't time. And you're in Long Island the whole year, so . . ."

"Sure," she says, not sure at all what she is agreeing to. "Are you sure she wants to, though?"

"Well, yeah, she's been wanting to ever since last summer."

Oh. It is a bit strange thinking that Percy talks about her enough that his mom wants to meet her. Rationally, she knows he talks about her, they emailed each other while he was back home in NYC, but also . . . it's strange. She isn't used to having friends.

"You don't have to," he rushes to say. "Just, uh, if you wanted to, I'm sure she'd like it, and you'd finally get to leave camp for once—"

"Sure."

Percy looks like he wants to say something else, push for something, but he doesn't. She's thankful for that. She is sure Miss Jackson is a lovely woman, but something about her being a mom just . . . instantly doesn't sit right with Thea. It's ridiculous, almost as if she has a phobia of mothers.

Considering what happened to hers, she guesses it makes sense in some weird, twisted way.

She places her hands firmly on the splintered wood of the Queen Anne's Revenge and looks out to the horizon. She can see monsters just beneath the water, large and deadly, and she wonders what it would feel like to dive into the water alongside them.

Her eyebrows pinch together at that. She doesn't want to die, does she? That's absurd, she has a lot to live for.

Like Charlie. Who is possibly dead, even if she can't admit it to herself. Or Annabeth and Percy—who would probably move on easily, since Thea technically is just a girl that was tacked onto their first quest that they're stuck with.

No. She isn't doing that again, she isn't going down that path.

But it is tempting.

*    *    *

"WHAT ARE YOU doing?"

"I found a journal, 'think it was one of the pirates that used to live on this ship," she says. "So it's mine now."

"Is that . . . Spanish?"

"Yeah." She bites her lip as she tries to remember what the word for 'cooking pan' is. "That girl on Circe's island, she spoke Spanish. It, uh, it reminded me that I haven't spoken it in a long time." She finally remembers the word and scribbles it down to finish the sentence. "Not since my mom, y'know. So I'm trying to make myself remember it, I don't wanna forget it. Maybe I'll take Nyssa up on her offer to speak it around camp, but hers is a little different."

Percy blinks. "Wait, there's different versions of Spanish?"

"Well, yeah, obviously. Different countries have different ways of speaking it. I mean, a lot's the same, but certain words mean certain things, or there's different slang that doesn't exist somewhere else." She stares at him as she shuts the journal. "Do you only speak English or something?"