¹Royal Cries, p. jackson

015.

ROYAL CRIES
━━ chapter fifteen

━━ THERE WERE TOO many goodbyes that day.

That night after the battle was the first night Elisa saw camp burial shrouds being used on bodies. It was a sight she never wanted to see again. There were many dead; Lee Fletcher, the former head counselor of Cabin Seven. He had been killed by a giant's club. He was wrapped in a golden shroud without any decorations. An unclaimed kid from the Hermes Cabin named Claret Ulmer was given a blank, white shroud. Elisa felt ashamed to have never even learned the girl's name, knowing Claret was one of the few unclaimed demigods who had stayed on the gods' side. Connor and Travis were asked to speak about Claret and tasked with lighting the funeral pyre. The sons of Hermes lit Claret's and the fire spread across the long line of shrouds waiting to be burned. In the middle of the amphitheater, the burning shrouds sent smoke and sparks up into the night sky.

Elisa and Nico sat in the back of the amphitheater as everyone slowly filed out. The son of Hades had his hands clamped around his knees, looking ready to vomit. The daughter of Dionysus figured he was getting nervous around so many people at once.

She rubbed his back, promising him, "No one's giving you a second glance."

"It's not that," Nico said, rubbing at his eyes. "It's ... It's just that there's so much death and I'm supposed to pretend I don't know exactly where they are right now."

"You don't have to talk to them—the people who lost siblings, I mean," Elisa said. "They may want to know but you don't ... It would be dangerous to say anything to them, they may figure out who your dad is."

"Does that even matter anymore?" asked Nico.

Elisa took a deep breath, wondering if Nico knew about the prophecy about a child of the Big Three turning sixteen. She figured he had to know something; the dead whispered a lot. "Yeah," she said, "because if Poseidon and Zeus found out, it'd be bad."

Nico didn't respond at first. He watched the columns of smoke rise into the air. "It's horrible to know just how close to death everyone had become during this. I knew how close to death Castor had gotten ..."

The daughter of Dionysus's back straightened. She looked away from the burning shrouds, not wanting to think about what a deep purple shroud would look like. "Will said it was a miracle he survived," she said.

Nico raised his eyebrows at the statement. "He's not wrong. Castor was stabbed in the side."

"Yeah, I know," Elisa said, sounding more bitter than she meant to. "I mean—I watched him get stabbed."

"What'd they say?" Nico asked. "About how Castor will heal and all?"

Elisa rubbed her forearm, where Rachel had written the line of numbers. The ink was smudged from sweat and blood. The battle didn't feel real, of course it was, but everything from it was a blur. She didn't want to recall any of it in great detail anyway.

"They said he won't fully be healed for a long time. That he was lucky to survive and that it didn't pierce any organs—especially his lungs," said Elisa. "Drew told me that she'll help as much as she could while he was admitted to stay in Cabin Twelve. Then Will gave me and Pollux this long list of what he had to do to help and what Castor wouldn't be able to do—which was every activity here, basically ..."

Nico looked away from the burning shrouds and at Elisa. His eyebrows were pinched together, looking like he wanted to ask her something. "So ... Bianca really did offer to stop that Talos model?"