"Percy!" Tyson came running across the forum, Ella fluttering behind him with a scroll in her talons. When they reached the fountain, Ella dropped the scroll in Percy's lap.
"Special delivery," she said. "From an aura. A wind spirit. Yes, Ella got a special delivery."
Percy had been gone eight months now, and he'd had a very action-packed week, to say the least. He made some new friends, journeyed to Alaska, almost died from being poisoned, almost drowned, befriended a harpy, got imprisoned by scary Amazons, found a golden eagle, freed the god of death, fought the giant that was born to defeat his father, defeated the giant with the head of a godly statue, been elected praetor of the Twelfth Legion and finally, he finally remembered who Cressida was and that it was her purple eyes that he saw in his dreams. Just to sum it up.
He remembered who she was, that she was Dionysus' daughter and a girl he'd been in love with since they met. He remembered what her voice sounded like, and how her skin felt, but asides from her eyes, he couldn't remember what her face looked like. And that irked him. Not to mention that he'd never hated Hera more.
"Good morning, brothers!" Tyson had hay in his hair and peanut butter in his teeth. "The scroll is from Leo. He is funny and small."
The scroll looked unremarkable, but when Percy spread it across his lap, a video recording flickered on the parchment. A kid in Greek armour grinned up at them. He had an impish face, curly black hair, and wild eyes, like he'd just had several cups of coffee. He was sitting in a dark room with timber walls like a ship's cabin. Oil lamps swung back and forth on the ceiling.
Hazel stifled a scream.
"What?" Frank asked. "What's wrong?"
Slowly, Percy realized the curly-haired kid looked familiar—and not just from his dreams. He'd seen that face in an old photo.
"Hey!" said the guy in the video. "Greetings from your friends at Camp Half-Blood, et cetera. This is Leo. I'm the..." He looked off-screen and yelled: "What's my title? Am I like admiral, or captain, or—"
A girl's voice yelled back, "Repair Boy."
But Percy's eyes widened as another girl laughed. "That's a good one. You're not half bad at nicknaming," her voice had said.
He knew that voice.
"Cress," he muttered as the boy, Leo, continued speaking.
"Very funny, Piper," Leo grumbled. He turned back to the parchment screen. "So yeah, I'm ... ah ... supreme commander of the Argo II. Yeah, I like that! Anyway, we're gonna be sailing toward you in about, I dunno, an hour in this big mother warship. We'd appreciate it if you'd not, like, blow us out of the sky or anything. So okay! If you could tell the Romans that. See you soon. Yours in demigodishness, and all that. Peace out."
"Hey Repair Boy!" the girl, Piper called. "You're forgetting something."
"Oh right," he said before turning back to the parchment. "We have a message for the demigod named Percy Jackson."
His friends stared at him, but his eyes stayed on the parchment.
"Well, we don't," Leo said. "But she does. Hey, Hollywood," he called to someone off-camera. "You're up."
And Percy's jaw dropped as a stunningly beautiful girl took Leo's place as she stared at the parchment.
"Hey, Fish Face," she said with a small smile and Percy picked up the parchment, studying every inch of her face and he was determined to never forget it again as his heart soared at the sound of her nickname for him. "Uh, I don't know if you remember me," she continued as she fidgeted with a bracelet on her wrist. "But that's ok. I can get your memories back. I think. I hope so. I don't really know why Houston is making me do this stupid message," she laughed hopelessly. "But I miss you. And we made a promise to never leave each other behind. So, if there's any part of you that remembers that or remembers me, even after the last eight months, then please don't shoot our warship out of the sky. I lo-"
She cut herself off and Percy squeezed the parchment in his hands.
Please let what she'd been about to say be what he thought she was about to say.
"We'll see you soon," she said before she gave him a smile, that smile that he knew she gave no one but him. "I'll see you soon, Fish Face. Stay alive for me until then."
And then the parchment turned blank.
"No! No! Cress! Dammit! Come back," he said before Hazel distracted him.
"It can't be," Hazel said.
"What?" Frank asked. "You know that guy?"
Hazel looked like she'd seen a ghost. Percy understood why. He remembered the photo in Hazel's abandoned house in Seward. The kid on the warship looked exactly like Hazel's old boyfriend.
"It's Sammy Valdez," she said. "But how...how—"
"It can't be," Percy said. "That guy's name is Leo. And it's been seventy-something years. It has to be a..."
He wanted to say a coincidence, but he couldn't make himself believe that. Over the past few years, he'd seen a lot of things: destiny, prophecy, magic, monsters, fate. But he'd never yet run across a coincidence. And part of him knew that it wasn't a coincidence that the only thing he remembered when he got to Camp Jupiter was Cressida's name and her indigo eyes.
"That girl," Frank said. "The one at the end. Was that-"
"Cressida," Percy answered, knowing that they'd be curious especially since he'd been muttering her name in his sleep ever since he arrived and yet had no answers as to who she was until now. "She is..." he didn't really have the words to describe it. She felt stronger than a girlfriend. She was more than that. She was his rock, his anchor, his best friend, his everything. So, he settled with saying, "She is someone very important to me."
Before Frank could question it or before more could be said, they were interrupted by horns blowing in the distance. The senators came marching into the forum with Reyna at the lead.
"It's meeting time," Percy said. "Come on. We've got to warn them about the warship. They can't kill my girlfriend before I completely remember the fact that I have one."