{Kiara}
Kiara quickly pushed the thought away. Her feelings and emotions had started to freak her out lately. She kept thinking about Piper, and nothing seemed to stop it. And the way the shadows sometimes took the forms of people didn't help at all. She had started to think she was going crazy and started to hallucinate.
"Do you remember anything?" Thalia asked, dragging Kiara out of her reverie.
Jason shook his head. "I woke up three days ago on a bus with Leo and Piper. Kiara doesn't remember anything either."
Thalia looked at Kiara, who smiled at the hunter awkwardly.
"Which wasn't our fault," Leo added hastily. "Hera stole his memories."
Thalia tensed and turned to Leo. "Hera? How do you know that?"
Jason explained about their quest—the prophecy at camp, Hera getting imprisoned, the giant taking Piper's dad, and the winter solstice deadline. Leo chimed in to add the important stuff: how he'd fixed the bronze dragon, could throw fireballs, and made excellent tacos.
Thalia was a good listener. Nothing seemed to surprise her—the monsters, the prophecies, the dead rising. But when Jason mentioned King Midas, she cursed in Ancient Greek, which Kiara didn't understand.
"I knew we should've burned down his mansion," she said. "That man's a menace. But we were so intent on following Lycaon—Well, I'm glad you got away. So Hera's been... what, hiding you all these years?"
"I don't know." Jason brought out the photo from his pocket. "She left me just enough memory to recognize your face."
Thalia looked at the picture, and her expression softened. "I'd forgotten about that. I left it in Cabin One, didn't I?"
Jason nodded. "I think Hera wanted for us to meet. When we landed here, at this cave... I had a feeling it was important. Like I knew you were close by. Is that crazy?"
"Nah," Leo assured him. "We were absolutely destined to meet your hot sister."
Thalia ignored him. So did Kiara, but for once, she agreed with Leo.
She tensed. What the hell was wrong with her. She couldn't find a girl attractive. That was weird. If she told anyone about this, she would be seen as a freak.
"Jason," Thalia said, "when you're dealing with the gods, nothing is too crazy. But you can't trust Hera, especially since we're children of Zeus. She hates all children of Zeus."
"But she said something about Zeus giving her my life as a peace offering. Does that make any sense?"
The color drained from Thalia's face. "Oh, gods. Mother wouldn't have... You don't remember—No, of course you don't."
"What?" Jason asked.
Thalia's features seemed to grow older in the firelight, like her immortality wasn't working so well. "Jason... I'm not sure how to say this. Our mom wasn't exactly stable. She caught Zeus's eye because she was a television actress, and she was beautiful, but she didn't handle the fame well. She drank, pulled stupid stunts. She was always in the tabloids. She could never get enough attention. Even before you were born, she and I argued all the time. She... she knew Dad was Zeus, and I think that was too much for her to take. It was like the ultimate achievement for her to attract the lord of the sky, and she couldn't accept it when he left. The thing about the gods... well, they don't hang around."
Kiara didn't remember anything about her parents except for that dream she'd had back at Camp Half-Blood. Pluto had told her mom that he couldn't stick around because of 'godly stuff'. Anna hadn't seemed like she wanted Pluto for herself—she had looked like she was sad because Kiara wouldn't be able to meet her father.
She watched Jason's face—looking more and more devastated as Thalia described their mom. She felt bad for Jason, not having memories like that—not having anything to fall back on. But, then again, she couldn't remember much either.
"So..." Jason didn't seem able to finish the question.
"Jason, you got friends," Leo told him. "Now you got a sister. You're not alone."
Thalia offered her hand, and Jason took it.
"When I was about seven," she said, "Zeus started visiting Mom again. I think he felt bad about wrecking her life, and he seemed—different somehow. A little older and sterner, more fatherly toward me. For a while, Mom improved. She loved having Zeus around, bringing her presents, causing the sky to rumble. She always wanted more attention. That's the year you were born. Mom... well, I never got along with her, but you gave me a reason to hang around. You were so cute. And I didn't trust Mom to look after you. Of course, Zeus eventually stopped coming by again. He probably couldn't stand Mom's demands anymore, always pestering him to let her visit Olympus, or to make her immortal or eternally beautiful. When he left for good, Mom got more and more unstable. That was about the time the monsters started attacking me. Mom blamed Hera. She claimed the goddess was coming after you too—that Hera had barely tolerated my birth, but two demigod children from the same family was too big an insult. Mom even said she hadn't wanted to name you Jason, but Zeus insisted, as a way to appease Hera because the goddess liked that name. I didn't know what to believe."
Leo fiddled with his copper wires. Kiara could tell he felt like an intruder. She felt the same way too. She wondered why Thalia wanted her to stay. She wanted to be with Piper, make sure she was okay—
Shut up! she told herself. These feelings made her want to scream and cry until she couldn't do either.
"How did you guys get separated?" Leo asked, snapping her back to reality, which Kiara was glad for.
Thalia squeezed her brother's hand. "If I'd known you were alive ... gods, things would've been so different. But when you were two, Mom packed us in the car for a family vacation. We drove up north, toward the wine country, to this park she wanted to show us. I remember thinking it was strange because Mom never took us anywhere, and she was acting super nervous. I was holding your hand, walking you toward this big building in the middle of the park, and..."
She took a shaky breath. "Mom told me to go back to the car and get the picnic basket. I didn't want to leave you alone with her, but it was only for a few minutes. When I came back... Mom was kneeling on the stone steps, hugging herself and crying. She said—she said you were gone. She said Hera claimed you and you were as good as dead. I didn't know what she'd done. I was afraid she'd completely lost her mind. I ran all over the place looking for you, but you'd just vanished. She had to drag me away, kicking and screaming. For the next few days I was hysterical. I don't remember everything, but I called the police on Mom and they questioned her for a long time. Afterward, we fought. She told me I'd betrayed her, that I should support her, like she was the only one who mattered. Finally I couldn't stand it. Your disappearance was the last straw. I ran away from home, and I never went back, not even when Mom died a few years ago. I thought you were gone forever. I never told anyone about you—not even Annabeth or Luke, my two best friends. It was just too painful."
"Chiron knew." Jason's voice sounded far away. "When I got to camp, he took one look at me and said, 'You should be dead.'"
"That doesn't make sense," Thalia insisted. "I never told him."
"Hey," Leo said. "Important thing is you've got each other now, right? You two are lucky."
Thalia nodded. "Leo's right. Look at you. You're my age. You've grown up."
"But where have I been?" Jason said. "How could I be missing all that time? And the Roman stuff..."
Thalia frowned. "The Roman stuff?"
"Your brother and Kiara speak Latin," Leo said. "But Jason is a bit more of a fanatic over the Romans. He calls gods by their Roman names, and he's got tattoos, and so does Kiara." Leo pointed out the marks on Jason's and Kiara's arms.
Then he gave Thalia the rundown about the other weird stuff that had happened: Boreas turning into Aquilon, Lycaon calling Jason and Kiara "son and daughter of Rome," and the wolves backing off when Jason spoke Latin to them.
Thalia plucked her bowstring. "Latin. Zeus sometimes spoke Latin, the second time he stayed with Mom. Like I said, he seemed different, more formal."
"He wasn't Zeus at all," Kiara said tiredly: her feelings were driving her to the edge. She knew that Jason wasn't Greek already. "He was Jupiter. Jason is Roman, and so am I."
Thalia stared at her, but Kiara was looking at her feet. All of this... it was too confusing and hard to handle. It was like she was given an anvil to carry. And the prophecy—In umbris profundis, anima latebrata, filìa Plutonis, cor suum detegit, In shadows deep, a soul concealed, a daughter of Pluto, her heart revealed—scared her to death.
"How... How do you know that?" Thalia asked.
Kiara got up. She was on the verge of tears because of all this Greek/Roman stuff and her emotions and feelings. "I don't know, okay? I just—" She ran out of the cave.
Behind her, Thalia and Leo called out for her, but Kiara couldn't hear them. She was sobbing. She hated herself and what she felt. When she'd first realized she liked girls—which was back at Camp Half-Blood—she hadn't worried about it much, but now... she was scared of herself for feeling this way.
When she arrived at the back of the cave, she leaned back against the rock and slid down, pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face between her body and legs.
Towards the entrance of the cave, she heard Leo shouting her name. She turned her back to the clearing and buried her face even deeper and continued sobbing.
"Hey," a voice said. Kiara didn't recognize it and looked up slightly.
When she saw the shimmering transparent figure, she stifled a shout and tried to back away into the rock wall behind her. "Wh—what are you?"
"You don't remember me?" the shimmering appearance asked. She had a British accent. She sounded disappointed. "Well, it has been years, and Hera stole your memories, so I guess it's normal you don't remember me." She paused, looking Kiara up and down. "You've grown a lot, Kiara, but I haven't. I miss you."
The girl was no older than Kiara—physically, at least. Her long, coal black hair cascaded down her back. She wore a black and white plaid dress, which brought out the redness of her lips and the way her gray eyes gleamed. She had simple earrings on both ears. Her apparition kept flickering as if she was a malworking hologram.
"You're a ghost," Kiara realized, straightening. "What are you doing here?"
"Visiting you, of course," said the ghost girl. "I asked your father for permission to see you."
"My father?"
"Yes, Pluto." The girl's voice was soft and comforting. Kiara also sensed something else in it. With a start, she realized she knew that voice. "I convinced him, but we don't have much time, my love."
"Wh—who are you?" Kiara managed.
The ghost smiled. "I'm your sister, of course. Evelyn Morrigan."
The words hit Kiara like a train.