Prologue
"He'll be back."
Thalia tears her gaze away from the funeral pyre and focuses it on the blonde girl beside her. Annabeth isn't looking at her and her eyes reflect the flames devouring the remains of the boy they once called friend.
"He won't," she replies, steel in her voice. She doesn't want to talk about this now or ever again; this chapter in her life is closed. "Reincarnation's not his thing."
"He said he was going to try for three. I believe him."
Thalia can't help the wave of anger that rolls through her when Annabeth says that. It's all well and good for her to have her faith in Luke restored, but Thalia wasn't there for his redemption and her last memory of Luke is as Kronos's puppet. That's not something she can forget or forgive easily. She had more encounters with him than Percy and Annabeth did, lost Hunters to him, and he never showed any weakness against her.
Maybe she would feel differently if she had seen him die instead of getting herself stuck under that wretched statue of Hera, but she doesn't think so. As far as she is concerned, the Luke she had known disappeared the day she got turned into that stupid tree.
"I suppose I'll keep my eye out for him then," Thalia says, giving in and letting Annabeth have her moment. They don't need to argue at a funeral, although she thinks the old Luke wouldn't have minded. He always said the two of them had too much spunk to be contained. "Seeing as though I'll probably be a million years old by the time his ass decides it's time to reincarnate."
"I think he'd like that," Annabeth says with a small smile. "You two deserve a second chance, at any rate."
Thalia doesn't ask what she means by that, preferring to let Annabeth have her delusions in whatever disgustingly romantic world she lives in, and turns back to the pyre.
The flames crackle and smoke curls up to the starry sky, carrying away the last remainders of the body of Luke Castellan, son of Hermes.