CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE:

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ON THE DAY THAT Ezra Min died, Annais was supposed to die with her.

It was cruel, almost, how fate tried to pick and choose when their hearts would stop beating. Who would bleed the most, who'd suffer with every breath like their lungs just couldn't inhale enough oxygen. Who they would love and who they would hate; everything came down to them and the ropes that bound them to each other like chains.

The Mins, even as they contorted against each other, battered each other's hearts, doused out their flames, were stuck until their dying breaths in a cage of their own creation.

Annais was supposed to die with her sister.

But her sister had other plans.

(Ezra always had another plan.)

Fate be damned.

Percy was the first to reach Annabeth. As the others descended down the rope ladder one-by-one, he threw his arms around her and buried his face against her neck. They exchanged words for only the two of them as Ezra hurried to their side. A moment later, she joined the hug, and the rest of their friends waited on the outer.

"Your leg," Piper gasped all of a sudden. She dropped to her knees on Annabeth's other side, examining the wooden splint with wide, horrified eyes. "Oh, Annabeth, what happened?"

Through barely concealed tears, Annabeth forced the words out. Annais watched the wound on her forehead ooze blood until she could no longer stomach the sight, or the words that buried deep in her brain. She picked out bits about Arachne but the rest was lost on her. In the end, the group were stunned into gruesomely amazed silence.

"Gods of Olympus," Jason breathed out. Faithfully, he held Annais' hand, clinging on even as her fingers remained limp between his. "You did all that alone? With a broken ankle?"

He said it like a question, but the proof was staring at them right in the face. Annabeth had faced Arachne and lived to tell the tale. She'd done the impossible, something that so many of her siblings had died trying to achieve.

And Athena was nowhere to be found.

"Well... some of it with a broken ankle."

Percy laughed and pushed some of Annabeth's hair back from her face. "You made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but Holy Hera--" Ezra's face scrunched up in distaste. Percy didn't seem to notice. "Annabeth, you did it! Generations of Athena kids tried and failed, and you found the Athena Parthenos!"

Everyone gazed at the statue. It was much larger than any of them could've imagined, towering over them with its arms reaching for the sky. The sun seemed so close, within reach; anything seemed possible with Annabeth sitting in front of them.

"What do we do with her?" Frank asked, gnawing on his lip anxiously. "She's huge."

"We'll have to take her with us to Greece," Annabeth said, and Annais let out a groan at the thought of lugging a giant, hundred foot statue onto the Argo II. Would the ship even be able to sustain such weight? "The statue is powerful. Something about it will help us stop the giants."

"The giants' bane stands gold and pale," Hazel echoed the lines they all knew by heart at that point. "Won with pain from a woven jail." She looked at Annabeth in pure awe. "It was Arachne's jail. You tricked her into weaving it."

Leo raised his hands and squared off his fingers like he was taking measurements. "Well, it might take some rearranging, but I think we can fit her through the bay doors in the stable. If she sticks out the end, I might have to wrap a flag around her feet or something."

Still, no one moved to set the plan into motion.

(Looking back on it, would it have changed anything? Annais would like to think so. If they'd just moved faster, left the Emmanuel Building sooner...)

"What about you guys?" Annabeth asked, glancing almost wearily between Ezra, whose face had almost immediately soured -- rather like she'd sucked on a lemon, in Annais' opinion -- and Annais herself, who had released Jason's hand to fold her arms across her chest and scowl. "What happened with the giants?"

And this -- the tension that clung to them like the shadows that were yet to fade from Ezra's body.

It was Percy who filled in the blanks; from Bacchus to the fight with the twins in the Colosseum. He mentioned Nico, but the son of Death didn't say much, keeping his head low as he looked anywhere but at his sisters. It was clear to Annais he didn't know what to think, couldn't choose who was right and who was wrong -- if anyone was.

What a warm welcome home he'd received.

Percy finished by explaining Nico's discovery about the Doors of Death. The news hung like a knife over their heads, sharp and relentless. The cavern, despite being flooded by sunlight, was dark and cold by the time he went quiet, Penelope's name lingering on his tongue after a very brief acknowledgement. No details.

"So the mortal side is in Epirus," she said, taking the news of Penelope surprisingly well. She continued with a squeeze of Ezra's hand. "At least that's somewhere we can reach."

Nico grimaced and pointed out, "But the other side is the problem. Tartarus."

It suddenly occurred to Annais, that they were the closest she'd ever been to the pits of Hell. Percy, Ezra and Annabeth were sitting on the edge, their backs facing the endless drop below. Next came Nico and Annais, then Jason, but he was yet to reach for Annais' hand again. Time and time again, they brushed up against Death; teasing, testing, taunting.

Soon enough, they would miss a step, and he'd catch up...

Percy continued, "Bacchus mentioned something about my voyage being harder than I expected. Not sure why--"

And there it was.

The final reckoning.

Everything had been building up to this.

The cavern groaned. A warning sign. Annais eyed the weathering brick with nervous eyes just as the Athena Parthenos began to sway. The breeze was light, a gentle nudge, and yet the giant statue moved like it was caught in a hurricane. The marble foundation underneath the pedestal had started to crumble.

"Guys. . ."

Annabeth followed her gaze and let out a terrified gasp. "Secure it," she cried, desperate, sick to the bone. She tried to move and grimaced as pain shot up her leg in lightning bolts. It was her friends who lurched into action, dispersing across the cavern in a frenzy.

"Zhang!" Leo cried as he hurried past Annais. In a surprising turn of events, he was the one who ended up tethered to Ezra. Quickly, so she wouldn't be dragged around after him, he unclipped the tether and attached it to Annais' jeans instead. Annais' eyes widened but she didn't have the chance to protest before he hurried off with Frank. "Get me to the helm, quick! The coach is up there alone!"

Nodding once, Frank transformed into a giant eagle, and the two of them soared up to the ship as time continued to tick.

Jason attempted to curve his arm around Annais' waist. She brushed him off. "My sisters," she insisted, and all but shoved him towards Ezra, Mel and Hea. "Take my sisters first."

With one last look in her direction, he disappeared after Frank and Leo with Piper clinging to one arm and Hea and Mel sharing the other. He struggled with the weight of all three of them, but Annais watched him successfully disappear over the railing of the Argo II and breathed a sigh of relief.

She knew he'd come back for her.

But by then, it would be too late.

"This floor won't last," Hazel warned. She had a firm grip on Nico's arm. "The rest of us should get to the ladder."

From above, the first of several grappling hooks tumbled over the edge. One looped around the statue's neck like a noose. The other latched onto her arm, then another to her leg.

"Hazel, go," Annais urged, and forced herself to stay calm even as her heart began to pound. "Come on. I'll help you with Nico."

Hazel went up first, then Nico. They were halfway up before Annais deemed they were safe and turned back to the others.

Just in time to watch as Annabeth's legs collapsed from beneath her and she collided with the floor.

"Her ankle!" Hazel screamed in a tone Annais had never heard from her before. One of horror, and pure desperation. "Cut it! Guys, cut--"

Watching Annabeth fall over the edge was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Annais' brain urged her forward -- not that she could do much to prevent the inevitable, she had spent too much time playing God that the real Gods had decided it was time to reap what she'd sown. In flashes, she watched helplessly as Percy lunged and caught Annabeth's arms. The momentum of it dragged him over the edge too.

"Percy!" Ezra cried, and let out a gasp that Annais was sure she'd never forget.

One string.

One fucking string was all it took, caught around her ankle from where she'd thrown herself onto Annabeth.

One little tug and she was swaying.

Annais thought she yelled her name, she wasn't sure.

Next thing she knew, she was flying.

One-by-one, Death picked them off, hovering them over the precipice of his domain. This was what she'd seen in the warning of Ezra's shadows. But she never thought she'd die too. Fear crept in then, like a flush of fire in her veins.

Annais Min didn't want to die.

Sometimes, she lost her way and it didn't seem worth it.

But Annais Min, daughter of Death itself, feared what had created her.

She feared herself.

"Jason!" she screamed, the one person she knew would come for her.

He would.

He loved her.

She loved him.

He'd come for her.

Right?

Ezra disappeared, her body yanking on the tether. Annais grew closer and closer to the edge and then she was air-borne.

In that moment, in the second where gravity was yet to make its move, Annais Min became Icarus. She'd flown too close to the sun.

And down, down, down she went.

Her fingers latched onto a gap in the floorboards and clung until her nails cracked and bled.

Someone was screaming.

(Was it her?)

Nico and Hazel were there.

Jason wasn't coming for her.

The weight of three bodies pulled on her, and Annais was so tired, and it would be so easy to just let go.

No one was coming for her.

Perhaps, Hades had seen this all along. This was what he'd warned her of so long ago.

She was her own damnation.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry..."

It was all she could give.

To Ezra, to herself, to the people she was leaving behind.

Then I'm sorrys became I love yous to a boy who'd never get to hear them, and siblings who didn't even realise that two of their sisters were going to be leaving them.

She heard Percy shouting something, the gentle squeeze of a hand on her leg.

And then--

Then...

Annais defied gravity.

She looked down, right into the eye of the storm, just as Ezra pulled Penelope's pin from her hair and, now hovering by one thick line of rope, she cut free the chain that held the Mins together.

The tether snapped.

The pin dropped like a stone to the very bottom of the Underworld.

The three lovers fell.

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ANNAIS MIN WILL RETURN IN
DEVIL TOWN!