Chapter 63
The thunder seemed to shake the very boards of the pier beneath us. The naiads below paused their weaving, looking up through the shimmering water with wide, curious eyes before resuming their work, their movements a little more hurried.
Grover swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Yeah," he whispered, as if the sky itself might be listening. "It is."
The air felt charged, thick with the smell of ozone and lake water. My singed arm hairs were standing on end again, and it wasn't from the lava. I looked at the line of cabins on the hill, my eyes drawn to those three silent, imposing structures at the end. They weren't just empty. They were like graves for a promise, or maybe cages for a threat. The thought settled in my gut, cold and heavy.
"So," I said, my voice quieter than I intended. "No kids from the Big Three for the last sixty years. That's the rule."
"That's the oath," Grover corrected, pulling at a loose thread on his shirt. "On the River Styx. Break it, and… well, you're cursed. Terrible things happen. The Furies come after you. Nothing good."
I stared at Cabin Three, the one made of rough-hewn sea stone, with shells and coral encrusting the foundation. It looked less like a cabin and more like a piece of the ocean floor that had been dragged ashore and forgotten. Empty. A king's palace with no king, no prince, no one.
"But the cabins are still here," I pointed out.
Grover followed my gaze. "Chiron says it's a matter of respect. And… contingency."
"Contingency?"
He fidgeted, his hooves clopping softly on the wood. "The oath said no more *affairs*. It didn't say anything about if… if a child was born from a true, sacred marriage. Or if… if the Fates just decided to spin a thread anyway. The gods work around rules. They're kind of famous for it." He let out a shaky breath. "But it hasn't happened. Everyone knows it's forbidden. The last ones… well, they caused so much trouble, it's better this way. Safer."
The conversation lulled, filled only by the lap of water and the distant sounds of camp. Canoeing and swordplay debates felt like childish nonsense now. We were sitting next to a history of divine war, a ceasefire written in celestial blood and sworn on the waters of the Underworld.
I thought about the climbing wall, the lava, the feeling of my heart trying to hammer its way out of my chest. That was a controlled danger, a game. The empty cabins spoke of a danger that wasn't a game at all—a danger so profound the most powerful beings in the universe had to ban it.
Grover hunched his shoulders, looking smaller than ever. His dream of a searcher's license, of finding Pan, seemed to drift even further away, overshadowed by these titanic rules and ancient oaths. My own vague sense of not belonging, of being an outlier, suddenly felt trivial in the shadow of those vacant thrones.
"Must be lonely for them," I finally said, not entirely sure if I meant the cabins or the gods.
Grover just nodded, his eyes dark and solemn. "The most powerful things often are," he murmured.
The thunder had rumbled off toward the hills, but a new kind of quiet had taken its place—a waiting quiet, the kind that hangs in the air before a storm that hasn't quite decided to break. We sat in that quiet for a long time, watching the naiads weave their baskets, creating something whole and beautiful from separate strands, while above us, the empty cabins stood as stark reminders of things that had been unraveled, and oaths meant to keep them from ever being woven again.