"You still claim him then?" Zeus asked, menacingly. "You claim this child whom you sired against our sacred oath?"
"I have admitted my wrongdoing," Poseidon said. "Now I would hear him speak." Wrongdoing.
A lump welled up in my throat. Was that all I was? A wrongdoing? The result of a god's mistake?
"I have spared him once already," Zeus grumbled. "Daring to fly through my domain ... pah!
I should have blasted him out of the sky for his impudence."
"And risk destroying your own master bolt?" Poseidon asked calmly. "Let us hear him out, brother."
Zeus grumbled some more. "I shall listen," he decided. "Then I shall make up my mind whether or not to cast this boy down from Olympus."
"Perseus," Poseidon said. "Look at me."
I did, and I wasn't sure what I saw in his face. There was no clear sign of love or approval. Nothing to encourage me. It was like looking at the ocean: some days, you could tell what mood it was in. Most days, though, it was unreadable, mysterious.
I got the feeling Poseidon really didn't know what to think of me. He didn't know whether he was happy to have me as a son or not. In a strange way, I was glad that Poseidon was so distant. If he'd tried to apologize, or told me he loved me, or even smiled, it would've felt fake. Like a human dad, making some lame excuse for not being around. I could live with that. After all, I wasn't sure about him yet, either.
"Address Lord Zeus, boy," Poseidon told me. "Tell him your story." So I told Zeus everything, just as it had happened. I took out the metal cylinder, which began sparking in the Sky God's presence, and laid it at his feet.
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the hearth fire. Zeus opened his palm. The lightning bolt flew into it. As he closed his fist, the metallic points flared with electricity, until he was holding what looked more like the classic thunderbolt, a twenty-foot javelin of arcing, hissing energy that made the hairs on my scalp rise.
"I sense the boy tells the truth," Zeus muttered. "But that Ares would do such a thing ... it is most unlike him."
"He is proud and impulsive," Poseidon said. "It runs in the family."
"Lord?" I asked.
They both said, "Yes?"
"Ares didn't act alone. Someone else—something else— came up with the idea." I described my dreams, and the feeling I'd had on the beach, that momentary breath of evil that had seemed to stop the world, and made Ares back off from killing me.
"In the dreams," I said, "the voice told me to bring the bolt to the Underworld. Ares hinted that he'd been having dreams, too. I think he was being used, just as I was, to start a war."
"You are accusing Hades, after all?" Zeus asked.
"No," I said. "I mean, Lord Zeus, I've been in the presence of Hades. This feeling on the beach was different. It was the same thing I felt when I got close to that pit. That was the entrance to Tartarus, wasn't it? Something powerful and evil is stirring down there ... something even older than the gods."
Poseidon and Zeus looked at each other. They had a quick, intense discussion in Ancient Greek. I only caught one word. Father.
Poseidon made some kind of suggestion, but Zeus cut him off. Poseidon tried to argue. Zeus held up his hand angrily. "We will speak of this no more," Zeus said. "I must go personally to purify this thunderbolt in the waters of Lemnos, to remove the human taint from its metal." He rose and looked at me. His expression softened just a fraction of a degree. "You have done me a service, boy. Few heroes could have accomplished as much."
"I had help, sir," I said. "Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase—"
"To show you my thanks, I shall spare your life. I do not trust you, Perseus Jackson. I do not like what your arrival means for the future of Olympus. But for the sake of peace in the family, I shall let you live."
"Um ... thank you, sir."
"Do not presume to fly again. Do not let me find you here when I return. Otherwise you shall taste this bolt. And it shall be your last sensation."
Thunder shook the palace. With a blinding flash of lightning, Zeus was gone. I was alone in the throne room with my father. "Your uncle," Poseidon sighed, "has always had a flair for dramatic exits. I think he would've done well as the god of theater." An uncomfortable silence.
"Sir," I said, "what was in that pit?"
Poseidon regarded me. "Have you not guessed?"
"Kronos," I said. "The king of the Titans."
Even in the throne room of Olympus, far away from Tartarus, the name Kronos darkened the room, made the hearth fire seem not quite so warm on my back.