The Son of Neptune

Hazel is celebrating her 13th birthday in New Orleans where she lives with her mother, Queen Marie. She is struggling in school because the other students bully her, but she has developed a relationship with a boy named Sammy. Hazel and Sammy spend the afternoon riding horses together at the stable where he works. He gives her a cupcake and a chaste kiss. Afterward, Hazel walks home thinking of her curse and how her mother has used it to benefit them in the past. Before they knew it was a curse, her mother would take the jewels Hazel pulled from the earth and used them to pay their expenses. However, each person who received one of these jewels would experience a tragedy. Hazel lives with great guilt because of this and her mother has grown bitter. Recently, Hazel’s mother began acting oddly, having conversations with someone who is not there. When Hazel arrives home on this day, she meets her father for the first time, Pluto, the god of the underworld. Pluto gives her a gift of a sketchpad and colored pencils. She asks him why he cursed her, and he tells her to ask her mother. In their apartment, Pluto confronts Marie. Marie announces she plans to move to Alaska and Pluto tells her it’s a trap.

Nico shakes Hazel awake from the blackout and tells her she must learn to control these events to stay safe. Hazel thinks about something else Pluto told her, that a son of Neptune would one day free her of her curse. She wonders now if that person is Percy.

Nico and Hazel rush back to camp for muster. On the way, Hazel accidentally reveals a gold bar. Fearful someone might pick it up, she practices a new trick she has learned and melts it into a ring and sends it back into the ground.

At muster, the legionnaires are lined up in their cohorts. Hazel belongs to the Fifth Cohort, the least respected of the groups. After roll call, Reyna announces the arrival of Percy and announces Octavian’s declaration that he will join the legion. When asked for someone to vouch for him, Frank and Hazel both declare him worthy because he saved their lives. Hazel becomes Percy’s sponsor as he joins the Fifth Cohort.

The legionnaires gather for dinner before war games. Nico speaks to Percy, telling him he only recently met Hazel and that he had a sister who died. He says he used to visit his other sister, Bianca, in Elysium—the Underworld paradise—but she chose to be reborn. He met Hazel and because there are so few children of Pluto, he felt they should stick together. Dakota, the Fifth Cohort’s centurion, notices that Percy has an “empathy link with a faun” (93). Nico distracts everyone by insisting Hazel and Frank work with Percy on strategy for the upcoming war games.

Frank and Hazel tell Percy more about the legion, including the story of how they lost their eagle and most of their Imperial gold weapons when the Fifth Cohort went to Alaska in a failed attempt to figure out the Prophecy of Seven. Jason Grace raised the reputation of the Fifth Cohort when he became praetor, but since his disappearance, their reputation has soured again.