I can’t trust Dev. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to, but I do love him. He’s still my brother. Maybe he can start to realize what he has done, and how far he needs to climb to come back to me. I have to be strong for him, as I was for my crew. I stand over him as he cries, and I watch the flowers of the sea changing color in the light of the Nautilus.

I say good-bye to my mother and father.

I say a prayer for my brother, and for the future. I will not give up on either of them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank my advance readers for their help with this book: Roshani Chokshi, author of the best-selling Aru Shah quintet; sensitivity readers Riddhi Kamal Parekh and Lizzie Huxley-Jones; and Dr. Robert Ballard, a retired United States Navy officer and professor of oceanography who is now a full-time deep-sea explorer. If you want to read about his amazing real-life underwater adventures, check out his book Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found the Titanic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICK RIORDAN, dubbed “storyteller of the gods” by Publishers Weekly, is the author of five New York Times #1 best-selling middle grade series with millions of copies sold throughout the world: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Heroes of Olympus, and the Trials of Apollo, based on Greek and Roman mythology; the Kane Chronicles, based on ancient Egyptian mythology; and Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, based on Norse mythology. Rick collaborated with illustrator John Rocco on two New York Times #1 best-selling collections of Greek myths for the whole family: Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods and Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes. He is also the publisher of an imprint at Disney Hyperion, Rick Riordan Presents, dedicated to finding other authors of highly entertaining fiction based on world cultures and mythologies, and a contributor to an RRP short story anthology, The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities. Rick lives in Boston with his wife, Becky, and their two sons, and when he’s not writing, he enjoys traveling the world. He’s even been known to go scuba diving on occasion. Rick’s Twitter handle is @RickRiordan.