Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the kid sobbing in my arms.

It’s raining on the third anniversary of Thalia’s death. Not in Camp, of course, but on the other side of the tree, the rolling grey clouds haven’t stopped their downpour in the past six hours. Annabeth had said it’s because Zeus was upset about Thalia’s death too. Annabeth is also ten years old and worships the ground her mum would walk on - if she’d ever bothered to come around and see her kid.

That same kid is leaning against me, upper body heaving with barely controlled sobs. When I turn to look at her, her eyes - the same colour as the storm clouds - are staring up at the tree that was Thalia. The tears on her face mirror the rain outside. Annabeth insists it’s a non-native tree, the same as one on Mount Olympus itself. I don’t remember the name she gave it. I also don’t really care, but I’m constantly amazed by her ability to care about small details like that. Everyone says it’s just an Athena kid thing, but I disagree. She thinks it’s a sign that Thalia’s dad cared. Everything’s a sign to her that someone cares. Like my stupid quest. I don’t know what Hermes was thinking, offering me some second-rate quest in the middle of dinner but if he thinks I’m going to go fetch a stupid apple for him, tough.

There’s a shuddering sigh from Annabeth, and her breathing evens out, though she’s still sniffling. I pull her into me a little more and rub her shoulders. This is never a good day for either of us. The first year I’d been woken up by Athena kids saying they couldn’t find her. It’d probably been the only thing that would have gotten me out of bed that day. It did make me doubt the supposed intelligence of her siblings though - where else would she have been on the day of Thalia’s death?

She’d been curled against the trunk of the tree that first time, as she’s pressed into my side right now. She’s always slept that way, even when we’d been on the run. Her blonde curls are brushed cleanly, a stark contrast to how matted they had been when we’d been that first anniversary or while we were on the run. Neither Thalia nor I knew how to brush her hair without making her screech like a harpy, and she’d only ever let Thalia cut her hair when it started becoming uncombable. I think that was the only thing they’d ever argued about.

Logically, I knew she’d only been eight at the time but Annabeth had become so self-assured while she’d been at camp that I had forgotten she was still just a kid. She had still been a year younger than I had been when I ran away. It’d had been unnerving to see her so distraught. Since then, it’s become our tradition. We come to the tree early in the morning of The Day and spend at least a couple of hours here before we have to get on with the rest of the day. We don’t talk much, but it’s like the three of us are together again.

There’s a shuffling sound from the other side of Annabeth and then an “Oops!” as the figure seems to slip and crash into the ground. Annabeth pulls away from me and launches into the figure’s arm, now crying again. I smooth out my frown before I turn to Grover.

It’s not that I hold a grudge against Grover, but things were fine before we ran into him. Yeah, we got chased by monsters but we’d also made safe houses for demigods and had managed to outwit and outmatch every monster that came after us. Then, Grover the 23-year-old satyr with his insistence for a stupid camp that would somehow fix all our problems had turned up. Then the hellhounds had turned up, then the Furies, and then he’d screwed up and led us to a Cyclops, and then Thalia died. But at least we’re at Camp Half-Blood.

“Grover.” I smile at him, and give him a pat on the back, reaching over Annabeth who’s clinging on like an octopus. “Any luck with the searcher’s licence? Annabeth, give the kid some breathing space.”

His face falls even further, and I see his eyes well up alongside the streams of tears down his face already. For a moment, I feel bad. He’d only been 11 or 12 in human years and was trying to ‘protect’ a daughter of Zeus against three Furies and hordes of hellhounds. I’d been 14 and a head almost half a foot taller than him already, and I couldn’t do much either. Then that voice in the back of my head reminds me that Thalia had been his age and had put herself between us and the armies of hell to get us all to safety. It reminds me that if Grover had been the one who tried to carry Annabeth instead of me, then maybe I could have helped Thalia. Or if Annabeth hadn’t twisted her ankle then she could have run inside and gotten help whilst Thalia and I held them off. Or if…

I feel the heavy gaze of Annabeth defiantly lifting her chin towards me. “Right, Luke?”

My confusion doesn’t deter her. “We can tell them that you did nothing wrong, right? We’ll tell the stupid Council you did your best to protect us but there were too many…” She takes a deep breath in to steel herself. “You did your job as a searcher, you found us, you tried to get us back, but one satyr with three demigods against the Kindly Ones is unfair!”

Under Grover’s curly brown mop of hair, his eyes look hopeful as he peers up at me. I’d always been taller than him, but sometime in the past year I’d shot up overnight and now had the weird sensation of everyone looking up at me. At first it made me nervous, but now I quite like it.

I toss up what to say before settling on, “Maybe you should hire her to be your lawyer.” I give him a smile. “The puppy dog eyes might be more convincing than anything she says though.”

Annabeth pushes me. I let myself fall onto the ground as she started to try her best to pommel me into the ground. Her spindly arms don’t do very much, though they’re landing more effectively than a year ago, and it makes me laugh. The pathetic punches come a bit faster and harder. “You’re so dumb! They’d all believe me!”

Her face has contorted into genuine annoyance, which is better than tears. I stop laughing when she manages to land a particularly good hit to my stomach, “I give up, I give up, stop hitting me! How am I going to go on that quest all bruised and battered now?”

“You’re really going to go on the quest?” Annabeth's face lights up with ecstasy as if she’d been chosen for it herself. Thank the gods for ADHD and distractable ten year olds.

That had not meant to come out. There’s no chance I’m going on any stupid quest that Hermes sent me on, especially not something that had already been done thousands of years ago. What was the point other than to treat me like a dog playing fetch? Yesterday when he’d told me, I’d been the furthest thing from angry. I’d been happy - Hermes had turned up out of nowhere, asked me to do something! He’d remembered me and he’d trusted me. I’d lain awake all night thinking about it and the quest, excited to pick a crew, wondering how I’d do it. Then I remembered that it had already been done. Thousands of years ago, Hercules had done it. Now I had to tell Chiron I didn’t want to do it.

Chiron is kind and patient, and possibly the closest thing to an actual parent in Annabeth’s life. He listens to her talk about the quest she wants to do, how she needs to leave Camp and help fulfil some prophecy, how she’s going to design the greatest building the world has ever seen, and how that pine tree is really special. That makes him okay in my books.

“No,” I say, thinking of the disappointed look Chiron’s going to give me, like he’s my dad. Too bad, I already lucked out with a terrible one. “I’m not going to go across the company for a stupid apple. He can get it himself. Don’t look at me like that, you’re not going to convince me to do it.”

Those grey eyes are now steel-coloured in determination to convince me to live out her dream vicariously, and now I’m the one facing the puppy dog eyes. Why are 10 year olds even allowed this power?

“Stop it,” I insist. “I mean it, I’m not doing it.”

“You’re the one who keeps talking about how they want to leave Camp,” Grover points out unhelpfully.

I turn my glare to him and he shrinks away, pulling out a tin can from his pocket. Annabeth is made of stronger stuff.

“He’s right!” she insists. “You can leave, you can check on our safehouses and make sure they’ve still got stuff, maybe even if there’s other demigods that need help you can bring them back to Camp!

This gives me pause. It’s been years since I left Camp, the idea of leaving makes me nauseous, not that I’d admit it to anyone. Every time I’ve looked over the hill of Thalia’s tree, past the strawberry fields and towards the city, I’ve only ever seen the army of monsters that had come to kill us. The first few months I’d avoided the tree entirely. The first time I went up to it and looked up, I’d almost been sick right there. Now I could sit here for a couple of hours every few days before that happened again. We’re not quite there yet.

The idea of setting up those safehouses though… There had only been about a dozen, and they hadn’t had much, just some sleeping bags and basic supplies, but it’d be nice to see if they’d been of any use to people. No one who’d come this way had ever mentioned them, but maybe we’d done some good in the world and they’d helped out.

“And on the way you can get the apple, make your dad happy and maybe he’ll talk to you again!” Annabeth adds, helpfully tearing me away from my traitorous thoughts.

“I don’t need to make him happy,” I snap. My tone is louder than usual, less teasing, too rough for these kids who just want to cheer me up. Annabeth and Grover both shrink back and I rub my head with my hands. There’s a pressure building up in my head. My son - his fate, not his fate, rings alongside it. “I don’t care about him.”

It’s true. If I could have my way, it would be me, Annabeth, and Thalia, battling it out amongst the monsters until I was old enough to get a job - any job, something normal and sane and away from this world of gods and monsters. We would be fine. We had been fine.

I take a deep breath to settle myself. I shuffle myself around to face them both, back to Thalia’s tree. Over the water, the clouds are breaking and some soft sun is managing to peek through the clouds. I’d been right. There was no sign the gods knew what today was.

“I’ll talk to Chiron, alright? They might have even revoked the quest after last night.” Behind the pacified expressions of the pair, I see the familiar brown hair and beard of our resident centaur. “You’re in luck, he’s going to chew me out.”

Chiron and I sit on the porch of the Big House as I dig into breakfast. Chiron had chased Annabeth and Grover over to the mess hall, insisting we had private quest business to talk about and had put down a plate he’d taken for me. He’s brought over a large stack of pancakes, fruit, cereal, and a few glasses of orange juice and water. He’s probably seen enough demigods scarf down their weight’s worth in food over the past decades.

“I’m not doing the quest,” I say as I start on the fruit. Chiron’s disapproval becomes a bit more pointed, possibly more because I’ve still got a stack of pancakes in my mouth rather than the whole quest thing. It’s an ongoing war between the two of us, but I was never letting good food get away from me again. Or bad food, even. Five years with no idea of when the next meal was coming is more than enough for me.

He’s sitting in his wheelchair form, hands folded over a colourful blanket in shades of green, blue, yellow, and red resting on his lap. He doesn’t say anything until I’ve finished my plate, with a near personal best of probably a few minutes. Comforting ten year olds takes a lot of energy, especially at 6 in the morning. When I finish, I keep my eyes on the plate, not wanting to be the one to start the argument.

At baseline, Chiron and I disagree heavily on the entire concept of Camp and quests, and doing what the gods want of you. They’re always quiet(ish) discussions out of earshot of Dionysus, but I respect that Chiron will actually talk to me about it, even if he regurgitates the same arguments each time.

We sit in silence, the distant sound of the waves from Long Island Beach intermixing with the chaos of the kids’ breakfast. It’s weird being one of the oldest at Camp. Having a bunch of children treat you like family because you’ve got some half-baked connection through your parents doesn’t sit right with me. But most of them are sweet, though a little naïve. And also insanely loud.

“Luke,” Chiron starts calmly.

“How come he just gets to turn up?” I don’t know where it comes from. I was ready to just let his words roll over me before I responded in any way, and now I can’t stop my frustration from welling over. “Why does he decide today of all days? Why can he just ignore me for three years and then turn up with a useless quest that doesn’t even help anyone? That’s already been done before anyway? Why -” I cut myself off. Why does everyone keep talking about my fate and not telling me?

The old centaur bushy brown eyebrows are furrowed with a downturned expression. It’s like he expected this response. I look away and back out over the twelve cabins in their horseshoe, over the strawberry fields, over the climbing wall and stables and volleyball court, and out to the coast. You can leave, Annabeth had said earlier, and suddenly I feel like I’ve been sitting in a smothered haze for the past three years. What is there for me here, other than Annabeth? I’d learnt how to fight monsters better than I had, I’d be able to survive out there. We’d be able to survive out there. We could just use it as an excuse to leave Camp, say we were going out to do the quest and leave.

My heart thumps faster at the idea of just walking out, and that pressure in my head comes back. It’s a great idea, so why does it make me feel like it’s a mistake? Sure, Annabeth loves Camp, has grown more certain of herself, has learnt to fight against kids four years older than her and hold her own, has people that understand her better than anyone out there did - fuck. That’s the reason why.

“Luke.” I can feel Chiron’s gaze on me, steady. Has he heard this all before? Am I the most recent in a long line of demigods that are pissed off by their parents? I can’t imagine anyone at Camp right now who’s complained to him like this, they’re all so content here. Even Chiron seems at peace with his lot, and he’s stuck with a bunch of bratty teenagers who do nothing but whine. “Is it so bad to do things that others have done before?”

I groan and push off of the wooden table in front of us, collapsing back in my chair. My plate rattles and two of the glasses shatter from the force. The wooden chair back digs uncomfortably into my spine. “It’s not - you don’t get it!” Great, I’m beginning to sound like one of those bratty teenagers myself, but the injustice of the situation has been stoked and now sits comfortably in my chest. “He can’t just - what’s so important that he’s come back three years later? After being useless the rest of his life anyway.”

“Oh, Hermes has always been uniquely useless, I agree,,” a jovial voice rings out from behind me. I force myself to sit in a more respectable position. Chiron begins to fold out his wheelchair to revert to his centaur form, but stops presumably at the hand that waves in front of my face, narrowly missing my nose.

“Who even needs people to deliver messages these days?” he adds. “They’ve got texting and email and who knows what else the mortals are going to create next! It’s the start of the 21st Century! You’re in my seat, Liam.”

Dionysus isn’t particularly impressive to look at, perhaps even less so now then he had been three years ago when we’d first met. He looks flushed like he’s still hungover even though it’s been fifty years since he’s had a drink, with dark blue eyes ringed with sleeplessness. He’s got a t-shirt with a ‘Wish You Were Beer’ slogan on today, possibly to add to the cheer of a demigod going on a quest to die. Or maybe he hopes I’ll turn into beer along the way and it’ll bypass the rules somehow. Is that cannibalism? Can Gods eat humans? They ate Sisyphus' children before they knew and punished him…

Chiron shoots me a look when I don’t get up from my chair, distracted by my thoughts. Right. God. Chair. To be fair, Chiron’s the one who put my plate there.

I scoot over into the chair away from Chiron, letting Dionysus sit between the two of us before I realise I probably should have stuck closer to the centaur.

“Mr D, Luke here was just planning for his quest -” Chiron starts.

“Planning to not go ahead with it it seems.” Dionysus actually sounds pleased. I would have thought a god would be pretty unhappy for me to be directly going against one of their kind. Apparently not. It does make me hesitate though, I don’t know if agreeing with Dionysus is a sign I’m making the right decision.

“Sorry Mr D, I was just, you know, raising some points,” I say uncomfortably, slinking low in my seat. Gods I hate myself for shrinking back. Annabeth would do better than I was right now. “What’s the point of the stupid apples anyway?”

“Because, Lincoln, it’s not about the apple, it’s about the process of getting them.” He rolls his eyes as if I’m an absolute moron for not understanding.

“What’s the process of getting it? That you trick some stupid Titan like Heracles did? Super memorable.”

Dionysus’ eyes crinkle in amusement. “Yes, the long forgotten tale of Heracles’ Eleventh trial. An obscure piece of history.”

My fists ball up without thinking. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then change the story,” he shrugs. A Diet Coke appears in his hand. He cracks the can open and takes a sip. “Kill the dragon, trick the Hesperides, for Zeus’ sake do demigods need someone to spell everything out for them nowadays?”

That’s not the point anyway! I want to yell but there’s no point talking to a God about divine right. It’s even more useless than talking to Chiron about it. They’ll just toe the party line, something about fates and godly powers and other duties. I look at Chiron nonetheless, in case he wants to add to the conversation.

He’s looking at me, almost saddened. Fuck. He’d figured out I’m going before I did.

“Let’s start with the Oracle,” he says in a tone reminiscent of someone trying to coax an injured animal into a cage. “Then you can choose two campers before you go.”

Chapter Text

is a nuisance because I spent the last two years teasing him about being shorter than me. You win some, you lose some I suppose.

Technically I’m not sitting at the Hephaestus table, I’m hovering next to it, in the middle of the aisle as some of the later demigods scramble behind me to find a seat at their tables. It’s a ruckus, as it always is with more than fifty teenagers scrambling around. At least the constant fire from the hearth means we’ve got the smell of flame and fresh food instead of teens.

“Sure.” The thing I love most about Charles as a friend, is that he never doubts me. When he says something, I know it’s not sarcastic or an attempt to appease me. “You’ll just have to convince Luke.”

“Oh, I’ve got that under control,” I say easily. Charles raises an eyebrow and I can feel my cheeks heat up. “I meant the whole - “ I drop my voice so we can’t be heard over the noise from our fellow campers. “You know, charmspeak thing.”

Charles’ eyebrows shoot up - he really lets his face do the talking for him - and properly turns away from his breakfast to look at me. He’s leaned in further now, and his face is inches from mine. As a daughter of Aphrodite, I absolutely should not take the step back that I do, feeling my face heating up even more, if that was even possible. But Charles is clearly looking past me, his eyes vacant and I try to suppress a flash of irritation, though I’m not sure if it’s at myself or him.

I turn to look behind me, there’s no one there and when I turn back, Charles is now looking me in the eye. “What?”

“I don’t know if you should be… using that for the quest,” he says. “It’s a Fate thing, right? Won’t they decide who gets it?”

It was a thought I’d had myself, but since last night I’d had this feeling in my gut that I was supposed to go on that quest. I tell Charles as much. “Charles, I think that’s convincing more than anything else. I have to help.”

I run my fingers through the strands of my hair nervously. He has to believe me, because if Charles believes me there’s a chance Luke will believe me, and then I can go on this damn quest! Charles is quiet as he contemplates. I focus on the smoothness of my hair - thank goodness for Aphrodite cabin’s hair products - as I do my best not to get irate at his silence. I take a deep breath in. I’m a child of Aphrodite, I don’t get annoyed and when I do, I just let it go, I say to myself as I always do when I can feel my temper flare.

“Does Michael know?”

I frown but it’s more controlled than better. “He doesn’t get an opinion on this,” I retort.

“That wasn’t my question.” Charles is smiling now, which is so rare for him that it makes me smile in turn. He’s got a good smile, with his eyes lighting up and the corners wrinkling even when he’s not fully laughing.

I force myself to make my hands still, though I’m not sure when that happened, and shrug. “I’ll tell him after I get it.”

“Go get ‘em,” he says. This time, he gives me a full smile, teeth and all. It’s even better.

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I sit on the stairs of the Big House porch, having just missed Luke. I’d spotted Grover, his satyr friend, at breakfast and he’d told me how Chiron had told them that Luke would be joining later after a meeting. Apparently he’s gone to see the Oracle, a thought that makes me shiver. I’d never met it myself, only heard about it from campers that had gone up - all of whom hadn’t returned after.

I think that might have been the reason I wanted to go on that quest - at this point, there weren’t many older campers left on the account that everyone else had died. Well, I’d heard of a couple that went to college but so far we were batting zero for gods knows how many. I’d heard the last successful quest had been decades ago at this point.

Chiron is pacing anxiously along the porch. He’s in his centaur form, I think something he does when he’s anxious more than anything even with the strain it puts on his back leg. I grew up around horses, and I can tell his left leg is acting up more than usual. He’s not unsteady, I guess from centuries of living with it, but he’s not as normally composed as he would be.

“You’re due to see Michael, right?” I ask gently. “You should see him, I can wait for Luke to come back. He might be gone for a while.”

Chiron gives me a pained smile, “I appreciate that, child, but it shouldn’t take long and I should be here when -”

It’s lucky he’s here. There’s a crash from upstairs, heavy running down the stairs, and then a very pale Luke comes running through the Big House with a squirming mass in his arms. Annabeth. Gods, they’d sent a 10-year-old up there too?

Turns out, no. Annabeth admitted she had stayed behind, curious, and had followed Luke up the stairs. And now we were prophecy-less with no clue of where to go next. Still, it’s hard to be mad at the cute 10-year-old who’s eyes are already red from crying her heart out this morning. With Thalia’s tree having always been around since I’d been at Camp, I’d forgotten the date.

“You were pretty brave going up there,” I say to her, after Luke and Chiron are done telling her off. They both shoot me equally exasperated looks, something I’m sure Luke would never want to hear. I know I’m not really enforcing their message, but the kid looks like she needs a break. “I think I would have peed myself a little if I’d seen a zombie.”

She folds her arms and glares at me stormily, impressive for her age in how she radiates ‘unimpressed’. “She wasn’t scary,” she huffs.

“Well, I guess if I have to go up, I’m taking you with me,” I say, then whisper in faux secrecy. “Is it true she’s got red eyes and can move things around the room?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes, which is a lot better than the shell-shocked expression she’d had come out, or the glare she’d been giving me before. “No, but there was a lot of green mist.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for it.” I nod, doing my best sage-like impression. “Now, I think you’re going to miss breakfast if you don’t hurry out. And don’t forget to scoot over to Apollo cabin, tell Michael I told you to swing by and he’ll sort you out with some ambrosia or nectar, I have a feeling that you’ll need it to get through the day.”

I infuse just a little bit of charmspeak into it to coax her along. Annabeth is hesitant, moving her weight between her feet and rocking a little as she thinks.

Charmspeak was a relatively new skill I’d realised I had. It had started with accidentally making some of my siblings do things - not anything harmful or mean, but they’d actually listened when I told them to clean up after themselves, or not to touch my things. It’s not that they’re terrible people and won’t listen to me, but the way they did it had been so uncharacteristic that I’d approached Charles about it. We tried it on a few other people, and it seemed to work though with varying results

I tried to bring it up with Elias, but he’s been a pretty checked out camp counsellor since the last failed quest. He didn’t seem to think it was anything other than the usual Aphrodite charm. We had ended up sneaking into the Athena cabin library with some good old bribery - Charles was great at making weird and wonderful things to trade with them - and figured it out on our own. Mostly.

Anyhow, it didn’t seem to work as well on people who had more, well, willpower, and it seemed like this kid already had it in the truckloads. In the end, Annabeth looks up at Luke, reads something in his face then nods her head and shoots off. Before any of us can get another word in though, she runs back up the porch stairs, bowls Luke over with a hug, her tiny arms barely reaching around his back, and says, “You’ve got to come find me before you go!”

She doesn’t even wait for an answer before she’s run off again. What I would do to have that energy back.

Luke smiles after her, looking a little less sorrowful than he did before. “You’re good with her,” he says. “She would have spent an hour arguing with me about that.”

He turns to face me, still smiling, and I’m blown away by how handsome. I mean, he’s been around longer than I have and I see him every few days, but still. He’s got sandy blond hair that’s a little too long and falls over his blue eyes. His smile is a little cheeky, as if he knows he’s charming, which should be infuriating but instead just adds to the good looks. It doesn’t help that he’s one of the nicest campers around; cheering everyone up when they’re doing their chores, helping the camp counsellors with their rounds when he can tell they're busy. Everyone’s trying to figure out when Cameron is going to step down and let him be the Hermes cabin counsellor instead.

I know I’m blushing again - three times in one day and It’s not even 9 in the morning! - and I look down at my new bracelets and clean a smudge off one of them.

“Oh, she’s sweeter than my half-siblings,” I say, trying to think of things that are not that smile. “You should see what a brat Jemma is when we try to wake her up for breakfast. I’ve lost two perfumes bribing her.”

“Gods, what are you going to do without them?” he drawls, “I mean, what’s Michael going to think?”

I try to hide my surprise that Luke knows anything about my love life, but based on the edge to his smile I don’t think I’m doing very well.

Chiron coughs. “Is there anything you wanted to talk to Luke about, Miss Beauregard?”

“Right,” I say, trying not to think about that now Chiron of all people knows as well, which just feels a bit much, “I want to go on the quest with you.”

It’s nice to see Luke on the back foot for once, even if he’s much better at hiding it than I’d be. He just blinks slowly, still smiling though it’s turned a bit confused. I know what he’s thinking. It’s what everyone will think once we’re gone anyway. Why is an Aphrodite kid going on a quest? All they care about is makeup and their hair and what goes with what, but it’s so not true. Anyway, if I wasn’t supposed to go, why would Aphrodite have left me these bracelets this morning?

There’s a long silence while we stare at each other, me willing him to understand that this quest is important to me, his face inscrutable. Finally, he shrugs. “Sure, no one else has been dumb enough to -”

I fling myself at him in a manner embarrassingly like Annabeth. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

When I stumble back finally, almost delirious in joy, Luke is looking slightly stunned. I’m not quite mean enough to comment on it, but am interrupted anyway by another voice saying, “Uh, is there like try-outs for the quest or something?”

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Luke is sitting on the ground under Thalia’s tree with Annabeth opposite him, clutching her small hands in his. Her hair is loose and there’s enough of a breeze that it’s being swept out in front of her face, covering her expression. They’re talking quietly amongst each other, as they have been for the past half an hour. Next to me, Ethan has his arms slung over his knees, eyes narrowed at the pair of them.

“I think this is the first time they’ve been apart in three years,” I murmur to him as I fix the straps of my backpack and tie them out of the way. I’d taken the time to reorganise my gear in the time we were waiting - my siblings had insisted I be prepared and thrown some items at the last minute leading to an absolute mess. “Be nice.”

“We were supposed to leave 15 minutes ago,” he grumbles, not taking his eyes off the pair. “Luke was the one that told me to be here on time.”

Rather, Luke had told him he could come on the quest only if he was here on time and no one else decided to come along. He’d stormed off after, with barely concealed irritation on his face.

It had been a lacklustre argument, Luke protesting that an 11-year-old shouldn’t come along on the quest, Ethan retorting he was 13 and definitely old enough to go on a quest, and they’d managed to create an endless loop of an argument from that. I’d stayed behind to supervise when even Chiron, whose patience knows no bounds, had gotten tired of the argument and decided to leave. He received a surprisingly vicious look from Luke as he sauntered off to visit Apollo cabin and I got the joy of watching them almost throttle each other.

“He’s just worried about you,” I offer. “He doesn’t want you getting hurt. And you have to admit, you’re pretty young to go questing.”

Ethan rolls his eyes, then collapses back to the ground dramatically, arms splayed out on the grass above him. “Whatever. Let me know when he wants to go on his quest. That he doesn’t even care about.”

I’m saved from having to deal with this temper tantrum when I spot Charles jogging up the hill. He’s impressively unpuffed as he reaches us, and gives a puzzled look at the boy complaining next to me. I shake my head. “You’re lucky we’re still here,” I say, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from Ethan and Luke. “As Ethan pointed out eloquently before, we were supposed to head out earlier.”

Charles looks past me, seems to spot the duo still talking behind me, and shrugs. “Guess they’re not used to being apart.”

I nod, rolling my bracelets absent-mindedly.

“Oh, yeah! I saw those yesterday.” Charles pulls his arm away from my grip and digs into his pocket. “And I figured you might need something for the quest.”

“Charles, I don’t have any space -” I am interrupted by him holding out his palm. In it sits small bits of metal, two bronze, the other steel.

“Can I?” he asks.

“May I,” I correct, but hold out my arm. Charles ignores this, and takes off one of the bracelets. I watch as he gently threads the metals - charms, I realise - into it before offering it back to me.

I hold up my arm to take a closer look at the bracelet. On closer inspection, the bronze looks like a tiny, immaculately crafted spear and dagger in shocking detail for such small pieces. The steel however, is shaped in the image of a shield.

“Alright, so they’re pretty easy to use,” Charles says with more enthusiasm than I’ve ever heard before. “All you need to do is pull on them - they’re each two pieces, give one a go.”

I almost stab Charles in the eye with the spear that appears in my hand once I disconnect the charm.

“Oh my gods, Charles I’m so sorry!” I yelp and throw the spear on the ground - mindfully away from Ethan’s direction now.

Charles waves his hand and picks up the spear with the other hand. “Now, all you do is grab it and then hold your bracelet against the spear tip and… there you go!” He smiles broadly at me, larger than I’ve ever seen in the past year. “Should work the same with the dagger and the shield. But with the shield - ”

“Charles, this is - I can’t even - did you sleep at all last night?” On closer inspection, the bags under his eyes are telling. “Charles!”

He shrugs his broad shoulders and looks away, almost bashfully. “Hopefully it’ll keep you safe. All of you, I mean.”

I try to formulate some sort of response that is appropriate. In the end, I can only give him a hug. He tenses, initially, but eventually envelops me in his own hug. We stare at each other awkwardly after.

“So, how does Michael feel about the quest?” Charles offers.

“Oh, we broke up.” I shrug.

“Again, huh?” Ethan says from behind us, making us both jump a metre up in the air. “Isn’t that like the fourth time in a month?”

“It’s impolite to eavesdrop,” I snap. “And it’s been two weeks since the last one!”

“It’s been ten days,” Annabeth’s voice pops up cheerfully. Gods, no one understands privacy in this place. Luke’s up and helping her get to her feet, then smooshes her into a hug. “Luke, let go of me!” She’s not fighting very hard to get out of it, barely shoving him away, but she’s making a valiant effort of pretending she doesn’t want to be hugged.

“You’re not allowed to take over the Camp while I’m away,” Luke insists, keeping her enveloped tightly. “You have to wait ‘til you’re a teenager at least. And no going on a quest while I’m gone.”

“Fine.” Annabeth finally pulls away from Luke. She hands over a dagger to him. “Only if you take this and bring it back to me. It’s only a loan.”

“Promise,” Luke smiles, then ruffles her hair until she’s running away from him screeching instead.