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Reyna would never admit it but she dreams of love.
She wants someone to rely on, someone who allows her to possess them and someone she would allow to possess her. It is selfish perhaps to want more than she already has, to want someone to stay but she longs for it anyway.
At first she thinks it will be Jason, will be this son of Jupiter with such a bright future, her best friend and a wonderful warrior to boot. Reyna isn’t sure she is worthy of him but he seems to think so - they wouldn’t be friends otherwise, would they?
She thinks she is going to marry him one day and maybe they will settle down in New Rome and have children or maybe they won’t, too occupied with each other and their duties to the Legion. Reyna dreams of her future with him, of the life they might have.
They don’t have it.
Jason goes missing before what they have can go any deeper and Reyna thought she had so much more time but suddenly she doesn’t and he is ripped away, the budding bloom of her cruelly plucked.
And then Percy comes, Percy who is so like Jason and not - Percy who she could come to love as well but doesn’t because she is loyal and Jason is still missing and her heart won’t be whole until she knows. She finds him in the end but he is standing next to another girl, far more beautiful than she and Reyna realises she doesn’t stand a chance.
It breaks her heart as much as it lifts it because maybe if she can start to heal again, maybe she can fully give it to Percy, can love someone honestly. But he repudiates her, gently of course, but it is still rejection for the girl whose name he remembers.
Reyna is envious for quite a time, unhappy that she does not have anyone like him - someone who will remember her name even when the queen of gods herself has tried to make him forget. But she cannot have Percy.
She cannot have Percy, she cannot have Jason and Venus - Aphrodite at the time - all but dashes her prospects. She cannot, will not have any demigod, is cursed to be forever alone.
The loneliness stays with her for a long time, strong as ever after the war. It does not diminish when she steps down as Praetor. Reyna considers joining the Hunt but decides to wait a little while before she chooses.
It is then that she meets Luna.
Their first meeting goes a lot better than it could have, considering that Reyna is not usually the type to engage in conversations with blondes who wear radish earrings and whose eyes have a certain dreamy quality to them.
Actually, perhaps it is the latter category that first sparks their relationship - fellow dreamers recognise each other and Reyna sees the thin steel hidden under the surface. She may not agree with a woman like that but she can respect her.
And she does. She listens to her rambling, accepts the truth of her world just as Luna accepts hers and she smiles because though they are not yet as close as her and Jason were, there is potential here that they could be though she does not recognise it as this at the time.
It is Luna who helps her see that perhaps she is already complete, that perhaps love is not just protection and comfort, that it is also growth. Most importantly, she credits the blonde with making her realise that perhaps she is not content with what she has because she is not content with herself rather than that others must content her.
When she kisses the blonde in her far too big, flower-patterned van, she is complete. When their hands wander under the exposed sky (magic is truly a wonder), she feels complete.
But even when she is alone wherever Luna has brought her, even when it is only her, she feels complete. Even a hen it is only her hand that wanders, she feels whole.
Reyna has so much, has lost so much but has gained so much too that there is no sense in thinking that she is incomplete, that she needs romantic love to be filled.
Perhaps her and Luna’s love is not romantic but it does not matter because Reyna no longer dreams of love. Why should she?
Reyna already has it.