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When she’s young, people tease her about her mother. They try to fit her into a mold.
The moment she’s claimed by Aphrodite, it’s like everyone has decided who she is. Because she is beautiful, she cannot be strong. Because she wears makeup, she cannot be smart. Because she is a daughter of Love, she is worthless.
And she almost starts believing it.
Almost.
But then a son of Hermes finds her. He’s handsome and kind, and he knows what it’s like to live in the shadow of their parents.
We’ll make them listen to us, he promises. We’ll make them realize how powerful we really are.
So Silena follows him, joins his quiet rebellion and vows to make people realize that she is more than Aphrodite’s daughter, that she is not worthless because she loves.
And when she realizes what’s going on, it’s too late. She can’t back out.
Not now.
Not after everything.
The silver charm makes her bracelet feel like a shackle.
oO0Oo
Clarisse is like a soul friend, someone she feels she’s known all her life. And as she straps the worn armour onto her slender body, each click of metal and leather snapping into place feels like an echo of a memory long-forgotten.
The silver scythe on her charm bracelet is heavy and burning cold against her skin. She counts her heartbeats to the rhythm of the names of all the demigods who have died because of her.
Her fault. This was all her fault.
But she’d make it right.
Her fingers are steady as she buckles her greaves into place and fits the plumed helmet over her head.
oO0Oo
She knows Clarisse’s mannerisms, has been friends with her for years. She’s picked up on the way she moves, the forceful stalk of her gait, the fluid and powerful motions of her body as she fights.
So her voice doesn’t falter as she orders the Ares cabin to the chariots, brandishing Clarisse’s electric spear over her head in a battle cry.
None of the dozen Ares campers notice the difference.
oO0Oo
It’s no surprise Silena’s reckoning comes in war.
There’s a reason her mother is so drawn to Ares. People go to war in the name of love. They end wars for the same reason.
She is a daughter of Love, and she has come to realize that it is the most powerful weapon of all.
Even still, the piercing yellow gaze of the Lydian drakon is near paralyzing. There is no way that she could defeat something so large. Not alone. Not with only half a dozen campers and a spear she barely knows how to use.
But she knew she wouldn’t walk away. She’d led the charge, knowing it would end with her death.
She never intended to survive.
She faces the drakon and feels the faint stirring of memories, like she’s been here before.
Just like before, she knows her death will spur the others into action. And that will have to be enough.
oO0Oo
“Ares, to me!” Silena screams, her voice sounding shrill and terrified, even to her ears. But she doesn’t let the fear distract her as she jabs her spear at the drakon again and again.
Clarisse’s siblings are falling around her, one eaten by the drakon, another knocked off his chariot, a third sprayed with poison.
She doesn’t give any of them a second glance. She can’t. Not with the drakon bearing down and dozens of lives depending on her.
“ARES!” she shouts and charges the drakon. Distantly, she hears Percy yelling for her to wait and knows her deception must have been uncovered, but it doesn’t matter.
Not when the drakon spits poison in her face and she falls from her chariot, the skeletal horses continuing their rampage without their rider.
Pain. Pure, blinding pain.
Feet pound the asphalt towards her and hands struggle to remove the melting helmet from her ruined face as a familiar voice, heavy with grief, cries, “NO! Curse you, WHY?”
The leather and Celestial bronze is corroded and bound to her skin with poison as Clarisse cradles her in her arms and screams, “WHY?” over and over again.
And Silena can’t say It was the only way. This was all my fault and I’m going to fix it.
She can’t say it because the poison is already eating away at her skin, melting holes through her flesh and bones. And it hurts. Gods, it hurts. It’s an agony like she’s never felt before, like she knows she’ll never feel again, but it’s nothing less than she deserves.
She just focuses on breathing as the weight of Clarisse’s body next to her disappears and her friend charges the drakon.
Will she be remembered as a hero or a traitor? She doesn’t think she could bear to hear the answer.
A single, burning tear traces its way through the poison and melted metal on her cheek.
oO0OO
Silena only knows the drakon is dead because of the sudden absence of sound in the war-torn surroundings. No more roaring, no more screaming. Just the quiet whimpering of the injured and stunned murmuring of the survivors. But her fading vision is focused on Clarisse as she returns to cradle her head in her lap.
“What were you thinking?” Clarisse’s voice hitches with what, in anyone else, might have been a sob.
Silena swallows, tries to force down the burning bile that rises in her throat. “Wouldn’t… listen. Cabin would… only follow you.”
Speaking is nearly impossible. Her vision is gone in one eye, the skin burned away with the corrosion, and the pain almost blinds her completely.
She doesn’t hear what Clarisse shouts, but knows it anyway.
“Don’t blame them,” she croaks. “They wanted to… to believe I was you.”
Clarisse starts truly crying then. Silena can feel her sobs jostle her body and the rippling pain causes her to wince. “All my fault,” she whispers, voice slurred. Her tongue feels leaden in her mouth, like heavy, molten metal against her teeth. “The drakon, Charlie’s death… camp endangered—”
But speaking is too painful, her breathing shallow like someone has wrapped a tight band around her chest. So she opens her palm, the only answer she can give them.
“You were the spy.” Percy’s voice is faint and watery, like he’s speaking from underwater.
She tries to nod but pain explodes through her neck as the movement rips at her burning and corroded skin. “Before… before I liked Charlie, Luke was nice to me.”
And so she tells them of her failures, of her mistakes and her shame, of the guilt that weighs down her shoulders. She ends with a heavy, shuddering breath, but also a strange feeling of relief. “Forgive me,” she says, and it sounds like more than an apology. Like they were words that had been trapped within her for millennia and were only now coming out.
“You’re not dying,” Clarisse insists, eyes wet. Her voice is so distant Silena can hardly hear her.
The world around them blurs, flickering between the battle torn city, a stretch of sandy beach painted red with blood, a dark chasm with a river flowing through it. She knows in her heart that she’s been here before. At least this time she gets to say goodbye.
Her vision fades again and there’s a tall man standing by Charon’s boat with his hand outstretched, his dark skin glowing with an unnatural hue.
“Charlie…” Her voice sounds a million miles from her body. If she even has a body anymore. “See Charlie…”
And she takes his hand.