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Reyna Ramirez-Arellano had learned to not tolerate disorder from the moment she was born of a war goddess’ womb.
Her father was a fanatic, desperate to keep their bloodline from thinning out, pushing her to be worthy enough for the golden family pedestal. Later she’d donned the thick velvet cloak of the praetors, and her shoulders were weighed down with the mistakes of the legion, each little mishap tearing at its pristine fabric. She was determined to keep them as neat as possible, making sure no chess piece strayed from their individual quadrant.
Once or twice or thrice she allowed herself the breathing room for mistakes. Sometimes she slept an extra hour before waking up just as the earliest droplets of bronze radiance spilled from beyond Berkeley Hills. She might return to the same hot chocolate shop twice an afternoon instead of her usual once, breaking her strict schedule. If she was feeling particularly diabolical, she would wait for the evening to be over, enter her office, and sit in front of a stack of urgent reports, staring at their blank pages as she chewed on sugary jellybeans.
Reyna didn’t know much of mistakes other than those. On bad days, she would think back to her hours spent strolling through the streets of New Rome with Jason, and consider those mistakes, too. On worse days, she would remember the request she had made to Percy, followed by his swift denial, and consider that a mistake as well.
She would linger in her favorite hot chocolate café, Rel de Cacao , stirring whipped cream as rain pounded outside, trapped with the other customers. She couldn’t look away from the small details – the way that girl’s hand brushed against the other’s, the way those two young men gazed at each other like it hurt to look away, the couple squeezed into one of the shadowy booths, their mugs abandoned as their lips met in the darkness.
When she sipped, the chocolate always tasted bitter on her tongue. She would pour it down the drain in her home at the Via Principalis. Very un-preatorlike, but there was no one to see.
Reyna constantly aimed for perfection, but being a shining star at all times was difficult. She had fallen once before, and though she’d gotten back up to take her place as a star again, she often felt less like a celestial body and more like a burning kite posing as one – an imposter. But still she would rise, look at the lines on her wrist, remind herself that she had earned them, and put on her cloak once again to rule yet another day.
That was what she had planned to do that morning, cracking one bleary eye open as her internal clock pounded against her skull. She yawned, stretched her aching limbs, and slid out of bed. Her dogs nuzzled against her legs, cool metal jolting her awake from sluggishness. In the kitchen, she made a meager breakfast of toast and hastily scrambled eggs. As she chewed, her exhaustion won over: I’ll skip the run today.
Another yawn tumbled out of her. Her footsteps echoed down the empty marble halls – patter patter , her feet went. She dressed quickly – skirt, shirt, breastplate, cloak-
No. She typically draped her cloak over a chair in her room, but it wasn’t there. Her boots were, as were the rest of her ensemble, but no cape.
She bit her lip. Not in the closet, or in the kitchen, or library. Patter patter , her feet went, faster and faster, until she had combed over every room until her eyes begged to see another sight. She checked outside, even though that was irrational and not at all a decision a praetor would make. By now, any logical leader would have tossed aside the worry and gone about their day, but Reyna found that she couldn’t.
Simply put, the cloak was now enchanted, and she hadn’t realized how much Athena’s Aegis spell had helped her get through the reconstruction and post-war era of Camp Jupiter. Even before the magic, it had always felt like a constant sign of her accomplishments – she had earned her position, and it was that cloak, more than the medals pinned on her chest, that signified that it was all real .
And now it was lost. She knew she had come home with it last night, hadn’t she? She had, right?
Argentum let out a metallic whine, sensing her discomfort. She stroked his silver nose and sucked in a breath, tying her loose, wavy hair into its usual braid. She tried to calm herself, despising how vulnerable she felt without a shred of cloth billowing on her back. Her boots slapped against the cobblestone street leading to the forum at rapid pace, and the waking city watched her with curious eyes.
She needed a hot chocolate. A mug would calm her down, and there would be less customers this early in the morning, too. Her memory led her to the café, its brightly painted walls sticking out in the hodgepodge of brick, stone, and wood buildings all pressed together like an estranged family.
Rel de Cacao had a pretty pink door, stained wooden walls painted the color of a summer sky, and flowerboxes filled with magicked blossoms that changed hues every week. Today the hydrangeas were a faded mint green. Their rich vanilla scent did nothing to cloud the fumes of brewing chocolate wafting from the tinted windows. When somebody had visited, you could tell – they would be smiling and smelling of sweetness.
Reyna strolled inside, and the little bell above the door chimed to announce her entrance. The old woman who ran the joint, Ameya, waved as she polished elaborately decorated porcelain mugs with a washcloth. It was early, and the place was quiet except for the sound of simmering milk and the swish swish of Ameya’s work.
“Morning, Praetor. A fine day, isn’t it?” the old woman gushed. Her hazel eyes sparkled like amber as she set up the ingredients for a classic order, not needing any instruction after Reyna’s hundreds of visits as a regular.
“I suppose,” she said vaguely, trying for a smile. Ayema was wise enough not to ask about her lack of cloak. Perhaps she hadn’t even noticed, and Reyna was blowing things out proportion. Still, her shoulders felt cold and naked without the heavy silk fluttering behind her, There was a constant battle raging in her head –anxiety would swell within, then hatred that she’d even been weak enough to allow anxiety to plague her in the first place.
“Praetor.” Ayema’s voice brought her back to the present. “There’s been someone waiting for you, I believe.”
Reyna’s brow creased. “What?”
“Oh, yes,” she confirmed. Her lips split in a conspiratorial smile. One gloved hand poured a little tin saucepan of milk into a mug, and steam rose between them like a curtain of secrecy. “I’m glad you came this morning rather than your usual afternoon. I’m sure they would’ve waited all day until you showed up.”
“Ayema, who is ‘they?’”
The woman pointed towards one of the tables in the back. Wrapped in shadows, it might’ve been hard to discern the person if not for their shock of curly red hair and startling green eyes. There weren’t many people in New Room with that appearance – but this girl wasn’t from the legion. Reyna recognized her from Camp Half-Blood.
The oracle: Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
“Huh,” was all she could say. Not eloquent at all, but Ayema had seen her in worse states. She knew her all the way back from when she had just arrived at Camp Jupiter, struggling to make a place for herself when she’d spent most of her teenage years attending to the wills and whimsies of a sorceress, blending into the background as nothing more than a servant in white.
The old woman drizzled a spoonful of dulce de leche onto the dollop of cream she’d added, then gently pressed the mug into Reyna’s palms. She thanked her and walked towards the table, sliding into the booth. Rachel didn’t look surprised to see her.
“Oh, hey,” she said casually, “You’re Reyna, right?”
“I certainly hope so.” Even in the darkness, Rachel’s outline was stark, like the wavering lines of her shoulders and arms had been drawn over in thick marker. “If you want to speak with me, you’ll have to fill out a form. There’s a line, you know.”
“I’m sure there is,” Rachel agreed, “but this isn’t that urgent a matter and it’s probably more interesting than whatever forms you’ve got to read.”
It was a blunt, honest statement, and for a moment Reyna was stunned into silence. She was so used to the conniving senate leaders making her go through mental gymnastics just so she could respond neutrally, not unknowingly give them ammunition. Octavian had taught her that, and now she had the habit of digging into people’s words when there were usually no underlying intentions. Oftentimes she had to remind herself that not everyone was a liar.
“I see,” she muttered. “Well, then, what is it?”
Rachel bit her lip. “The other day I was at a student conference-” she took an art course at New Rome’s college, Reyna recalled - “when I found a sheet of purple left behind in the auditorium.”
Her heart stuttered. “My cloak.” She tried to contain her delight. It had been a sweltering afternoon when she’d given a speech to some of the undergraduates at the school. She had taken it off for just a moment and must have forgotten to put it back on.
“Yeah...” Rachel nervously laughed. “I didn’t know whose it belonged to, I just thought it was, like, a banner or something. So I might’ve painted it.”
Reyna choked on her hot chocolate, the thick caramel souring on her tongue. “You what ?”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel hastily apologized. “I didn’t know it was yours. Personally, I think it looks better now, but I used washable paints, so a soak or two will get it out.” From her lap she lifted a folded square of shimmering indigo, pushed aside her half-drunk mug, and spread it out on the wooden table.
Splashes of vivid green and blue and yellow greeted Reyna’s eyes. It wasn’t a single portrait, but rather several sewn together - a mural. There were scenes of the city painted in black and white, like an ink tip had spilled over the cloth. Whorls of color made spirals of dark garnet roses along the edges, and a glorious tangle of jade vines curled around their petals, the shading so immaculate that Reyna could pluck them off their painted stems. Blossoms unfurled and bloomed; the thralls of spring trapped underneath artful strokes. This was what mirrors would look like if they kept the beauty they reflected, snippets of everything stitched together by skillful – no, blessed hands.
Those very hands tapped at the table restlessly. Reyna slowly lifted her gaze from her cloak, though it was hard to pull her attention away from it. Rachel didn’t necessarily look nervous, only apologetic.
That was a new one for Reyna. While she’d tried her best to establish respect for her in the legion, fear came with it as a byproduct. To the people, she was an untouchable figure, so far up you couldn’t touch her, could barely see the soles of her heels. Nobody talked to her like they were face-to-face, and the only exceptions were her friends, Octavian – who addressed everyone like they were hardly fit to wash his gnarled toes – and Rachel.
“It’s...pretty,” she said lamely. “I quite like it. How did you do it?”
Rachel perked up. “Oh, well, I used a combination of light and dark hues to create this effect here,” she pointed to the roses. “And for those clouds, I used a sponge instead of my typical brushes.”
“You did a good job, even if it was unintentional,” Reyna complimented. “I’d be proud to wear it.”
The redhead’s lips split into a smile that lit up the dark alcove. Reyna’s heart kicked at her ribs. “I’m glad you like it. Honestly, it could be better, but I had to work on my projects for school.”
“’Could be better?’ It’s already marvelous.” She winced at her wording – it was too strong, and she had strayed from her usual neutrality, but Rachel only grinned.
“That’s what everyone says about my art, but you can always improve on things,” she said, sipping her cocoa. “Even if they start out as mistakes.”
“I’ve made plenty of those in my career,” Reyna said dryly. “Usually, once you make a mistake here, nobody forgets it. At least, the Senate won’t let you forget it.”
“Yikes. Touchy much?”
Reyna hid a giggle at the other girl’s arched eyebrows and taunt lips. It was such an outlandish, judgmental expression, and her distinct features made it all the more amusing. “Touchy is one word, I suppose.”
“Have you considered just voting them out of office?”
“That’s not exactly how a republic works.”
“Then what’s the point of being head honcho?” Rachel joked, pushing back a stray curl.
“Leading, mostly,” said Reyna. “Reading grievances.”
“Grievances?”
“Complaints.”
“Oh.” Rachel made another face; Reyna tried not to laugh. “ Boring .”
“It’s not all that bad.”
She leaned in, and Reyna could see the scattering of freckles over her nose, like spots of paint. “You’re lying.”
She sipped her cocoa, only to find that it had gone cold. She had never let her cocoa get cold before. In fact, now that she thought about it, she had never lingered in the cafe for longer than it took to drink. She’d never had a reason to stay and sit, but small details of its interior made themselves known – the grooves in the wood shaped in hypnotic spirals, the chipped paint on the bottoms of the mugs, the draft coming in from the cracked open window.
She focused on these details to keep herself from staring too long at Rachel’s face. The thought appeared in her mind – a blip, then gone. The blush on her face lingered, and she gulped down cold cocoa to fill her heart with something other than confusion.
“So...” she swallowed, “how’s college treating you? I can’t imagine you aren’t homesick.”
Rachel shrugged. “I’m usually only at camp during the summer. But yeah, I do miss it. I heard Annabeth is leading the projects to start their own multi-generational community there, so maybe I can stay permanently one day.”
Reyna had heard about it too – an impressive feat, but nothing was beyond the grasp of that girl, especially since she was spending every weekend at the Greek camp working on it with the rest of the Athena cabin. “Hopefully,” she agreed. “But my city isn’t too shabby, is it?”
A spark lit in her eyes, like fire shavings. “It’s great,” she said earnestly. “Great campus, great food, great cocoa.” She tilted her head, curls spilling over her shoulder in a waterfall of scarlet. “Great people.”
“Good,” Reyna said, a little too quickly. She cleared her throat. “I mean – good. I’m glad you like it.”
“It’s very...what’s the word you used earlier – pretty,” Rachel observed. A wry smile slid onto her face, and Reyna’s nerves tangled themselves into knots. The heat in her face felt like a betrayal – seriously, body? “Pretty streets, pretty architecture, and pretty girls? That’s a bit overkill, don’t you think?”
“What’s overkill ,” Reyna said through clenched teeth, “is the way you’re speaking to me right now.”
Rachel smirked. Reyna almost wished she’d looked scared, only so she could have some familiar ground to walk on. “My sincerest apologies, Your Majesty.”
“Apology not accepted,” Reyna snapped, but her tone was playful. Playful . Gods, when was the last time she’d ever felt that way? “I expect you to adhere to your punishment, peasant.”
Rachel laughed – it was boisterous, like the sound of firecrackers popping off one after another. Her gaze glittered with mirth. “And what punishment would that be?”
“Penance,” said Reyna. She was smiling. Her cheeks hurt. “A day in my company, to which you will cater to my every need.”
Rachel blinked – Reyna wondered if she’d taken the joke too far, and silently cursed herself. But then the other girl laughed again, and she knew she’d done something right for once.
“You know,” she said, “if you wanted to go on a date, you could’ve just said so.”
Reyna’s face turned blotchy. “A-A what ?”
“A date. When you go out and-”
“I know what it is,” she grumbled. “It’s just – I was...I was joking.”
“Oh?” Rachel asked. It was an invitation – a crossroads. She was giving Reyna a chance to change her answer.
Or maybe she wasn’t, and Reyna was just overthinking this like usual. She could communicate well with the masses, but her professionalism wasn’t suited to casual teenager interactions. She wasn’t sure if she could ever crawl out of that tight, rigid armor when it had practically become a second skin. If she were to go on a date – which she had never done before – she'd mess it up somehow. She would be too callous and scare the other girl off. She would be too stiff, unable to figure out what the redhead wanted her to do. She hardly even understood her own feelings – how could she fall so fast, so hard, to a girl who she had only met a moment ago?
She was the ash to Rachel’s fire. Accepting this invitation was bound to be a mistake. And Reyna did not tolerate mistakes.
She opened her mouth to refuse, only to notice that Rachel was busying herself by sketching on a paper napkin, deft lines forming an upside-down image Reyna couldn’t quite make out. Her tongue swiped underneath her pink lips, and her eyebrows were screwed with concentration.
“Rachel?”
“Hmm?” She stood up straight again. “Yeah?”
“I- I’m sorry, I must’ve wasted your time.”
“No sweat,” she said smoothly. “I figured I made you uncomfortable or something, so I decided to give you a moment to think. I didn’t even consider how you felt about the stuff I was implying, so I should be saying sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Reyna assured. She couldn’t form the words needed for a rejection yet, so she instead asked, “what are you drawing?”
“You,” the girl said, showing her the napkin. Reyna had had portraits done of her before, where she posed regally with her two dogs, her features harsh and menacing, her eyes colder than an empty hearth. They hung framed in front of her home for two weeks before she finally took them down, unable to walk past them without touching her face and wondering, is that really how I look?
The woman Rachel had drawn was a stranger, her head turned to the side, eyes lost in thought. Her dark wavy hair hung loosely over her shoulder. Her cheekbones were sculpted but not sharp, her expression more dazed and dreamy than authoritarian. Rachel hadn’t drawn her armor, so she could’ve imagined a sweater, or a shirt, or any normal clothing she wanted. The blanks were hers to fill.
It was only a doodle on a paper napkin, but when Reyna’s knuckle brushed against her face, she thought, this is me , and there was no doubt, no question about it.
“Is this...is this how you see me?” she asked. It was a naked question. She hadn’t buried it under the ground like a coffin.
“Should I be seeing something else?”
“I don’t know. It’s just...different from the art style I’m used to seeing people implement with me.”
“Different?” Rachel smirked. “Whatever happened to ‘pretty?’”
A smile curled at the edges of her lips. “Fine. It’s very pretty.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’ll be five-hundred drachma, please.”
Reyna rose an eyebrow. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Then what’s the point of being head honcho?” Rachel muttered, then said, “Fine. I expect you to adhere to your punishment, then.”
Her heart thundered at those echoed words. “And what punishment would that be?”
Rachel tucked a curl behind her ear and offered a genuine smile. She was radiant in her faded overalls and striped shirt. A work of art, making art, being art – not a stone statue like Reyna, dormant and unchanging. “A day in my company – only if you want to, of course.”
Reyna’s fingers clutched the handle of her mug. Now was the time to say no, turn away, and forget this had ever happened. Her eyes strayed on the napkin doodle. Her lungs constricted, and she felt like she was flying. She’d never felt like she was flying when she was with Jason or Percy. She had felt merely bubbly, and now she was frothing like champagne, threatening to spill out of the confines of what was normal to her.
Could she not make this normal?
This is a mistake , a part of her warned. A mistake.
But she couldn’t look at her time with Rachel and think of it as a mistake. Maybe, if things went wrong as they tended to, she would. But right now, she didn’t.
Right now, she wanted to overflow. “Yes. But only a day.”
“A day,” Rachel agreed. She abruptly stood up. At Reyna’s surprised look, she offered a palm. “Come on, it’s already seven. I have the whole day to show you how awesome I am, don’t I? Or should I use the word pretty-”
“Let go of that, will you?” Reyna groused, but the other girl only laughed, grabbed her hand, and pulled her out of her chair. The praetor stumbled. Balance didn’t come as easily anymore. Her feet were twisted backwards, trying to pull her into another kind of hell.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they gave their mugs to Ayema.
“I don’t know.”
“What? No plan?”
“Who needs one? I’m an Oracle,” she remarked, “things usually don’t go according to plan for me. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you have classes today?”
“They can wait. I’ve got a queen to serve.”
Reyna blushed again – Gods, she wasn’t ever going to get used to Rachel’s brazenness, was she? - and let the other girl lead her along, her hair swaying in the breeze like fire atop a candle, lighting the way.
This is a mistake , a small part screamed again. It was harder to hear.
A mistake , she thought, the paper napkin clutched in her palm. It was crinkled, and the ink was smudged. She stuffed it into her pocket for safekeeping.
If this is a mistake , she mused, it sure is a beautiful one.
She smiled as Rachel pulled them out of the store, her new cape fluttering behind her like a pair of wings, taking her up, up, and away.