Archive of Our Own

The air brushes past her hair as she shields one hand over her eyes. The mid-November breeze freezing the tips of her fingertips.

In the horizon, a clearing of suspiciously empty land separated by a marbled arch that read “CAMP HALF-BLOOD,” in gold, stood. 

“I’m supposed to be safe here? In a summer camp?” She muttered to herself, dark eyebrows furrowed as she looped multiple scenarios on how the camp could possibly equip her with knowledge on how to fight humanoid snakes who had chased her for three states.

Maybe she’d learn how to roast them on open fires and stick tents up their asses— She snickers at the thought. 

Maenam looks sheepish and apologetic, “It doesn’t look like much yet,” she says. “But that’s because we haven’t reached the barrier, so the mist is still, well, doing its thing.”

“But I promise you, Jai, you’re gonna absolutely love it here.” She gleams at the demigod, insistently promising. Kwanjai hums, unconvinced. 

You don’t exactly learn to love when you haven’t felt it before, and you especially won’t when you don’t belong.

Experience taught her that . She hadn't loved being the only Thai student in a sea of faces that didn't look like hers, something worse than a plethora of undiagnosed learning disabilities and dreams that left her screaming in the dark. She hadn't loved the looks for being different, or that her own father had abandoned her for that very same reason.

So when Maenam, her supposed satyr protector, whatever that means, noticed her, offered her a safe haven, she immediately took the opportunity to escape the hellhole she was in. Coming with her, apparently, meant that she was a demigod— a child of one of the Greek goddesses. 

The grueling hike came to a stop just as the sun was setting, in front of a big house with two stories and chipping blue paint. 

“This is the big house—” “That's the name? Big house? Really?” Kwanjai snickered at the lack of creativity.

 A bunch of half-bloods at Camp Halfblood with a big house in the middle called the Big House.  

“Welcome, Kwanjai Suthamanee.” A deep voice spoke from behind the two girls. A tall man, half horse and half human, spoke. 

Kwanjai stared. If the day hadn't been ridiculous enough, the universe had decided to throw a horse-man at her for the finale.

“We've been expecting you.”

“Welcome to camp half-blood!” A girl with fiery red hair, green eyes, and soft freckles greets. She was tall and looked to be in her late teens. On her neck were 5 beads signifying the duration of her stay up until that point.

“I'm Cynthia, the head counselor for the Hermes Cabin.” She gestured to the cabin which had a symbol. A wand and two snakes coiling around it, like the symbols on pharmacies, it looked homey and well-lived in, unlike that of Cabins 1 to 3.  

Kwanjai felt something off. She knew her dad was undoubtedly human, having seen him bleeding and inebriated and such, that it was her mother who was blessed with divinity. 

Why, then, is she staying with the children of Hermes, a male God?

“We usually take in unclaimed children before they're set to live in their cabins.” She explains, noting the younger's reluctance. Right. Cynthia took the three steps up and opened the door, exposing the chaos that is Cabin 11.

Two people were running around chasing each other, apparently from something stolen, stepping over someone sleeping on their bed. This startled someone on the top bunk, who almost fell, eliciting giggles from most of the room. 

Kwanjai felt her hands getting clammy, her forehead breaking out in a cold sweat. Why couldn't she have roomed with Maenam instead? 

Cynthia looked exasperated at the sight of her cabin and shouted out, “Guys! We have a new cabinmate!” Effectively getting the attention of most of the campers. 

“Introduce yourself,” Cynthia whispered to the young girl beside her, giving her a friendly nudge while she was at it. 

“I'm…” She hesitated. Her name wasn't exactly one that rolls off the tongue well, but if these were the people she was going to be staying with, then she might as well. 

“I'm Kwanjai Suthamanee, just call me Jai. Um, nice to meet you.” She decided to get it over with.

 Everyone started to talk to her, all. at. once.

“Guys, go bombard her in the morning; she needs her rest. You guys, of all people, should know how hard travelling here is.” Cynthia scolded, looking at each and every one of them in the eye.

"Jai, there should be some empty beds right around the back. Go pick one for yourself and get situated.” She nodded. 

She hadn’t really estimated how… crowded the cabin would be. There were still some beds empty, but the sheer number of children in one room was overwhelming. There were clothes strewn around, shoes and other stuff scattered on the floor, which would surely trip someone in the morning, and a lot of different conversations happening at the same time. Kwanjai hopes she isn’t the focus of some.

Slowly, the lights turned off, and the conversations died down. The girl stayed staring up at the empty bunk above her. 

Kwanjai tries to imagine what life she’ll lead now that she’s in a camp. Perhaps she’ll be able to find a hobby, something she enjoys immensely, maybe she’ll grow taller and fuller, maybe she’ll learn to enjoy it here. 

The prospect of being a demigod feels entirely imposing. On one hand, she has perks and gifts from her supposed mother; on the other, it entails that the monsters from the myths are real, and at any given moment, they can attack her. 

Her probable first step is to learn about the monsters, so that she can at least be useful here. 

The cabin door creaks open at a poor attempt at staying quiet. Everyone else is fast asleep and doesn’t seem to stir at the disturbance. 

Kwanjai freezes up at the intrusion and mentally tries to reassure herself that there is a barrier, and that couldn’t have been a monster or someone dangerous. She tries to peek, but the light only casts a shadow on the person’s face. She could only make out a mop of damp, curly hair steadily walking up to the bunk directly next to hers. 

She stops thinking about it and forces herself to go to sleep, praying it doesn’t attack her as she does. 

In the book she was reading, partly to avoid interaction before she had her first meal, it had said that Zeus was afraid of humans before, who had double the limbs and organs they had now. He separated them into halves to weaken their forms, and Apollo had sewn them back up again, turning us into the humans we are right now. 

Beyond all reasonable cause, perhaps aided by fate, humans now search for their missing half in pursuit of completeness. 

“Look at the new girl, her nose’s stuck in a book already. Reckon that’s Athena’s?” Someone said, as they treat her like a bet, putting wagers on which cabin she’s in. Is this how zoo, or even circus animals, feel? 

The horn blew, signalling the last calls for breakfast, as the Hermes table slowly started to fill in. Every person is conversing with each other. Cynthia, Gods bless her soul, decided to sit beside the newbie to introduce her to everyone. 

Most notable questions were of her descent and suspected parentage, which she answered honestly. “Uh, I’m, Thai and … Greek, I guess. I moved around a lot as a kid, but lived in a boarding school in L.A. before coming here.” 

“L.A.? Holy shit! That’s, like, on the other side of the country!” Jeulian gaped at how far she travelled to get there. 

“Yeah, well, uh, my mother’s a Goddess, but I don’t really… have a clue who…” She trailed off. People started giving unsolicited help trying to get her, possibly to remember her mother, or if she had skills representing any of the Goddesses around. 

“Hey, is Castellan not eating?” Someone throws out. It seems to have been effective as everyone tries to look around for him, anticipating his return. A guy, whom she remembers as Chris, spoke up. “He trained late last night, he’s probably just going to eat lunch later.” as they all stood up to get their food. 

Whoever this Castellan guy must be important for his absence to be noticed, but that thought gets brushed away quickly when it's their table’s turn to get food. 

Kwanjai looks at the breakfast she was given, and tries to go back to the table, but immediately notices that everyone else is heading towards the campfire. “What’s this for?”

“It’s for the Gods. You burn a portion of your food, kinda like an offering, or a gift.” Zachary, another Hermes child, answered. “You can talk to them too if you’d like.” Cynthia helpfully answered. 

“Right,” Kwanjai stared at which food to offer, and decided she didn’t really want the fruit, and watched it burn on the fire. She racked her brain a million times, to try to think of praises to shower, but ultimately, all she could think of was bitterness, loathing, at an unknown Goddess for not intervening in her life earlier. 

She decided to leave it be, maybe another day. Maybe when she can leave all the hurt she amassed in her weary bones. 

Everyone filed back onto the table slowly, some in the process of finishing their meals, some already chattering away. “This claiming thing,” 

“How do I get claimed?” 

Following the advice of the other campers, Kwanjai spent her first week drifting through the activities. She spent her afternoons huddled in the fields with the Demeter sisters, Karyn and Kelsey Freesias, attempting to harvest strawberries. But every time she tried to snip a berry from the vine, the results were messy and unpresentable, with a stray leaf or two always seemingly falling.

 Even if she hadn’t been a daughter of Demeter, wouldn’t having basic planting skills be something everyone knows? She quickly left with an apology for her inadequacy and red ears. 

On her way to the training grounds to spar with some Athena kids, she noticed everyone was gathered around one specific area, and she decided to check out the fuss.

“It’s Romulus Siege! He’s sparring with Castellan!”

This Castellan guy comes back late, wakes up late, skips breakfast, and goes straight back to sparring? That’s hardcore. 

She decided to stay and watch, if there wasn’t anyone else available to spar. 

She managed to squeeze in near the front, and finally got a good look at the two demigods. One was blonde, aquiline nose, and sharply cut muscles, he had a fiery aura and a knot on his brow that felt more like he was a kid of Ares. She turns her attention to the other kid, probably Castellan, and she feels time slow down.

Every swing and deflection he does is so skilled, it flusters her, the crimson red crawling up her neck, into her ears. 

She feels rooted in place, unable to move, unable to stop watching. Her ears filled with cotton, unable to hear anything but the loud, speedy thumping of her heart. 

If the Gods are truly benevolent and powerful, and if they had truly split humans into two, Kwanjai solemnly prayed this boy was her other half. 

She snapped out of it when a sword went flying in her direction, probably from the disarming of one of the two. The steel glinted in the air, spinning. She traced it with her eyes. By some miracle, she caught the weapon midair, unharmed, before it narrowly hit some of the other campers. 

She looked to see who lost the spar, noticing the curly-haired boy stayed armed, she can only assume he won. She let out a small, relieved smile, ecstatic. Then, quickly stopped when she noticed the glances.

Her flush took over her whole body. “Sorry.” She apologizes, before she can even think of handing over the sword to the unlucky person beside her and leaving, a beam of pink light emitted from her body. 

A plethora of excited and shocked gasps surrounded her, but all she could hear was the overpowering sound of waves crashing and doves chirping, everyone looking at something above her.

Everyone but Luke Castellan.

They meet eyes briefly before she breaks away and looks above her. 

A dove symbol in pink hovers a few feet over her head. 

“Kwanjai Suthamanee,” She flushes when Chiron announces her name, wrongly might she add, out loud. Everyone knelt below her feet, in the middle of the training field. 

“Daughter of Aphrodite. Goddess of Love, Beauty, Lust, and Desire, Lady of the Doves.” He hails. 

“Welcome to Cabin 10!” A girl with brown hair and blue eyes hugs her welcome; these are her half-siblings now, she supposes. “I’m Silena, the camp counselor starting this year.” Her eyes shone as she ushered the younger girl inside. 

The cabin was pink and girly, with modern elements like chandeliers and even vanities for every member of the cabin. They all had separate beds instead of bunks like the Hermes cabin, and everything was tidy. 

“Everyone left you a welcome gift on your bed, even our mother.” Silena leads Kwanjai to her designated corner of the room and helps her put her bag down. She sits the newcomer down in front of the mirror and asks her for permission to brush her hair.

“I assume you don’t know yet what being a daughter of Aphrodite means,” She takes off Kwanjai’s ponytail, and starts at the end to brush the knots out. “No, not exactly,” 

“You’ve probably heard already. We are impulsive, rash, and we act immediately on what our hearts tell us to do.” Silena continues to brush, “But that just means we live without regrets.” She smiles. 

“Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot more perks too, that come with being Aphrodite’s daughter, for one, we can speak the languages of love fluently,” She changes into French, “It’s like a secret code between us siblings,” She winks. 

“Charmspeak is another thing entirely, which Drew and I’ll handle some lessons on with some other campers,” Silena takes some sort of hair oil and lathers it on her fingers.

“Makeup and clothing manipulation,” She rubs it on Kwanjai’s hair, making it shine in the light. 

“Heightened empathy to emotions around us, as we feel emotions of the heart more deeply than most, we get a peek into the hopes, longings, and desires of others.” Silena started braiding her hair into a half-up hairstyle. As she finished, she looked directly into Kwanjai’s eyes in the reflection.

“And finally,” she said, her voice deepening into something Kwanjai didn’t quite recognize. Kwanjai closed her eyes from the glittering light in the air,

 “Shapeshifting.” She said. Silena had changed. 

Her shoulders were broader, she was taller, and she wasn’t seen in the vanity mirror anymore. She had stood with confidence, one that felt like it had belonged in her bones. She crouched down in front of the mirror, and Kwanjai’s heart dropped into the pits of her stomach. 

Because Luke Castellan stood behind her. 

Everything was accurate, the rivulet curls of his hair, the crooked, easy-going smile, and the eyes. 

Kwanjai froze. 

“Oh,” Silena, or more accurately, Silena-as-Luke said. She hadn’t been able to hear his voice before, this must’ve been what it sounded like. Warm and soft-spoken. “So that’s what it was.”

The illusion dropped as quickly as it had happened, luckily with no one around to witness it. 

“When you were claimed,” Silena said, piecing the puzzle together. “It was during Romulus and Luke’s spar,” 

Silena then proceeded to reveal something shocking, “Because I didn’t choose that appearance, your heart did.”

Kwanjai’s face burned, “I– I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” Silena said, squeezing her hand, kneeling to her height. “That’s the point, though. Our powers respond to what we feel, and sometimes, it’s not quite something we want to admit. Strong emotions leak, especially one of romantic intent.”

Kwanjai looked away, mortified.

Silena’s eyes softened even more. “Don’t worry, Jai, with training, you’ll learn how to keep your heart from showing when it’s not safe.” She paused, then added with a small smile,

 “And how to let it show when it is.” 

It was easy talking to Silena about everything under the sun. Kwanjai had never realized how much lighter burdens can be when someone listens to you, and Silena held the perfect mold of a big sister. 

“I do have to warn you,” Silena said worriedly, “There is a rite of passage requiring a child of Aphrodite to prove themselves by breaking someone’s heart,” She said. 

“But between you and me, you don’t actually need to follow it,” Silena winks. “I think it’s a reckless and archaic custom anyway,” She rolls her eyes. Both of the girls are currently lying down beside each other on Kwanjai’s bed, looking up at the ceiling. 

A beat passes. 

“Do you think Castellan knows about that custom?” She whispers to her. Silena sucks in a sharp breath, staying silent, and answers. “I don’t want to lie to you, babes, but I think there isn't a soul in camp who hasn’t figured it out— or at least isn't cautious about our reputation.” Silena answers. 

That response contained all she needed to know. 

It's hard to transition from a life that hasn't experienced love before to a place overwhelmingly brimming with it. 

She decides on a resolution: Stay away from Luke Castellan. 

She'd rather not be on his radar than to be remembered with a negative encounter. Approaching him, while he's well-aware of her cabin's penchant for broken hearts, is a recipe for disaster. 

She's lived unloved for years, she can handle a few years more

The door slams open, and in comes another Asian girl, who looks like a supermodel in her own right. 

“Heard the new girl’s our young sis,” 

She looked around, and her eyes landed on Kwanjai. She sizes her up by looking at her from top to bottom, before rummaging in her closet and throwing out a bunch of clothes and accessories. “These don't fit me anyway,” She hauled a massive pile and threw it on the bed, hilariously drowning Kwanjai in a pile of clothes. 

She analyzed Kwanjai, looking at her up and down. “Yeah, you're DEFINITELY a summer shade,” She said, picking out more clothes. 

She starts a conversation while she’s waist deep in a drawer, “Getting claimed in the middle of the training field, eh? Aphrodite just had to give you an entrance, didn’t she?” 

Kwanjai flushes, “Drew…” Silena said, exasperatedly. “What? I think it's so flashy, it's actually crazy.” She snickered, with lesser malicious intent than before. 

“When she claimed me, I was doing my makeup, alone, I wish I had a crowd to bow to me.” She took a pair of boots and lifted them up. “What size are you, uh” “Jai.” “What size are you, Jai?” “I think I'm a size seven,” She tries to remember the last time she got fitted for her shoes, probably in time for uniforms in her old boarding school. 

Silena and Drew furrowed their eyes and repeated, “You think?” with Drew adding, “How do you not know?” 

This lights up her ears in shame again, “I've— I've never been able to buy my own shoes before,” She admitted, faltering slightly at the end. 

Silena and Drew gape at her, and then at each other. “This is a cabin 10 emergency.” Silena alerts and Drew breaks out in a cold sweat, eyes open in horror, like it's the end of the world. 

In a matter of a few moments, every child of Aphrodite has crowded in the room, giving and altering their old clothes to fit her. 

“Thank you, guys, but— I'm not—” She bit her lip, “I’m sure it’ll be wasted on me.” She admitted shamefully.

The silence was deafening, and Silena decided to ease her into the idea of wearing the clothes. 

“You don’t have to wear them if you don't feel comfortable yet.” 
“Maybe ease into it at first. Try on a few accessories, or change out pants for skirts.”

Kwanjai nodded as everyone gave her advice to switch up her style. 

After which, everyone started to get to know her. Asking where she's from, how her life has been before camp, and how she's faring right now. She can't help but think of all the differences between her and her siblings. Maybe years of no exposure to her mother have turned her bland, uninteresting, boring. 

All of them seemed to be brimming with life, finding beauty and excitement in everything, and all she is, is a stagnant, weathered force. 

Still, she bites her lips and gets along. 

Everyone else filtered out into their classes for the day. Silena vaguely mentions that she'll have to check with Chiron to get Kwanjai into the classes she wants. She folds each piece of clothing into her cabinets, slides each shoe under her bed, and stacks makeup on the dresser. Then she stops when she spots a box, shaped like a seashell, sitting on top of her pillow. All of the gifts she's kept so far have come from one of her siblings. 

“Everyone left you a welcome gift on your bed, even our mother.”

‘This must be it.’ She inspects the box, turning it over. After years, this gift marks the first time her mother has attempted to make contact with her. Kwanjai grasps the velvet box and opens it. The pink magnetic box opened with little to no resistance. Inside was a glass pendant of a heart, held by gold chains. 

There was no note on how to use it, what it does, or how to learn about it. Kwanjai wears it anyway, not expecting any sort of contact from her mother. 

The chains started fading to silver, and she couldn't help but think it fit her better than the gold.

Kwanjai sat on the edge of the Aphrodite cabin’s blanket, knees pulled in, hands wrapped around a cup of something she wasn’t really interested in drinking. The fire crackled, embers rising into the dark, and someone from Apollo was strumming a guitar, hilariously off-key.

A wicked laugh cut through all of it.

“Hey,” She said, tall and mighty, with her wavy hair tied into two braids, loud and sharp. “Is that the new Aphrodite kid?”

Kwanjai stiffened. She didn’t know who this was, and yet, she felt a sense of malice in her that told her this was danger.

This person stepped closer, arms crossed, patronizing. “Nothing to say? Figures. You lot always hide behind the firelight so nobody notices you don’t actually do anything.”

A few campers snickered.

Kwanjai opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her face burned.

Before she could say more, Drew Tanaka stood up, slowly, deliberately. She didn’t raise her voice. Her heels made enough noise for her. “Clarisse,” Drew said, sweet as sugar. “You’re blocking the fire.” Clarisse scoffed. “I’m talking.”

“And right now, you're getting on my last nerve.” Drew tilted her head. “So move.”

Clarisse bristled. “You wanna repeat that?” Drew stepped closer, just inside Clarisse’s space. “If I repeat it, La Rue,” Drew said.

 “You won't even remember what hit you.” Her eyes lit up, pink and shiny, an obvious show of charm magic.

The fire flared suddenly, sparks flying higher. Clarisse glanced around. There were too many eyes, too many witnesses, too bad of a light painted on her. She snorted. 

“Whatever. Camp’s gone soft.” She turned and stomped away, gesturing a nod to both of her siblings as they dispersed.

The moment she went, the tension lifted; even the other cabins let out a sigh of relief. Kwanjai stared at the ground. “You didn’t have to do that.” Drew furrowed her perfectly manicured brows. “Yes, we did.”

Silena handed Kwanjai a roasted marshmallow with a smile. “Eat. You need it. This is your first campfire, you shouldn’t think too much about what she said.” 

Kwanjai softened despite herself, taking the marshmallow from Silena gratefully. 

Across the fire, Drew Tanaka met the gaze of Luke Castellan, who looked like a deer caught in headlights. 

One of his hand gripped the floor, his eyes on high alert, just about to stand up if she had just been 1 second later. Drew looked away and slowly smirked, as if she had found a new plaything, because things were just about to be interesting. 

Kwanjai paced back and forth around her bed, kneeling under again to make sure she hadn’t been wrong. She was positive she had placed the boots Drew gave her under the bed. 

“It’s fine, right, Drew?— We can just look for it in the morning—” Silena comforted her younger sister. Kwanjai shook her head adamantly. 

“No! No… It's fine, I'll just— I'll look for it really quickly.” She said, before bolting off outside the cabin really quickly, not waiting for a response.  

Drew stood in her corner, arms folded, slightly endeared, at how much the little thing cherished a dusty old pair of last-season boots. 

“We all think Clarisse and her goons were up to this, right?” She asked her siblings, and a chorus of agreements were thrown out. “With the stunt she pulled out there earlier,” Silena's eyes furrowed as her grip tightened on the sheets below her, “I wouldn't be surprised.” 

The newest cabin 10 girl, on the other hand, kept dashing. Checking places she wouldn't even think of, until she had reached the training grounds. 

She craned her neck up, zoning in on one of the tree branches, heart dropping, because her boots were stuck, dangling together by the laces, looking like they were haphazardly thrown. 

The night breeze passes by, the cold winds add to the stinging of Kwanjai's eyes, she doesn't know what to do, she had never really learnt how to climb a tree, and this one looked especially tall and dangerous. 

She hears the sure crunch of dead autumnal leaves behind her, and she turns slowly, praying that it's not the perpetrators. 

It's Luke Castellan.

He stops a few inches away, a thumb hooped through his belt loop, a sword sheathed on his hip, like he'd just been plucked in the middle of training. He takes in her predicament in one sweeping glance: the boots, the tree, her expression. 

He whistles, “Let me guess,” he looks at her in the eye. “Clarisse?” 

Kwanjai sucks in a breath, “I'm not too sure, but I don’t think you're far off.”

He rolls his shoulders once, and then says, out of nowhere, “Maia.” Immediately, his red shoes, (did he always wear these shoes? Kwanjai didn't notice.) started to grow tiny wings. In a matter of moments, Luke was propelled off the ground and scaling the tree. “You don’t have to—” She starts. “Already doing it.” He laughs, good-naturedly. He reaches for the boots, takes them by the laces, and starts descending. “Maia.”

By a tiny miscalculation on his part, his body lands just a little bit too close to her. 

Only the boots in his grip occupied what little distance was left in between them. 

Kwanjai, perhaps it was her mother's genetics acting up, picked off a leaf that made its home in one of Luke's curls. 

Still, all too close. 

Luke said, but it sounded more like a whisper, “You know, there's a similar myth, I just can’t remember who. A God threw another Goddess' sandals into a tree as an excuse to talk to her.” “You reckon it worked?” She asked, and Luke laughed. “I think it did.”

“As for you, though… you might wanna keep your boots closer," he adds, as he hands it to her.

“Some campers can be quite… creative.”

Kwanjai didn’t notice the warmth radiating off of him until he stepped back, and the cold engulfed her, only then did she miss it. 

“I'm Luke, Hermes Cabin, I don’t think we've talked yet.” 

“Jai. Aphrodite.” She said, “I know.” He replied quickly, a response that had her heart beating impossible speeds per second. Right, from earlier, the claiming. Chiron. Before she can command her heart to still and form a response, someone calls him back to the grounds. He jogs quickly with a wave and a good night. 

She didn’t have the courage nor the time to tell him that it was Hermes who got that sandal back for Aphrodite. 

When she got back to the cabin, no one had been asleep yet, waiting for her to come back.

“Jai!” Silena and a few other campers sat up in surprise. Kwanjai lifted the boots up, “I got it.” She grinned, walking down to her station. Everyone else looked at each other, anticipating Silena's sermon. 

“Jai, your wellbeing comes first before any object,” She sighed and walked closer. “We’re glad that you and the boots are safe, but nothing good happens going outside, at night, alone.” Kwanjai freezes up at the soft scolding of her eldest sibling. 

Drew, sensing more to the story, decided to dispel the tension. “Silena, it’s fine, the important thing is that she’s back safe. How’d you get it back anyway?” Clocking the immediate crimson of the newest camper’s neck. 

“Oh, uh, I found it stuck on a tree. It was too high. A, a guy from Hermes’ Cabin got it down.” She quickly recounted the tale. “And who was this guy?” A smirk slowly started forming on Drew's face.

“Luke— Luke Castellan.” A multitude of gasps around the cabin, mainly female ones, “THAT Luke Castellan? Golden Boy Castellan?” and she hadn’t really known why it was such a big deal.

“Yes?—” “This is a monumental thing! He's flirting with you?” Leah said. “I didn't say that!” Kwanjai vehemently denied this. 

She spent the next few minutes denying any claims about a possible relationship, but hoping it was the case.

The next morning, as the first horn blew to announce breakfast, Kwanjai didn’t bother to wash her face nor brush her hair, and was so, so, very sleepy that she almost slammed into the door of the cabin as she walked out. 

Silena and Drew, pretty as ever, had to hold their newest sibling on both of her shoulders just to get her to walk in a straight line to the dining hall for breakfast. 

As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she fixed her hair and shirt, and distinctly felt the final horn blow, attracting the bulk of campers to come and sit before they miss breakfast. Luke entered the hall, his eyes searching around, looking for something, and it somehow found its way to her own. 

Her nerves immediately knocked her awake as they meet eyes, stronger than a plunge into a pool of iced water. Kwanjai looks down and then up again, now fully awake. 

He gave her a small nod, so inconspicuous that she could've missed it if she had blinked. He looked away just in time to sit in the Hermes table, his back to her.

She must be delirious… right? The sleep must've not yet left her, this dream surely is a result of replaying last night's event over and over. 

But she was sure he was looking at her.

Kwanjai pinches herself on the hand.

“Ow?” She said, offended, as if she wasn’t the one who inflicted the pinch on herself. “Am I not dreaming…?” She muttered to herself.

Her siblings gave her a weird glance.

“Luke? He had a girlfriend prior to coming to camp.” The son of Apollo, Cami Bludden, whispers back to her. He points subtly up to the sky, “See this barrier? That's his girl.”

What? Kwanjai tries to make sense of it all. “His girlfriend is the one keeping the barrier up?” Cami huffs, “No, she turned into the barrier.”

“Oh.” was all she said before she continued reading for her morning mixed Mythology and History classes, taught by the Athena Cabin. 

Well, she'd more or less expected it. It'd be more shocking if he weren't single. Still, it didn't make the dull ache any better just because her hunch was correct. 

Her eyes trailed off to the far end of the camp, watching from her seat as the aforementioned boy took his archery classes with Chiron. 

The white and red rings, a few feet away highly contrasted with the lush greenery of the camp. Luke took his bow, rolling his shoulders (a habit that Kwanjai has consistently seen him do) before taking an arrow.

He kept his back straight, tightened his shoulder as he loaded the arrow inside, pulled the string taut, and then—

“Jai?” Andie Piesse, the Athena kid in charge of today's class, calls her. She looks away from him, startled. “I was asking what the traits, weaknesses, and attributes are of Eurynomos.” She wracked her brain, “Um, well, Eurynomos are vulture-like creatures in appearance, usually seven feet tall in height and coated with, uh, iridescent or glossy feathers.” 

She looked back to the archery side of camp, only for Luke to be nowhere, the arrow on his board narrowly missing a bullseye. 

“As for weakness, they are known hoarders, so glinting pieces of jewelry are used as trade, in exchange for a safe journey.” She trailed off, still trying to find where he had gone. “As for attributes, they're commonly found feasting on flesh, looking to turn them into skeleton warriors, and they're commonly… found… in—” “In the underworld.” Someone finished for her.

She looked up from where she was sitting, and got a mini heart attack at who was standing above her. 

“Castellan,” Andie Piesse sighs, used to his antics. “Hey, uh, Chiron sent me to call for Kevin.” She looks away, down at her book. “Fine,” He said, before announcing, “Read up on more underworld monsters for now, we’ll tackle the overworld tomorrow.” Andie took off in the direction of the cabins to look for their counselor. 

Luke lingers around, never really leaving that spot above her, and it feels like he wants to say something, fill the silence, try anything to alleviate the awkwardness permeating the space. It feels like he’s waiting, anticipating, for something to spark off before he can speak. 

It never does, and Kwanjai locks onto the book below her, traces the same image over, and over, and over until Kevin Day arrives and leaves with Luke. 

Kwanjai looks at their retreating figures and wonders if she can ever feel the same warmth again. 

“Listen up, Maggots!” Clarisse commanded the training arena. She walked mockingly, and was apparently always meaner when it came to Cabin 10’s turn. She had them stand in a straight line, and walked in front of them, in a poor attempt to be menacing. 

Kwanjai has only been here for a month or so, but something about Clarisse just rubs her off the wrong way. Like she’s always vying for attention and goes about it in all the wrong ways. 

“Ground Rules: You speak when spoken to, breaks are taken when I say so, is that clear!?” She says, and a chorus of pained ‘Yes.’ echo throughout the arena. “Great.” She barks out, assigning each one a sparring partner from her own cabin. 

She gets assigned a girl, around the same age as her, named Enya Lios, similar in stature, except she had a pair of green eyes, tanned skin, and dyed red hair. She was definitely La Rue’s sibling, judging from the matching nasty snarl on their lips. 

She turns to the armory to pick out a weapon, judges the options, until she lands on the cornermost area of the artillery shelf, where a long, spear-like polearm was placed. She stared at it, the blade was sharp and curved, unlike the diamond-shaped end of a spear. 

Without any more time to spare, she deemed it good enough, and set off into the arena. 

Enya Lios wouldn’t be an easy target, this was given, but when she was clad in full armor, wielding a spear, she looked even more daunting. Kwanjai felt a shiver run through her back, raising the hair on her arms. 

She got into a fighting position, taking a deep breath, she steadied the hold on her polearm. 

“Fight!” 

Enya struck immediately, and Kwanjai deflected just as quickly with the blade. The sound they had made was loud enough to catch attention. 

“What’s wrong? Broke a nail?” Enya pushed her sword with more force. Ares kids aren’t impartial to using all means to win. Which means she’ll have to be a bit more crafty in her approach.

 Kwanjai pushed her polearm long enough to slide under Enya’s sword-wielding arm to her shoulder and used the edge to tip her down, immediately flanking her. 

Enya had more balance than she had anticipated, and quickly stumbled to her feet. The raven took this blunder to strike once more, getting deflected by the redhead sloppily. 

Kwanjai twisted her spear, aiming for a low blow, Enya had smirked, her eyebrows rising in mockery, thinking she had finally cornered the girl. “What? Gonna bat your eyelashes ‘til I surrender?” 

At the exact moment their blades met, Kwanjai held the middle of her polearm and used the blunt end to land a hit on Enya’s neck, immobilizing her temporarily. She swiftly passed under her sword arm, once again appearing behind her and kicking her torso with one, final push, that finally knocked Enya down. 

Kwanjai threw the spear on the patch of grass near her neck, to prove a point. “So noisy.” She grumbled, just enough for only Enya to hear. She heard a few dozen campers clapping before she looked up. They might have been a little overtime as the next cabin had been waiting to use the arena, including the person she had been dreading to see lately. 

She took off her armor and left to exit the arena, pointedly ignoring Clarisse's commands that she hadn’t been dismissed yet. 

Kwanjai didn't exactly have the best morning that day. She had a terrible dream about her dad. 

He had always been absent, like the functioning alcoholic he was. Mornings, afternoons, and evenings at home had always been silent. If he had any love left to give her, she could not hear it. 

It would’ve been better if he’d cursed her, told her off, told her she had her evil mother’s eyes, all to know he had been paying attention, even just a bit. 

What he did instead was to ship her off to a boarding school on the other side of the country, paid the tuition for the remaining years, and left her with a note to stop contacting him. 

He was always a pathetic sight, her mess of a father,  drinking himself to sleep on the couch, barely able to look at his own daughter. But that was her father, and she longed for his love. There was once a time she was convinced he gave her silence so she could share in the sound of her mother, echoing throughout the halls of their house, haunting him. 

She didn’t need a perfect dad. All she wanted was someone to stick with her when all the world, above, below, natural and preternatural, were out to get her.

When he had died, she escaped her school and set off into Camp Halfblood, with the knowledge that all her mother does is make you give up on love, or die trying.   

Also, when she woke up that morning, she found a huge pimple on her cheek, which was the main driving force for all of her tantrums today. Drew gave her a pack of pimple patches for it and proceeded to tease her relentlessly, “Pimples only appear when you have a crush, who’s the unlucky guy?” “Drew!” She whined. 

She made her way to the nearest creek and sat there, knees propped up, zoning off. Kwanjai snapped out of it when a tumbler came into view, being offered to her. She looked up. 

Luke was there, great, just the person she had been avoiding. 

Still, he didn’t know that, and she scooted over on the off chance he might sit down. 

He made himself comfortable, well, as comfy as one can be while wearing pounds of armor. He offered her the tumbler again, his other hand holding the helmet. “You didn’t take a break after the spar.” He lifted the canister to her.

She took it, feeling the jolt of her fingertips meeting his.

 She unscrewed it, and took a sip from it, and returned it to him. “What did Clarisse do this time?” Luke took a sip before closing it completely. The source of the clanging unsure whether it's from his armor, or from the metal tumbler.

She bit her cheek, “No, I'm just, in a bad mood is all. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, if you will.” The most she's probably spoken to him. “Ah, I get that.” Luke nodded, now fiddling with the strings of his red shoes.

“...Cool shoes. I've never asked where you got them.” She gestured to the bright red things. “Ah— A gift from my dad.” He says, inspecting his shoe. 

A beat passes.

“Hey, Luke,” Her eyes lingered on the shoes.

A sense of recognition flashes in his eyes, perhaps knowing that this was her first time calling him by name, and the proximity allows for her to notice his breathing hitch.

 “Is it weird that I don’t know my own shoe size?”

 He flinches before visibly curling into himself, turning away from her and shaking.

 “Are you laughing at me right now— Luke, that's so mean,” She says, trying to make him face towards her, but all he's doing is giggling. 

“Out of all the things, heh, you could possibly ask, I— I didn’t expect that—” “It's a sensible question!” His fit of giggles lasted for another 10 seconds before he attempted to gain composure, sitting up straighter, and closer to her. “Why were you asking?” 

She explained the whole shoe emergency that led to Drew giving her the boots that got thrown. “Oh, ohh, that makes a lot of sense,” He thought for a moment. 

“You're fitting in well with the Aphrodite cabin I'm assuming.” She froze, the rite of passage, she looked at him. He looked back at her expectantly. She wanted to disappear, abandon the conversation.

She couldn't lie. She wouldn't deny her sisters. Her siblings had done too much for her at that point that her conscience actively steered her response. “Yeah.” She pauses. “They've been treating me really well.” Her hands find some of the grass while her voice mellows down.

His eyebrows softened slightly, and he shrugged. “I'm glad,” he said. “Cabin 10 is a great fit for you.” 

She desperately tried not to look into it, but couldn't help but notice his voice, and how the noise seemed to go silent around it, like the world was listening, waiting on his every word.

Her glass necklace warmed a smidge. 

“Wait,” She said, horrified, like she had a terrible epiphany. “What?” Luke asked, on high alert. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the training grounds?” “Not really,” He said, ignoring the armor-shaped elephant in the room. “Right,” She snorts. Luke gestures behind him, towards the grounds. “You were great out there. How'd you know how to fight with a glaive?” 

Kwanjai thought about it, “So that’s what it's called… For the record, I actually don't, I was just pissed off, probably a stroke of luck—” “I can teach you.” He said, a little too eagerly. “I mean, if you want to,”

She faltered a little bit. She felt as if agreeing, if Luke had intended for it to be a friendly gesture, would be imposing. She didn’t want to bother him. 

“I'll think about it.” 

The minutes go untracked as they talked about things that happen around camp: Mr. D having his children fetch him liquor for the nth time, Drew kicking Clarisse's chair, and Sea and Zoro, two campers, caught in an affair. 

And soon enough, the horn for lunch blew, startling the both of them. “Lunch, already?” Luke mumbles, under his breath, standing up and dusting the leaves off of him. He offers a hand out for Kwanjai, and she takes it gratefully. 

He doesn't let go of her hands just yet.

“Wait—” He calls, pulling her closer with their intertwined hands. He steps closer, his eyes roaming.

He brushes a few leaves off her hair. She closes her eyes, not wanting to get it into her eyes. “Returning the favor.” He said, alluding to the time she had done it for him. “The autumn season gets really messy, doesn't it?” She pointed to his own head, which Luke took as a sign to shake his head to get off the leftover leaves dusted off him. He picked up the tumbler and matched her pace as they walked to the dining hall.

Once he reaches Cabin 10's table, just before they split up, he glances down to her and nods, running faster to save a spot in his own, quickly filling, table

Her sisters and brothers look at her knowingly. “Hey, here's our sleeper agent.” Drew announced, a teasing lilt to her voice. “Good work out there earlier.” Leah patted her back as Hainah cheered and Agustin clapped.  

“But don’t think we didn't see you walking back with Castellan. Are you sure you guys aren't anything?” Leah winked. “What? That— no, I've, I've only been here for like, what, 2 months?  I'm sure he's nice like that to everyone,” 

“And, besides, he has a girlfriend doesn’t he?” 

Everyone present at the table looked at her as if she had grown a fifth head, all in different stages of disbelief. “And who told you that?” Agustin asked incredulously. 

“My friend, Cami, from the Apollo cabin—” “Yeah well, your friend Cami's a big, fucking, liar.” Everyone nodded along to Drew. “Even if he did have one, you could just steal him away—” “Drew, no.” “Drew, yes. Luke's been rejecting girls, yeah, sure, but he's never had one.” Drew clarified, swinging her hands around like she was preaching. 

Kwanjai gaped, “But,” she made vague gestures with her hands, before settling up to point at the sky. “Ah. Better ask Silena, she'd know the whole deal.” Drew said, “But he definitely is single… Is that why you're hesitating? You think he's taken?” Drew tries to ease her into opening up, slowly probing. 

“I just don't think it'll work, is all.” Her siblings remain silent, exchanging worried glances every now and then. When it's Cabin 10's turn, she burns her favorite part of the meal, in hopes her mother feels her desperation.

And for the first time, she prays. Not even for glory, not for courage. 

Mother… If you exist,

She imagines throwing out her confession is akin to cleansing, maybe if she admits it to her mother, she'll take it away and stash it in Olympus, and it'll all be out of reach. She always seemed great at hiding. Maybe then, it'll disappear. 

Luke Castellan. I want him. 

She doesn't demand the stars rearrange themselves. She doesn't demand a sculpture of marble and wax be turned into bones and skin. She doesn't demand a golden apple, and she certainly doesn't ask her to wage a war. 

She opens her eyes, resigned, and goes back to the table. 

December finished as quickly as it came, bringing with it the sound of training, campfires, and soon, January was steadily approaching at full speed ahead.  

The Aphrodite, alongside Apollo, cabins had been assigned the New Year's Eve design duty; everyone else either got supplies, cooking, or cleaning duty. Kwanjai had helped in putting up the tall designs with Augustine, while the others cut out the designs on pieces of tinsel and paper. 

Everyone ran around the whole afternoon, and when the sun set, everyone retreated to rest and get ready for the evening. 

Kwanjai was the last to enter the cabin and was immediately dragged inside with the door shut behind her. “What’s, what’s going on?” She asked, with the serious faces of the people around her concerning her. 

“You…” Drew pointed, walking menacingly, “Are invited to a super-secret afterparty!” She said, and suddenly, confetti and a party hat were strapped on her head. 

“What afterparty? We already have a party though?” Kwanjai asked. 

Leah stepped up, “Yeah, but you honestly expect Chiron to let us stay up past 10?” That, makes sense to Kwanjai, actually, given the nature of the Centaur. “Won’t we get caught?” Kwanjai asks, her eyebrows reflecting her worry. 

“You leave that up to us.” Silena appeared, blow-drying her hair. “Your only concern right now is choosing what to wear.” Leah and Drew started rummaging through their closets to find her something. 

Only then did she notice their outfits. 

Silena had a white halter top with a white, lacy mermaid skirt, perfectly capturing her figure. She had rows and rows of gold rings, bracelets, and arm bands, glinting perfectly on her tanned skin. Her makeup was done, with glitter on her eyelids and a soft brown eyeliner. 

On the other hand, Drew looked striking with her contrasting colors. A black biker jacket, a fiery red dress with a beaded sun on her left torso, and on her lower left thigh. Her hair felt like it could prick someone who got too close, partially tied up by a clamp, spiking out to the right. A single gold conch necklace sat on her collarbone. And her makeup was bold: smoky eyes, and the blackest and sharpest eyeliner known to man. 

Leah donned a navy blue cardigan with a white collared polo under, a white skirt, and knee-high boots. Layering 2 silver necklaces, and carrying a small purse that no doubt carried makeup. She put on a simple look, focusing more on blush than eye makeup, and her hair was in gorgeous microbraids. 

By the time she had finished appreciating her sisters’ looks, Drew and Leah had both decided on an outfit and pushed her behind the folding screen. 

She had no time to look at herself in the mirror before Silena told her to shut her eyes, beginning to put makeup on her. The brush tickled, and she had to stop giggling every time Silena brushed it on her eyelid. Someone, she assumed, Leah, worked on her cheeks, and Drew on her lips. 

“Move, Leah, she’s gonna look like a clown if u keep— bumping—” “She’s gonna look like SpongeBob if you don’t stop elbowing—” Silena sighed, “I’ll handle her face, Leah, you find jewelry, and Drew, you look for shoes. Agustin, we need a little help here?” “On it.” 

She still didn’t have the time to look in the mirror before she was dragged out, hand in hand with Silena and Drew. 

Everyone was already there by the time Cabin 10 arrived. Her sisters made a fuss about a grand entrance and why it was a must being fashionably late. Chiron got the attention away from them and formally started the boring opening program. 

She didn’t know if the heat radiating off her necklace was something she imagined out of anxiety. 

Kwanjai took the time to look for some of the people she knew. She saw Cami in the far distance and branched off from her siblings to say hello.

“Cami,” She bumped shoulders with him slightly. He was all bundled up, a white shirt underneath a flannel shirt, and on top of it was another khaki coat with multiple pockets. He wore a darker brown, baggy jeans and black high-cut sneakers. 

“Jai,” He said, in recognition, before leaning down. “You think I can steal a New Year's kiss from Kevin at the afterparty later?” Kwanjai snorted, looking at the aforementioned male, who looked interested in whatever Chiron was preaching. 

“I'll bet one drachma on it.” “Deal.”  The two shook on it. “Chiron’s such a snoozefest,” Cami yawned. “Nice outfit by the way.” 

The boring speech allowed her to finally process her outfit, a short jean skirt, and a long, sleeveless, white lace babydoll top, and she had white sandals with ribbons up to her knees. “My sisters picked it out, I trust their vision.” She winks. 

“No plans on making a move on Ca—” She covered his mouth, in the off chance somebody might hear. Her eyes moved around, no one seemed to be particularly interested. She took her hand off slowly, glaring. “Cami…” 

Cami rolled his eyes. “Fine. No plans on making a move on Mister Golden Boy?” He said, dripping with faux sweetness.  “Because I heard through the grapevine that Aly Simms was going to.” 

Ah. She froze. Well, that’s— that’s fine, right? It’s fine because Aly Simms had more than enough reason to, looked well enough, did enough, and she’d treat him far better than she could, right? It was a generous thought, a sisterly thought, and it felt like a slow-acting poison in Kwanjai’s veins. 

If it was fine and dandy, then why was she clenching her fist so hard her nails were digging in?

She felt a frantic sort of nagging inside her, so sinister she couldn’t call it by name. She just knew that the idea of Aly Simms touching Luke’s arm, of her being the one to catch his gaze at midnight, felt like a crushing weight.

“Well, hand me a grape too while you’re in there, Chester.” Mr. D. startled both of them, sarcasm dripping down his tone. “Go listen to Chiron.” And then he walked away, grumbling about how rates of firecracker-related incidents skyrocket every year. 

Chiron’s speech ended, and he encouraged cross-seating as a treat for the dinner feast. That was great and all, but after finding out that Aly Simms wanted Luke, suddenly, nothing was so funny anymore. Everyone else besides her seemed like they had fun, chattering away. This had been the noisiest yet that the hall had been in her 3 months of being here. 

“I’m just saying," Cami said, a mouthful of spaghetti. The sauce had dripped to the corners of his mouth, making his lips look wider than they are. “If you really wanted him, then you’d seize this opportunity! The outfit! The ambience! The timing— This would make for such a good confession story.” His hands started swinging around the fork.

“And all I’m saying,” She took a napkin out, “Is that Kevin Day would not appreciate kissing someone and the first flavor of the year being Spaghetti, Cami.” She evaded the question, judging by how much he flailed around, offended by her suggestion. 

Her eyes wandered while she snacked on roasted chicken; she hadn’t actually seen Luke yet. Her eyes darted from person to person until she had landed on the one seemingly filled with camp counselors.

Sure enough, there he was. Smiling and laughing, his dimple made an appearance every time he did so. He looked… unfamiliar from what she was used to, swapping out his armor for a crisp sage green button-up and cream pants. His sleeves rolled back to his elbows, exposing the muscles and veins that were the fruits of relentless training. 

Luke came to the party early, putting on whatever looked presentable at the moment. He kept himself busy, helping set the horn for Chiron, checking in with the Hephaestus Cabin for firecrackers, asking the Athena Cabin for the outside materials they were asked to buy (this one’s more for the afterparty). 

Aly tried to make conversation with him, asking about fireworks, and he waved her off, saying it wasn’t under his supervision, that she should ask Charles about it.  

He felt restless, his skin buzzing, like he was waiting for something. He just couldn’t pinpoint it. He turned around, looking at anything at all he might’ve forgotten to do, or something he didn’t do right, but he couldn’t seem to find it. 

Until Cabin 10 enters. All of the buzzing, the prickling, the unsettling feeling stopped like it had been leading him to this moment. He’d be speaking for everyone if he said he was awestruck, but that didn’t seem like the right word. 

Kwanjai laughed and giggled, talking with her older sisters, hand in hand. If a grand entrance was what they wanted, they certainly did get it. 

Chiron took no time and started his speech, and unlike himself, Luke zoned out. His eyes, like the other pair of her magnets, found its way back to Jai. He tracked the way the lace shifted as she moved, fluid and loose, a stark contrast to the rigid, aching tension that had begun to settle into his own muscles.

 He found himself noting down the details: the small, silver glint of her necklace, the bouncy way her hair fell away from the bob of her throat, her curious, watery gaze. He was memorizing her, though he didn't yet have the words for why he felt the need to.

She looked like she belonged to the tomorrow that everyone was celebrating. She looked like she belonged in his future. 

“A pretty one, isn’t she?” Silena had said, unnoticed, from beside him. She had a glint in her eye that meant she was definitely causing chaos. Still, he jumped at the sudden intrusion. She poked his side, the wrinkles from his shirt disappearing just as she did. “Think of it as a New Year’s gift, you won’t impress her with a wrinkled shirt,” She wrinkled her nose in turn. “We’ve taught her better.”

He thought there was no point in trying to hide feelings from a daughter of Aphrodite, “How long have you known?” He asks grimly, voice barely audible over the sound of Chiron’s speech. She paused for a moment, thinking about what to say, before speaking again, low and honest. “I wish I had an answer, but I’ve just always known your fates are intertwined. Call it a gift from my mother, I guess.”

His hand twitched, flexing open. He wanted nothing more than to go to her, close the distance, but he stayed rooted to where he was. “I— I can’t go there.” He muttered, more to himself than to Silena. 

Her eyebrows raised, and she asked, knowing full well the reason, acting like she was testing him. “Why not? The year’s ending, Luke.” 

“Because if I go over there now,” His eyes count the number of people in between. He turned to her, “She’ll fold," he said, his voice tight with frustration. 

"I push—if I make it real, she’ll pull away." Silena smiled to herself, satisfied with his answer, satisfied he knows what her sister needs. “It seems I don’t need to worry on this front then,” was all she said before she left the boy to himself, plagued with the thoughts of her. 

When he had looked back, Jai had disappeared from where she had been standing.

Kwanjai was a force in the corner of the room, but she wasn't alone. Cami Bludden was there, all over her with the intimacy of someone who had earned the right to intrude. He had his seat close to hers, his head leaning close to whisper something that made Kwanjai’s shoulders shake with a genuine laugh, a sound Luke hadn't realized he was starving for until someone else fed it to him.

Luke’s fingers curled into the palms of his hands, his nails, too, biting into the callouses. 

It was a disgusting feeling, that of jealousy, sharp and scalding. It didn't matter that Cami didn't want her, not in the same way Luke did, not in the way that involved the scalding heat of a touch or the heavy weight of a gaze. The world and their mothers knew Cami’s heart belonged to a counselor in the Athena cabin, but this knowledge provided Luke no sanctuary.

If anything, it made it worse.

Cami got the version of her that wasn’t guarded. He got the version that didn't have to be careful, the version that didn't crush under the suffocating pressure of Luke’s own intensity. 

Because Cami was safe, he was allowed to touch the hem of that lace, to fix a stray hair behind her ear, to exist in her orbit without the gravity of it crushing her.
"He's just her friend, Luke." Silena nudged his side, her voice a soft, levelheaded interruption. "Calm down. You're looking at him like he’s a thief." Annabeth accused.

"He is," Luke said, his voice an accusatory, low thing. "He’s stealing the time I don't have the right to ask for yet."

"She looks happy," Silena observed, her eyes searching Luke’s face for the cracks she knew were there.

Luke looks away.

He calms himself, tells himself it’s nothing, just Cami being Cami, loud and affectionate and annoyingly incapable of understanding personal space. He stabs at his food with more force than necessary, listening to Silena and Charles argue about something involving fireworks and a bad idea.

He looks back anyway.

And, surely, she stared back at him. 

His gaze didn't drift or wander, it was glued to her own. Even across the rows of flickering candles and the heads of a hundred demi-gods, his eyes found hers with a clarity. He didn't smile. 

But he certainly didn't acknowledge Aly, who was trying to catch his eye.

He just looked at Kwanjai, scanning her from head to toe, and for a second, the silence between them was louder than the entire hall.

He was looking at her like she was the only thing in the room that mattered, and it was too much. It was too heavy. She saw the way his jaw tightened, the way his eyes tracked the line of her chest where the lace met her skin, and she felt the familiar, terrifying urge to give out, to pull away before the weight of his attention crushed her.

She was the first to look away, her heart a rabbit, thumping its feet against her ribs.

A voice full of a quiet, mournful kind of knowing, told her. ‘He’s not looking at anyone else, Jai. But you're already running.’

She doesn’t know what to do, when the voice sounds exactly like hers. 

‘I don't know how to be the person he sees when he looks at me like that.’

The transition from the pavillion to the courtyard was a blur of ambient torchlight, the burnt smell clashing with the humid scent of impending winter. 

The feast had been an endurance test of just how much she could take. Kwanjai had spent the entire meal conscious, both of the itchy white lace of her top and the way Luke’s two undone buttons seemed to draw every eye in the room, especially Aly’s.

As the campers spilled out of the dining hall, the air grew ecstatic. Hephaestus’ children were hauling out crates of "Star-Stingers", newly invented firecrackers that didn't bang, but whistled with the shrieks of sirens.

Kwanjai stood on the edge, her hands tucked into her pockets. She watched Luke move through the crowd. He was laughing at something Chris Rodriguez said, looking every bit like the main event, the golden boy, the one everyone looked forward to. 

And then, the first firecracker went off too early.

It wasn't an explosion. It was sharp, faulty fuse that sent a spark of white light directly into the crowd.

The shocked screams that followed were brief, but the smell of chemicals were immediate. Jai saw Luke stumble back, his hand clutching his forearm, the sage green sleeve blackened and smoldering.

Her vision tunneled. She didn’t even think before she bolted.

Her heart is already pounding as she pushes away the crowd, her mind cataloging what she knows about first aid. Burns. Sterilization. Bandage.

When she returned, lungs burning for air, the kit metallic and heavy in her hand, the courtyard had settled into a suffocating, golden glow. 

Aly Simms was already there. 

She looked every bit the Daughter of Apollo in her element, her hands radiating a soft, yellow warmth that made the injured skin mold back together in seconds.

Kwanjai stopped in the shadow of a marble pillar. 

She looked at her kit, then back at the effortless divinity of Aly’s touch. The jealousy wasn't a hot thing, no, not like she thought it would be, not like how it was earlier.

 It was a cold, sinking realization of her own obsoleteness.

She was a daughter of Aphrodite: her "power" was beauty and the fragile matters of the heart. In a world of burns and battles, she felt like a decoration. 

She turned and walked away, her outfit irritating her skin, reminding her that even as a daughter of Aphrodite, she still wasn’t an exact fit. 

When Chiron left, and everyone was gearing up for the afterparty, Mr. D looked at each one of them, “I know you each have your illicit gatherings with whatever booze you snuck in,” he nursed a diet coke, sipping from it. “Try not to be stupid. I’m far too sober to fill out the paperwork for a New Year’s casualty.” He said before walking away. 

He stopped in his tracks, hilariously pulling two large bottles of whiskey out of his small pockets, “Actually…” He gets an idea, “If I have to endure one more day of this job, I’d rather you lot be useless and hung over.” He dumped it on his nearest kid before walking away. 

“Sweet! You’re the best, Mr. D!” 

The afterparty at the creek was a weird sight. The Aphrodite cabin had dragged silk cushions and shimmering lanterns to the water’s edge, turning the wilderness into something soft and velvety.

The bass from the speaker thrummed all around the area, and everyone mingled amongst themselves, forgetting the debacle from earlier. 

Kwanjai sat on a fallen log at the very edge of the lantern light, the cup of Coke and whiskey Drew had poured her half-empty beside her. She felt like a placeholder. Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw was the golden glow of Aly’s pale hands against Luke’s sage green sleeve.

Then, the grass rustled.

Luke stepped into the soft glow of light. He looked exhausted, the bandage on his arm a stark reminder of her own failure to be enough. He didn't speak to the others. He didn't even acknowledge the cup she had. He just walked straight to her, his presence stealing the air right out of her lungs.

He sat on the log, so close that the heat from his leg seethed through the cream fabric of his pants. For a long time, they just watched the creek. The longing was intangible, a string stretched so tight between them it threatened to snap. 

Kwanjai wanted to reach out and touch the bandage. She wanted to rip it off and replace it with something of her own, even if it was just a scrap of her top.

"I saw you in the courtyard," he broke the silence, trying to joke. His voice was holding a secret none of them understood. "You were hugging that kit like it was the only thing keeping you on your feet."

"I was trying to be useful," Kwanjai whispered, her angry gaze fixed on the rushing water. "And useful, here, usually meant powerful. Could I have fixed you up with beauty? Charmed you and make love heal you?" 

He grabbed the red cup, swirling the contents, before downing it. 

"I don't need to be charmed into feeling something I’m already drowning in," he murmured. He leaned in, and the world seemed to tilt. The scent of him, pine, woodsmoke, and the sharp, clean smell of antiseptic, filled her senses until she couldn't breathe.

He didn't touch her, not yet. 

He just hovered in the space, all too personal, all too close. The silence between them was heady, intoxicating, filled with the three months of stolen glances in the dining hall and the lingering heat of the training grounds. 

“And power?” He asked, incredulously. “Power isn’t just physical,” His tone dropped to a whisper that felt like something forbidden he shouldn't be exposing. He took the lace in his fingers, like he had been longing to since earlier, since he saw her. 

"Aly can paste my skin back together. She can— She can fix a sleeve and a burn and send me back to the party. But she can’t make me feel like I can burn the world with just one look.” He looks at her desperately. 

“She can’t offer me anything that I’d be desperate for, that I’d take like a man, in a desert, parched."

Kwanjai felt her knees starting to weaken, her shoulder dipping toward his. She wanted to confess it all, the jealousy that made her blood curdle, the way her eyes roamed every crowd, the wish to be his other half, but the words felt too large, even for her throat. 

Her necklace burned, impossibly hotter.

"Luke," she breathed, the name a plea.

He turned his head, his face inches from hers in the flickering light. His eyes moved over her face with an agonizing thirst, tracing the edges of her mouth, the lines of her throat, the glint of her necklace. The pressure was immense. He looked like he wanted to dismantle her; at the same time, he was afraid to break her.

The countdown began somewhere up the bank, muffled, distant roars. Five. Four. Three.

Luke reached out, his hand hovering over hers on the log. He didn't grab it; he just let his pinky finger hook around hers, a fragile, grounding tether.

"Look at me, Jai.” he whispered, his breath warm against her cheek. 

As the distant cheers of 'Happy New Year' erupted, Kwanjai finally breached the distance. 

She didn't speak. She just leaned her head into the crook of his neck, burying her face in cotton. Luke’s uninjured arm came around her, pulling her flush against the hard plates of his chest, his hand splayed wide against her back.

His thumb pressed flush, rubbing the skin between her shoulder blades. "Besides, I have enough people who know how to heal a wound. I don't have anyone else who looks at me the way you do." He whispers.

The fireworks, the cheers, the music, everything was drowned out, quiet. Quiet didn’t sit well with Kwanjai. Quiet haunted her in the halls. Quiet raised her, called her inadequate and unlovable. 

Affection, she initially thought, didn’t grow on the foundation of silence, avoidance, inaction. This, too, was silence, but why did it hold so many words? 

Just as the year changed, Kwanjai had a realization that affection can be formed in silence. 

The very next day, Luke’s jealousy, not that there was any left, was soothed by the image of Kevin Day and Cami Bludden stumbling out of a broomshed together, hungover out of their minds. Marks blooming on each of their necks.

Their dynamic started shifting immediately after. Whatever words were exchanged during the new year marked the death of distance. Luke seeks her out to train together, swaps out the food she doesn’t like during meals, and invites her to swim together in the creek. Only this time, she doesn’t step away. 

They don’t particularly name anything, and they don’t deny it either. 

Drew, in particular, was silent. When people brought it up, she acted like it was about time they got together. Still, when everyone was fixated on the meals, on the weapons, she sent an observant glance at her younger sister, sat a little closer during meals, knowing well she’d give Castellan hell if anything about her sister felt off and uncomfortable. 

It hasn’t yet, and 4 months have already passed. 

Kwanjai sat awake; she couldn’t sleep. Lately, she’s been having dreams, dreams of Luke, on a cruise ship. It’s probably random, something she picked up from Leah’s ridiculous gossip magazines, but somehow it felt too real. She knew that couldn’t be him. The vengeful eyes that weren’t his at all.

She sits up, the creak of the ceiling fan the only thing accompanying her mind. She looks around to see no one awake to even talk to. She puts on slippers and exits the cabin, careful to close the door silently behind her, so as not to wake anyone up. 

Her eyes immediately latch onto someone walking in front of the Hermes cabin, sitting outside. She notices the mop of curly hair under the hood. She calls him. “Luke,” 

He looks up and immediately softens. “Hey there, what are you doing awake?” He walks to her to greet her, meeting her midway. “I couldn’t sleep,” She answered, taking the arm that he offered her, noticing it was wet. “You? Why were you awake?” She asked him back. “Bathroom.” He said, which definitely explained the hands. 

They settled in front of the porch of Cabin 10, just beside his own. Idly passing time. “I’ve been thinking,” He said, “Of what I’d do after I turn 20.” His hood slipping down, exposing the hair he’d kept parted sideways. “I’m not sure if I’ll still be welcomed here.” He smiled sheepishly. Right, demigods who turn 18 usually set off into the world, leaving camp behind.

“I’ll come with you,” Kwanjai said, quietly, hesitant, like she was unsure of her welcome in his future, like there hadn’t already been three mugs and cabinets placed for her in them. “I can probably get my inheritance, we can build a house in the woods, near a sanctuary, and then we can figure life from then on.” 

He stares down at her, longing and amusement in his eyes. He wraps his, now dry, hand around her waist and uses the other hand to make gestures, pointing out empty spaces as if what he was planning could sprout up from the land.  “We can build a house near a sanctuary,” he points out, “And then hunt monsters in the day. We can go on quests together, we can even help demigods who are on the way to camp.” His eyes glinted. 

She stared at his ecstatic figure, Luke Castellan, who wanted nothing more than for the camp and other demigods to be safe, not wanting them to live a life he had experienced. This man would never be the same one who was in her dream. She nuzzled her face into his neck, smelling his usual musky cologne.

She wanted to stop pretending she was okay with the mutual understanding they had built. She wanted to get swept up by his storm, to let the vibration of his breathing become the only thing she could hear.

She felt like she was drowning, the pressure in her lungs, the cold rush of him over her head, the slow, rhythmic pull of a current she couldn't fight. Every instinct told her to gasp for air, to reach for the surface, to run back to the safety of her own world. But as she leaned into his space, she realized she didn't want to be saved.

She wanted to go under. 

She wanted to take that risk, to let the tsunami break over her until there was nothing left of the girl who was afraid.

If this was a disaster, she wanted to be right in the center of it. She wanted to sink until he was the only thing holding her together.

“Chan chôrp thoe. (I like you).” She whispered, unable to handle telling him directly, but also unable to contain the roaring feeling inside her. 

He turned to her, propping his chin on top of her hair. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked, genuinely clueless. “... It means I’m sleepy.” She said, her ears flushing. “Right, code-switching,” Luke said. 

He tapped her shoulder to let her know he was standing up, and pulled her to her feet. “If you’re sleepy, I’ll go back after you go inside.” He squeezed her arm, pointing his nose at the door. She nodded, starting to move. “Wait,” He said. “How do you say good night in Thai?” Kwanjai thought for a moment. 

“Rak ter na. (I love you).” She said. 

“Rak ter na, Jai.” His palm gently stroked her hair, combing down some of the curls. 

She told him good night one more time before shutting the door, sliding down behind it silently, her giddy heart beating being the only thing audible in her ears. 

The May sun was relentless on her skin; she felt like she would turn into prunes if she didn’t step into the shade moments sooner. She sat beside the beach, a volume of ancient myths on her lap, the air getting stronger until she saw a woman rising out from the ocean. 

At first, she thought it might be a naiad coming to say hello. But when she smelt the very same aroma wafting in the air when she got claimed, she knew this couldn’t have been the same one. She dropped her book, gripping a dagger just in case this was a trickster, someone who wanted to pretend it was her. 

But she just knew inside of her, it couldn’t be a mistake. 

Aphrodite had risen from the ocean. 

She was a vision of soft edges and shimmering light, looking less like a distant goddess and more like the mother Kwanjai had reached for in her dreams. She observed her face, and couldn’t help but think she had the image of everyone Kwanjai’s ever loved. 

She reached out, her fingers, cool and smelling of rain-washed petals, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Kwanjai’s ear.

"My sweet, foolish girl, Kwanjai, is it? That he named you," Aphrodite murmured, her voice causing an ache. The voice she has longed for, held space for, in the off chance of hearing it. "Look at you. You’ve dressed yourself to match the purity of a heart you’ve handed over to a boy who doesn't know how to handle fragile things."

Kwanjai tried to pull back, but the Goddess’s touch was a magnetic pull. She stared petulantly. "I don’t know what you mean. He makes quiet mean something. He makes the world quiet—"

"He makes the world quiet because he is the storm, Jai," Aphrodite sighed, her eyes reflecting a tragic depth, like she, too, was hurt by what she was saying. 

She cupped Kwanjai’s face, her thumb stroking her cheek with featherlight tenderness that felt like a goodbye. "Listen to me, as someone who has seen a thousand men like him turn to lead. You are a daughter of Love. I understand your power is to see the beauty in the cracks of the world, but... the son of Hermes, is a thief by blood. Don't let him steal your future before you've even lived it."

The Goddess stepped closer, her silk robes whispering against Kwanjai's own clothes. Her tone shifted, becoming more urgent, sounding maternal, as if she had it in her to be.

"Leave him now, while the memory is still sweet. Walk away while you can still breathe without tasting his name in everything. If you stay, you aren't simply choosing a boy,” Aphrodite stared deep into her, reaching depths she couldn’t have known existed, appealing to worries she hadn’t had before.

She had a feeling that her dreams maybe weren’t just dreams anymore.

“You are choosing to be the anchor for a ship that is destined to sink. He will seek a throne built on the pieces of your heart. He is a thief by blood, Jai— and a thief cannot steal what is freely given, but he will take the choice from you if you let him."

Kwanjai felt the sting of tears. "I can’t leave him. We’re two halves of a soul."

“That, you are.” Aphrodite’s expression hardened into something mournful. 

“I have asked the fates too many times why it has to be my daughter who is intertwined with that man, but now, I think I understand.

“Only love that survives betrayal can persist in the underworld, and our blood knows it better than others. 

"If you must, then you should prepare for the dark he is inviting. Soon, I will send you on a quest. You will go to the House of the Queen who never smiles to fetch a box of Persephone’s beauty. But listen to me, for your ears will be tricked: They will tell you that to grow is to lose, and to rule is to forget. But the greatest power in the Underworld is the light you refuse to leave behind. If it comes, follow your heart."

She leaned down, her lips ghosting against Kwanjai’s forehead.

"This is all I can help you with. I’m proud of what a big heart of gold you’ve grown up with, given the cards you were dealt. I won’t question you where your loyalties lie, I don’t have the right to, but perhaps if it were you, you might be able to save a traitor’s soul.” 

With a final, lingering stroke of Kwanjai's hair, the Goddess dissolved into a shimmer of gold, leaving Kwanjai alone in with her thoughts. 

Kwanjai didn’t know what to feel. The first time her mother, the Goddess of Love, appears, she tells her not to pursue her affections for Luke Castellan, and she leaves her a quest. She laughed, dryly, how cruel. 

Come next morning, the news hit the dining pavilion like a sudden drop in temperature. Quests were rare, usually reserved for the children of the Big Three or seasoned veterans, but ones directly from the Goddess were rarer, and her message had been undeniable. 

During breakfast, a single, glowing dove had circled the Aphrodite table before exploding into a shower of rose petals that formed the sigil of a locked box.

Chiron stood at the head pavilion, his expression grave. "Kwanjai of Cabin 10 has been summoned. The Goddess demands a tithe from the Underworld— Persephone’s beauty, to be returned before the middle of June. It is a journey, alone, as per the Goddess's decree."

The pavilion erupted in whispers. Kwanjai felt the weight of the camp's gaze, but only one pair of eyes mattered. Across the room, Luke was frozen, his fork halfway to his mouth. His face went pale, his brown eyes darkening with a mixture of terror and a strange, rough resentment. 

“Will you be all right?” Silena asks Kwanjai, who was packing things in a bag Agustin lent her. “I’ll be all right, I have to be.” She assures her sister. “Take this,” Silena gives her a silver pocket mirror, silver rose engravings swirled around it. She looks at her older sister, puzzled, “So you remember who you are, it’s easy to forget down there.” Her eyes watered, scared for her life. “Thanks,” She sniffled. 

“Here,” Drew tossed her a heavy pouch. “Drachmas. You owe me. When you return, because. you. will.” She glared, arms crossed, and the discussions closed. 

Leah gave her a crumpled paper, filled with names and spirits that owe Aphrodite. “You never know who you might need help from down there.” She winked. 

She had all bid them a temporary farewell, hugging each and every one of them. Yes, even Drew. The summer solstice would fall on her birthday that year, which meant she had a little bit more than a month to spare. 

Before she could leave, Kwanjai had to climb the ladder to the attic of the Big House. The air up there was thick, smelling of dust and ancient, probably rotting, things. The Shell of the Oracle sat in her velvet chair, a withered husk that suddenly lurched forward, green mist pouring from her mouth. The image that appeared was her father, tight and disappointed:

“You shall go west to the Queen of the Cold, 

To reclaim the grace that was never sold. 

The thief shall watch from the sun-drenched land, 

While the weight of the world fills your trembling hand.

 Return what was lost and postponed, 

Or face the descent of the heart alone.”

Kwanjai stumbled back, her heart a frantic drum. The thief shall watch. The Oracle’s words merged with her mother’s warning, creating a suffocating pressure in her chest.

She descended the ladder to find Luke waiting at the bottom. He looked desperate, his camp shirt rumpled, his hand reaching out to catch her elbow. 

"Jai, tell me what she said. I'll come with you, Chiron be damned, I won't let you go down there alone."

Kwanjai looked at him, really looked at him, and for the first time, she didn't see the “Golden Boy." She saw the shadow her mother had warned her about, a boy so afraid of the dark that he would disobey rules to stay away from it.

"I have to go alone, Luke," she whispered, her voice a hollowed-out version of itself. "Yesterday, my mother came to me and told me all about it.” He looked at her, lost, like he didn’t get why she would even suggest a thing. “Don’t worry about me.” She smiled at him, taking off her glass necklace, leaving it grasped in his hand. 

“Because when I finish this quest, I have something to tell you.” 

Argus, the guy with a hundred eyes, was assigned to drive her, feeling excited about the quest.

 “You really like travelling, huh, Argus?” She asked him, smiling when he had nodded with such enthusiasm. “I wish I were as excited as you on this quest.” She sat back in the passenger seat. “I feel so confused, and I might be hit with a… lot more questions that I can think of answers to.” Argus patted her back.

“It’s fine, really! Some campers must’ve had it harder than me. Mine’s just a delivery request. I’ll live.” 

It took three naps for Kwanjai, no stopping, three red light violations, and 24 hours, but they finally reached DOA studios. The “human” front for the entrance to the underworld. 

When she entered, she was greeted by a crowd of people, all in stages of sitting down and waiting. Just waiting. 

She figures they might be the unlucky ones who had no means of payment, seeing as most of them were kids. She looked at them sadly. After which she noticed a guy at the front desk, and she walked to him. “Hi, I’m, uh, Aphrodite’s deputy. For the tithe.” He looked at her, emotionless still, extending his palm out.

She’s a guest, and they still decide to extort money from her? This is definitely Charon. 

She rummaged through her bag, giving one drachma. 

He twisted it in his bony finger and walked without even a second glance. Kwanjai took it as a sign to follow and trailed after him. He entered an elevator, pressing the lowermost floor. “You will be boarding the next ship. Just walk straight.” “That’s it? No scans or security?” She asked him.

He deadpanned. “There is no need. Everyone here is dead.” Right, she pursed her lips.

The elevator opened, and she walked out without him. 

She followed the arrows, pointing to a ship that was currently boarding. As she got on, the door started creaking, rising up, and closing. Apparently, Kwanjai was the only missing boarder. 

The whole ride was terribly boring, especially when you’re alone. She walked around several times, but all she could see was a vast stretch of greyness and calm waters. 

When the boat creaked to a stop, she saw Cerberus, ever the mighty dog, and he looked like the cutest thing ever?

“Hey there, who’s a good boy?” She tried out the charmspeak lessons she had been getting. The dog’s head all took turns sniffing her before shrugging, laying down, wagging his tail, and asking for belly rubs. 

“Such a cute boy,” She giggled, giving him the scratches he was asking for, which took a good 5 minutes, given his stature. “Won’t this good boy tell me the door that leads to Persephone’s garden?” The dog tilted his heads, probably because all of these doors eventually lead to Persephone’s garden.

She asked again, but instead, asked for the door that had the safest path. The dog wagged its tail before pointing all of its snouts to the leftmost door. 

She closed the door behind her and started her walk to the garden. She notices a bunch of gray trees in the distance, realizes it might be just beyond that. 

Kwanjai began to walk closer, but soon realized that these were no ordinary trees. These were people, well, the shell of who they were. Anchored down by their regrets, unable to leave behind what could've or should've been in their lives.

She trudged on in the eerie place, with nothing but herself, Silena's mirror strapped to her wrist, and her thoughts to keep her company as she tried not to think creepy thoughts. 

“I have to go quickly, no time to waste. Luke is waiting for me. I promised him that if— no, when I return, I’ll tell him something.” 

Then why didn't you say it before you left? You had plenty of time to. 

“What? No— I didn’t have time, there was no proper moment where I could've told him I loved him—”

You've loved him since you first laid eyes on him. You could've said it at any point since then. 

“But then it wouldn't be special.”

Nothing's special about either about sitting on the precipice of being more and never really crossing it. 

Roots started to grow out of the ground, slowly but surely. Crawling up her ankle.

Then what about when you stayed quiet? When you stood by and watched him, when all he was waiting for was you?

“N-no, that's— I didn’t—”

Was it because of your dad? The one who left you? The one whose silence you keep blaming for all of your shortcomings? When you know very well those were at the result of your own decisions?

“No…”

The roots started to wrap around her waist, enveloping her like slithering snakes, immobilizing her arms, with no plans of stopping.

And what about when you failed to help his arm? 

She stayed silent, pensive, right, the sting of her wound being reopened.

When Aly got to him first? When you got reminded of how useless you actually were?

Nobody knows, but in the recesses of her mind, when she feels like she has failed herself and everyone around her, the moment keeps playing for her. 

When the nightmares of her father's silence disappeared, it was her obsolescence, her replacability that bothered her. 

Maybe that's why this memory is playing, because she’s finally failed everyone. 

The roots started to go up her neck, slowly and surely, swirling around her cheeks, before closing up above her head. 

Silence. 

She’s going to fail her mother, Cami, who had been attached to her at the hip since they had shared classes together, Maenam, who had lead her to safety when she didn’t know how to fight, and sent her letters from her search for Pan, Agustin, who was her closest brother, Leah, Drew, Silena, who all saw her and supported her for who she was, and Luke. 

Luke… 

“Look at me, Jai.” 

 Luke? Who is Luke? Where is Luke? 

….

Who is she?

“Remember who you are.”

Who….

“Rak ter na, Jai.”

Right, she's Kwanjai Suthamanee, the daughter of Aphrodite.

She's in the underworld with a quest to finish so she could tell Luke how much she loves him, 

and she is, very much, alive. 

All of a sudden, a light, coming from the mirror on her wrist, exploded, blasting the pieces of wood from her body. She fell down, her head hurting like she had just remembered nothing and then everything at once. 

The quest…!

She scrambled to stand up again, her clothes tattered and dirty, and soldiered on, no time to waste. She has to get back. She must.

She stood in the middle of a garden, lush and full of life, contrasting against what the whole Underworld stood for, pulsing in a world that had long since stopped breathing.

It's here she finds a gorgeous woman, who looked young, but tired, a downwards tug weighing the edge of her lips. What softness she has is left in her eyes, when she tends to the garden, watering them. She realized she might’ve been staring for too long, and made her presence known. 

“Lady Persephone,” She called out to the lady. Her gaunt eyes traveled to her, scanning her up and down. “I assume you're Aphrodite's daughter.” Her voice was cold, sharp, and void of Springtime that the poets had sung about. 

Her eyes tracked the tremble in Kwanjai's fingers. “I’m Kwanjai. My mother sent me here, f-for your beauty.” She said, her voice cracking by the end. 

Persephone’s gaze drifted to the box. A faint, haunting smile touched her lips, a ghost of a feeling. "Is that what she calls it? Beauty. As if it were something you could rub into your skin to hide the cracks.” 

She stood, her dark silk robes trailing like smoke as she walked closer. She didn't tower over Kwanjai, but she walked with a haunting, heavy grace. "I gave that away a long time ago, little dove, you can have it and tell her to take all of it.” She dismisses, planting the weeping box into the demigod's arms.

“Take it. If you open it for yourself, you will receive eternal beauty.” Persephone urged her, sounding like she had wanted nothing more to do with the box. “If you don't mind, I'd like to know more.” She asked the goddess.

She paused, and for a moment Kwanjai was afraid she had offended her. “I didn't make it because I was forced to give it up, no, but because I had chosen to. I loved a King who ruled a kingdom of ash and bone, and to stand beside him, I, too, had to become a Queen of the Dark. 

"I thought I was simply growing up. I didn't realize that in becoming a ruler, I was letting the girl who loved the sun ebb away." She reached out, her fingers hovering near the box but not touching it.

"I made a decision. I chose my heart, and I chose my duty. But maturity is an anomaly. It tells you that to be strong, you must be hollow. I didn't know that my soul, my identity, was the price for my crown." ​Kwanjai looked down at the inscription, ‘To hold the crown, let the girl go’, under which said ‘Kore’,  and then back at the Queen. 

"My mother told me that a thief cannot steal what is freely given. She said it as a warning about the boy I love. But looking at you... It feels different. Your husband rules a land of souls, the seeds of life themselves. You spend several months without your husband, above, and he continues to command souls even when you're not here. 

“You don’t need to give up your soul, Lady Persephone. It’s never too late to get it back. Lord Hades won’t mind.” Persephone nodded slowly, her eyes softening with a shared, ancient understanding. Like this has been the case for millennia.

"This boy you love, the son of the messenger, he is like my Lord in many ways. He has a vision for a world.” She stares off into the grey underworld, from this view, all of its islands can be seen. 

"And he thinks he must be the one to fix it, even if he has to burn himself down to do it. 

“He will try to take your choices to keep you safe, little one. He will try to steal your future because he is afraid for you. because he is afraid of his diastrophy, his magnitude." She finally placed a hand over Kwanjai’s on the lid of the box. The metal stopped weeping.

​"But your mother was right, though perhaps not in the way she intended," the Queen murmured. "If you give him your heart freely, every shattered, fragile piece of it, he cannot steal it. A thief only has power over what is hidden or guarded.

“If you stand in his storm and say, 'I am here, and I am yours, and I am not afraid of the dark,' you take the weapon out of his hand." Kwanjai felt the box click. It didn't pop open with a flash of light. A scent of crushed wildflowers and summer rain, the smell of a girl who hadn't yet learned to be a Queen, spilled into the stagnant air.

​"I’m not taking this back to the surface," Kwanjai said, her voice steadying. “I cannot, in good conscience, do so.” She held firm.

"I'm returning it to you. You shouldn't have to choose between your crown and your soul. You shouldn’t have to lose in order to grow. I think, being the queen of souls means that you can bring your own into a barren one, and be able to thrive within a place that's so empty of it.” 

It's dangerous, defiant of her one and only purpose for being there, but her mother did say return something. 

​Persephone’s breath hitched.

For a moment, the frosted glass of her eyes cracked, revealing a glimpse of the spring goddess she used to be. She took the box, holding it against her chest as if it were a heartbeat she had forgotten she possessed.

She opened it, the light was too bright she had to close her eyes for it. When she opened her eyes, she looked the same, perhaps she might always will. But her eyes carried hope, and her cheeks started to carry a healthy flush, and on her face was a genuine grin. 

​The silver box sat between them, no longer a weight. Persephone held the reclaimed pulse of her own youth against her chest. She looked down at Kwanjai, her gaze searching and impossibly old.

​“You have given a Queen a gift she did not know she could still hold,” Persephone murmured. “The laws of the dark demand a balance. The underworld doesn't forget. Tell me, little dove, what do you want in return? Beauty that never fades? A love that without end? For your father’s soul to be accounted for? Speak, and it is yours.”

​Kwanjai didn't hesitate. She didn't look at the jewels or the power humming in the shadows. She thought of a boy, constantly within armour, pained but smiling, the whole world waiting on his betrayal.

​“Ensure that Luke Castellan finds his way to Elysium,” Kwanjai said, her voice small.

​Persephone went still. The shadows in the room seemed to lean in, listening. “You ask for the soul of the thief? You have walked the paths of the dead, Kwanjai. You have seen the disturbance in the Styx. You have heard from Aphrodite. You know that before the end, he will betray the world, but before that, he will betray you.”

​The Queen stepped closer, her glistening, dark purple eyes boring into Kwanjai’s. “Do you truly want to spend your only wish on a boy who is fated to walk away from you? Even after knowing he will betray you?”

​“Yes,” Kwanjai whispered, her throat tight with the truth she had finally stopped fighting. “Because I love him, and right now, he hasn't betrayed me yet.”

​Persephone stared at her for a long beat, the silence stretching until it felt like it might snap. Finally, the Queen bowed her head.

​“There is a boy,” Persephone began, “Golden. Tired. Walking toward the wrong kind of loyalty.”

​She looked at Kwanjai like she had always known.

​“When his soul comes here,” Persephone continued, “I will see that he does not wander. I will place him in Elysium. Beyond his own merits, because someone loved him enough to guarantee it for him.”

​The Queen reached out, her fingers ghosting over Kwanjai’s shoulder. A faint, silver light flickered there, a sealing mark.

​“That is a promise I do not make lightly. And for you, little dove... a final mercy. You have seen enough of the dark. The way back is long, but I will open a path. You will find the surface before the moon sets, safe and untouched.”

​With a wave of Persephone’s hand, the obsidian walls seemed to ripple and dissolve, creating a staircase.

​“Go,” the Queen whispered. “Until we meet again. He waits for you.”

She turned back to Lady Persephone, smiling and carrying the heavy box where she used to be trapped. “I have a promise to fulfill. Thank you, Lady Persephone.”

She reached the surface after five minutes of endless walking, panting. She sat down, gripping the heavy box with her, the ascent being grueling. She looked at the empty California road, worried about how she was supposed to go home. 

As the air began to fill her lungs, she realized she wasn't alone.

Leaning against a lamppost was a man in a modern hoodie, in the middle of the summer, while his winged sneakers twitched restlessly. He looked like a blurred photograph of Luke, the same sharp jaw, the same lips, but his eyes held enough secrets for a millennium.

"You look like you've been through the wringer, kid," Hermes said, his voice a smooth, annoying hum that lacked the roughness of his son's. He didn't move to help her, but his eyes scanned her with a father’s hidden worry.

Kwanjai stopped, her lungs burning. "He’s going to do it, isn't he? Aphrodite... Persephone... they all say the same thing. He’s going to betray everything."

Hermes looked away. He didn't know the specifics, the ship, the scythe, the stab, but he knew the soul of his son. "He’s always been the kind of boy who’d rather pull the whole house down than live in a room with a leak."

He sighed, a sound that felt older than the cave she had just been in. "I can't say he’s right. But I can't say I don't understand why he’s angry."

He looked back at her, and for a moment, the distance of a god vanished. "I’m glad he has you. He needs someone who isn't afraid of the storm he’s stirring up. Most people just see the sword. You’re the only one who sees the boy."

Kwanjai wiped a streak of underworld-substrate from her cheek. "How do you know?"

Hermes reached out, tapping the hood of the car. "Because he hasn't stopped talking to me, kid. Not for a month. He didn’t use to offer sacrifices.

“But every meal since then, the same frantic, desperate words, asking me to watch over your path. 

“He’s been praying for your safe travels since the quest was given. He may think I’m not listening, but his voice was the loudest thing in my head."

He opened the passenger door, the interior sleek and smelling of leather. "Get in. I'll get you back before midnight. I don't think he’ll survive another hour of waiting."

Hermes gripped the steering wheel with a relaxed precision, his winged sneakers still twitching with that trademark restlessness.

"You know," Hermes said, his voice cutting through the hum of the engine, "being the God of Languages means I hear the beat behind every word."

Kwanjai looked at him, her reflection in the window looking ghastly and beat up. "What are you hearing now?"

"Your name," Hermes murmured. "Kwanjai. Your father was a mortal with a poet’s soul, Jai. He didn't just pick a name because it sounded pretty." He glanced at her. "In his tongue, it means 'the breath of the heart.' The center of the soul. The one who holds the spirit together."

Kwanjai felt a lump form in her throat, the meaning of her own name hitting her with a weight she hadn't expected. Perhaps she should thank her father, despite the resentment, because he had unknowingly pointed her life in a direction befitting of her name, the name he gave her.

"He named you the thing that makes life worth living," Hermes continued. "And it’s ironic, perchance tragic, that Luke found you. He’s spent his life feeling like he’s lost his breath, like he’s been running a race he can’t win. You are ‘Kwanjai.' You are the only thing keeping his heart from stopping."

The car slowed, the blurred lights solidifying back into the familiar, dark pines of the camp borders.

"He prays to me for 'the breath of his heart,'" Hermes said, his voice softening. "He doesn't realize that by asking me to keep you safe, he’s admitting he can’t survive without you."

The car came to a seamless halt just outside the magical barrier. Hermes didn't look at her as she opened the door. “I’ll take the box back to your mother, you’ve done a lot carrying it here.”

With a sudden pop of displaced air, the car vanished, leaving Kwanjai standing at the camp borders. 

She had entered the Cabin, it was the midnight of June 15th, the box had been returned, its contents back to the rightful owner. 

She didn’t care to shower, nor to change out of her clothes, she placed the bag down and sat on the bed, taking the view she didn’t know she had missed. She was back home. She dropped her head back to her bed and passed out immediately. 

She woke up to a body jumping on her sleeping figure. “You’re back! You made it!” Leah said, glomping on her and squishing her cheeks, not minding the soot and ash that dirtied both of their clothes. “Guys! She’s back! Jai’s back!” Almost everyone sat up. Some campers, with whom she wasn’t close with yet, gaped, while Silena and Drew (even Agustin) bolted towards her immediately. 

Drew pinched her cheek, pulled her hair, checked her retinas. Silena snuggled up to her, on the opposite side from where Leah did. Agustin sat by the floor like a kid, his head in her lap. “What happened?” Silena asked her, “Well,”

She told them about Charon, how he still extorted money from her, how Cerberus was charming and fluffy, even with the aid of charmspeak, how Asphodel was cold and eerie, and how Persephone’s garden brimmed with life. She left out the impending betrayal and the reward she had asked for in exchange. 

They had all sat, teetering at the edge of their seats when she told them about it. At the end of her story, they gave her hugs and “birthday-and-welcome-back gifts,” as Leah called them. 

The news doesn't reach Luke immediately. It finds him in the midst of the scrape of his sharpening blade. Luke is tucked away in the walls of the armory, his focus narrow and intense, sinking into his worry, she’ll return to him, surely, she promised. Her necklace pressed against his neck with every scrape

Sea Magnus enters, a child of Hephaestus, eyebrows knitted as ever. They recognize Luke sitting in the corner, laser-focused on getting the sword sharpened.

"She’s back," Sea says, their voice occupying the otherwise silent armory. "The Aphrodite girl. Jai. She came in after midnight."

Luke stills. The whetstone slips, a horrid screeching sound as it bites too hard into the bronze edge.

"Is she okay?" he asks. The question comes out too fast, too sharp, cutting through his usual composure.

Sea shrugs, already turning back toward the door. "I mean, she didn’t look dead."

But Luke is already gone.

He doesn't wait for the rest of the sentence. He doesn't put the sword away. He drops the whetstone onto the workbench and sprints out of the armory, his boots thudding against the dirt. He ignores the expletives thrown at him at the discarded stone and just keeps on running.

His lungs burn with a desperate heat as he tears through the cabins toward the lake.

He finds her exactly where his heart told him she’d be.

The morning light is pale and thin, stretching across the water like a sheet of unpolished silver. It’s the kind of light that makes the world feel newly forged and fragile. Kwanjai is sitting at the edge, her shoes abandoned on the grass, her toes barely skimming the surface of the water as if she’s testing to see if she’s still solid enough for the world.

She looks... changed. Steadier. 

When she hears his heavy, uneven breathing, she doesn't flinch. She just turns, and for the first time in a while, she is the one to offer the smile.

"Hey," Luke says. He’s leaning over, hands on his knees, trying to force his heart to stop trying to climb out of his throat.

She stands, the hem of her shirt swaying in the breeze. For once, she doesn't wait for him to fill the space between them. She doesn't want to wait for him to decide what they are.

"I went to the Underworld," she says, her tone calm, almost conversational. "And I came back."

"I know," he replies, his hands gripped tight on the hem of his shirt to hide the way they're shaking. "I'm glad you did." He plays it cool, as if he hadn’t been thinking about her every day, as if he hadn’t begged his father to guide her travels.

“I promised you I have something I wanted to tell you, remember?”

There are a thousand things he wants to ask: what she saw, what she heard, why her eyes look like they've seen the end, but the words die in his throat. All he’s feeling is relief that she’s come back.

She steps closer. Close enough that he can see the faint, dark shadows under her eyes. Close enough for him to realize that this is no longer a soft, blurring dream, but his reality. She’s really standing in front of him.

"I don't want to carry regrets anymore," she says.

Luke frowns, a flicker of his old protective instinct flashing. "You don't have to, Jai. I told you, I’d—"

"I know," she interrupts softly. She nods, as if she’s already navigated this conversation in her head a dozen times. "But I’ve been choosing to. I’ve been waiting for you catch me, when I should have been picking myself up."

Her hands shake. She doesn't hide it, doesn't tuck them away. She lets him see the vulnerability, one that he’s been so desperate to protect.

"I love you," Kwanjai says.

The words land between them with a heavy, salt-etched conclusion, as if the tsunami has finally crashed onto the shore. There is no wading back out now, the damage is done, the landscape is altered, and nothing can be taken back. 

No apology. No flinch. She just stands there in the wreckage of the silence, letting the water settle around them.

Luke doesn't speak. For a heartbeat, Kwanjai wonders if she’s misjudged everything, if the storm has finally pulled him too far out to sea for him to remember his way back. Then, his expression shifts. A recognition. He exhales a long, slow breath, like a weight he’s been holding for a lifetime finally has permission to drop.

"You came back different," he whispers.

She smiles, small, cheeky "I’ve been waiting."

He reaches for her hair, his fingers hesitating for a fraction of a second before he combs his fingers through to ground himself. He laughs quietly, a breathless sound at his own sudden shyness.

"I don't know how to be careful," he admits. "I don't know how to love you without wanting to burn the world down to keep you safe--" "You don't have to be careful," she says, her eyes locking onto his with an honesty that makes him feel seen in a way that terrifies him. He doesn’t know the lengths he will go. 

He nods, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. "I love you too." She grips his shoulders, his shirt wrinkling under the force of her fingers. She leans up, her heart frantic.

He meets her kiss midway.

It isn't anymore the careful touch of a boy trying not to break something fragile. It’s a whirlstorm finally finding land, he pulls her in until there’s no air left between them, his hands tangling in her hair, holding her as if she’s the only thing keeping him close to the earth. The beach behind them ripples, a pulse that feels like the world acknowledging them.

Kwanjai doesn't tell him what Persephone said. She doesn't tell him about the promise of Elysium, or the way his name sounded like a tragedy in the mouth of a Queen.

Love is sometimes standing in the path of the storm and choosing to stay.

She watches him beside her, his golden hair catching the noon sun. Her heart is steady. Whatever comes next, whatever dark choices he makes, she tries to prepare herself.

When December comes, Luke Castellan will steal the master bolt. 

By June of the next year, he will be exposed by the son of Poseidon and escape Camp Half-Blood, and Kwanjai Suthamanee will stay with the demigods.

Four years later, the news is delivered to Kwanjai’s doorstep, one that is made of wood and is located inside Aphrodite’s Sanctuary, tailored with extra room to house demigod children on their way to camp. 

The war is over. Luke Castellan, the Hero of the Prophecy, has defeated Kronos by sacrificing himself. 

She felt her knees weaken, and her blood drain from her face. She sits herself down on the nearest chair, the only thing comforting her being Persephone’s promise. He will not wander.

At age 85, Kwanjai Suthamanee, protector of half-bloods, dies, surrounded by the demigod children she took care of, and Maenam, who visited her every time she could, not aging a day past 20. All witnesses to a life well-lived.

Kwanjai entered the underworld, and nothing changed since she had been here some 70 years ago. Charon looked the same, demanded the same, told her the same thing when she asked about security. Except that she was there as a customer, not as a guest. 

She greeted Cerberus the same, and he excitedly wiggled his tail, pushing her immediately to the middle door, different from the one she was in during her first rodeo. 

She closed the door quietly behind her again, walking, and she couldn’t help but think that Elysium is beautiful, filled with the sound of laughter and the scent of eternal spring. She could see Silena and Charles, feeling her face heat up as they probably don’t recognize her, being old and wrinkly, and—

She looked at her hands, and her skin was as good as it was at 20. She greets them with a smile, and Silena points to somewhere as both of them state she should be greeting someone else first. 

She walks further, bordering near the edge of Elysium, to the Lethe River. He sits, waiting for her, pensive. 

She sits beside him. They talk.

They agree on rebirth and walk across the Lethe together, hand in hand.