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The new Aphrodite counselor was… something. Clarisse hadn’t really been involved in the whole… quest thing with Beckendorf’s bronze dragon — although Happy the fucking Dragon was certainly a choice. Why in Latin, she had no idea, unless the little Roman had named him — too busy trying to teach her brand new siblings how to not accidentally slice their fingertips open on a knife, sword, and on one occasion, a particularly sharp pinecone. The new demigods were… an interesting lot. And there were way more of them now. All novices. All completely untrained. So someone had to teach them, and if it gave her a better distraction than pretending— well it was something to do to keep busy.
Some of them were even quite good. Sherman’s training needed work though. He wasn’t actually very effective and if she were to leave him in charge after the summer, he was going to need to put the work in.
“So you’re Clarisse La Rue?” the new Aphrodite girl asked, sidling up to her halfway through the bonfire. “It’s nice to meet you.” Clarisse knew her name — she’d heard Drew scream it in frustration enough — but she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of letting her know she knew who she was. It was a good test.
“Yeah,” she sucked in her cheeks for a moment, turning to her. “You?”
“Piper McLean,” she shrugged. No don’t you know who I am? No haven’t you heard of me? It was good. She had passed. “I was wondering— can we talk? Sometime?”
Clarisse looked out into the fire, the faces of the campers who sensed something was coming and couldn’t quite relax for it. She was going to be busy tomorrow. And the next day. She had to be busy. She was keeping herself busy. No more quests. No more missions for Chiron. No more diving into the labyrinth and nearly dying.
But it meant her timetable was pretty full.
“We can talk now,” she nodded into the woods. “Got a weapon?”
She pulled a dagger from her belt. Clarisse didn’t miss her lack of apprehension at going into the woods at night. It was promising. Or stupid. Bit of both, most likely.
“So,” she said, once they were far enough from the fire to speak at a normal volume. She could see Piper McLean’s silhouette next to her as she took step after step, her hands gripping Maimer, ready to bring it out at any moment. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about Silena,” she said decisively. “I’m sorry for your loss. They told me you were her best friend.”
It might be a little funny, to mortals, for someone’s half-sister to say that to their sister’s friend, not the other way around. But Clarisse knew, and Piper McLean knew that that was what it was like for demigods.
“Thanks,” she said, a little blandly. “I guess. She was, my best friend.”
“Drew said she was a traitor.”
She sucked in a breath. This girl did not waste time.
“But— Drew obviously hates her. And she took her job. And she says, I mean, the worst things about her. Annabeth said she was a hero.”
“Why do you want to know?” Clarisse turned to her. Maimer caught the light of the moon, reflecting it onto Piper McLean’s face. She was pretty — all the Aphrodite girls were — and she had the sort of face that could scar nicely in battle, or in a training accident. Silena had looked nothing like her, not at all the same. Clarisse couldn’t put a single feature between them. Except a part of her really wanted to see both of them covered in blood and grinning about it. But that was the Ares in her, she supposed. She liked it in Chris too, liked seeing him riled up and bruised and excited. It was what a good time was to her. “You never knew her, and you won’t know her. Tell Drew to shut the fuck up and get on with your life.”
“I’m head counselor,” her voice had gained a slightly fried inflection — if she hadn’t grown up or spent a lot of time in LA, Clarisse would eat Maimer herself — “I have to be the person setting the tone for the other campers. I’m never going to meet Silena, probably not anyway, but everyone in Cabin Ten talks about her. Or, they think about her. She’s always there, but there’s no one really objective about it. No one will even tell me — not even Annabeth—” she cut herself off, breathing heavily.
Clarisse’s boots crushed some frozen leaves underfoot before she said anything else. “I’m not objective either. She was— to me she was a hero.” She tried to swallow her hate. “She was the reason that Cabin Five came to the battle. She made it so we had fresh troops, ready to take on the drakon. And it killed her.” Piper McLean was polite enough to not mention the way her voice cracked on the last words.
“Then why does Drew—”
“Because she was,” she cut her off. She didn’t want to hear it again. It was true but it wasn’t the whole story. Silena was a traitor. Silena was a hero. She’d saved some. She’d damned others. She’d meant well. She’d failed. But her plan, in a horrible, convoluted way, had succeeded. Clarisse was still alive. She’d still spared her. And all these months later, she had no idea how she was supposed to feel about it. For the first time, she felt angry at her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t sad about it too — devastated, actually — and she still loved her but she had nowhere to put it anymore, but if she stopped she might never start again. And that’s when you died, as a demigod. And Clarisse wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
“Oh,” Piper said.
Clarisse’s head whipped to face hers. She hadn’t realised that that had come out of her mouth but it was out now and she couldn’t take it back. “If you tell anyone—” she didn’t need to complete the threat.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Piper said, her hand hovering over her bicep. She let it land, her palm cool and smooth. There were the beginnings of calluses on her fingers, but nothing all that consequential yet. That would come. “That’s up to you. I— I still don’t know Silena but you’re allowed to have your own feelings about it.”
“I know that.”
She smiled slightly. “I thought the woods were full of monsters?”
She straightened her back, a weight off her shoulders, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find you some.”