QueenJunoTheGreat on Ao3!

Hazel threw a tantrum after the tunnel collapsed, and, quite frankly, Annabeth couldn't blame her.

She screamed, she cried, she kicked the rocks like that would knock some sense into them. Then she went on a swearing streak that Annabeth found more than a little impressive. After a while, she seemed to just run out of steam, and she curled up in a little ball in front of the pile of stone. She didn’t tremble, but her eyes were glassy and empty as she stared at nothing in front of her.

“Sorry,” she croaked eventually. Her voice was thick with remaining tears and a little rough from screaming. “You probably think I’m being a big baby, huh?”

Annabeth snorted so hard it actually hurt, then slid down the wall to sit next to her. “Absolutely not. I was going to do this exact same thing, but you beat me to it, so I figured you could have your moment.”

Hazel gave her a wet little giggle, then sighed and pressed her forehead to her knees. “Does it ever get any easier?”

“What? Quests or–”

“No.” Hazel shook his head then looked at the stone. “Does it ever get any easier watching him run off like that? I mean, I know he can take care of himself, but I don’t want him to be in a situation where he has to.”

Annabeth pressed her lips together hard. She wanted to lie to Hazel. To assure her that as time went on, she’d get more comfortable with watching the boy she loved run off into battle. But she couldn’t. She thought about Percy challenging Ares at eleven years old, of him holding up the sky, and of him telling her that he’d stay behind so she could escape from Mount St. Helen’s. She thought about every moment of the Battle of Manhattan and every time he’d ever uncapped his sword and charged with nothing but sheer determination to win.

“No, it never gets any easier,” Annabeth sighed. “It’s always going to suck, watching him put his life on the line, and it’s always going to hurt that it feels like he doesn’ care about how much him dying is going to mess you up.”

Hazel sniffled and hid her face deeper in her knees. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“I’m a councilor, not a counselor.” That got another snort out of Hazel, so Annabeth gently elbowed her in the side. “Besides, I said it doesn’t get easier. It’s always going to be hard, but you learn how to deal with it better.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.” Annabeth tipped her head back until it hit the rocky wall behind her. “You just… learn to trust him, you know? He’s never going to stop being a hero, but he’s never going to stop trying to get back to you either. You have to believe in that more than you believe he’s going to leave you.”

Hazel peeked out of her hiding spot, her eyes red-rimmed and wet but also incredibly hopeful. “When do you know that it’s worked?”

“I’ll let you know when it finally happens.” 

Annabeth let Hazel stew for a bit longer, allowing her the emotional freedom she felt she’d been denying herself since she was seven, before she clapped a hand down on her shoulder. “Alright then. The most important part of learning to deal with boys is that you can’t ever let yourself just sit around waiting for them to get back from whatever suicide mission they’ve sent themselves on this time. You ready to go kick this sorceress’s ass?”

Hazel took a deep breath, then nodded sharply, determination flaring back up. “Yeah. Let’s go.” To show her agreement, Gale popped out of Hazel’s sleeve and started her polecat chittering.

Annabeth’s face puckered. “Oh, good. Glad everyone is here.” Gale glowered as balefully as her beady black eyes could manage, but Annabeth just ignored her. She just got to her feet, pulled Hazel up, and the three of them started walking. The farther they walked, though the darker it got and eventually Annabeth had to pull out the replicas of Hecate’s torches she’d made just to see where she was going. As soon as she did, Gale went completely silent before going into a near-feral squeaking session. Annabeth frowned. “Um, what’s her deal?”

“She’s been a follower of Hecate since she was human; they’ve been together for thousands of years,” Hazel reminded her, scratching Gale under the chin before stroking down her back. “She can’t decide if she’s impressed or disgusted by us remaking her patron goddess’s symbol of power.”

“Oh.” Annabeth looked at the fiery torches she was holding, then back at Gale. She’d kind of forgotten that beneath the teeth and claws and fur, Gale was a real person, not just an opinionated animal. “Well, can she at least say if we did a good job? We kind of need these things to work.”

Hazel relayed the question, and Gale chittered back for a moment. “She says they’re about as close as a mortal can come to recreating divinity. I think that’s why they freaked her out so much.”

“Is that going to be enough?”

Hazel winced. “That she can’t say. Apparently, Hecuba is better with divination. She can offer guidance, but the future is as big a mystery to her as it is to the rest of us.”

“Helpful,” Annabeth muttered under her breath, though she knew Gale would still hear it. When they came to a fork in the road, she stopped and looked back at Hazel. “Alright, then. Which way?”

Hazel stepped forward, placed her fingertips on the stone wall and closed her eyes. “They’re both structurally sound,” she reported, then she turned down the left tunnel and shuddered. “But this one is more… evil.”

“A resounding review,” Annabeth said dryly.

Hazel shot her a grin, then confidently led the way down the path without looking back. “Come on.”

Annabeth stood there frozen for a moment before shaking her head and trotting after her. The path narrowed drastically the farther they went, and soon Annabeth found herself following Hazel’s lead, almost blindly. Her stomach churned unpleasantly, just as it had from the moment they’d drunk the poison and Nico had put Hazel in charge of getting them through the crumbling structure of the House of Hades. She tried to tell herself that it made sense for Hazel to lead. She was the one with Earthsense, she was the obvious choice. 

But that didn’t make Annabeth like it any more. She never enjoyed following, not since she was eight years old and she was forced to watch Thalia get turned into a tree. She could take orders when she needed to, and her years with Percy had all but forced her to learn the value of a partnership, but there was always, always some part of her mind that desperately wanted to push her way forward and take charge, insisting that she could do it better. She bit those feelings back, telling herself that it was impractical at best, but they just fell down her throat and simmered in her stomach acid.

It didn’t help that Hazel’s diagnosis of the tunnel being “evil” was spot on. As the tunnel sloped down and curved around a massive bend, the air got colder and heavier. There was a presence permeating the space that made it hard to breathe. “How much farther?” Annabeth asked quietly, feeling like any sudden loud noise might just bring the whole structure down on their heads. 

“We’re getting close,” Hazel promised with a shudder. 

Annabeth’s grip tightened on her torches. “Alright, so it’s just the two of us, but the plan is still the same. You take on the sorceress–”

“Pasiphaë.”

Annabeth paused, and Hazel stopped to look over her shoulder. “Pasiphaë?”

“That’s the name of the sorceress. Pluto told me after Sciron.”

Annabeth’s mind whirred like an engine revved too hard too suddenly. “Did I know that?”

“Um… I don’t know,” Hazel confessed. “Pluto kinda told me to avoid saying her name until the time came, so I don’t know if I mentioned it. Does it matter?”

“I don’t know either.” Annabeth frowned, staring hard at the flickering light. “I think I know that name. No, I know I know that name.”

“But you don’t know where you know it from?”

“Not a clue.”

Suddenly, the tunnel filled with disembodied laughter, bright and cold like sunlight reflecting off steel. “Well, then, Annabeth Chase. Allow me to remind you exactly who I am.”

Then the floor fell out from under them.

Annabeth and Hazel tumbled over one another as they fell, Gale shrieking her outrage the whole time. She lost her grip on the torches and their fire immediately sputtered out, but they didn’t roll off too far when the three of them landed in a heap. Annabeth was the first one to her feet and she frantically scooped the torches up, watching with relief as they flared back to life, then she looked around.

The room they found themselves in reminded her of the Acropolis, but much, much darker. The same massive pillars lined the walls, but they were either made out of a black stone or deliberately stained with ash to darken them, and beyond that there was no sign of exit in any direction. Instead, the obsidian walls were reverently carved with scenes of death and plagues and torture and the corpses of fallen heroes. The roof here was intact, of course, and where the Athena Parthenos would have stood in the Acropolis, a shrine to Hades had been torn down and replaced with–

Annabeth made a choked off noise of horror as she looked at the Doors of Death. They were identical, down to the last filigree, to the elevator doors that led up to Mount Olympus in the Empire state building. The only difference was that these were colored black and silver, and were held in place with massive ice-encrusted chains. The sight made her sick.

“Yes, they do look familiar, don’t they?” Pasiphaë’s voice cooed mockingly. “I’m afraid the Olympians are only ever creative when it comes time for cruelty, not design.”

Hazel scrambled to her feet, clenched fists trembling with rage. “Show yourself!”

Pasiphaë clucked her tongue. “Now, now. I thought you were Hecate’s favorite? Shouldn’t you have no problem seeing me yourself?”

Annabeth swung the torches around, trying her best to light up the area more, but every pass, the world just seemed to grow darker and heavier. The presence from the tunnel, the one she’d assumed was Pasiphaë, was back, and she could tell this time it wasn’t something a mere mortal sorceress could manage. She blinked hard, trying to get the spots out of her vision, until the darkness condensed, and she found herself staring thirty feet up at Clytius. She couldn’t make out any of the Giant’s features, he was far, far too shrouded in darkness for that, but she could see the way he instinctively shied away from the light of her torches. 

Annabeth grit her teeth and took a step forward, trying to press her advantage, but Pasiphaë clucked her tongue again. “Ah, ah, ah! I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

This time, the air between them and Clytius shimmered and Pasiphaë herself materialized. She was remarkably tall, with a solid, heavy-set build, and she held herself with the confidence of someone who knew how beautiful and powerful she was. She was regal and timeless and untouchable in a way that reminded Annabeth unpleasantly of the statue of Hera in Cabin Two back at Camp Half-Blood. She wore an Ancient Greek gown of silver fabric that shimmered in the light like the Mist itself had been woven into her clothes,  her hair was piled up high on her head in an intricate design studded with gemstones, and she wore a necklace with a pendant in the shape of a stylized maze.

Pasiphaë sneered at the torches in Annabeth’s hands. “Well, now, aren’t those clever? Tell me, where did you come up with something like that?”

Annabeth stuck out her chin. “Daedalus himself.”

Pasiphaë’s whole face twisted up in disgust at the mere mention of Annabeth’s old mentor. “How dare you speak of that two-timing hack in my presence?”

Annabeth narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, her eyes slid back to Clytius, who was still standing right by the Doors where Annabeth had last seen him. She knew, without question that he was the bigger threat, even if Pasiphaë was deliberately trying to make herself the more immediate one. “Your friend isn’t very chatty, is he?”

Pasiphaë looked incredibly irritated that the subject had been changed from her to focus on someone else, and she threw Clytius a frustrated look over her shoulder. “I assure you, he’s no friend of mine. I’ve learned to take little pleasure in the company of men, regardless of race or relationship.”

“So, he’s your babysitter, then?” Hazel asked with enough deliberately innocent sweetness to make sure every word burned.

“He’s insurance, you insolent brat,” Pasiphaë spat, glaring at Hazel with enough hatred to make Annabeth’s skin crawl. “A stipulation put in place by my employer, Gaea, but rest assured you have no need to fear him. I was given the honor of handling you myself, and I have no intentions to fail.”

“Well, you’re going to,” Hazel shot back with more confidence than Annabeth felt was really due, but she couldn’t help but admire it. “We’ve torn through every last one of Gaea’s little plans, you’re just next on the list.”

Pasiphaë’s lip curled in disgust. “You demigods are all the same. You think so highly of yourselves, when in reality, you’re nothing more than every other mortal on Earth. My husband, Minos, was the same way. He was a son of Zeus, but look what that got him.”

“Minos?” Annabeth echoed, eyes wide. “So, your son was the–”

“Minotar, yes,” Pasiphaë sniffed, condescending. “It’s cruelly fitting that you remember my husband’s name before you remember mine. My husband was a nasty, prideful man, too proud, too stupid to honor Poseidon, despite our proximity to the sea. So, in a fit of rage, the god punished me for his crimes. A fitting justice system for the likes of Olympus, no?

“Then, as if that weren’t enough, after my disgrace, Minos disavowed me, claiming I was a blight on his name!” she snarled. “He locked my son, the only creature who had any love for me, away in the Labyrinth, then he wanted nothing to do with me! And would you like to know how he was rewarded for his honorable life? He was made a judge of the dead! As if his soul had any right to pass judgement on the likes of a worm! It makes me sick.” She turned her fury on Hazel. “And your father was the one who honored him, Hazel Levesque. I cannot gain vengeance upon my treacherous husband, but I can get it on the gods, and I can certainly get it on the likes of you.”

Hazel stuck her chin out. “My dad’s Pluto, actually. Not Hades.”

“Irrelevant!” Pasiphaë screeched, eyes, quite literally blazing. Then, before she could say another word, the Doors of Death let out a soft, eerily pleasant ding! and the UP button glowed green. Without speaking, Clytius stepped forward and hovered his big finger over the button and Pasiphaë looked at them with triumph. “There, you see? The elevator is in use, just as Gaea planned.”

Annabeth grit her teeth. “Let me guess, more Giants?”

Pasiphaë’s grin was nasty. “Much to my relief, no. Clytius is the only Giant I am forced to deal with, the rest are accounted for back in the mortal world, preparing the final assault. No, this ride is far, far more important to you and your little friends.”

“Piper and Leo!” Hazel gasped, clutching Annabeth’s arm. “They’re in the elevator.”

“They are, indeed!” Pasiphaë crowed. “It’s a twelve minute ride, and they will be quite reliant on my associate here pressing that little button when they reach the top.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Annabeth asked, throat tight.

“Then, poof! No more demigods!” Pasiphaë laughed. “You get to decide if they make it to the surface or not.”

“How?”

“You see, Gaea needs a pair of demigods to rise from her slumber for good,” Pasiphaë explained. “Traditionally, this means a male and female demigod, but I assure you that a pair of Greek and Roman girls will do the trick nicely. If you survive, then you two will be the lucky ones taken to Athens and sacrificed to Gaea. If, instead, the two of you die in my new domain, well, we have a delivery coming, and I’m quite certain that they’ll be in no condition to argue.”

“What are we supposed to survive?” Hazel demanded, reaching for her spatha.

Pasiphaë’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Hazel Levesque, I am so glad you asked.”

She snapped her fingers, the sound cracking unnaturally loud through the silent shrine, and the world instantly went black.

*-*-*-*-*

It took Annabeth an uncomfortably long time to get her bearings after the world stopped spinning. Hazel, it seemed, was just as unfortunate, pressing the heels of her palms into her temples. She shuddered and let out a soft whining noise. Annabeth grit her teeth and looked around. The corridor they were in was well-lit and eerily familiar, but much like Pasiphaë’s name she couldn’t place it. She scowled up at the ceiling and shouted, “Where have you taken us?”

“She hasn’t taken us anywhere,” Hazel muttered. Gale was on her shoulder, headbutting under her jaw in what seemed to be affection, but growling with remarkable menace. “All this is just an illusion.”

“Oh, Hazel, I expected better from you! You of all people should know that there’s no such thing as ‘just an illusion’ when it comes to our practice,” Pasiphaë chided. “And, Annabeth, do you really need me to explain what I am creating here? Come now, if you’re as clever as you think you are, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Annabeth grit her teeth and focused, replaying every word Pasiphaë had said. A new domain, a poor son locked away for a crime his mother didn’t commit, a revered name spat with venom. Then her mind shot back in the timeline, back to when she was fourteen and leading her first quest and staring at these very bricks and her eyes widened. “You can’t!”

“I most certainly can!”

“She’s rebuilding the Labyrinth,” Hazel realized grimly. 

“That’s not possible!” Annabeth spat. “The Labyrinth collapsed during a battle at Camp Half-Blood years ago. It was tied to Daedalus’s life force and he sacrificed himself to make sure it fell!”

“There you go again, remembering only the men,” Pasiphaë sneered. “Yes, Daedalus built the Labyrinth and designed many of its tricks, but he didn’t do it alone. He tricked me, and before I realized what was happening, I had breathed life into my dear child’s cage. The Labyrinth is tied to that wretched man, but I am its mother, and it now answers to me.”

“It’s an illusion,” Hazel insisted. “We just have to break out of it.”

“An illusion, so it’s not real?” Annabeth clarified.

Gale chittered in a way that sounded somehow smug and Hazel let out a sharp breath through her teeth. “Yeah, yeah, I get what you were trying to say before,” she snapped at the polecat. Then she looked at Annabeth. “To quote Gale, ‘Yes, but actually no. More accurately, no, but actually yes.’”

Annabeth stared blankly at her, waiting for an explanation, but Hazel never supplied one. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The Mist doesn’t really work with sense like that,” Hazel confessed. “It’s more about showing people what they expect to see.”

Annabeth tried to understand that, but the more she thought, the more her brain hurt, and Pasiphaë was obviously not interested in giving them time for a philosophical discussion. “Tick, tock, girls,” she crooned. “You only have twelve – well, eleven, now – minutes before your friends arrive. If you haven’t solved it by then, the Labyrinth will fully awaken, and you will be left to wander its halls for eternity!”

Annabeth perked up. “She said we could solve it, so let’s solve it,” she said decisively. “I’ve spent time in the real Labyrinth, so I can handle this. Follow me.”

“Annabeth, wait–”

Annabeth didn’t wait, she just turned on her heel and jogged forward, keeping her left hand dragging along the wall. Hazel was following her, she knew that much because she could hear footsteps and polecat noises behind her. She could lead Hazel out of this, she knew she could, just like she’d led Percy, Grover, and Tyson before.

Only you didn’t lead them, did you? a nasty voice in her ear taunted. You couldn’t do it back then, you had to have a mortal girl hold your hand and guide you. No wonder it took so long for anyone to trust you with a quest, considering you couldn’t handle the pressure when it happened. Now, you’re going to fail again. You’re going to get Hazel killed. You’re going to get Piper and Leo killed. You’re going to get the whole world killed because you couldn’t solve a single puzzle.

Annabeth felt tears sting in her eyes, but she just pressed on, going faster and faster with every step. She kept her hand on the wall, just like she’d planned, until suddenly the hall opened up into a wide open room and she almost tripped over her feet. She whipped her head around wildly, and was horrified to see that Hazel wasn’t with her, probably hadn’t for a long time, and worse yet, the entrance she’d just come out of was completely empty. 

Lining the walls of the room were giant marble statues of the Olympians, exact replicas, but each and every one of them had their face twisted in disappointed revulsion. Like she was nothing more than a collection of every mistake she’d ever made in her life. Like she was a monster, worth nothing more than a hateful stare. She wondered wildly if this is how Pasiphaë had felt any time a divine gaze had landed on her.

“Ugly, isn’t it, the way you can feel their disdain closing in on you?” Pasiphaë sighed sadly. As she spoke, the statues literally started closing in, creeping in, pressing their heads together in a dome that blocked out the sight of anything but unfeeling marble. “It’s crushing, isn’t it?”

It was. It was crushing her. Annabeth braced herself and took the weight on her shoulders, just like she had with the sky. That experience had nearly killed her, and she still wore a gray stripe of hair like a scar, but this was somehow heavier. She wondered what this would do to her.

Then the pressure suddenly lifted, and Annabeth fell to her knees with a relieved gasp. When she blinked the spots out of her eyes, the only thing she could manage was a croaked, “Hazel?”

Hazel stood before her, standing tall, one hand stretched up above her head and holding back stone like it was nothing. She offered Annabeth a hand. “It’s just an illusion,” Hazel promised again, pulling Annabeth to her feet and keeping their fingers laced. She casually thrust her hand up, sending each and every one of the statues back into place. “You can’t just rely on your senses here, you can’t do what makes sense. She knows what you’re expecting to see, and she can trick you into expecting whatever she wants.”

“Then how do we get out of here?” Annabeth demanded, her breath still ragged. 

Hazel’s eyes flicked around the room and she pointed with her free hand. “That way.”

Annabeth balked. “That wasn’t there before. That has to be a trap.”

“It is,” Hazel agreed. She squeezed Annabeth’s hand. “This is going to suck, but I need you to trust me. Ignore logic, just for a minute, and trust me to lead you out of here.”

Annabeth’s blood froze in her veins and she squeezed her eyes shut. She was going to fail again. This stupid maze was going to beat her for a second time, and just the thought made her want to scream.

Then she opened her eyes, and saw Hazel staring at her with complete sincerity. The Labyrinth wasn’t going to beat her, just like it hadn’t beat Rachel Elizabeth Dare. It wouldn't beat Annabeth, just like it hadn’t truly beat her two years ago, not if she shelved her pride and followed her guide. She swallowed thickly, and nodded.

Hazel practically beamed. “Alright then. Follow me, and don’t let go.”

With that, the two raced through the corridor hand in hand. Pasiphaë’s voice cut through the gloom. “Well, isn’t this cute? Six minutes left, and you’re just running around aimlessly.”

Annabeth secretly wanted to agree before she smashed that thought like a bug under her heel. Hazel knew what she was doing, Annabeth had to trust that.

Hazel led them through an absolute gauntlet. Rooms where spikes jutted from the walls mere milliseconds after they had left that exact spot, one corridor where the floor fell out from under them, and another that was full of toxic gas that had burned Annabeth’s skin but didn’t kill her, so long as she held her breath like Hazel told her to. Throughout it all, Annabeth followed Hazel’s exact steps, not allowing herself the luxury of doubt. Hazel would get them out, she knew it.

Then, they came to a chasm, so wide that Annabeth couldn’t even properly see the other side. They’d never make that jump, it was impossible. Despite her better judgement, Annabeth peered over the ledge, and scrambled backwards with a soft scream. Inside the chasm was a massive spider nest, one that would have given Arachne herself a run for her money, and it was swarming with a pulsating mass of millions of black spiders crawling all over one another.

“We have to jump in,” Hazel announced, and Annabeth wondered if she’d truly gone insane. 

“I can’t do that,” she insisted sharply. “Hazel, it’s full of–”

“Spiders. I know.” Hazel squeezed her hand a bit tighter. “Who do you trust more? Me or Pasiphaë?”

The truth was easy, the reality was hard. Annabeth nodded and turned toward the pit. “On three?”

Hazel nodded. “One.

“Two.”

“Three!”

As one, they jumped into the pit. Above them, Pasiphaë cackled about there only being three minutes. Annabeth knew she expected them to be eaten alive by spiders. Annabeth expected Hazel to pull off a miracle.

As if answering her prayer, Hazel twisted violently to the left, and they landed hard in a chute angled sharply downward. A chute that had them land right on top of Pasiphaë.

Hazel landed with unsurprising grace, as she was the only one who’d seen the event coming, and she had both her feet planted on either side of Pasiphaë’s chest, a gleaming Imperial Gold spatha hovering less than an inch above the maze pendant. “Gotcha.”

“You miserable, wretched girl!” Pasiphaë howled, though she dared not move. Around them, the Labyrinth faded away, and the House of Hades swam back into focus. The Doors were still there, Clytius still posted and ready to go at the first sign of an order. “I will end you!”

“You’re not ending anything but your sentence,” Hazel shot back. “I bet this really gets under your skin, huh? You hate demigods so much, you want us destroyed, but you can’t help but lose every time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I know more than I need to,” Hazel said simply. “Your life was unfair. You were wronged by the gods, your demigod husband betrayed you, a hero killed your son and stole your daughter, and now two more have taken control of your Labyrinth. No one deserves that, but no one deserves what you’re doing, either.”

“Then what, pray tell, do you plan to do with me, Hazel Levesque?” Pasiphaë spat. “Kill me? You can’t, I’m immortal. I’ll always come back.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Hazel promised. “All I’m gonna do is reunite a mother with her child.”

Before another word could be spoken, a trap door appeared under Pasiphaë, opened, and she went tumbling into the abyss with a scream.

Annabeth watched with wide eyes. “What did you do with her?”

“She’s in the Labyrinth now, and that’s where she’s going to stay,” Hazel explained, sheathing her sword. “She’s still got enough power to control the area immediately around her, so she’ll be as peaceful as she can be, but she won’t be able to get back out.”

Annabeth couldn’t help but imagine Pasiphaë wandering the corridors of the Labyrinth forever with only herself for company. The thought didn’t please her as much as it might have. “Like son, like mother.”

Hazel nodded grimly, the weight of the sentence obviously heavy on her shoulders. “She’s going to be the ruler of her own little world. It’s awful, but I think it’s the only way she’d ever be happy after everything that happened to her.”

Annabeth considered arguing, wanting to say that the world Hazel described wasn’t peace, and it certainly wasn’t happiness, but she couldn’t. What Hazel had done wasn’t fair, but it was possibly the only kindness anyone could offer the sorceress. Before she could say anything, though, the Doors let out their pleasant little ding! announcing that the elevator had finally made its long journey up from Tartarus. Instead of pressing the button to let them open, Clytius stepped back, and Annabeth’s world narrowed to one singular point. “Hazel! The button!”

Without a second’s hesitation, Hazel flung her hand out, and one of the sizable emeralds that had fallen from Pasiphaë’s hair when they tackled her shot forward like a bullet. With precise aim that would have impressed even Sciron, it tore right through Clytius’s shadowy form and hit the UP button.

The Doors opened with a deeply sinister hiss, and smoke billowed out as soon as it had room to breathe. Inside the silver box, Piper was crumbled in a bloody heap, and standing in front of her was Leo, who looked terrifyingly scorched. His hands were curled into claws, stretched out on either side of his body like he’d been holding onto the Doors as they slid open, and he swayed dangerously in place. He looked at Annabeth for a moment, blinking stupidly before his face puckered in upset confusion, and he slurred, “Y’re not Superman.”

Reyna was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the sun in nearly forty-eight hours, and, genuinely, it wasn’t her fault. The Legion had been given some time to be simply on-call, rather than being on 24/7 active duty in recognition of the “whole saving the world” thing, but unlike divine punishments, rewards from up on high did not necessarily reach the highest ranks. While most of the Roman demigods got to enjoy a day dedicated only to leisure, outside of one or two chores, Reyna got to deal with the administrative nightmare that was learning how to integrate two camps of highly volatile demigods who were all but predestined to destroy each other. It wasn’t hard, exactly – all they really needed was a miniature version of customs, and Terminus was more than delighted to enforce that – but it was tedious, especially as she was trying to do it on her own. Frank was great, and he was going to make a fine Praetor one day, but she couldn’t help but find herself missing Jason. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available; he was too busy galavanting about with Piper in search of Leo, leaving Reyna to–

She cut the thought off. Jason wasn’t her partner anymore, and that was the end of the story, even if she didn’t care for it. Nobody, including Jason, was really sure what his new title of Pontifex Maximus actually meant, but even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. Jason had followed the proper channels and asked his Praetor (Frank, not Reyna, notably) for a leave of absence, so she couldn’t even really complain about dereliction of duty. So, she was just left to stew in a frustration of her own making while shouldering a weight meant for two backs. Again. 

Reyna’s pen hit the desk with a quiet clink when she flattened her hands against the woods, forcing deep, even breaths past clenched teeth and into her chest. She was meant to not be thinking about Jason, not dwelling over him again. “Get it together,” she growled quietly to herself.

“Get what together?”

Reyna’s head whipped up, furious and horrified in equal measure that the supposed sanctuary of her office had been breached, and her breath stuck in her throat. She dipped her head to show her respect. “Oracle.”

“Praetor,” Rachel smiled back lazily.

In all honesty, Reyna wasn’t really sure how to act around the one and only Rachel Elizabeth Dare. She was the direct mouthpiece of the god Apollo himself, but Rome didn’t exactly have an Oracle, so there was no easily-referenced precedent. Not to mention that the Greeks’ treatment of her was wildly contradictory in and of itself. In one moment, the Oracle of Delphi was treated with the utmost reverence her title demanded, and the next she was being beamed in the back of the head by a dodge ball, which everyone, including her, found hilarious. So, like she did with most social things she didn’t understand, Reyna just did her best to avoid Rachel whenever she could.

Right now though, Rachel was standing in her office, covered in paint and wearing a pair of knee-length cut-offs and mis-matched flip-flops with a sloppy bandana tying her hair back. She looked so effortlessly confident that Reyna wondered if she’d simply been born without shame.

“So, what are you working on, and why do you need to be in one piece to do it?” Rachel asked again, not even remotely annoyed at Reyna’s delay.

For a moment, Reyna considered icing her out, stating that it was important Praetor business, but she couldn’t. Or maybe she just didn’t want to. “I’m attempting to make a version of customs that isn’t completely trauma-inducing.” Rachel laughed loudly and openly at that, so Reyna made her own attempt. “And you? What are you doing here?”

Rachel shrugged casually. “I kinda just followed the signs.” 

“The signs, you say?” Reyna echoed, arching an eyebrow. “Then one or more of the signs should be corrected. This is my private study.”

“Oh, I don’t mean the street signs. I can’t read them; I don’t speak Latin,” Rachel said, absurdly calm. “I just… get signs from the Fates, and sometimes I follow them. Sometimes they lead me to rooms I don’t have any business in, but they wind up needing me anyway.”

“Thank you for your concern, but the Fates must have given you the wrong sign. “I’m not in need of assistance.”

“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you were outside for longer than five minutes? Do you remember having lunch? It’s two PM, by the way.”

At those words, Reyna’s stomach gave a loud, treacherous growl, and she felt her cheeks warm slightly. “I concede your point.”

Rachel laughed, obviously delighted and it made Reyna’s chest tighten slightly with sudden warmth before she could shut it down. Venus’s words echoed in her mind. No demigod shall heal your heart. She had to remember that.

But, then again, Rachel wasn’t a demigod, the stubborn flame of hope pointed out. She was a mortal girl, possessed by the undying spirit of prophecy. She was certainly not the shape Reyna had wished or hoped for.

She very quickly brought that thought to heel, and was a little surprised to find that her mental exercise had resulted in her physically snapping her book shut too. She did her best to pass it off as completely deliberate. “Have you had lunch?”

“No,” Rachel confessed, eyes glittering. “I had a feeling there was something I needed to check on before I ate. Any recommendations on where to go?”

Reyna stood, an unwilling smile twitching at her mouth without her consent. “I may have a few ideas.”

Rachel looked almost smug. “Then let’s go, Praetor.”