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Chapter Text

PRELUDE - As the sun burns

She’s born in the height of summertime, when the sun blazes brightest in the sky. The air hums with life, the faint scent of lavender drifting in through an open window.

Her mother is crying, both from pain and elation, her world a blur of tears and golden light. She cradles the tiny child in trembling arms, her breath catching as she gazes into eyes that seem impossibly wise for one so new.

“My little blessing,” she whispers, her voice thick with emotion, “the sun that lights my path.”

Outside, the wind stills. A ray of sunlight falls across mother and child, unseasonably warm.

Delphine Arnaud doesn’t know it yet, and won’t for a good while, but it’s no simple words she crooned into her newborn daughter’s ears.

It’s a prophecy.

Ψ

Delphine meets Fred at one of her father’s galas.

Henry Arnaud is a wealthy patron of the Arts, known for his vested interests in the Louvre’s collection of antiquities, particularly those from Ancient Greece. He jokingly tells the other patrons present that his love for his wife, Katina, stems from this. Katina was born in Greece, he says, calling her the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Delphine aspires to the love her parents share.

She stands still in front of one of the statues on display, completely enamored by the polished white marble. The smooth lines give way to harsher, clear-cut ones, weaving a tale of beauty and tragedy.

“They don’t make them like they used to,” a voice quips behind her. She turns, her reply ready—but it catches in her throat.

The man is beautiful. Spectacular, even: all lean muscles and sharp angles, flawless skin, and hair so blond it practically glows.

And then he smirks, and the magic disappears.

“They do not, indeed,” Delphine mutters, meeting his gaze. His eyes are gold, an extraordinary, unnatural shade that takes her breath away.

“I’m Frederic,” he introduces himself, offering his hand. She places hers in his, unsurprised when he lifts it to his lips.

“Delphine Arnaud,” she replies politely.

She’s used to men like him—handsome, arrogant, and far too interested in what she represents rather than who she is. They see her father’s fortune, her mother’s beauty, a pretty fruit ripe for the picking.

“Delphine,” Frederic breathes her name like a prayer. Oh, he’s good.

She’s ready to brush him off when he speaks again.

“Delphine Arnaud? The one behind the modern rendition of Daphne Fleeing from Apollo?”

That—throws her off.

She’s written her share of theatre pieces, but no one talks about her first. Her mind flashes to the dreams that inspired it, dreams full of grief and triumph, of a god’s desperation and a nymph’s terror.

Raising a delicate brow, she replies, “That’s not the first piece that comes to mind when people speak about my work.”

“And yet it’s the best one of them all,” he smiles.

“Bold claim, Monsieur Fred,” she murmurs. “Many disagree with you.”

He waves her words away. Behind him, the light forms a halo around his head, his golden eyes gleaming like sunlight on water.

“They don’t matter,” he says arrogantly, and for a moment, Delphine sees something much older behind his gaze.

“It’s an amazing piece,” he continues. “The emotions behind it are raw and all-consuming—one can almost pretend they’re there, standing witness.”

That’s - exactly what she intended.

She’ll give it to him: Frederic is very good.

They spend the rest of the evening discussing Daphne Fleeing from Apollo, and Delphine is almost sad when the gala ends—until Fred reaches for her hand and invites her to a play the next evening.

The next evening turns into a week, the week into a month. Interest turns into desire, desire into love, and love into devotion.

A heartbreak and nine months later, Delphine gives birth to a beautiful baby girl with her curls and her father’s eyes.

“Sélène,” she names her.

The moon to his sun—a light that would never quite outshine him, and yet it would stand on its own. Later, she’d admit her choice was entirely too vindictive.

Ψ

“All done, mon soleil,” Delphine coos as she finishes braiding Selene’s hair.

Selene giggles as her maman fits her sunhat atop her head. She’s wearing her favorite white pinafore, her swimsuit underneath, and she wiggles in excitement. They’ve just arrived at her grandparents’ private beach, and she loves the mornings here—when the sun shines brightest.

“Shoot, I forgot the sunscreen,” Delphine mutters, rummaging through their bag. She adjusts Selene’s hat and rises. “I’m going to ask the Duponts for some. Stay under the parasol, okay? I’ll be quick.”

“Okay, Mama,” Selene says dutifully, then grins. “Can you ask Tata Marie for strawberry water too, please?”

Delphine smiles and kisses her cheek. “Sure, mon soleil, just wait here.”

Selene nods, watching her maman leave. She settles under the parasol and pulls out her dolls. The sand is warm beneath her feet, the sun high above. Unlike her mother, who burns so easily, Selene feels at home in the heat.

Here, there’s nothing but the sea, the sun, and her.

She’s arranging her dolls when she hears it—a lullaby. Faint at first, but unmistakable. It’s the same song her maman sings to her every night.

“Come on, my little sunshine,” her maman’s voice calls.

Selene looks around, confused. Maman had only just left—why would she be back so soon? The melody is faint, but soon it sounds higher than the waves crashing onto the rocks nearby.

She suddenly wants to climb onto the rocks and hunt for crabs. Not the big ones, because they’re too high and too slippery for her to climb without her grandmama to help her, but she manages the small ones okay.

The sun is high up and scalding, but Selene only feels warm. The music calls to her.

She climbs, the sand sticking to her legs. The rocks sparkle in the sun, and she pauses to admire them, her balance teetering. Suddenly, her foot slips.

She crashes to the ground with a sickening crack.

Pain blooms immediately, sharp and blinding. She gasps, trying to breathe through the dizziness.

“Come on, little sunshine,” the voice croons again, closer now.

Through blurry eyes, Selene sees her maman standing over her—but something is wrong.

The woman is too tall, too fierce, her smile too sharp. Her nails gleam like claws, and her dark eyes shine with malice.

That’s not Maman.

Selene scrambles backward, the sand burning her arms. The creature screeches and grabs her leg, dragging her closer.

“Maman!” she screams, her voice breaking with terror.

A glint of gold in a sea of yellow catches her eye.

Selene doesn’t hesitate.

She’s five years old – weak with feeble limbs, but she grabs the golden object with the ferocity of a lion. She turns and somehow finds the strength to throw herself at the monster trying to kill her – and drives the golden arrow into its’ eye, piercing its head to the other side.

A beat.

The monster screeches, writhing as it crumbles to dust. Selene stares, trembling, clutching the arrow as if it’s the only thing keeping her grounded.

She brings it up. She’s never seen an arrow before. Not up close, at least. Her grandpapa has a bow exposed in one of the corridors of the house, but he forbids her from touching it.

The gold seems tarnished somehow, less bright than it was a moment ago, but the arrowhead is still sharp. Deadly.

“Selene!” Delphine’s voice cries, breaking the silence.

Selene turns, relieved. She smiles and brandishes the arrow like a trophy.

But her maman’s face is pale with fear, her lips forming Selene’s name again.

The world disappears.

Ψ

Delphine flexes her fingers open and closed, trying to quell the tremors running through her.

She’s never been so terrified.

Selene, usually so full of life, lies motionless on a bed too large for her, swallowed by sheets that feel too cold. Sweat beads on her fevered skin as her small body shivers and burns in turn, fighting off an insidious fever. Delphine clenches her eyes shut, but the image won’t leave her: her daughter, battered and bloodied, clutching a golden arrow in victory—a weapon that now feels more like a curse than a salvation.

“If I’d known,” Delphine whispers, voice raw and hollow, “I wouldn’t have taken your hand.”

“Liar,” a voice cuts through the room, sharp and mocking.

Nothing hurts worse than the truth.

She turns slowly, as if expecting this. Apollo stands in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame, arms crossed. His presence fills the space, too large, too brilliant. His eyes—old, gold, mercurial—glow with a light that has seen the rise and fall of countless lives.

He feels impossibly distant.

“I suppose you're right,” she mutters bitterly. “Liar,” she echoes.

Apollo's gaze flickers toward Selene, who remains unmoving on the bed. His mouth twitches, though whether it’s in amusement, pity or something darker, Delphine can’t tell. He moves, fluid and untouchable, and the bed dips under his weight as he sits beside her daughter.

 “The doctor says she has a concussion,” Delphine continues, her throat tight. “He doesn’t know when—or if—she’ll wake up.”

“She will,” Apollo says simply, his voice both a balm and a blade. A soft promise that feels more like a command.

His fingers trail over Selene’s dark curls, caressing her forehead. He hums under his breath, almost tenderly.

“She’s the first of my children to have black hair,” he says, as though the statement holds meaning beyond the words themselves.

Delphine’s heart clenches. She knows the weight of that claim.

Despite knowing how the story ends, Delphine can’t shake the fear that grips her, smothering her like a heavy blanket. The fear of what Selene will become. The fear of what Apollo’s presence here means.

“This will change her,” Apollo says softly, his gaze distant.

“What do you mean?” Delphine presses, pinching the fabric of her dress between trembling fingers.

Insufferably evasive, he hums, the sound elusive like a distant memory that slips away when you try to hold onto it. There are truths Apollo is loath to share, but she won’t back down on this.

“Answer me,” she snaps, her voice rising despite the exhaustion in her bones.

She stares unflinchingly into golden eyes when they finally look at her. Something flickers behind them – rawness, humanity.

“Don’t you already know?” he mocks, a cruel smile curling his lips. “Almighty and all-seeing as you are?”

Her teeth grind as she leashes tight the retort she wants to give. Her nails dig into her thighs.

 “You know I am powerless, Apollo Phoebus,” she hisses, mindless of the god before her. “And I never pretended otherwise.”

Apollo’s lips curl into a smile, too sharp for comfort.

“And look at you now, Delphi,” he says, a low laugh rumbling in his chest. “demanding answers from me.”

 “She’s my daughter. Mine to raise, mine to protect!” Delphine rises, trembling with righteous anger.

“Is she?” Apollo steps closer, his presence overwhelming. His voice is quiet – dangerous.  “Was she, Delphi, when you left her to die at the hands of a bird-woman?”

The accusation stabs deep, and Delphine recoils.

“How dare you,” she hisses, lunging forward to grab his face.

The heat of rage burns through her – she doesn’t falter. Apollo’s hands clasp her wrists.

“How dare you say that to me?” she spits as she digs her nails into smooth golden skin, feeling the warmth of his body, the perfect stillness of his divinity. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch.

His own grip on her wrists is precise – unyielding, yet there’s no fury in his eyes now – only something deeper.

“How dare you call her yours,” he mirrors back, reproachful in his cruelty. “She’s mine.”

She feels her righteous anger quell at the unexpected emotions she hears in his voice.

“Mine to shield. Mine to guide. My arrow. My daughter.”

Delphine freezes, her breath hitching in her throat. The weight of his words presses on her, suffocating, the gravity of his claim far heavier than she can bear.

The silence that follows is suffocating. She feels trapped in the heavy, golden air between them. Apollo’s arms, the arms that have carried kingdoms, feel impossibly solid around her. She feels small, mortal, fragile against him. She feels the weight of his grief and something more—raw, unspoken love.

Slowly, her trembling arm encircles his shoulders. He doesn’t push her away.

She knows him—better than anyone, perhaps. The god. The man. The power. She knows his flaws and his truths, the endless contradictions in his nature.

She’s been his lover, his confidante, and yet, she has always been a shadow to him. A part of his world, but never the center.

Her heart aches. A shadow cannot exist without the sun to make it so.

“Your laws are rubbish,” she murmurs, more to herself than to him.

Apollo’s laugh rumbles through his chest, low and rough, but it’s tinged with something he’s trying to choke back. A sob. A loss.

“Go back to Paris,” he says after a moment, his voice quiet but insistent. “As soon as you’re able.”

She nods.  

“Don’t be afraid of her,” he whispers, his voice softer now, pleading.

“They’ll fear her and try to break her – but you – you must not falter.”

Delphine meets his gaze, the weight of his plea sinking into her bones.

“Never,” she says softly, but the truth in her voice is something new. Something she’s not yet ready to face.

Ψ

Selene stares into the sea.

The water ripples over the sand and glitters in the sunlight.

The beach stretches endlessly in both directions. The horizon is but a blurred line where sea and sky meet. The waves crash onto the shore in a steady rhythm, the sound both soothing and immense to fathom.

The sunlight warms her skin, tingling against her arms like tiny sparks dancing over her. She feels the heat deep in her chest, pulsing in time with her heart.

It reminds her of something.

A house by the ocean, perched on a windy cliff. The scent of salt and wildflowers in the air. The sound of gulls crying overhead.

It’s more than a memory. It’s a feeling—a knowing.

The world tilts.

The beach wavers and shifts out of focus. The horizon bends as if caught in a heat mirage.

Selene blinks, and everything clicks back into place.

She gasps.

Something vast and unknowable expands within her, filling every corner of her mind. Fragments of lives she doesn’t recognize rush to the surface—moments she’s never lived but feels deeply in her bones. A girl running through a forest, her heart pounding in her ears. A child crying beneath a moonlit sky. A man whispering a name in the dark.

Selene sinks to her knees, the sand beneath her impossibly soft and shifting like water. Her descent feels endless—as if the ground itself is pulling her down.

She’s five years old, but she’s also twenty-six. And thirty-five. And centuries older.

Her small frame trembles with the weight of lifetimes—past, present, and future—pressing against her all at once. Her mind fractures under the strain, caught between what she was, what she is, and what she’ll become.

The sea stills. The waves no longer crash. The world is silent.

Above her, the sun burns, unbearably bright. Its golden rays scorch the sand, turning it white-hot beneath her fingers.

“Pace yourself,” it says.

The voice is deep and resonant, filling the silence like a melody carried on the wind. It’s everywhere and nowhere, wrapping around her like a second skin.

Selene shivers. The pain surges, searing through her veins, setting fire to her body.

She clutches her head as visions flood her mind—men and monsters clashing in battles that shake the earth, lovers turned enemies, brothers torn apart by blood and betrayal. Children crying out for parents who will never return.

She chokes on a sob, her voice small and broken. “Make it stop, please.”

Hands, warm and steady, cup her face.

“Sélène,” the voice says again, softer now. It cradles her name as though it is something precious.

She feels fingers comb gently through her hair, brushing it back from her damp forehead.

“Calm now, sunlight,” the voice coos, tender and soothing.

She leans into the touch, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“It hurts,” she whispers. “I can’t see anything.”

The voice hums, a low murmur that resonates deep in her chest, steady and unyielding. The sound washes over her, grounding her in its rhythm. Cool fingers trace the lines of her brow, her cheeks, her eyes, and the pain begins to ebb away.

Selene exhales shakily. The burning subsides, leaving behind a strange, heavy stillness.

“Thank you,” she breathes.

The hands are gone.

The voice doesn’t answer, and when she opens her eyes, the beach is empty. The waves crash onto the shore once more, their rhythm unchanged.

Selene stares at the horizon, her chest hollow and aching, the weight of prophecy settling into her like a second heartbeat.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

PRELUDE II: An ode to simpler times

Selene turns six-going-on-forever.

She and her mother move back to Paris, away from the sun and the monsters—or at least the deadlier ones.

Now, she sees things she’s never noticed before. The cashier at her favorite candy store has small, curved horns hidden beneath a messy fringe. The gardener at the pépinière has skin the color of young leaves, her nails as ridged and textured as tree bark.

Selene does her best not to stare, utterly fascinated.

“Stay focused, εγγονή,” her grandmother chides gently.

The hand holding hers gives a reassuring squeeze, and Selene looks up.

At sixty-three, Katina Arnaud is the definition of timeless. Her long black hair, pinned into an elegant chignon, gleams under the fading sunlight. Not a single wrinkle mars her face, yet there’s a wisdom in her dark eyes that makes her seem as ancient as the stone château they live in.

“But Velanidià looks so pretty, Grand-mère,” Selene says, gazing at the dryad seated nearby.

The dryad flushes, her hair the brilliant red-orange of autumn leaves, glinting as if flecked with sunlight. Her smile is as radiant as her hair, and her melodic voice is a balm Selene hadn’t realized she needed.

“Thank you, young lady,” Velanidià says.

Selene relaxes, letting herself bask in the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy of the centenary oak. She leans back against the tree’s warm bark, her body going boneless as she munches on a chocolate tartelette. It’s not home—not really—but it comes close.

She knows where home is. Or rather, where it will be. But it’s far away, in both distance and time. For now, this will do.

“Sélène,” Katina calls, her tone amused, pulling Selene back to the present.

“’m awake!” Selene chirps, even as her eyelids flutter.

“That you are,” her grandmother concedes.

Selene nods vigorously, trying to shake off the drowsiness. Focusing has become harder since the Beach. The thousand stories echoing inside her head pull her in a dozen different directions, and it’s so easy to get lost in them.

Katina pinches her cheek, not unkindly. “Focus, dear gods.”

“It’s hard,” Selene mumbles.

“I know,” her grandmother says, though Selene questions the truth of that statement. “My mother was the same.”

Selene hums noncommittally, recognizing a test when she hears one. She won’t rise to it—not now.

Her grandmother sighs, shaking her head as her gold earrings tinkle softly in the breeze. Katina looks remarkably like Selene’s maman when she’s tired and done with the world’s nonsense. Selene wonders if she’ll wear the same look one day. Probably.

Ten years, whispers a voice in her head.

She shoves the thought into a mental box and locks it away. Not now.

The sun dips lower, and a gentle chill creeps into the air. Katina rises with practiced grace and offers Selene her hand.

They walk back to the house, waving goodbye to Velanidià as the dryad retreats for the evening. Katina brushes her hand through Selene’s hair, and Selene preens like a cat under her touch.

Ψ

Inside, the warmth of the fire wraps around her like a familiar blanket.

Henry Arnaud sits in his favorite chair, a leather-bound book in hand. He barely looks up before Selene throws herself onto his lap with all the force her small frame can muster.

“Oof!” he exclaims, the book slipping from his hands. “Moondrop, you’ve grown too heavy for an old man like me! You’ve had more than a couple of tartelettes, have you?”

Selene giggles, miming with her hands. “All the tartelettes!”

Henry chuckles, hoisting her onto his knee with ease. “You’ve left no room for dessert, I suppose?”

She shakes her head solemnly. “There’s always room for dessert.”

Behind him, Delphine looks on fondly, her smile tinged with exhaustion. Selene nestles into the comforting scents of firewood and home, burying herself against her maman’s side when she takes her usual place on the couch.

“It’ll get better, mon soleil,” Delphine murmurs into her hair.

Selene nods, but she knows the weight pressing on her shoulders won’t become lighter.

“Sélène,” Katina calls from the kitchen doorway. She carries a platter laden with colorful foods, her presence commanding without effort. “You’ll make the first offering tonight.”

Delphine stiffens beside her, her body going rigid.

“No,” she says firmly. “She’s too young.”

Katina doesn’t flinch. “She is not, and you know it.”

The air crackles with tension as Delphine meets her mother’s unflinching gaze. Henry remains silent, wisely keeping out of the battle between the two women.

Selene places a small hand over her mother’s.

“I’ll do it,” she says softly.

Delphine’s face crumples, heartbreak flashing across her features, but she doesn’t argue. They both know the truth—Selene has already stepped into this world. She’s slain a monster, and nearly died in the process. There’s no going back.

The offering is set. A wide array of foods waits before the hearth, each item carefully chosen. Selene scans the platter and reaches for a single cow-shaped cookie, her small fingers closing around it with confidence.

Her grandmother raises a brow but says nothing.

Selene steps toward the fire. She holds the cookie in her hands for a moment, its warmth familiar and grounding. Then she tosses it into the flames.

The air changes. A comforting heat sweeps through the room, carrying with it the scent of home.

Selene closes her eyes. She doesn’t say the words aloud, but she feels them resonate deep within her.

Hestia.

For a moment, all is still.

The sound of the fire fades into the background and the world shifts. She feels it first—a soft, steady warmth, not the searing heat of the flames, but something gentler, something that wraps around her like a blanket on a cold night.

It reminds her of simpler things: the scent of baking bread, the hum of quiet conversation, the way her mother’s hand feels when it brushes through her hair.

Selene breathes deeply, the warmth settling in her chest like a steady heartbeat.

She opens her mouth, and the words come, unbidden and uncertain.

“I don’t know if you’re listening,” she murmurs, her voice soft as the crackle of the fire. “But if you are…”

The words falter, but the warmth presses closer, encouraging her.

“Let me be strong,” Her voice wavers, and her hands curl into fists at her sides. “but not yet. Later.”

The fire shifts, its light flickering across her closed eyelids. She swallows hard, unsure if what she feels is courage or fear.

“They look at me like I’m - more.” Her fingers twitch. “But I’m not. I’m just a child. A child who—” She chokes on the words and shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

The warmth doesn’t retreat. Instead, it steadies her, a quiet presence that holds her in place.

Selene exhales shakily. Her thoughts come slower now, her words quieter.

“Please help me be strong. Give me clarity.” Her voice softens, barely audible, and she promises: “I’ll do better.”

She feels a faint, featherlight touch on her brow, a warmth that sinks deep into her skin. Her breath catches and the knot in her chest loosens.

When she opens her eyes, the fire flickers as it always has, and the warmth of the hearth is all that remains.

Ψ

Selene stands on a pier, sixteen, the wood creaking softly under her bare feet.

The water below glimmers in the sunlight, clear and impossibly blue, with naiads darting just beneath the surface. The sky is painted in shades of orange and pink, as though caught between dusk and dawn, and a gentle breeze carries the scent of salt and pine.

She hears laughter. She turns and sees him.

The boy—no, the young man—sits beside her, his legs dangling over the edge of the pier. His dark hair is tousled by the wind, and his sea-green eyes glint with mischief, even as his brow furrows with something deeper.

“You know, you’re not as funny as you think you are,” Selene says, crossing her arms.

He grins, the expression bright and irrepressible. “And yet, you’re still here.”

“Here I am,” she echoes, her voice soft.

The banter feels natural, easy, as though they’ve done this a thousand times before. She sits beside him, their shoulders brushing, and looks out at the water. But the peace is fragile. Beneath it is something heavier, a tension neither of them dares to name.

“We’re not ready,” he says suddenly, his voice low.

Selene glances at him. He’s staring at the horizon, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists on his knees.

“No one ever is,” she replies softly.

He turns to her then, searching her face as though looking for something he’s afraid he won’t find.

“I can’t do this without you,” he admits, the words raw and unguarded.

Selene reaches out, her hand brushing his. “You won’t have to.”

She opens her mouth to say something else, something she knows is important—

And the dream fractures.

The pier vanishes.

Selene is swept into a torrent of images, each one vivid and overwhelming, crashing into her.

A boy stands before a god, his back straight, his fists clenched. The sea roars behind him, unnaturally high, and his voice carries above the waves: “Bring it.”

A girl stands at a fork, her finger pointing the way, her voice steady even as shadows close in around them.

A blond boy stares at her with an intensity that scares her. You should’ve chosen me.

A girl with golden curls cries out in terror, spiders swarming over her. She runs away.

The first boy again. Fighting. Always fighting. His sword flashes in the dim light, his face set with determination, but she can see the fear behind his eyes. The sea behind him threatens to rise and consume the land.

Another vision of him, but this time, he’s screaming her name. The anguish in his voice rips through her, and she wants to reach out, but the vision shifts too quickly –

The world stills.

Selene blinks and finds herself standing in a familiar place—soft sand beneath her feet, the gentle lapping of waves against the shore.

She’s six again.

Before her stands a small boy, with dark hair and sea-green eyes. She recognizes him.

He doesn’t.

He’s clutching his jacket, knuckles white, and there’s a tremor in his voice as he looks up at her.

“Who are you?” he asks, his tone defensive but edged with fear.

Selene steps closer. She doesn’t ask his name.

“Don’t be scared,” she says gently. “You’re not alone. I’ll be your friend.”

The boy’s lower lip trembles, but he doesn’t cry. Instead, he stares at her, his small body radiating a quiet bravery.

“Promise?” he asks.

Selene smiles, reaching out to hold his hand. “Promise.”

The waves lap gently at their feet, and for a moment, the world feels quiet and safe.

But then the sky darkens. The horizon shifts, the sea retreating as if pulled by an unseen force. Selene glances back at the boy, and her heart catches in her throat.

Behind him, shadows rise, swirling and massive. In their depths, she glimpses the shape of something vast and terrible, something she’s not supposed to see yet.

The boy steps closer to her, his small hand clutching hers.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispers.

“I won’t,” Selene says, voice steady despite the fear creeping into her chest.

The warmth of the sun presses against her back, and she feels a strange certainty settle over her – but the moment slips away like water through her fingers.

Ψ

On the same shore, the same waves crash against the sand.

A boy – small and scared but trying so hard to be brave – stares at a girl with dark curls and a steady gaze.

“You’re not alone,” she says, and he feels her hand in his, solid and reassuring.

Her voice is soft. It’s like the lullaby his mom hums when he can’t sleep.

“Promise?” he whispers.

“Promise,” she replies, and the sun shines through her smile.

When he wakes, her face lingers in his mind, clear and vivid. She feels real. He rubs his eyes – his chest is tight with a longing he doesn’t understand.

Years later, when he sees her for the first time, in the middle of a busy street, in gritty New York, he’ll feel the pull again. Like the tide answering the call of the moon.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

PRELUDE: Truth-sayer, Plague-bringer

Selene starts going to primary school.

The classroom is a picture of perfect order: polished floors, and rows of gleaming desks. Bright sunlight filters through tall windows. The other children look at ease, chatting easily with each other. Their laughter rings out like bells.

The teacher’s footsteps carry steadily over the hum, though Selene barely hears them.

She sits in the second row, her back straight, her hands neatly folded on the desk.

“Bonjour, class,” the teacher greets, her tone warm. She’s a thin woman with square glasses atop her nose.

The other children echo her in perfect rhythm. Selene joins in – she tries to match the cadence but falls short.

Selene glances at the girl beside her, whose neat braids are tied with pale blue ribbons. The girl is scribbling on a notepad – a cat with a bright pink bow.

She catches Selene looking and tilts the notepad toward her.

“You like it?” she asks.

Selene hesitates. Her fingers twitch against her notebook as she nods.

“It’s cute,” she offers, though the words feel borrowed.

The girl smiles, and Selene lets herself relax.

At recess, she lingers by the edge of the playground. She watches the other children run and shout.

“Tu veux jouer?” a voice calls.

Selene turns to see a boy with sandy hair and bright eyes holding out a ball. She freezes, mind racing – her many selves whisper warnings. The boy smiles again, and she nods timidly.

The game is simple – a clumsy exchange of kicks and tinkling laughter, but it feels like a small victory.

Later, the boy—Antoine—introduces her to his friends, a group of giggling girls and one other shy boy. Selene smiles cautiously. She doesn’t call them friends – not yet. She only lets herself hope.

Ψ

The first time it happens, Selene is in art class.

Sophie, a gentle girl with pigtails and a shy smile, holds up a messy crayon sketch of a house.

“Do you like my drawing?”

Selene opens her mouth to say yes – it’s easy, expected – but the words catch in her throat and when they finally come out, they’re not what she wanted to say.

“It’s not very good,” she blurts, and flinches.

Sophie’s face falls, and Selene immediately feels the sting of guilt. “I mean—I didn’t mean—”

The words can’t fix themselves, no matter how hard she tries.

Truth, raw and unkind, refuses to be swallowed.

She spends the rest of the day avoiding Sophie’s gaze.

That evening, the fire crackles softly in the hearth, its warmth filling the quiet room.

Katina sits on the sofa, her long black hair loose over her shoulders. She brushes Selene’s curls with slow, rhythmic strokes.

Selene fidgets with the hem of her nightgown.

 “Grand-mère?”

“Yes, εγγονή?”

“Is it bad to lie?”

Katina’s hand pauses mid-stroke, the brush hovering just above Selene’s hair. “Why do you ask?”

Selene bites her lip.

“I said something mean today. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to lie, but the words—” She looks down, her voice trailing off. “The words came out anyway.”

Katina resumes brushing, her touch gentle. “The truth can be difficult, Sélène. It has sharp edges, like broken glass. And sometimes, when you hold onto it too tightly, it cuts without you realizing.”

Selene blinks up at her. “But if lying is bad, then isn’t the truth good?”

Katina’s lips curve into a small, thoughtful smile. “The truth is a tool, my love. Like fire. It can warm a hearth or burn a house. It all depends on how you use it.”

Selene frowns, her small hands twisting in her lap. “What if I don’t want to use it?”

Katina sets the brush aside and cups Selene’s face with both hands, her dark eyes steady and warm. “You don’t have to use it, little one. But it is part of who you are. Be careful with it, yes, but do not fear it. The truth does not make you cruel—it is what you do with it that matters.”

Selene nods slowly, her grandmother’s words settling a quiet weight in her chest.

Ψ

The first whispers start small.

Selene notices Justine watching her, sharp-eyed and curious, when she walks into class with her grandmother one morning. The next day, she catches Justine whispering to a group of girls by the lockers, their giggles quick and mean.

“She’s weird,” Justine says loudly as Selene passes.

Selene ignores her. She’s learned from her mother that paying attention to small cruelties only makes them grow. But it doesn’t stop.

At lunch one day, Justine bumps into her, spilling water across her tray and food on her favorite blue dress.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, but her smirk is anything but apologetic.

In art class, Justine leans over her shoulder and snorts. “What is that supposed to be? A tree? It looks like a stick.”

Selene turns red with shame. She doesn’t say anything.

Her bully speaks the truth this time – it does look like a stick, but it was her best attempt so far. She sighs and accepts she’s not one for the arts.

By the end of the year, with Christmas celebrations fast approaching, Selene’s tentative friends are looking at her sideways, whispering whenever she walks by.

It’s fine, she tells herself.

It’s not.

One afternoon, during recess, Selene sits on a bench beneath the tree, a book open in her lap. Her breath comes out in small puffs of condensed air, even with her nose burrowed beneath her scarf.

Justine approaches, flanked by two other girls. She crosses her arms, her gaze sweeping over Selene with disdain.

“Is it true?” she asks, her voice loud enough for others to hear. “Your family doesn’t even go to church?”

Selene freezes, her fingers gripping the edges of her book. “What?”

“My maman says your family isn’t Catholic,” Justine continues, her words slow and deliberate. “She says you’re... different. Strange.”

The anger bubbles up before Selene can stop it, sharp and hot like a match striking flint.

“Why do you care?” she snaps.

Justine smirks. “I don’t. But everyone else does. We don’t need witches here.”

Selene’s hands tremble. Her chest burns with a heat that isn’t hers alone – an ancient fury clawing its way to the surface.

Her voice is quiet, but it cuts through the air like a blade. “You should be careful, Justine.”

Justine raises an eyebrow, her smirk widening. “Or what?”

The anger spreads over her entire being like the twisted comfort of a blanket. She hates this girl. She wants her to choke on her words and feel the same ache she stabbed into Selene’s heart over and over. Learn your place, mortal, her mind whispers venomously, and choke on your words.

The next day, Justine isn’t at school.

Nor is Antoine. Or Sophie.

By the end of the week, nearly half the class is missing. The whispers start soon after—parents talk in hushed tones about the sudden fever spreading through the city. A mysterious illness targeting children.

Selene sits quietly at her desk. She stares at the empty chair where Justine usually sits, conflicted.

Selene overhears the teacher speaking in hushed tones by the door. “The fever,” she says. “It’s spreading faster than anyone expected.”

Her heart thuds in her chest, her palms clammy. She doesn’t wonder why – she knows.

She didn’t mean for this to happen – for her anger to take root and grow into something she can’t take back or control.

That night, as Katina tucks her into bed, the air of her room too heavy to bear, she whispers: “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for, εγγονή?”

“The plague.”

Katina freezes, her face unreadable. Selene waits.

“You did not mean it,” she finally settles to say. “And you did not see it. You are but one small girl, Selene. The blame doesn’t fall on you.”

She leaves and takes all the warmth with her. Selene is left with her cold skin burning against colder sheets, terrified, and guilty.

She stands on the beach again, her feet sinking into the sand.

The sea is dark, carrying the acrid scent of decay. She looks down at her hands – at the black veins beneath her skin, pulsing with every beat of her heart.

“They’ll kill you for this,” a voice croons. Hateful. Malevolent.

Selene turns away from it.

“Do you like my gift?” it continues, mocking, and she clenches her eyes shut.

When she wakes, her body drenched in sweat, she can still hear the voice’s crooning laugh, and her own heartbeat echoing in her ears.

She doesn’t need to watch the news to know how the epidemic progresses.

“It’s not a gift,” she mutters. “It’s a curse.”

Ψ

Delphine hates this helplessness.

Powerlessness is a cruel thing, especially when her child’s life hangs in the balance. It’s the second time she’s been forced into this position, and she is no closer to stopping it than before.

Selene coughs, the sound rattling deep in her chest, her temples slick with fevered sweat. Her fever has reached an all-time high, and nothing the doctors have given has helped. The medicine barely takes the edge off her pain.

Delphine raises a trembling hand to smooth her daughter’s wild curls, her throat tightening as she swallows back tears.

Katina’s been praying to the gods for three days now, lighting candles and whispering entreaties until her voice turned hoarse. If the gods have heard, they’ve chosen to ignore them.

“It’s alright, Maman,” Selene whispers, her small voice thin and raspy.

It’s not.

Delphine closes her eyes.

Her daughter is dying again. But this time, there is no divine help coming—only judgment. Selene is only seven years old. Seven, but too powerful for a godling.

Prophecy first, then truth, and now plague, her mind whispers cruelly. Behind her lids, the future dances, mocking her. She sees a girl standing to point the way; a boy who fights with the sea at his side.

Most of Apollo’s children inherit his gifts for music, archery, or healing. At most, they inherit a fragment of Prophecy. In the long span of history, only three children of Apollo have borne Plague. The first two never lived past fifteen, tearing civilizations apart with their unbridled power, only to be ended by their own maker.

Let us hope you are not the third, Selene. Please.

Delphine presses a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. Her daughter has inherited not one, but two of the most destructive domains of her Olympian father, and Delphine dreads the consequences of such gifts.

A sudden, brilliant flash of light fills the hallway beyond the door, brighter than the sun. Delphine exhales shakily, bracing herself. The door creaks open, and Apollo steps inside, his skin glowing faintly in the room’s dimness.

He is beautiful in the way only gods can be—his radiance painful, even subdued. But his golden eyes are heavy with something human, something worn.

“Hello, my love,” Delphine greets, her voice soft and deliberate.

Apollo strains a smile her way. He knows what she’s doing. She can see it in his gaze, the faint flicker of exasperation. She doesn’t apologize. Her child’s life hangs in the balance; she will use every weapon in her arsenal, even her own heart.

Selene coughs again, the sound wet and choking, and Apollo is beside her in an instant. Delphine hasn’t blinked.

She watches her daughter’s small hand reach out, her fingers weakly clutching Apollo’s tunic. Delphine doesn’t stop her. She should. She doesn’t.

Selene struggles for breath, her chest rising and falling erratically, and both her parents wait.

“Are you here to execute me,” she asks hoarsely, “Papa?”

Delphine’s heart shatters.

Here her daughter lies—tucked beneath a blanket too large for her, her fever-bright golden eyes fixed unblinkingly on her father. There is no fear in her gaze, no anger or accusation. Only understanding.

It isn’t fair.

Delphine doesn’t exhale. She doesn’t dare.

Apollo is frozen, his golden eyes wide. For the first time in centuries, he looks devastated.

The silence stretches.

Apollo reaches for Selene’s head but hesitates, his hand trembling. Then he shifts, his fingers cradling her cheek instead.

“No,” he murmurs.

“You could,” Selene whispers, her voice almost gentle. Delphine hears what she isn’t saying: You should.

“I could,” Apollo admits, his voice low.

Father and daughter stare at each other, the air between them charged and still.

Delphine stands witness to a shift in fate, both terrified and relieved.

“I’m not supposed to live tomorrow,” Selene croaks. She coughs again, but the fever in her eyes dims slightly, the color in her cheeks returning. “I wasn’t.”

“But you will,” Apollo says, his voice hardening, steady as stone. “And you’ll thrive, sunlight.”

Selene blinks up at him, her breathing steadier now. “Because you choose me?”

Apollo’s gaze sharpens, his jaw tightening. “Because you are mine. And I do not abandon what is mine.”

The words are a promise, and they hang heavy in the room.

In the silence that follows, the faint sound of distant thunder rumbles. Delphine glances toward the window, her breath catching.

“They’ll come for her,” she whispers.

Apollo rises, his frame impossibly tall, his golden light filling the room. “Let them come.” His voice carries a sharp edge, fierce and unyielding.

Delphine shakes her head. “You know what they’ll demand. They see her as a threat.”

Apollo’s eyes darken, his light flickering briefly. “Let them try. They will find me waiting.”

Delphine knows he means it. For all his flaws, and all his arrogance, Apollo loves his children fiercely. And Selene—their Selene—is different. Special.

Later, as Selene sleeps, her fever finally breaking, Apollo turns to Delphine. His expression is no longer radiant but drawn, mortal.

“You must leave,” he says quietly.

Delphine stiffens. “Apollo—”

“Take her,” he interrupts. “Leave France. Hide. They cannot act if they cannot find her.”

“And where do you suggest we go?”

“New York,” Apollo says without hesitation. “A city of noise and chaos, where even the divine get lost. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“You want us to go right under their nose?”

“Exactly— they won’t think to look there. But to be safe – travel first. London, Santa Monica, Singapore. Wherever you need.”

Delphine studies him, her eyes narrowing. “This is dangerous for you.”

Apollo doesn’t answer. Instead, he brushes a hand over Selene’s curls, his golden light dimming further. “I’ve defied my father once tonight. Let him punish me, but Selene will live.”

The weight of his words sinks into the room, heavy and unrelenting.

Delphine exhales softly, her throat tight. “You’re too reckless.”

He turns to her, his golden eyes meeting hers with a spark of something deeper. “And you’re too calculating. Together, we’ll manage.”

She allows herself the faintest of smiles, though her heart aches. “For her, then.”

“For her,” Apollo agrees.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: Thread-weaving

Ψ

Selene sits on the curb, her knees drawn to her chest, watching the movers unload the truck. The quiet buzz of the Manhattan street presses against her, every honk and shout a reminder of where she is now.

New York.

The air smells of gasoline and hot pavement, a sharp contrast to the pine-scented breezes of her grandparents’ estate in the Parisian countryside. Everything here feels wrong—too loud, too fast, too crowded. The towering brownstones loom over her like a forest of brick and iron.

Three years after the plague and six cities under her belt, Selene is no closer to liking the feel of the city.

“Maman,” she’d shouted earlier, “why did we have to leave so fast? Again!”

Delphine had ignored her. Not with cruelty, but with silence, which is somehow worse. It’s always silence when it comes to the hard questions, the ones Selene has been asking since they left France.

She’d stormed outside, anger bubbling in her chest like a volcano waiting to erupt. She remembers kicking at the curb with her shiny Mary-janes, golden eyes glaring at the world, truth itching at her throat like a bad cold, demanding to be spoken.

You’re keeping secrets, Maman. About father. About you. About me.

She hadn't spoken those words – not out of fear, but because she knew what her mother would do.

The carefully composed expression, the measured tone, the gentle redirection—none of it would answer her questions.

Her hands curl into fists, her nails biting into her palms as she takes another breath.

She glances at the movers, hauling a dresser up the narrow staircase. Their new home is small and quiet, nothing like the sprawling château in France. It’s smaller, cozier – the kind of place perfect for hiding.

Selene resents it - resents the rushing, the leaving, the hiding.

The plague, for bringing her under the gods’ gaze, her father, who’s never here to hold but whose presence always looms overhead, her mother, for lying and hiding - the entire world.

Her thoughts drift to him again, to the boy in her dreams. His sea-green eyes shimmer like the ocean, his voice echoing in her ears even now.

“Help him,” the dreams whisper.

She thinks of him constantly now, his face clearer than ever since they arrived in New York. She doesn’t know why, but the city feels like a connection to him, like stepping closer to something inevitable.

He’s here. Somewhere. I know he’s here.

The thought pulls at her, filling her with a restless energy she can’t shake. She doesn’t know where to start. She doesn’t even know his name. But she knows she’s meant to find him, to guide him. To prepare him for what’s coming.

She lets out a frustrated sigh and presses her forehead to her knees.

Ψ

It’s then that she notices them.

Three old women sit across the street on a worn bench, their faces shadowed by wide-brimmed hats. They look out of place, their stillness too deliberate.

Selene stiffens.

She doesn’t need to ask who they are. She knows.

The Fates don’t beckon her. They don’t call her name or stop their spinning. They simply sit, the faint glint of golden thread visible in their hands.

Selene pushes herself to her feet. Her legs feel shaky, but she doesn’t hesitate. She crosses the street, weaving through parked cars and ignoring the honk of a taxi.

The three women continue spinning, their hands working in perfect rhythm, the threads glimmering and twisting between their fingers.

Selene stops in front of them, her chest heaving.

“Why did you bring me here?” she demands. Her voice is small, but it doesn’t waver.

The Fates don’t look at her. They don’t stop spinning.

“We didn’t,” the one on the left says, her voice low and dry, like leaves crunching underfoot.

“You came to us,” says the one in the center, her hands deftly twisting a thread into the loom.

Selene feels anger flare in her chest. “I need answers,” she insists. “I need to know what to do. I need to find him.”

The thread in the center woman’s hand snaps. The sharp sound echoes in Selene’s ears, louder than it should be.

“You’re impatient,” says the third woman, her tone sharper than the others. Her pale fingers knot a new thread, looping it seamlessly into the weave.

Selene takes a step closer, her fists clenched. “How can I help him if I don’t know where to start? How can I—”

“Child,” the woman in the center interrupts, her voice calm but firm. She reaches up to take Selene’s hand before she can pull away. “Work with our threads, not against them.”

Selene freezes. The threads glimmer faintly, forming shapes and patterns she doesn’t understand. For a moment, her vision shifts, and she sees a vast web stretching into eternity, each thread connecting to others, twisting and tangling.

One thread stands out. It pulses with golden light, and she follows it with her eyes, her heart sinking as she sees where it leads. To the boy. The one she dreams of.

He stands in her vision, the sea raging behind him, his shoulders squared as he faces impossible odds. Her heart aches at the sight. He looks so small against the storm.

“You will find him,” Lachesis says, her voice quieter now. “But not yet.”

“Not yet,” the others echo.

The golden threads vanish, and Selene’s vision clears. She stares at the women, her chest tight.

“Wrath is your flaw,” Atropos says, her tone close to pity. She cuts another thread. Snip. “Master it, or it will master you.”

Selene opens her mouth to argue, but the Fates are already fading, their forms dissolving into the noise of the city.

Ψ

When she returns to the brownstone, the movers are gone. The house is quiet, except for the sound of her mother unpacking in the living room.

Delphine kneels by an open box, her movements slow and deliberate. She doesn’t look up as Selene enters.

Selene hovers in the doorway, the anger from earlier still simmering beneath her skin. But her encounter with the Fates lingers in her mind. The threads. The patterns. The inevitability of it all.

She thinks of her mother’s tired eyes, and the weight in her movements. Delphine never says it, but Selene can see it—the fear, the guilt, the love.

“I’ll help,” Selene says quietly, stepping into the room.

Delphine looks up, surprised, but doesn’t hesitate. She nods.

Together, they unpack. Selene places a framed photo of her grandparents on the mantle, her fingers brushing the edge of the glass.

It’s been three years since she saw them. Phone calls are not the same as her grand-père’s bear hugs or the quiet peace that comes with Katina’s self-care afternoons.

Delphine pulls out a small wooden box and hands it to her. Inside is a delicate lyre, its strings glowing faintly in the dim light.

Selene hesitates. “Should we put this out?”

“Yes,” Delphine says, her voice soft. “It’s his.”

They clear a space on the mantle and arrange the lyre alongside a handful of other tokens: the arrow, a dried laurel wreath, and a small stone reflecting sunlight.

Selene lights a candle and places it in the center.

“Do you think he’ll come?” she asks.

Delphine’s smile is faint but genuine. “He always does.”

Selene stares at the flickering flame, the threads of her dreams and destiny tugging at her mind. The smell of bay laurels and sunshine engulfs her.

“I’ll wait,” she whispers to her father.

Delphine rests a hand on her shoulder, grounding her. For the first time in days, Selene leans into the touch.

Ψ

The air is damp and heavy as Selene walks home, the faint smell of rain lingering from the earlier drizzle. Her arms ache under the weight of her library books, and her feet drag slightly on the pavement. Central Park’s trees sway in the wind, their bare branches clawing at the gray sky.

She pulls her jacket tighter around herself. The walk isn’t long, but today, it feels endless. The bleak weather, combined with the restless energy that’s settled deep in her chest, makes her feel out of sync with the world.

Selene hears the low growl before she sees them.

It reverberates through the quiet street, guttural and hungry. She stops mid-step, her heart pounding. The books in her arms shift as she turns slowly, her golden eyes scanning the shadows.

Then she sees them.

Three hulking hellhounds slink from an alley, their matted black fur glistening, their coal-red eyes fixed on her. Their mouths hang open, drool dripping from their jagged teeth.

Selene exhales sharply, her annoyance momentarily eclipsing her fear. “Seriously? Here, of all places?”

The largest of the hounds growls louder, and Selene narrows her eyes.

“Grand-uncle Hades,” she calls out, her voice carrying into the ether. “If this is your idea of a joke, I’m not laughing.”

Claws scrape against the pavement. The faint scent of damp earth and cold stone drifts past her, subtle but unmistakable, projecting reluctant amusement. A challenge.

Selene sighs and drops her books onto the sidewalk with a dull thud. Her hands move to her pockets, where twin knives are sheathed on either side. The polished bronze glints faintly even in the dim light.

The knives had been a gift for her eighth birthday, appearing on her father’s altar. They’d been a source of comfort ever since, a reminder of her father’s quiet insistence that Selene learn to defend herself.

He probably noticed she was rubbish at archery and decided to remedy the problem.

The hounds lunge.

She moves with precision, ducking and weaving, her knife flashing in the dim light. One by one, the hounds fall, their bodies evaporating before they hit the ground. By the time the last one vanishes, Selene is panting, her arm aching from the effort.

Selene exhales, her breath visible in the chill air. She leans down to gather her books, muttering under her breath. “Would it kill you to keep your pets on a leash?”

The scent of damp earth lingers for a moment longer before fading.

It’s then that she notices the figure slumped against the wall.

Ψ

The girl doesn’t move at first, her body hunched against the cold brick. Her dark hair falls across her face in tangled strands, and her jacket is torn, revealing a bloodstained shirt underneath.

Selene approaches cautiously, her knives still in hand. “Are you alive?”

The girl stirs, lifting her head slightly. Her electric-blue eyes meet Selene’s, sharp and piercing despite the pallor of her face.

“Barely,” she mutters, her voice rough.

Selene crouches beside her, tucking her knives away. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live,” she says, her voice strained.

Selene kneels beside her, setting her books aside. “You will if you let me help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Clearly,” Selene says dryly, pulling a small pouch from her bag. “That’s why you’re bleeding in an alley.”

Selene carefully peels back the torn fabric of her jacket to assess the wound.

“I’m not great at this,” Selene admits, laying a homemade unguent over the injury. “Healing’s not exactly my strong suit. But I know enough to keep you from keeling over, so shut up and stop moving.”

The girl hisses as the herbs sting. “You’re awfully bossy for a kid.”

Selene smirks. “You’re awfully stubborn for someone who should be thanking me.”

“Who are you?” the girl asks as she wraps the injury in bandages. Her work is sloppy. Her godly brother is probably cursing her name somewhere.

“Selene,” she answers, focused on her work. “And you’re welcome, by the way.”

The girl snorts softly, though her expression remains guarded. “Thalia.”

Selene glances up, her hands stilling. The name feels familiar, but she doesn’t know why. A flicker of something—golden threads, tangled in the dark—flashes in her mind. She shakes it off.

“You’re lucky I came along,” Selene says, tying a strip of cloth around the girl’s wound.

Before Thalia can retort, footsteps echo down the alley. Selene’s head snaps up, her knife back in her hand in an instant.

A boy steps into view, tall and lean with sandy hair and a wary expression. He stops a few feet away, his sharp gaze flicking between Selene and Thalia.

“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice edged with tension.

“She’s helping,” Thalia says before Selene can answer.

The boy doesn’t relax. “Why?”

Selene rolls her eyes. “Because she’s bleeding, and I don’t enjoy watching people die. Happy?”

He studies her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Who are you?”

“Selene,” she says again, standing and brushing off her hands. “And you are?”

Luke,” he says finally, though his tone is still wary.

Selene tilts her head, and another flicker of golden threads flashes in her mind. She sees them—Luke and Thalia, younger and thinner, huddled together in the cold streets. Another child sits with them, smaller and frailer, her blond hair tangled and her face pale.

She blinks, and the vision is gone.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, her voice softer now.

Luke doesn’t respond, but he lowers his guard slightly.

The warmth inside the McDonald’s feels almost unnatural after the damp chill of the streets. The fluorescent lights hum faintly, casting an artificial glow over the worn plastic tables and trays of food. Selene sits across from Thalia and Luke, watching as they devour their meals with a desperation that makes her chest ache.

Thalia tears into a cheeseburger, barely pausing to breathe, while Luke methodically eats his fries, his gray eyes scanning the room as if expecting trouble.

“You eat like you’re being chased,” Selene says lightly, hoping to cut through the tension.

“We usually are,” Thalia replies around a mouthful of food, her electric-blue eyes narrowing in a faint challenge.

Selene doesn’t flinch. “Well, you’re safe here.”

Thalia snorts, but her chewing slows. Luke glances at Selene, his expression unreadable.

Selene picks at her fries, her appetite dulled by the swirling tension in the air. She hesitates, then asks quietly, “Where’s your third? The blond one?”

Both of them freeze.

Luke’s head snaps up, his eyes flashing. “How do you know that?”

The words cut through the air, sharp and defensive. Thalia stiffens, her hands balling into fists on the table.

“I—” Selene starts, but the weight of Luke’s gaze silences her. She can feel his grief and suspicion rolling off him in waves.

“I’ve seen things,” she says carefully, keeping her voice steady. “I don’t know her name. Just... glimpses. A girl with blond hair. You were together.”

Luke doesn’t relax. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“Luke,” Thalia says quietly, her voice strained.

He ignores her, his glare fixed on Selene. “Why would you even ask that?”

Selene raises her hands slightly, a gesture of peace. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

Luke’s jaw tightens, and he looks away, his shoulders rigid.

Thalia exhales, her posture slumping. “Annabeth,” she says softly, her voice barely audible over the hum of the restaurant.

Selene’s breath catches.

“She was with us for years,” Thalia continues, her gaze distant. “We were a family. The three of us.”

“What happened?” Selene asks gently.

Luke flinches, his hand curling into a fist on the table.

“She got sick,” Thalia says, her voice cracking. “Three years ago. Me and Luke went to get help but - we didn't hide her well enough and - she - by the time we got back, blood was the only thing left.”

The air feels heavy, pressing against Selene’s chest. She can’t look at them, not right away. Instead, she stares down at her tray, her thoughts spiraling.

She can see it now - a thread pulled taut until barely anything remains - a little girl, barely seven, with too-wide eyes and dirty blond hair, whimpering in the cold, struggling against a fever. She hears the cough, the snarl of wild dogs in the street, and the slow drag of a wooden club. She feels the warm splatter of blood on her cheeks and closes her eyes in silent prayer.

A life for a life. That’s how it always is.

How she hates it.

She commits the name - Annabeth Chase -  to memory and loathes the knowledge it'll be the first of many.

When she looks up, Thalia’s eyes are wet, though she quickly wipes them on her sleeve. Luke is still staring at the table, his jaw clenched tight.

“I’m sorry,” Selene whispers, her voice thick with sincerity.

Thalia nods slightly, her lips pressing into a thin line. Luke doesn’t respond, his shoulders still stiff.

The silence stretches, brittle and fragile, before Selene speaks again. “For what it’s worth, you did everything you could.”

Thalia sniffs, managing a weak smile. “You don’t even know us.”

“Maybe not,” Selene admits. “But I can see how much you care about each other. That’s not nothing.”

Luke’s shoulders relax slightly, though he still doesn’t meet her eyes.

Selene leans back in her seat, giving them space. She’s still reeling, the weight of Annabeth’s death settling heavily on her, but she knows this moment isn’t about her.

Thalia picks up her burger again, taking smaller bites this time. “So,” she says after a moment, her voice steadier. “What’s your deal, anyway? Why are you helping us?”

Selene shrugs, trying to muster some lightness. “Because I like helping people. And because you looked like you could use a meal that wasn’t scavenged.”

Thalia snorts softly, her lips twitching into the faintest of smiles.

Luke glances at Selene, his gaze less guarded now. “You’re... different,” he says slowly. “You talk like you know things.”

“I do,” Selene says with a small, knowing smile.

Luke frowns. “Like what?”

Selene hesitates, her golden eyes flicking between them. She can't tell them everything —she may be young, but if history has taught her anything, it's that the Fates are not so easily swayed. She wants to, yearns to, even, if only to share the heavy load of the future with someone, anyone, but this is unfortunately her cross to bear.

She's nine years old, and she feels too big for her own skin.

“Like where you can be safe,” she says quietly, pulling a scrap of paper from her bag.

Luke takes it, his brows furrowing as he reads the neatly written directions. “Camp Half-Blood?”

“You’ll find shelter there,” Selene says. “And people who can help.”

Thalia tilts her head, her expression thoughtful. “How do you know about it?”

Selene’s smile turns bittersweet. “I know a lot of things.”

Luke’s nostrils flare briefly, but he doesn’t press her. Instead, he tucks the paper into his jacket pocket.

Both Luke and Thalia are lucky Selene was the one to stumble upon them. She can imagine what could've happened, and each fate is worse than the others.

Although, one can hardly call it luck, can they?

Outside, the cold bites at their faces. The faint hum of city life surrounds them—the growl of engines, the distant wail of a siren—but the three of them stand in a pocket of stillness beneath the flickering streetlights.

“Come with us,” Luke says suddenly, his voice softer than before, almost hesitant.

Selene shakes her head, her chest tightening. “I can’t. I have... something else to do.”

Luke frowns, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. “What could be more important than safety?”

She hesitates, then forces a small smile. “It’s not about safety. I just... I have to stay.”

Luke studies her for a moment longer, then nods reluctantly.

Thalia tilts her head, her electric-blue eyes sharp with curiosity. “You’re full of secrets, aren’t you?”

Selene meets her gaze, her faint smile turning wistful. “You have no idea.”

Luke nods once, catching Thalia’s arm.

“Luke, wait,” Selene calls, golden eyes intent. He looks back. “Your anger – wrath. It’s our fatal flaw. Don’t let it control you.”

 “I’m not angry.”

It’s a lie – a bad one, if she’s honest, but Selene doesn’t argue.

She steps back, and turns to Thalia, chest heavy with unspoken words.

“Pine trees are my favorite, you know?” she confesses with a smile as they make their way down the streets.

She’s decided to keep them company a little while longer. They deserve that much.

Thalia tilts her head. “You’re weird.”

She grins with all her teeth. “You’ll get used to it.”

Selene’s breath catches. The threads of reality twist and shimmer until nothing’s left but shadow.

Two teens are running through a dense forest. Thalia’s spear glints in the dim light as she turns, her electric-blue eyes fierce and determined.

The ground shakes. A roar splits the air. A cyclops crashes through the trees, a single eye gleaming with rage over a massive frame.

The vision sharpens; Thalia’s call to Luke is desperate. He brandishes a stranger blade – Backbiter. They fight together with the precision of years spent surviving side by side. A spear plunges into a leg, but it isn’t enough.

Thalia takes the blow, small frame thrown into the ground, crumbling.

No.

Neither of the teens hears her.

Luke’s rageful scream cuts through the vision. He lunges, his anger consuming him. Selene feels its echo in her bones.

The scene shifts.

Thalia lies on the forest floor, face pale and breaths shallow – too still for a demigod. Lighting splits the sky above. The ground trembles with Zeus’ wrath. In a blinding flash, Thalia’s gone.

A massive pine tree rises in her place, its branches stretching skyward, its roots digging deep into the earth.

Luke kneels down, his rage hollowed out, leaving only grief.

Selene blinks.

The vision dissolves as quickly as it came.

She sways, knees weak, and she takes a deep breath. The hollow grief lingers.

It’s one thing to know. It’s another to see. Selene clenches her eyes shut.

Thalia stops mid-step, turning back to her.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her tone cautious but edged with concern.

Selene forces herself to breathe normally. She looks at Thalia, etches into memory the sight of her blue eyes alive and unbroken, and then at Luke, his expression softer now.

“Nothing,” Selene says after a beat. “Be careful on the way home, okay?”

Calling Camp Half-Blood home comes as easy as breathing to her. Neither teen reacts, but she feels the faintest longing.

Thalia raises an eyebrow, her lips quirking into a faint smirk. “We’re always careful.”

“No, you’re not,” Selene replies, the words sharper than she intended. “Just... stay together. Protect each other.”

Luke glances at her, his gray eyes narrowing slightly.

She imagines she strikes quite the image: a girl barely nine, three heads smaller than him, swamped by her jacket and a backpack full of books and medical supplies. Anyone would be suspicious, but thankfully both Luke and Thalia don’t press her further.

As they turn to leave for good this time, Selene steps forward. “Luke.”

She hesitates for a moment, the words heavy on her tongue. Then she says softly, “Aim for the eye.”

Luke’s brows knit in confusion. “What?”

“Just remember,” Selene says, her golden eyes meeting his. “When the time comes, aim for the eye.”

He stares at her, something flickering in his expression—confusion, suspicion, maybe even understanding. Then he nods. Thalia tilts her head, watching Selene carefully.

“You’re really weird.”

Selene smiles faintly, her heart aching, “You’ll get used to it.”

There’s no heartfelt goodbye between them – just simple well-wishes and a prayer.

Thalia and Luke disappear into the night, their figures swallowed by the shadows of the city.

Selene stays rooted in place, the threads of fate weaving around her mind. She knows she can’t stop what’s coming, but the hope that she’s helped, even a little, keeps her standing.

As the faint scent of pine fills her senses, she whispers a prayer into the night: “May Zeus guard your path, Hermes speed your steps, and Apollo light your way – may we meet again under the sky.”

She turns and this time, doesn’t turn back.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: Harmony and gentle nudging

Ψ

The amphitheater at The Veritas School for Gifted Children, on the Upper side, is a marvel for the eyes.

Polished wood seats climb the tiers, framing the stage’s lacquered surface that glints with freshly poured resin. The golden glow suffuses everything – it gives the space an almost divine quality.

It’s tradition here to have a spring showcase of the students’ talents.

The art exhibition earlier was a hit — both Delphine and she had marveled at an oil painting of a storm at sea, each brushstroke so vivid she could almost hear the waves crashing. Sports’ day was less appealing, though the fencing demonstration snagged her attention. The way the fencers moved—fluid, sharp, and precise—resonated with something deep within her. She’s seen herself doing the same, knives in hand, battling things far more dangerous than students in padded gear.

Today, though, she’s here for music. Veritas’ music recital turns into a city-wide event each year, with the cream of the crop attending the world’s future musical prodigies. Fred, when he deigns to show up (two separate occasions so far, one in Hong Kong and another in Manchester), never shuts up about it.

Selene walks down the aisles with Delphine, the two of them a tableau of effortless grace.

Delphine, in a fitted black dress, is a vision of timeless beauty. Her dark hair, pinned back just enough to reveal delicate earrings, gives her the air of a portrait brought to life.

Selene is her mirror—youthful, radiant, her pale yellow pinafore catching the soft light like a painting’s focal point.

Together, they seem to belong not in a school recital but framed in a gallery.

Heads turn to watch. The weight of eyes on their back is heavy, but Selene barely twitches. She’s her mother’s daughter: she wears poise like armor.

“Do you think they’ll stare less if we wear neon pink next time?”

“Doubtful,” Delphine replies, her voice light with amusement. “I suspect they’re wondering which museum I came from.”

Selene grins. “Am I part of the exhibit?”

Delphine’s laugh is soft, melodic, and short-lived.

The air shifts, brushing against Selene like a whisper of something ancient.

Her breath stutters slightly, pulse quickening in anticipation.

It’s subtle at first—a hum beneath her skin, a faint tingle in her fingertips. Her steps falter, and she stops mid-aisle, her golden eyes narrowing as she scans the room. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she feels it. Like recognizes like.

And then she sees him.

At first, he’s just another man in the crowd. A golden-haired figure, sitting with casual ease in the middle of the amphitheater. Apollo’s human guise, Fred, is flawless as ever—lean, with sharp cheekbones and a cocky grin that hasn’t even formed yet but already radiates smugness.

But then he turns, and their eyes meet.

Selene’s breath catches. The world narrows.

Apollo looks just as stunned as she feels. His golden eyes widen, and for a moment, he’s not the radiant, self-assured god she knows but something softer, caught off guard.

Selene blinks.

“Ah,” Delphine murmurs, her tone amused. She follows Selene’s gaze, and her lips curve into a sly smile. “Well, this is going to be fun.”

Before Selene can process what’s happening, Delphine takes her by the arm and steers her toward Apollo.

“Fred,” Delphine greets smoothly as they stop beside him. Her voice carries the faintest edge of humor. “Mind if we join you?”

Apollo recovers quickly, his trademark grin sliding into place. He leans back in his chair, gesturing grandly. “Delphine. Sélène. What a surprise.”

“Truly,” Delphine replies, her smile sharp as glass.

Selene narrows her eyes at her father as she plops herself into the seat to his left, her pinafore swishing slightly. The sheer improbability of this moment is not lost on her.

“Fancy seeing you here, Papa,” she says flatly.

Apollo arches an eyebrow, leaning back lazily. “You know me. Always supporting the arts.”

Selene snorts. “Right. That’s why you’ve never been to any of my recitals.”

Apollo smirks, his golden eyes glinting mischievously. “That’s because you’d have to be good at music for me to attend.”

Selene gasps, feigning offense. “I’m great at music!”

 “Sunlight, the last time I heard you play, one of the muses took an extended vacation.”

Delphine, seated on Apollo’s right, covers her mouth with one hand, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Selene crosses her arms in mock-offense. “I’m being bullied. I don’t like it very much.”

Delphine chokes on her laughter. Selene notices the softness in Apollo’s gaze as he looks at her mother—their banter feels ancient, worn smooth by time and memory.

Apollo leans closer to Selene, his tone conspiratorial.

“It’ll be alright, sunlight. Keep practicing, yeah?”

Selene groans, exasperated.

“Fred,” Delphine cuts in, her tone playful. “Do try not to crush her spirit.”

Apollo straightens, his grin turning sly. “Delphi, you wound me, I live for her spirit! Just not her pitch.”

Selene rolls her eyes, leaning back in her seat. “You’re the worst.”

Apollo pats her hand lightly, grinning. “And yet, here I am, your father. Isn’t it grand?”

Selene lets their voices wash over her.

Zeus’s punishment for Apollo—light, for now—still hangs over them. For the time being, the gods have decreed they’ll leave them alone and monitor the situation from afar. Selene wonders how they’d be able to. The gods have no idea where to find them, cloaked as they are by the Mist. She'll let them keep face for now - gods are fickle and easily angered. She has no death wish, beyond the Damocles sword hanging over her head.

The lights dim, and the students walk onto the stage, their instruments gleaming. Selene scans the performers, and her gaze lands on a tall boy with golden-brown skin and dark curls. He stands near the center, a saxophone resting confidently in his hands.

“Austin,” Apollo murmurs, pride softening his features.

Selene stares, her thoughts swirling. Austin Lake, from Ohio. She knows this—feels it—but the certainty clashes with the reality before her.

“He’s supposed to be in Ohio,” she whispers, more to herself than to anyone else.

Apollo chuckles softly. “The future changes, sunlight. One variable shifts, and the whole tapestry rewrites itself.”

Selene doesn’t respond, her gaze locked on Austin as the first notes of his saxophone ring out.

The sound is rich and soulful, filling the amphitheater with a warmth that feels tangible. He plays with a vibrancy that feels alive as if he’s channeling something greater than himself.

Austin plays with a confidence that Selene recognizes. His movements are unrestrained yet deliberate. He’s good—so good that Selene can’t help but feel a pang of envy.

“He’s great,” Selene admits quietly.

“Of course he is,” Apollo leans back with a smug grin. “He’s my son.”

Selene rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue. Instead, she studies Austin, notes their similarities—the confidence, the way the light seems to catch on their skin like it belongs there. For the faintest of moments, she feels the pull of something – a deep tug at her very core, but it fades just as quickly.

There are differences too. Austin’s music is vibrant, and alive in a way Selene’s talents aren’t.

She can sing, yes, but instruments elude her. She’s tried before—piano, flute, even the harp—and failed spectacularly. Delphine had once remarked that she seemed more like her aunt —focused on action, strength, and instinct.

“Not every gift lies in melody,” her mother had whispered, elegant fingers threading through her hair, “ your aunt would find there’s strength in silence, too.”

Selene still doesn’t know what to make of that.

Selene usually feels like a thread pulled taut – her gifts are quieter, more calculated, and more dangerous than her siblings’. Such powers come with a need for responsibility and level-headedness she's not ready for yet.

The faint scent of pine drifts past her, grounding her like a silent hand on her shoulder. It feels protective, yet distant—a path she’s not yet walked.

For a moment, she wonders what it would be like to be Austin—to be normal, to play music on a stage without the weight of prophecy and power pressing down on her shoulders.

As the music swells, Selene glances at her parents. Delphine sits poised as ever, her dark eyes fixed on the stage, though there’s a faint smile tugging at her lips. Apollo has one arm draped casually over the armrest, and his gaze is uncharacteristically soft.

For a brief moment, they look like a normal family.

Selene leans back, letting the music wash over her. She lets herself pretend, just for a moment, that she’s a normal girl here to support her brother.

Apollo nudges her with his elbow, grinning. “So, sunlight, how about taking up an instrument?”

“Sure,” Selene shrugs. “Once you people improve your parenting record.”

Delphine laughs outright this time, her voice like music itself as she leans over Apollo to fondly ruffle Selene’s hair. Apollo groans theatrically.

“See if I invite you to my next recital,” he mutters, though his grin betrays him.

Selene grins back, her earlier wistfulness fading. For all its complexities, Selene realizes she wouldn’t trade this for anything.

She may never have a normal life, but being her parents’ daughter—flawed and chaotic as they are—is more than enough.

No art lies in perfection, anyway. The best works always have flaws.

Ψ

May sees Selene settling in New-York reluctantly. She’s currently homeschooled, as per Delphine’s decision, and is set to start at Veritas in September. She’s spent a few months exploring the city and their neighborhood, traipsing between locals and tourists, human and myths alike, growing confident this is the place she’ll finally get to settle.

She wonders how Luke is doing. It’ll be years before she can ask Thalia the same.

The first strings for the tapestry are almost ready. There’s only one missing – stubborn and elusive like sea-foam, and Selene’s stuck waiting for it to be mature for the picking.

He better hurry up. She’s getting tired of waiting.

Her introspection is interrupted when Delphine calls from the kitchen. “Sélène!”

She finds her stewing a large pot, adding herbs as it starts to bubble. “Would you deliver this batch to Nylie’s? We’ll do your math lessons this afternoon instead.”

Nylie is the bubbly nymph who owns the coffee shop down the street. She makes mean cookies and an even meaner hot chocolate - Selene absolutely loves her.

“Sure,” she agrees. “Is it reinforcements for the wards?”

Delphine winks. “Keen eye, ma fille, but not quite. It’s something to hopefully politely dissuade any strong-willed satyrs from entering the shop.”

“Eustache again?”

“Eustache,” Delphine confirms as she finishes bottling the mixture in two spray bottles.

Eustache is a friendly, if insistent, satyr, who, besides having a pretty nymph for a girlfriend, is quite clumsy. It’s the main reason for a very on-and-off relationship – in two months, Selene has seen them break up no less than seven times.

Last week, after another bout of terrible flirting, Eustache managed to trip over thin air, fall down and smash the café’s window, only to finish his run in the garbage bins out front. Nylie had enough after that and banned him from the shop, to his dismay.

“It’s not about the clumsiness,” Nylie had offered. Selene had questioned that statement in turn, only for her mother to give her a, You’ll understand when you’re older.

“He should really get a hint,” Selene mutters. She knows that much, no means no.

As she grabs the bag her mother extends, said mother rolls her eyes as if to say, Ugh, men, right? before grabbing the pot and rinsing it.

“You should get at least three drachma for each,” Delphine informs her. “Don’t let Nylie try to rip you off.”

“Is that something that happens often?”

“She’s a regular at the casino. Guess.”

Alright then, seems simple enough. Easy errand: bring the anti-satyr spray bottles to the pretty nymph down the street, get three drachmas for each, and try to not get ripped off. Six drachmas total. No monsters. No meddling gods. Easy.

Which, of course, makes her instantly suspicious.

She exits Nylie’s, inhaling the comforting scent of cocoa and pastries, but still twitchy from bargaining with the stubborn nymph. Immediately, a glint of bronze catches her attention across the crowded street.

The first one, the oldest, tall and grounded, with features to match, has the touch of a healer and the gait of a soldier. The other is wiry and sharp-eyed, limbs twitching with nervous energy. Selene glances at him and thinks, archer.

She keeps her head down as she passes by them, the whispers of not yet, not yet, echoing in her ears. She’s ready to cross the street and stay far away – it’d be the responsible thing to do – but she’s young, Selene, and has yet to shed her curiosity.

She lingers.

She drinks in the boys’ features, the strong noses and carved cheekbones, and the way light clings to their complexions like a second skin. They don’t look very much alike, she thinks, mostly because she is dark where they are light, and vice versa, but they share some features.

They stop right in front of the café, intercepting Eustache, who’s elected to camp in front of Nylie’s until said nymph accepts him back into the space. The oldest frowns as the satyr gesticulates wildly, the youngest checking his leather pouch in search of something.

She’s close enough to hear him say, “Chiron won’t like this.”

“It’s not our fault the dryad moved places, last I checked,” the oldest replies, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Fucking satyrs.”

“Language, squirt.”

Selene breathes out a laugh through her nose.

Neither boy really notice her as she walks past them – but when they glance her way, from across the street, their gazes linger with recognition.

She flashes them a smile, dimpling in innocence, and walks away with a citrus-scented breeze at her heels.

Ψ

Midtown Manhattan is bustling with activity, even in the heat. It’s different from France, where people tend to hide away from the heat and only emerge in the late afternoon or early evening – here, people are constantly moving, always talking, always living. They don’t pause or linger or even slow down. It’s similar to Hong Kong, only messier.

The cool temperature of the souvenir shop she enters is welcome. The shouting match happening near the checkout counter is not.

She’s here, mother in tow, to get her grand-mère a souvenir. She worries about her, so far away in France, alone in a mansion with too much time on her hands. Hopefully, she’ll find something, and not too tacky at that.

She doubts Katrina would appreciate a I-love-NY glitter fanny pack and singing snow globe combo, for example.

So, Selene’s here for a small tasteful token to send her grandmama overseas.

Or at least, that’s what she thought until she spots a redhead, clearly at the end of her patience, who looks about ready to launch herself across the counter.

 “I’m not paying eight bucks for a damn sticker,” she growls, shaking her head. The violin case on her back jostles. “It’s not even waterproof!”

That’s concerning, considering there’s a sign that says, “Waterproof stickers.”

The cashier – thin, tired, and clearly regretting every life choice that led him to this moment – tries to interject.

“No, honestly! Is no one fucking appalled by this!?” the girl bursts out, arms shaking wildly.

At that point, Selene’s getting worried about the violin more than the cashier.

“Do you enjoy ripping people off? Is that it? Or do you just lie ‘cause you’re full of shit?”

“The girl’s got a mouth on her,” Delphine observes. She seems morbidly interested – the kind of look you get watching a train wreck.

It kinda is – a train wreck.

Selene walks to the counter, picks up the sticker and eyes it.

“You know, that’s a shit sticker,” she remarks. “I wouldn’t pay eight dollars for that either.”

“Sélène.”

“Thank you!” the redhead exclaims, throwing her hands in the air.

“How about you make it five dollars?” Selene turns to the cashier.

She doesn’t strike a particularly intimidating figure: neat black hair, tied into two braids, a sensible dress and cardigan, and shiny Mary-janes. She’s the perfect opposite of the scruffy redhead next to her, whose hair flies all over the place, with thread-bare jeans and white sneakers.

The cashier doesn’t seem impressed with either of them.

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Selene beams. It’s a radiant, polite thing – a child  presenting a crayon drawing that says “I know what you did.”

The cashier raises a brow. “Go on, then.”

Selene adjusts her cardigan cuffs. “You see that sticker in the corner? The one with the little “Handmade by Local Artists” sign?”

“What about it?”

Her smile widens, and her voice dips just slightly – sweet, soft, exactly to the volume of a polite threat.

“Well, none of those brands are local. In fact, four of them are made in Shenzhen, by a bulk print company called PaperCrown. You can tell by the barcode format—see how it begins with a 13?” She holds up the sticker between two fingers. “Imported. Mass-produced. And if you really want to go there, the ‘waterproof’ claim violates at least two fair commerce regulations under NY state law.”

The cashier stares at her.

Selene doesn’t blink. “I could report you, you know. Or I could leave a review. I wonder how the Karens will feel about being ripped off.”

Delphine hums nearby. “Your grand-mère is on the consumer council, mon soleil, no review will be necessary. They do so enjoy digging into fraud.”

Selene turns back to the cashier, smiling still. “Of course, we can skip all that. You sell the sticker and this tacky snowglobe,” she shakes it for emphasis, “for five dollars total, and we’ll walk out of here pretending you didn’t try to swindle a child.”

A beat.

The redhead is gaping.

The cashier glances between them: Selene still wears her shark-like smile, the other girl’s exudes ticking timebomb energy with how much she vibrates in place, and Delphine, in the background, looks like she’ll turn your bank account into dust with a phone call.

“… Fine,” he mutters finally. “Five bucks.”

The redhead slaps the money down on the counter like she’s just won a war.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Selene says cheerfully, neatly sliding the sticker into a gift bag before handing it off.

As they walk out, the redhead mutters, “Okay, who and what are you?”

Selene sniffs. “How rude. I’m Selene. French. And you are?”

“Kayla,” she answers with a scoff. “No one’s that French.”

Selene smiles again. “Well, some of us are from Paris.”

The heat slams into them as the door swings shut, humid and thick with the scent of street food and exhaust.

Kayla marches ahead, sticker in hand, muttering under her breath. “Five bucks. For this. The thing better be bulletproof.”

Selene trails a few steps behind, utterly unbothered. She adjusts her cardigan sleeves like she didn’t just verbally gut a grown man in retail.

“It’s not waterproof,” Selene says primly. “You should probably laminate it. Or, I don’t know, not be so emotionally invested in adhesive paper.”

Kayla whirls on her. “Hey! That sticker has sentimental value. It’s got a corgi in sunglasses. That’s art.”

Selene nods, very seriously. “You’re right. It’s… timeless.”

Kayla squints. “Are you being sarcastic or are you just built like that?”

“Yes.”

Kayla stares at her for a second longer, then laughs—sharp and uncontained. “You’re weird.”

“So I’ve been told.”

There’s a lull in the conversation as the city rushes around them. Yellow cabs blur past, and some kid is playing jazz saxophone two blocks over. Selene eyes a pigeon that might be a monster in disguise. Kayla kicks at a crushed soda can like it owes her money.

“You’re not from here,” Kayla says eventually.

Selene arches an eyebrow. “What gave it away?”

“You talk like you’re in a historical drama,” Kayla says. “And you blink too slow. It’s creepy.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a compliment.”

Selene gives a beatific little smile. “I liked it anyway.”

Another pause. Kayla rolls the sticker in her fingers, thoughtful. “You’re really good at getting people to do what you want.”

“I grew up all over the place. It’s a survival skill.”

Kayla’s mouth twitches. “I like you.”

“I know.”

“Okay, now I don’t.”

Selene only shrugs. “You will again.”

Kayla snorts. “You’re weird and smug.”

They keep walking. Side by side now. Not quite in sync—but not clashing, either. The kind of parallel that doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

A hot dog vendor whistles a tune as they pass. Selene narrows her eyes suspiciously at him.

Kayla also glances sideways. “You ever play anything? Instrument-wise?”

Selene shrugs. “I sing. Poorly. I tried the harp once. It bit me.”

Kayla nods like that makes sense. “Violin. Four years.”

“I assumed,” Selene says. “You hold your rage like a musician.”

Kayla considers that. “You, missy, say the weirdest shit.”

“You keep answering it.”

Kayla opens her mouth to retort—but her phone buzzes. She groans at the screen. “Chaperone’s calling. Probably realized I’m not in the overpriced gift shop they forced us into.”

She turns to go, but pauses. “You got a phone?”

Selene shakes her head.

“Oh. That’s too bad. Come to think of it, aren’t you a bit young?”

“I’m ten.”

“You’re right, that’s practically ancient. Well, see you around I guess. You’re alright.”

Selene looks faintly delighted. “That’s very sweet.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“It already is.”

Kayla snorts. “Later, sticker girl.”

She salutes and disappears into the crowd like a badly behaved comet.

“You could have given her our home phone number,” Delphine remarks.

Selene shakes her head, braids fanning out around her. “That’s three.”

Her mother hums. “So it is. He’s being subtle, at least.”

She snorts softly, a blend of amusement and resignation.

“He sent me a redhead that functions on rage.”

Ψ

Now that she’s aware her father’s trying to get her to do something, Selene’s inclined to dig her heels into the ground like a stubborn mare and ignore the signs. Even if the signs come in the shape of siblings she yearns for.

Of course, her father is not known for his subtlety (that would be her uncle Hermes’ prerogative), so she should really have expected things to take a turn. Apollo isn’t known for his patience either, so naturally, she expected the signs to multiply.

(This little tug-o-war of theirs is all in good fun, of course, Delphine would never allow her daughter to anger any of the gods – she’s been raised to respect and work with them, but she’s also been taught not to take any bullshit. Especially from the gods. A positively revolutionary mindset, if she’s to believe what Prophecy whispers in her mind.)

What she didn’t expect was for the signs to crash into her.

She’s at Veritas again, doing a bit of exploring to familiarize herself with the building while her mother finishes her meeting with the head of school.

Let it be clear that she’s not trying to scare anyone – it’s not her fault people jump when they see her appear around corners like a ninja.

The collision is sudden and hard—books scatter across the polished floor in a flutter of paper, the boy sprawling awkwardly, and Selene landing hard on her bottom with an undignified oof.

“—Sorry—sorry— oh merde—” the boy mutters, scrambling to collect his things. His skin is suddenly glowing like he swallowed a disco ball, eyes wide in absolute horror.

Selene blinks.

“Tu brilles,” she remarks, dazed but delighted. “You’re a glowstick!”

Austin—because it is Austin, the only sibling she’s had the chance to observe closely, recognizable by his neat cornrows—chokes on another panicked curse, glow intensifying despite his frantic attempts to suppress it.

“You’re still glowing,” Selene points out helpfully.

“I—I do this sometimes when I’m nervous!” he hisses, voice strained with genuine fear. “If they think something’s wrong with me, they might kick me out. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Guilt flickers in her chest—she feels like she just kicked a puppy. She kneels quickly beside him, calmly helping gather the fallen books.

You’re meddling again, she thinks pointedly at Apollo, sensing a faint, smug hint of citrus.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she reassures Austin softly. “Really. And honestly, it’s pretty cool.”

Before he can respond, she reaches into her cardigan pocket and drops a small bag of candied pecans into his lap.

Austin stares blankly at the snack. “Uh—thanks?”

Selene smiles warmly, lightly tapping her wristwatch. “You’re very welcome. And look—you’ve stopped glowing. You’d better hurry, though, you’ll be late.”

“Oh shoot –” Austin scrambles up with his books precariously in his arms. “Thanks, gotta go!”

He’s gone swiftly, turning the corner in record time. All that’s left of his presence is a worn flyer, brightly titled Camp Half-Blood, with big red arrows pointing to the picture on the front.

Selene eyes it. A blend of longing, frustration, and mild amusement flickers through her.

“We’re done being subtle, I see.”

She rises, leaving the flyer deliberately behind as she goes in search of her mother.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: And so the sun turns west

“He’s insufferable,” Selene complains to her mother one night.

Delphine hums, stirring a pot behind the stove. The whole house smells like a feast of roasting lemon chicken and honey-glazed biscuits. It’s warm and golden and familiar. Safe.

“That he is,” she agrees, tapping Selene’s head gently with the back of her spoon. “But all he wants is for you to listen.”

“I am – and I’m saying no. Not now, I’m waiting for the right time.”

“You can’t spend your life waiting for a boy, Sélène.”

Delphine’s words hang heavy in the air, soft and heavy as incense. Selene glares at the polished floor, petulant in a way only a very-irritated ten-year-old can be.

“You can’t keep pouting about it,” her mother adds gently.

Selene groans and slouches heavily on the counter, all tangled limbs and furrowed brows.

“We’ve spent the past four years moving around to avoid divine wrath. I thought I shouldn’t go to camp. What changed?”

Delphine exhales – lowers the heat before turning toward her. “You did.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Selene mumbles, head in her arms.

“That’s exactly the problem, mon soleil.”

The words sting. Selene blinks, more startled than hurt. Her mother’s voice holds no judgment—only truth. Delphine sets the spatula down in a way that feels deliberate. She walks over to the table and sits, then pats the seat beside her. Selene joins her slowly.

“When I was seventeen,” Delphine begins, “I thought falling in love was a necessary step to my youth. Do you know what your grand-mère said to me?”

Selene shakes her head.

“One cannot guide anyone if they have not first learned to walk without falling.”

Selene fidgets with her sleeve. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” Delphine tilts her head. Her voice is soft, but there’s iron beneath it.

“You’ve spent half your life yearning for a place you’ve never seen. And I know you’re waiting to meet a spectacular boy. I understand that. But you cannot control fate – you don’t wait for it, it finds you.”

“I can’t go to camp,” Selene whispers. “I want to. I think it’s the only place that’ll ever feel like home. But I— I’m ten, maman. I’m a child—”

Her voice cracks slightly. That’s the part she never says aloud. Not since Prophecy. Not since she’s had to filter every word for truth that could hurt. Not since she felt her own power ripple outward and take lives.

Selene hasn’t felt like a child in years.

“No, you’re not,” Delphine counters fiercely. “You haven’t been a child since the moment you pulled a golden arrow out of the sand and made yourself known.”

There’s a silence between them. Delphine reaches out and wraps Selene in a careful embrace, warm and sure.

“We’ve spent years running.”

“Yes,” Delphine says, soft. “Because the King decided a little girl with plague in her bones was more dangerous than titan blood. Because your father made a choice, and broke a law older than this continent to keep you breathing. So we hid. We ran. We used the Mist to bury our names.”

“I thought we had to.”

“We did, mon soleil,” her mother whispers just as softly. She brushes a curl from Selene’s temple. “But your father didn’t save your life so you could spend it hiding. It’s time to step into the light, darling.”

Selene exhales through her nose and looks away.

“I may be young, but I understand the world better than you think,” she mutters. “Father wants me to go to camp so I can become another soldier.”

“No.”

And then—like lightning striking citrus trees—an overwhelming scent floods the kitchen: bright and burning, threaded with sorrow. Grief, laced with devotion. Heartbreak, and she almost wants to take back the words.

“Your father loves his children,” Delphine denies fiercely.

“He does,” Selene agrees. “But the gods don’t change. How am I supposed to be anything but a pawn?”

The room hushes.The citrus fades—mellow now, like sunlight drying your hair after a swim. Selene breathes in.

“Maybe so,” Delphine finally whispers into the air. A concession. “But you’re also the hand moving across the board. And you’ll live, Sélène, not just exist in the cracks between the Fates.”

Selene looks down, blinking rapidly.

“I’m scared,” she says, voice very small. “I’ve seen what comes next. It’s big.”

Delphine raises her head with a hand so they’re eye-level.

“You, mon soleil, are bigger than you know. And you won’t be alone.”

Selene closes her eyes, shoulders taut with the weight of everything she’s carried too young, and wishes she could stay in her mother’s embrace forever, with her father’s presence lingering in the air.

“Why now?”

“Because,” Delphine says, brushing her thumb against Selene’s cheek, “Waiting is starting to become hiding. And my love does hate watching his children dim themselves.”

Selene is quiet for a time.

She spoke the truth – she wants to go to Camp Half-Blood, to see the place she knows will be her home, yearns for it, even, but there’s so much to watch over and keep track of here.

She wants to go and see her siblings, find Luke, and apologize to Thalia. She wants to stay and meet the boy who has the sea in his eyes, and find out if he’s as disconnected as she feels. She wants to be the friend she promised him she’d be.

She wants to go back to sunny beaches in the south of France, where her grand-père will wait for her with chocolate tartelettes, their favorite, and they’ll gorge themselves sick on them. She wants to nap in the shade of Velanidià’s tree with her grand-mère humming next to her and greet her mother at the door when she comes back from work.

She has times where she hates the power the Fates gifted her, hates that she’s, above all, her father’s daughter, bright and brilliant in the light but carrying a darkness older than the world she knows.

(Sometimes, she dreams of tearing the threads of Fate apart with her bare hands. She wonders if anyone else has ever wanted to scream at the stars for noticing them too early.)

“I hate what I am sometimes”, she confesses, voice trembling. “I hate what they made me carry.”

“You’re more than what they made you,” Delphine says.

She thinks of home. Of prophecy. Of the boy she’s never met. Of the siblings she only knows in passing.

Finally, quietly, she says, “I’ll think about it.”

The citrus returns—not burning this time, but blooming, gentle and warm. A father’s joy.

Delphine smiles – not triumphant, but proud.

“That’s all we ask.”

Ψ

The New York Public Library is hushed and golden in the mid afternoon light. You can hear the quiet hum of turning pages and echoing footsteps, the high ceilings cradling the smell of paper and polish.

Selene walks beside her mother, shoes tapping a steady rhythm on the marble floors. Delphine, like always, exudes composed elegance in her navy slacks and linen blouse, her hair swept into a low twist that looks sculpted, not styled. She moves through the grand hallways like the place was built for her, eyes sharp, her designer handbag tucked under one arm.

They pass the archway toward the children’s reading room. A small sign reads:

Family Programming: Myths & Music Today!

Selene slows. Delphine doesn’t.

“I thought you said you had a meeting with the archivist,” Selene says slowly.

“I do,” Delphine answers smoothly. She checks her watch. “In approximately five minutes.”

“And you want me to…?”

“Explore, darling,” her mother says, lips twitching. “Not everything is a ploy. This program has music, and myths. You like both. Why don’t you give it a try?”

“I like them in moderation.”

Delphine pushes her forward gently. “Don’t be so contradictory, mon soleil. I’ll come find you when I’m finished. Tata !”

Selene narrows her eyes as her mother turns and heads to what she assumes to be the archivist’s office. She squints at the corridor, and sighs.

“Fine,” she mutters.

There’s a boy in the reading room. He sits stiffly in one of the bean bag chairs, flipping through a worn copy of The Odyssey for Kids. He looks younger than her: plump cheeks, bright blond hair, and a blue t-shirt that matches the color of his eyes. Clear as a midsummer’s sky.

He feels all too familiar.

Selene grabs a copy of Oracles of Delphi Keep and heads towards him. He watches her approach like a hawk, nervous posture tensing when she sits down.

“Hello,” Selene greets him serenely.

He looks up. And Selene was wrong, his eyes aren’t blue like she’d expected them to be. When the light hits his eyes, they shine gold, a mirror catching a sunbeam. He seems as surprised as she is.

Oh.

When she was young, Selene had her mother’s grey-blue eyes. After the beach, they adopted a peculiar gold shade that never went away, unsettling and eerie. Her mother applies a glamour to them every month.

She’s told it’s not unusual for demigods to inherit a few peculiar traits from their godly parent. Some spout feathers, others grow claws, develop gills, or other strange attributes throughout their lives. It’s uncommon, yes, but it happens often enough that mortal spouses are made aware of such. Selene’s quite lucky she didn’t end up with a serpent’s tongue or horns, honestly. All she got were light-reflective pupils, gold and bright.

It's her first time seeing them on another person, though. Her other siblings didn’t sport peculiarities.

“You can see through it,” she whispers, mesmerized. Warmth blooms in her chest in a rare moment of understanding. For once, she doesn’t feel so alone.

The boy startles. “Wait, what?”

Selene tilts her head, studying. “My glamour. You can see through it.”

His mouth opens, then closes. He looks ready to bolt. “Sorry? It’s not on purpose.”

She shrugs. “It’s okay. It’s getting old anyway.”

“Oh. Okay,” he mutters. Selene considers him, thoughtful.

“I’m Selene. Nice to meet you.”

“Will,” he answers, clutching his book like a lifeline.

“You’re very small, did you know that?’

Will scowls. “I’m eight.”

“I’m ten, so ancient compared to you.”

“That’s not a big difference at all!”

At the threshold of the room, Delphine watches the two children bicker in silent amusement. A vague feeling passes over her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck like a lover’s caress, and she pauses. The presence settles into the corridor beside her, wafting the air of a bright summer’s day in her parent’s orchard, and she doesn’t need to turn to see who it is.

Still, she does, her expression warm and her smile loving.

“Salut, mon amour,” she greets.

The air warms, humming with sunlight, as Apollo leans lazily against the marble column. Golden hair swept back, dark jeans, open shirt, lazy grin – he bears the typical look of a Don Juan. Sunlight seems to bend a little toward him, pooling at his feet.

“Delphi,” he breathes lazily. Delphine rolls her eyes.

“She’s in there.”

“I know,” his mouth twitches as he settles his head on Delphine’s shoulder. She relaxes slightly into his touch—old habits, she thinks ruefully, are impossible to shake.

“And you lured her here. How positively treacherous of you.”

Delphine smiles, suddenly shark-like. “You kept sending flyers, cluttering my house with your signs. Something had to be done.”

“Er – I’m sorry?”

“You better be,” Delphine winks. His hands cradle the small of her back lightly, as if it’s instinct. “Now go. Don’t say anything stupid.”

Apollo hums. “No promises, mon trésor.”

They part like a well-rehearsed dance – Delphine sweeps into the children’s reading room with the grace of a great feline, all elegance and subtle intimidation.

“Hello there,” she says to Wil, who jumps.

She can see Apollo in his nose and soft ringlets of gold. Funny how his children resemble him so – when her daughter, practically himself made flesh, is far closer to her in looks.

 “I’m Delphine, Selene’s mother. You must be Will. Your father told me all about you.”

Selene immediately squints at her. Her sweet daughter. Suspicious. Cynical. Sharp as anything.

Delphine could cry with pride.

“He—he did?” Will blinks. “He told you about me?”

“Of course. We’re old friends. He’s very proud of you, you know.”

Will gives her the smallest smile. The kind you barely notice unless you’re watching.

Selene notices. Selene wants to adopt him immediately: wrap him in a heated blanket and feed him pastries until it’s time to call it a day.

Delphine notices, too. Her smile softens.

“Say, Will,” she offers, “would you like to get hot cocoa with us? Just a quick break.”

“Uh... my dad told me to wait here until he got back,” Will says nervously. “And I can’t exactly call him—”

“He sent three hundred flyers. He owes us,” Delphine says sweetly. She glances left.

Apollo steps into the doorway, exasperated.

“If I must,” he sighs dramatically, “You can go, sunspot.”

“Are you sure?” Will asks with wide eyes. “No offense, but she’s kinda scary.”

“She’s the most intimidating woman alive,” Apollo beams.

Delphine raises an eyebrow. “Shall we?” she asks Will, who places his hand hesitantly in hers.

She drops a kiss onto her daughter’s forehead, a silent ask for good behavior.

“Please get in trouble!” Apollo calls after them as they both disappear down the hall.

He turns, and there she is – standing frozen in place, but looking like she owns it. Arms crossed. Braids swinging. Gold eyes narrowed in utter betrayal.

“She set me up,” Selene says flatly.

“Surprise?”

“I liked Will.”

“You still do.”

“I loathe you.”

“Nah,” he grins. He stretches onto a bean bag like a great cat. “You adore me. Now get back into your bean.”

Selene stomps back to her chair with maximum offense.

Apollo studies her. Not just her features—her sharp cheekbones, her dark curls, the stubborn tilt of her chin—but the essence of her. The fire behind her restraint. The fierceness of a great lion. The sharp edges.

She looks nothing like the rest of his children — no golden hair or blue eyes, no freckles and tan lines. And yet, she’s the most his out of any of them.

“You’re here,” she accuses, “Again.”

“You always sound so surprised.”

“Because you’re not supposed to be here. Laws and all that.”

Apollo waves a hand. “Technicalities. Also, the chariot’s on autopilot.”

Selene huffs. “You’re reckless. Also, that’s unfair.”

“And you, my darling, are a stubborn little thing. Wonder where that comes from.”

Selene levels him with a look. Apollo delights in the way her pout is all Delphine – somehow, Selene is also the perfect mix of the two of them. He’s glad for that.

“You’re manipulative.”

“I’m parenting.”

Selene glares. “I told Mom I’d think about camp.”

“And I’m simply helping that thought along. Gently. Like a breeze. Or a particularly inspiring sonnet.”

“Do not start reciting anything.”

“Rude. Anyway, please go, yadda yadda, I’d like to keep on your mom’s good side, please and thank you.”

“I’m not going because you want me to,” Selene says, raising an unimpressed eyebrow.

How impertinent. He’s trying his best, honestly, what an ungrateful little swan she makes.

His pride and joy.

“Good,” Apollo shrugs. “Go because you want to. Because you’re ready.”

She doesn’t answer immediately. She hesitates. Her hand tightens around the sunburst pendant at her neck. A gift from him. One he gave to bring light in a moment of darkness – he’s glad she wears it.

“I’m scared,” she whispers, “of leaving.”

“Sélène,” he kneels. Not as a god, but as her father. Desperate for her to step into the light. “You were born for this path. You deserve a home. Let camp be that.”

She watches him, quiet. Then:

“I was supposed to wait… for the timing to be right. And if I go to camp before that…”

“You think you’ll ruin the pattern,” he finishes gently.

She nods.

He brushes his thumb beneath her eye. Her skin is warm, too human and too precious in turn.

Oh, golden-eyed daughter mine, how brightly you shine.

“You are not a pawn, Selene. You’re a piece of the pattern, but you’re also the weaver. Waiting doesn't make you stronger — it makes you smaller. You’ve been dimming yourself to fit into a shape you were never meant for.”

She swallows hard. “But what if I miss it? What if I go too early, or I shift something I’m not meant to shift?”

“Then the world shifts with you,” he says, fierce now. “That’s the thing about fate, Selene. It doesn’t just bind you — it bends to you. You’re allowed to live. You’re allowed to take the step first.”

(He misses this. He’s always enjoyed guiding his children through their paths.)

Apollo has already lost so much to time.

Selene’s almost a girl grown, with his nose and his eyes, her grandmother’s wisdom and her mother’s impertinence. He wants her to reach her full potential, to become the blinding force heralding a new age.

She swallows hard.

“But what if I disappoint them? The ones I haven’t met yet. The ones I already know I’ll love.”

“You won’t,” Apollo says. “They’re already waiting for you, sundrop.”

A beat of silence.

 “If I see one more flyer,” Selene mutters, “I’m praying to my aunt.”

Apollo’s smile wavers even as he wants to crow his victory. “You wouldn’t.”

“She’s better with bows.”

“She stole my domain.”

“You let her.”

“She had a better PR team!”

Selene snorts. Apollo exhales, laughing silently with relief.

(He’s entirely too fond of her – in a way that’ll end up in heartbreak, he’s certain, but what can you do? It’s been so long since one of his children resembles him so. )

“I’ll go,” she says, almost a whisper. “I’ll try.”

He feels the sun rise again inside his chest.

“Thank you,” he breathes.

“Not for you.”

“Of course not,” he teases, tugging her braid. “Gods forbid you listen to your Dad.”

He opens his arms. She eyes him, then steps into the embrace.

His scent is sun and citrus and distant fields in bloom. It is home.

He holds her carefully, entirely, completely. He pours every ounce of love into it, because Selene feels like the wind sometimes.

(He wants her to live, desperately. Gods do not pray, but Apollo wants to.)

The hug is solid, secure — not a god’s blessing, but a father’s promise.

“I love you,” he murmurs into her hair.

“I know,” she says, voice muffled.

Outside, Delphine and Will’s laughter filters through the library walls, soft as curtain lace. Selene stays in her father’s arms. Just for a moment, she lets herself be small—and loved.

Ψ

That night, Selene dreams of the sea.

Not in the usual, distant way – where it sloshes behind the edges of her mind, where she can smell the salt and feel the sand between her toes, but not quite dip into the water. No. This time, the waves are near. Crashing. Endless.

She stands at the shoreline barefoot, the hem of her pajama pants soaked. The sky above her is an indigo bruise, dark and deep, and something waits just beyond the curve of the horizon.

She feels neither peace nor fear. She watches the skyline as much as it watches her.

She wakes before the tide reaches her.

The apartment is unusually quiet when she pads back into her bedroom. The windows are open – she can hear car horns honking obnoxiously, and the morning breeze carries the scent of early summer and honeysuckle from the neighbors’ garden.

She presses her palms to the windowsill, leans out slightly, and watches the sun rise between the buildings.

It's soft. Gentle.

She thought it might feel heavier, waking up on the day she leaves.

Her room is small. Lived in – a little chaotic in a way that’s entirely hers. Her suitcase lies open on the bed, halfway filled. Clothes are rolled tight, toiletries are neatly packed. On top of them lies her worn copy of The Secret Garden, its spine broken in four places. She adds a second notebook – blank, save for her name in tight, careful script on the inside cover.

She doesn’t know why she picks it. Only that she feels the need for it.

Delphine stands in the doorway, arms crossed loosely, a coffee mug steaming in one hand.

“Need help?”

“No,” Selene says, then softens. “A little.”

They don’t talk much. It’s not a silence that aches—just one that settles. Selene folds a cardigan. Delphine smooths down the sides of the suitcase. They work in tandem like this often—when baking, when folding laundry, when threading truths between themselves like needle and thread.

Delphine brushes a thumb across the zipper.

“Do you have your sunblock?”

“Don’t need it, Ma.”

“Water bottle?”

“Yes.”

“Anti-satyr spray?”

Selene gives her a look. “That was for Nylie.”

“Satyrs can be persistent.”

Selene hums. “So can I.”

Delphine smiles faintly. “That’s what worries me.”

There’s a pause. Then, gently:

“You don’t have to be brave, you know.”

“I’m not trying to be brave,” Selene says, quiet. “I’m just… trying.”

Delphine nods.

“That’s more than enough.”

They leave before noon.

The city is humming around them. Taxi horns. Music spilling out of cracked windows. Life in all directions.

Selene keeps her hand wrapped around the leather strap of her bag. It bites into her shoulder, but the weight helps. It reminds her that she’s actually doing this – it’s not just an idea anymore.

They walk to the edge of Central Park. A cab is waiting there, black and sleek and far too clean for the city. Its license plate flickers strangely under the sun.

Selene knows what it is.

She glances up at her mother. “Hermes’ taxi service?”

“Of course.”

She hesitates. “Not a satyr?”

“I didn’t trust you not to lose patience halfway there and ditch him.”

Selene snorts. “Fair.”

Delphine turns and crouches slightly so they’re eye level. Her face is softer here. Bare. Not the polished woman in tailored slacks, but Selene’s mother. The one who carried her across continents, who held her through prophecy and fever and fear. The one who never once let go.

“You don’t have to write every day,” Delphine says, brushing a curl from her temple. “But I’d like to know when you arrive.”

“I will.”

“I called in advance to warn them you’d be arriving. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. You know how.”

Selene nods, silently thanking her grandmother for sending her drachmas regularly.

“Also, politely remind your camp director I’ve got an offering spoiling on his altar, so if he could hurry along and allow me to move it, that’d be great.”

A waft of grapes comes and leaves just as quickly, carrying the feel of amused smugness.

“I told you he would like the grapes from grandmama’s orchard too much,” Selene remarks. Delphine sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“See if I get you anything nice for you again, Diónysos,” her mother mutters.

The scent of grapes grows so heady that Selene feels lightheaded. Delphine only rolls her eyes at the god’s antics.

“Cut it out,” she calls to the sky. She presses something into Selene’s hand. A velvet pouch. Inside, a folded piece of thick paper, tied around a smooth stone – dark, heavy, veined with streaks of gold.

“A protection talisman,” Delphine explains. “I’ll teach you how to make them just as your grand-mère taught me,” she promises with a smile.

Selene closes her fist around it. “It’s warm.”

“It’s meant to feel comforting.”

She pulls her mother into a hug without warning, bringing her frail arms around her neck and clutching tight. She breathes lavender, spice, and familiarity, and imprints it into memory, throat suddenly tight.

“I love you, Maman.”

“I love you more, mon soleil.”

She steps back before she changes her mind.

The driver says nothing when she gets in, eyes hidden by his sunglasses. The inside of the cab smells like strawberries and leather.

The meter isn’t running.

Selene pulls the door shut, handle clicking like a promise.

Delphine lifts a hand to the window in farewell. Selene presses her own to the window, heart tight.

And the cab moves – too fast, too smooth, the city blurring into watercolor.

Ψ

The apartment is too quiet.

Neither peaceful nor resting – just empty. The kind of stillness that settles after something immense has left a space – like the echo after thunder, or the hush after a birth.

Delphine stands in the doorway to her daughter’s room. The bed is made. The suitcase is gone. The sunburst pendant’s twin sits untouched on the small altar Sélène made to her father. And yet her body hasn’t quite registered her daughter is gone.

The clock ticks.

The house is empty.

A candle flickers as she passes it. Outside, a dog barks. A car alarm stutters and dies.

Selene is gone.

Not forever. Not even far. But still — gone.

Delphine exhales. Straightens. And turns toward the hearth.

It’s not a functioning fireplace — New York brownstones are not so generous. But the hestía is there all the same, carved into the corner of their living space like a secret.

She sighs.

“Fine.”

It comes out sharp. Dry. Barely a whisper. But the air listens.

She kneels before the altar — tucked between bookshelves, half-shadowed by a potted fig tree. It’s not grand. It’s not meant to be: a true hearth doesn’t need grandeur. Just memory.

She reaches for the small copper bowl. Fills it with olive oil. Handpicks a few laurel leaves out of the wreath sitting on the shelf.

Her hands don’t shake. Not yet.

She lights the wick.

The flame catches instantly.

She waits, watching it flicker. Prays. Then, under her breath—

“If you don’t show up, Apollo Phoebus, I swear to all the gods, I will switch your effigy with one of Hermes’.”

No answer.

She snorts. “Coward.”

“We’ve been over this – you hover, I tell you it’s forbidden, so you watch from rooftops. You pretend to be a hot dog vendor.”

She shifts slightly – the fire crackles.

“You might as well come in like a civilized person.”

A pause.

A breeze curls through the apartment, even though the windows are closed. It smells like crushed laurel and citrus peel and old books left in the sun.

And then he’s there.

Standing in the doorway like he owns the place.

Apollo. Tall. Radiant. Shirt rumpled again, hair wind-tossed, golden eyes lit like the wick itself bent toward him. Not quite divine today — but just enough to make the room seem smaller. as if he’s forgotten who he’s supposed to be in front of mortals.

He exhales.

“You rang?”

Delphine glances up at him, one eyebrow raised. “I called your name five times. Thought you’d know better than to keep a lady waiting.”

“Had to find my mortal pants.”

“Tragic,” she mutters. “I was so hopeful.”

He steps into the room, uncharacteristically quiet. The light shifts with him, warm and golden and heavy with emotion.

He kneels across from her, mirroring her posture like it’s something he’s always done — and it is.

Delphine doesn’t look at him right away.

She’s knelt here a thousand times before. With prayers. With petitions. With updates on school reports, lost teeth, bruised knees, and terrifying truths. She’s told him everything. Even when he didn’t answer.

Of all the gods she’s worked with, none come close to him. None ever will. Their connection is older than it should be. Worn smooth like a river-stone. Ritual, yes. But also love.

She’s given life to a daughter, and carried the weight of it admirably.

(She was the first one to speak His Voice, his first step into mortal affairs.)

“She’s gone,” Delphine finally whispers.

Apollo nods. “I felt it. The moment she stepped through the boundary.”

Delphine huffs softly. Not quite a laugh. “Of course you did, stalker.”

He doesn't deny it.

They sit in silence — two halves of something once whole. She and Apollo seize each other up – it’s been a long time since they’ve been together like this, mortal form to mortal. The brief glimpses they’ve shared over the years cannot compare to the raw silence that echoes between them now.

Fred looks his age. Or perhaps it’s Apollo who does.

And then, Apollo mutters, voice tighter now, lower: “I loathe this.”

Delphine’s gaze sharpens.

“The pretending,” he snaps. “The distance, the watching-from-afar. The schemes I plot just so I can get a glimpse of my children. I’m so sick of all of it.”

He shoves a hand through his hair, golden strands falling out of place.

“I used to obey. The Law was order. A directive, in a time when my actions only seemed to cause devastation and heartache. Gods must not interfere with their mortal children’s lives.”

He scoffs at that: “What a noble pile of shite.”

Delphine stays silent as Apollo seems to unload the weight of hundreds of years spent obeying rules.

“And then my father –” he spits, “The King himself, sat on his throne and told me to kill my own daughter. Mine. That if she carried Plague, it had to be done. My sister agreed. My twin. My mirror. Telling me I have to kill my daughter to protect the order?””

His voice trembles – not weakness, fury. A wrath older than civilizations. She’s seen him angry, through grief and heartache and sometimes want, but never this.

Delphine’s hand twitches.

“And I thought I could do it,” Apollo says, and this time, his voice cracks. “For one second, I thought—I thought maybe I had to. That I could do it if I closed my eyes fast enough. That she’d forgive me in another life.”

Delphine reaches across the space and takes his hand. Firm. Certain.

“But I looked at her,” Apollo whispers, “and I saw you. And I couldn’t do it.”

Silence.

The candle burns low.

“Our child, so small in that bed. Fragile. Burning, and yet still trying to protect us.”

He breathes in hard.

“That’s when I knew – I swear it on the Styx, Delphi, if I have to burn the world to cinders so Sélène keeps breathing, then so be it.”

The flame between them flares high, uncontrolled. For a moment, it casts the room in searing gold. Thunder booms, sealing what she knows to be an unbreakable oath.

Delphine doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t argue. She nods – accepts her lover’s promise.

(She’s glad.)

She reaches forward and lowers the edge of her palm over the bowl. The flame settles. Softens.

Apollo stares at her.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he murmurs, voice smaller now, pleading.

His wrath has left him entirely, sucked out by the weight of the promise he’s made.

“And yet,” she echoes.

Apollo leans back, hands falling on his thighs. Delphine chases him and presses a kiss to his eyelids — gentle, grounding. He exhales against her skin like he might cry.

“She looked back, you know. Hesitated,” he confesses. Delphine takes his hands in hers, humming the lullaby her mother used to sing under her breath.

“She always does, mon amour,” Delphine tells him. “Our daughter is fierce, but she’s young yet. Unsure. It’ll be alright.”

“I want her to be safe,” Apollo says. “But I want her to be magnificent more. Is that wrong of me?”

Delphine tilts her head. “Perhaps.”

Apollo grimaces.

“It is natural, I think. More so with you being what you are. But never cruel,” she finishes.

He lets out a breath — part laugh, part sob.

She hums again. His hands are warm, solid, worn down like marble beneath rain. She caresses them absentmindedly.

“You’ve always been good at burning, mon amour,” she says. “But you never did learn how to cool.”

Apollo huffs out a breath – half a laugh, trapped in his chest. “Then thank the Fates for you, trésor.”

Delphine smirks. “I’ve been saying.”

They sit like that for a while, surrounded by fire and offerings and the quiet weight of what they’ve created.

Their daughter.

Their sunlit, plague-born, prophecy-marked daughter.

There are no prayers in the solemn stillness between the two of them. No politics, no scheme. Only Delphine, silver-bright and mortal, and Apollo, golden and godly in his essence. Above all else, two people who made something impossible and watched her finally step onto her path.

Eventually, Apollo rises. Smooth and slow. His shoulders are still taut, but steadier.

“I’ll visit more often,” he says. “Even though you won’t see me.”

“I know, and I thank you,” Delphine replies. “She knows, too.”

Apollo leans down. Touches his forehead to hers, lingers. And as she blinks her eyes closed, disappears, winking out like the sun at dusk.

Delphine stares at the flame a moment longer, and then rises. She wipes her hands on her pants.

(The gods may have temples and priestesses, but her daughter has a mother.)

She crosses to the window and opens it, breathing in the fresh air. The city hums on. Somewhere far off, a car screeches, a child laughs, a dog barks twice.

She raises her hand, and lets the last of the laurel ashes scatter through her fingers.

“May Apollo light your steps,

May Hermes guard your crossings,

May Artemis shine moonlight at your back,

And may those who would twist your thread find it frays in their hands.”

A pause. Then, quietly, with a wry smile:

“And should you forget your sunblock, mon soleil, I shall find you and drag you home myself.”

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: A step into the Tapestry

Ψ

Selene’s ride in the taxi is silent on her part. She listens curiously to the radio – the channel keeps flickering every two to three seconds, letting morsels of information through. She can’t keep up with the flow, but the driver clearly can. He hums and frowns after each channel flickers.

It’s very weird, but she supposes it’s part of the job.

The city’s glamour dissolves behind her as they pass through more rural areas. She’s not leaving for long, but she can’t help but miss her mother already. It’s been the two of them for so long, it feels strange not to have Delphine’s quiet strength at her back.

Without her mother’s comforting presence, Selene feels exposed. She clutches the talisman a bit tighter, heat pulsing through like a heartbeat.

When the car starts slowing down after what feels like an eternity, Selene looks up. She can’t see anything except fields and dirt paths.

The taxi’s tires crunch to a stop.

The door opens with a dramatic swish.

The scent hits her first.

Selene steps out with both trepidation and panic curling in her chest. She clutches the talisman like a lifeline, adjusts the straps of her bag, and inhales deeply. There’s a thrum in the ground – an old song waiting to be remembered.

The hill looks like any other.

And yet.

And yet – it’s everything she’s ever dreamed.

She knows this place – not from maps or books or the stories her mother told her at night, but from her dreams, from the prophecy etched into her bones. From visions woven into the fibers of her soul.

She’s seen this hill a thousand times – bathed in dawn, veiled in mist, bloodstained and quiet at sunset. She’s walked these paths in battle and sunlit peace.

She knows the exact incline of the slope, the way it feels beneath her feet. Sher knows where the shadows fall beneath the trees at midday, and where the light filters through the canopy like spilled honey. She knows the scent of Camp – citrus, pine resin, salt, and the faint tang of celestial bronze.

This place is hers. She was made for it.

Camp Half-Blood is not simply a refuge – it’s home. Not the kind made of blood and lullabies, but the one forged from battle, the one built on bones and destiny. A hearth waiting to be lit.

She wonders how much the Fates have ordained already – if they carved her for this place, here, specifically.

Selene steps forward, suitcase in one hand and bag in the shoulder, free fingers brushing the air.

It’s warm. It feels like a welcome.

The majestic pine tree atop the hill greets her vision then, its needles wet and shimmering with dew, and Selene tenses. The sight strikes her like a knife – a painful memory.

She breathes in.

She’d hoped things would be different. She hoped Thalia would survive.

She remembers a fierce girl with eyes as blue as a clear sky, feathers in her hair, and wants to cry.

The girl she tried to protect is rooted in soil now, immortal and still, both a warning and a tombstone. Selene’s fingers twitch. Her teeth bite into the side of her cheek.

The price was too high. The lesson, harder still.

“I’m sorry, Thalia,” she whispers, voice trembling.

And she is.

Sorry that she believed her knowledge was enough. That seeing a thread meant she could keep it from fraying.

The hill doesn’t answer.

She stops just before the boundary line. Her fingers brush the edge of the magic there – thin and invisible but thrumming with power. It recognizes her. The wards feel like warm static against her skin and see her for all that she is.

But still – she hesitates.

There’s no going back once she crosses. Every action holds consequences, her mother often tells her, and this one will probably be costly. She’s not quite sure she’s ready, despite her father assuring her the contrary.

A pause.

Selene Arnaud contemplates all that she is.

A daughter, first and foremost. A demigod, second. A slayer of monsters at five. A Speaker and Truth-Sayer at six. A plague-bringer at seven. A girl who makes promises she can’t seem to keep.

She has to face it: she’s utterly terrified.

The sun waits above her, patiently. There’s no unsolicited nudging or overpowering citrus invading her nostrils.

Will I be enough?

“Always to me,” her father had answered, “and more beside.”

She closes her eyes.

The threads appear: gold, silver, rust-red, all strung through the air in the grand moving tapestry of life.  The sway gently, shimmering, singing, waiting.

A blond teen, eyes hollowed by grief, screaming himself hoarse. A small girl, her nose buried in a book, gone before she had the chance to make a difference. A malign whisper echoing all around her. A bottomless pit. A fierce girl, ushering orders, her spear tapping the ground. Sea-green eyes rising from the ocean’s maw, shouting her name.

Her heart clenches. This is too much. It’s too soon.

But still – this is her place. Not because it’s written, but because she chooses it.

(This camp – the cabins, the fields, this sun-soaked home – is hers to protect. This hill is where it begins.)

She opens her eyes. Steels herself for what’s coming.

And the moment she crosses the boundary, the sky shatters.

Ψ

When Selene was seven and a half years old, her mother whisked her away across the world.

Singapore was a place of heat and light, humming with life. They built a life there, fragile but so very bright.

Selene remembers bits of it: a cozy condo with a sunny balcony and an endless view of glittering towers. Late summer nights thick with spices and laughter, trying foods with names she still can’t pronounce. The heady scent of the earth after a monsoon, clinging to her skin.

(What she doesn’t remember: the terrible ache in her bones, the weight of godly essence fighting for dominance in her veins, and her body unable to keep up. The fever. The pleading cries she let out for days on end, begging for her mother and father to ease the pain. The way her bright eyes dulled into unseeing things, gold giving way to milky white. The shaking of her limbs. The way her skin stretched and rippled underneath her mother’s fingertips.)

Awakening Plague came at a price, as godly gifts do.

Ψ

Delphine has lost count of how many nights she’s spent at her daughter’s bedside.

She kneels by the bed, her hands shaking as she wrings a cloth over a porcelain bowl. She’s been trying to bring down the fever for what feels like days now.

Her lips move, but her voice is gone, worn raw by pleading prayers, rage, and desperation. By love.

Selene’s small body thrashes on the bed, fever-bright and terrifying in its fragility. Her breaths are too shallow. Her skin too pale. Her veins are pulsing, as if Plague itself has begun inking her blood.

(Gods be merciful, she hopes not. Let Hades take her, but Selene needs to live.)

Apollo watches from the far side of the room.

His hands flex uselessly at his sides. His godly essence is barely contained by his mortal form. It leaks out in golden wisps, singing everything around him.

Delphine has not looked at him once.

He is not enough. Not against this.

He, who brought ancient plagues, who could raise men from the brink of death with a touch – he is useless.

He presses the heel of his palm into his eye as if willing his old essence back into being. It doesn’t come.

(The gods have changed too much. Grown complacent. They have bent themselves to mortal society too much – their edges have dulled, their laws self-forged into chains. Once, he’d been the god of plague. Now, he is barely more than a story whispered in fear.)

“I can’t – I can’t fix it,” he offers up in prayer.

Delphine turns to him, her face frozen in rage and grief.

“Then why are you here, Apollo Phoebus?” she spits, her voice like a blade. “So you can watch her die?”

“Delphi,” Apollo pleads, but his lover’s face is immovable. “Delphi, please, I can’t –”

“Yes, we’ve already established you’re quite useless as you are.”

A silence stretches into the night air. Selene’s hands are unmoving.

(Don’t let her be dead. Please, don’t let her be dead. He won’t bear it.)

Selene lets out a whine.

“Our daughter is dying again,” Delphine hisses.

Apollo sinks next to her. His hands come to cradle her head, infinitely gentle, as if he’s afraid of breaking her. But Delphine is already broken.

“I know,” he answers, throat tight, and Delphine chokes down a sob.

The fever is not mortal. The Fates are calling their due.

His eyes stay fixed on his daughter’s form, too still and too pale against the soft yellow of her sheets. Her chest rattles with each feather-breath she takes.

The air thickens. A ripple passes through the room – the light flickers once.

Something ancient parts the fabric of the world, slipping through with the grace of a falling star.

Hecate, goddess of Mist and Crossroads, of Night, Moon and Magic, Mother of Witches, Keeper of paths, steps into the world like a blade sliding into a sheath.

She is no soft goddess of hearths and harvest.

She is the silence at night, the choice at crossroads, and the shadow of the moon.

Her cloak billows behind her, woven of mist and night sky. The keys at her waist make no sound as she approaches the bed.

Delphine is frozen. Next to her, Apollo is utterly still.

As the goddess meets her eyes, she sees a bottomless pit, reflecting not light but something much older.

It’s only when her shadow greedily reaches for Selene that Delphine scrambles to her feet, every instinct screaming to shield her daughter. Apollo reaches for a bow that is not there.

Hecate lifts one elegant hand – and the world stills. She hums. Her voice, when it comes, is low, almost musing.

“I felt a tremble in the paths,” she says, as if it explains anything.

She steps forward, and the earth itself seems to hush beneath her feet.

“Curious,” she murmurs, eyes tracing over Selene’s fever-wrecked body. “It is rare to have a disturbance strong enough to rattle my roads.”

She tilts her head – studies them, Delphine, tall and proud despite the trembling that betrays her fear, and Apollo, gleaming and impotent, both utterly helpless in the face of a child’s misery.

“And imagine,” Hecate continues, “my surprise, when I find the last of my line breathing still.”

For the better part of a year, she’d believed them dead.

Believed Apollo, ever the dutiful son, had obeyed the King’s edict. That Sélène, bearer of plague and prophecy, a daughter of Hecate’s line, had been snuffed out before she could set the world alight. That her mother, clever and defiant, had been erased with her. That her most faithful priestess was now left alone in the world, cradling the remnants of a tree that would bear no more fruit.

Hecate had mourned in her cold way. She’d stitched the Mist tighter around the mortal world, sealing up the wound like an experienced surgeon.

But now, the women of her line, surviving still. Clever. Resourceful.

The goddess allows herself a smile, razor-sharp and cold as starlight.

She points to Selene.

“This one,” she says, “is mine.”

Her voice is not cruel. It is only fact. Her eyes turn to Apollo.

“You did well, Bright One,” she compliments. “But the sun can only hide so much.”

He steps forward then, golden fury shimmering under his skin.

“What do you want,” he snarls more than asks.

Hecate’s eyes slide over to Delphine.

“I want nothing,” she tells her. “It is you who need me.”

“Why would you help us?”

“You are the last of the Aegeira. I will see you survive.”

Delphine studies the goddess and sees no lie.

“The fever will pass,” Hecate continues, “as it always does. But your child’s essence is too strong. You’ll be found out soon enough.”

“My mist will shield you. It will cloak your names, your faces, your very fates. I will weave it myself.”

Hecate holds Delphine’s gaze. An offer.

(A plea.)

“Your offers always come at a price,” Delphine says, and she speaks to both gods.

Apollo nods, silent and burning. He does not offer comfort.

“They do.”

“You have no say here, Bright One,” Hecate counters, voice a smooth velvet. “You went against the weave, despite knowing you could not protect her. Even you cannot see what she’ll become.”

The goddess’s eyes gleam – cold delight, ancient hunger, fathomless power.

For a moment, lost in the dark of them, Delphine sees. In a corner of her terrified mind, images flicker.

Her daughter, beneath a sunny sky, gold arrow in hand.

A boy with sea-green eyes reaches out for a hand falling from a cliff, anguished.

A girl, storm-born, planting her feet.

A throne shattered under a rain of stars.

A road, splintered down the middle.

A little girl, cowering in a corner, shielding away from the barks of vicious dogs.

Her daughter, alone, crowned in gold, face streaked with blood and light.

Apollo’s throat bobs. Delphine breathes out.

“You need me,” Hecate says. It is not a question.

Apollo steps forward, mouth opening – to protest, to plead, he doesn’t know – and Hecate does not even look at him.

“You cannot heal her,” she observes. “You are less than you were. We all are.”

The words strike Apollo like arrows. He knows.

“Let me cloak her.”

She lifts her hand higher in offer, like a master dangling a delicious bone in front of her starved dog.

A price, they ponder.

Selene moans softly in her fever, the gold in her veins blazing against too-thin skin.

No price is too high.

“An oath on the Styx,” Delphine whispers. She stands taller, curls falling down her back as she straightens. It frames her face like a halo. She has never been more beautiful. “Should I accept your offer, Hekátē, I’ll need you to swear your honesty.”

Hecate raises a brow.

“You would ask such a thing of me?”

“You will find, Hekátē, that there isn’t much I’m not willing to do where my daughter is involved.”

A pause. Katina raised her child well.

The world tightens.

The goddess of the Mist considers her for a heartbeat longer than mortals are meant to endure.

(Delphine doesn’t flinch.)

Finally, Hecate smiles—a slow, cold thing.

“Very well, child of mine,” the goddess concedes. “But understand that while I mean the child no harm, my weaving will not come without cost.”

Delphine does not look away. She stands her ground as the goddess, Magic herself, steps closer, shadows curling around her ankles.

“The child,” she explains. “Is already moon-touched. Fraying at the edges, crowned with prophecy, truth, and plague.”

The words seem to settle into Delphine’s bones.

“I will hide her – but I cannot promise the Mist won’t change her as much as it shields her.”

Her voice drops – it’s the silence of a crossing at night, the low rumble of ancient power beneath the earth.

“My weaving will protect her thread from those who wish her harm – but it’ll also sharpen the blade she’ll bear. And should she step into the light, the Mist will fall and expose her.”

Delphine breathes out slowly.

“Swear it,” she says again. “Should I accept, swear by the Styx that no harm – by your hand, your will, or your weaving, will come to my daughter, or Apollo Phoebus himself. Swear you won’t twist their fates, nor use their bond against them. If you mean to help, swear it.”

The light sputters, trembling at the demand.

"I swear by the River Styx," Hecate says, voice cutting across the room like the first chill of twilight,
"that no harm — by my hand, my will, or my weaving — shall come to Selene Arnaud, daughter of Apollo, or to Apollo Phoebus himself."

The shadows press closer.

"I swear I shall not twist their fates for my own ends," she continues, "nor use their bond against them."

The oath seals itself with a deep, rolling echo. Somewhere, far below, the River roars in answer. The air sharpens until it hurts to breathe.

Hecate lowers her hand, eyes glinting like dark moons. "Satisfied?"

Delphine nods once, her body trembling only after.

Only then does Hecate turn toward Selene. The Mist unfurls from her fingers, ancient and alive, wrapping around the child like the first breath of night.

Hecate lowers her hand.

"Done," she murmurs.

The Mist rises around her, silver and endless. It coils and weaves, threads latching to Selene's fever-ridden body with deliberate tenderness.

Selene sighs in her sleep—her skin cooler now, her breathing less ragged. But the pulse of plague remains, faint and terrible under her ribs.

Ψ

“Justice comes with storms,” Katina Arnaud once whispered to a six-year-old Selene, when the sky cracked open and Selene hid under the covers.

As thunder splits the air, she wonders if this – this unnatural downpour, this god-stained sky – is her final judgement.

(Maybe her father sent her to die after all.)

Selene gets soaked to the bone within seconds.

Rain lashes down in sheets, biting and furious. Lightning claws the sky, again and again, so bright it leaves afterimages in her vision, burned white-hot into her retinas.

(A storm in a place where storms don’t happen. Imagine that.)

Olympus is watching. Selene straightens her back.

Never apologize for existing.

She walks forward, water soaking her shoes, her suitcase trailing behind her like an afterthought. Her braids stick to her back like silk. Her cardigan clings to her arms.

She dared to live.

She won’t apologize for it.

The boundary recognized her. Accepted her.

If she wasn’t supposed to live, it wouldn’t have.

She may be young, but she knows enough about magic to know that.

Rain continues to pelt the earth like arrows.

Selene walks through it as though it’s a mere summer drizzle.

The Big House crests ahead – tall, and still, its porch lights flickering against the storm, windows shuttered like eyes braced for lightning. It looks like it’s holding its breath.

Thunder rolls overhead, and still Selene walks up the porch as if she’s been here a hundred times before.

She knocks once. The door opens with theatrical slowness.

Dionysus – Lord Dionysus, unmistakable in his divinity, his disdain, and his hideous taste in fabric – stares at her over the rim of a Diet Coke can. His leopard-print robe is thrown over a wrinkled hawaian shirt, like he couldn’t commit to either aesthetic.

“Khàîre, Lord Dionysus, Lord of Wine and Madness, twice-born by fire and womb,” Selene greets smoothly, head bowed in quiet respect. “I think I broke your camp.”

The god blinks.

“Chiron,” he calls without breaking eye contact, voice flat and emotionless. “Tell me there isn’t a pint-sized sun brat at my door.”

From the hallway, hooves click against wood. A tall, half-man, half-horse figure appears—stoic, dignified, until his eyes land on her. Then his brow creases in something too sharp to be called recognition.

Selene gives a polite smile and tries very hard to look smaller than she is.

Thunder shakes the roof.

“I was told you were expecting me?” Selene tries. Her voice cracks. “I might be a bit early, though – I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

Dionysus snorts, loud and theatrical. “There’s a lightning storm slamming into my Camp for the first time since—well, let’s not talk about that—and here you are. Glowing. Sopping wet. Radiating impending doom. You're the trouble.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Selene says earnestly. She's not really.

“You’re early,” Chiron says gently, his voice mild but searching. He studies her like she’s a book written in a language he half-remembers.

“My mother thought it’d be better if I came early – plenty of time for the storm to pass.” She looks up. As if hearing her, the storm grows louder. “It hasn’t yet.”

“Clearly,” Dionysus mutters, taking a loud slurp of his drink. “Next time, tell your mother to consult me before she drops a bomb into my lap.”

“I think she did,” Selene says, “with a fruit basket.”

That earns a pause.

Dionysus exhales. “Shouldn’t have trusted those grapes.”

Selene gets the distinct impression that her mother hasn’t been entirely truthful about what arrangements were made.

(It’d be just like Delphine, really, to wrap an omen in pretty parchment and garnish it with rosemary.)

“I’m Sélène Arnaud,” she says to Chiron, stepping forward with soaked shoes and squared shoulders. “Daughter of Apollo.”

Chiron tilts his head. “Your… parentage hasn’t yet been determined,” he says, cautious. “Normally, there’s a ceremony. A sign.”

“I don’t need one,” she says. “I’ve known since I was five.”

“Psssshhht,” Dionysus interjects. “That’s Apollo’s brat, alright. Look at her. Glows like a lantern and walks around like she owns the place.”

“I don’t,” Selene replies primly. “Not yet.”

Chiron makes a small, startled sound in his throat. His lips twitch upward, just barely.

Dionysus glares at his drink like it’s betrayed him. “I’m surrounded by lunatics. This whole place has gone mad.”

“You are the God of Madness,” Selene offers. “I’d think that was the point.”

He raises his can. “Don’t sass me, girl. I like your mother because she makes decent offerings and keeps me out of meetings. You, I’m not so sure.”

“About that – she told me to remind you that the grapes on your altar are starting to rot. You might want to move them.”

Dionysus narrows his eyes. “She bribed me with centuries-aged Dionysian heirloom grapes and then sent you here to ruin my summer.”

“It wasn’t personal,” Selene says helpfully.

“A waste of perfectly good grapes,” he grumbles.

A beat.

Chiron clears his throat. “It’s highly unusual for unclaimed demigods to be assigned housing, but given… the circumstances, I believe we can make an exception.”

Selene blinks. “Cabin Seven?”

Chiron nods, slowly. “Yes. It’s… clear where you belong.”

Her lips curl into something almost smug.

Thunder claps again.

“Yes, yes, you old blowhard, I hear you!” Dionysus yells at the ceiling.

“Mister D.”

The god sighs at Chiron and waves a lazy hand. “Fine. Fine, send someone to escort before our King floods the foyer. I’m being summoned.”

A blink later, Dionysus is gone, as if he was never there. Only the heady scent of grapes lingers in his wake. Chiron smiles.

“Do excuse him, Selene. I’m afraid our camp director is quite abrasive.”

“That’s okay, really – I guess I did cause him more paperwork.”

The centaur lets out a surprised laugh. “Quite.”

“Well, luckily for you, one of our camp counsellors came by before the storm. He should still be around somewhere. Let me call him.”

“Thank you, Chiron,” Selene smiles, relieved.

Now that Dionysus’s overpowering presence disappeared, she can focus a bit more. Gods are dizzying creatures to her – their threads bright and in constant motion.

Chiron turns towards the stairs. “Luke!”

Selene’s smile dims.

“Yes?” a voice calls out from the other side of the house.

“Please come quickly – we have a new camper!”

The footsteps that echo down the hall are heavier than the storm.

And Selene feels the first flicker of consequence.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: Storm-wrought

Ψ

The sky above Long Island fractures before it breaks.

A storm churns through the clouds like a predator on the hunt, blackened and boiling, furious in its descent. There are no stars—only the scent of salt and ozone, thick in Luke’s lungs as he scrambles uphill, dragging Grover by the wrist. His breath comes in heaves, not entirely from the run. His body is already broken in a dozen invisible places—fatigue gnaws at him, and fear follows closely behind.

And Thalia—gods, Thalia’s not with them anymore.

She’s behind them.

“I said go!” she’d shouted, voice sharp enough to cut through steel. Blood painted her mouth, smeared her armor. Her spear had flashed like a shard of the sky itself. “I’ll hold them!”

She always did.

Even when she shouldn’t have.

Grover stumbles behind him, crying and gasping, his legs buckling more than they move, hooves skidding against the wet grass. The edge of the Camp’s boundary comes ahead— Home. Sanctuary. Almost there.

Luke reaches the crest first.

He turns.

And the world slows.

Thalia stands just at the tree line, her small frame dwarfed by the pack of monsters descending on her. Hellhounds snarl and circle like smoke given weight, their eyes glinting ember-red. Behind them, the earth groans as the Cyclops emerges, the one that’s followed them since New Jersey. Its roar echoes like thunder across the hills, and Luke sees the faintest flicker of panic in Grover’s eyes.

But not in Thalia’s.

Never in Thalia’s.

She laughs—a wild, feral thing that cracks like a whip. Lightning’s twin. It’s not joy, but defiance.

Her shield is cracked. Her lip is split. And she’s smiling.

It rips something out of him.

“Thalia!” Luke screams, the name tearing from his throat. He tries to go back, feet slipping in the wet earth.

Grover wraps shaky arms around his waist. “We can’t! She said run, Luke, she said—”

“Let me go!” he snarls, voice raw and cracking. “She’s my—she’s—she’s all I’ve got!”

But the words fall apart.

Because she’s falling, too.

Thalia drops to one knee, her weight crumpling with it. Her shield shatters fully this time, splinters flying like stars. She doesn’t cry out. She braces herself instead—plants her spear and breathes in, like she’s preparing for the end.

And maybe she is.

Luke sees red.

He wrenches free from Grover with a strength he doesn’t recognize. His sword is in his hand, glowing faintly, the celestial bronze humming in warning.

“I’ll kill them!” he roars. “I’ll kill all of them!”

He takes one step past the boundary—and hears a voice.

Small. Clear. Certain.

Aim for the eye.

He freezes.

The girl from the alley. Selene. The one with the braids and the honey-warm voice and blazing golden eyes. She’d pressed candied pecans into his hand and told him he would live.

She’d looked at him like she knew.

That voice—her voice—slices through the chaos like a thread of fate, taut and irrefutable.

Aim for the eye .

He moves.

The Cyclops bellows as it charges. Its club is massive, but Luke is faster. He ducks, rolls, comes up behind it—just like she said. Aim for the eye. He lunges upward, blade flashing—

Thalia’s crumpled near a tree, fighting to stay conscious.

His wrath is a blade.

And it makes him sloppy.

He lunges—too hard. The cyclops catches him with a backhanded swipe and he goes flying, landing hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

He hits the ground hard enough to black out for a moment, the wind knocked out of him. Pain explodes across his ribs, his lungs screaming.

He coughs. Blood spatters the grass.

Somewhere, Grover screams his name.

He doesn’t answer.

He forces his eyes open—and sees Thalia again. She’s dragging herself upright, using her spear like a crutch. She locks eyes with him.

There’s so much in that look.

Pride. Fury. Regret. A thousand words they’ll never get to say.

Then—

The sky answers.

Lightning splits the storm with the voice of an angry god.

A bolt of lightning comes down like judgment itself—white-hot and divine, it arcs through the clouds, strikes the ground—

And hits Thalia square in the chest.

The world explodes in light.

When it fades—

She’s gone.

Where she stood, a tree now rises.

A pine tree. Ancient already. Proud and unmoving. Its needles glisten with fresh rain and divine essence. Her jacket flutters from one branch, caught like a banner at half-mast.

Grover falls to his knees.

Luke doesn’t.

He howls.

He howls like a beast, like something feral and broken beyond repair. He screams her name again and again until his throat gives out. He claws at the earth, tears at the grass with bloodied hands, his sword discarded like a broken limb.

“Fates damn you!” he bellows at the sky. “She was your daughter!”

But the gods are silent.

They always are.

When Chiron arrives, half-man and half-solemn, his voice is quiet. “She is part of the camp now. Protected. Forever.”

Luke doesn’t hear him.

He sees only a tree.

He feels only the weight of betrayal.

Thalia Grace died—

And Olympus did nothing.

Ψ

The storm hasn’t let up since she crossed the boundary.

Rain lashes the windows of the Big House in furious sheets, blown sideways by wind that howls like a thing with teeth. Thunder rumbles in the earth itself. Even the hearth burns lower, as though bowing to the pressure in the air.

Chiron watches the storm with the caution of someone who knows divine anger when he hears it. “You’ll have to brave it,” he says at last, resigned and apologetic. “It’s not easing anytime soon. I’ll have the nymphs bring warm food to all cabins.”

He turns towards her. “Luke will escort you.”

Selene nods – because there’s no use asking the storm to stop, and even less use waiting for it to be kind.

She hasn’t dared to look at Luke ever since she’s heard his voice. Mostly because she knows what she’ll find in his eyes, and she’s terrified of it.

The floor creaks. She finally glances up.

Luke Castellan leans against the doorframe like he’s trying not to splinter it. His hood is down, golden curls already damp. His jaw is tight. Arms crossed. His mouth doesn’t move. Neither do his eyes.

He looks older. Not taller, though he is, or stronger—though his shoulders have hardened into something sure—but emptier. Like grief took a knife to his chest and left him hollow, walking forward anyway.

Selene stares.

It’s him. It’s really him.

She takes in everything in one breath: the calluses on his hands, the coiled tension in his limbs, a sign he hasn’t stopped running since the night everything fell apart.

Relief blooms in her chest, but doesn’t get the chance to settle.

Because Luke doesn’t meet her gaze. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t say a word.

He turns and opens the front door. The storm screams through the gap.

Selene hesitates.

Her cardigan droops off one shoulder. Her suitcase’s wheels rattle on the wood as she adjusts it. The hem of her skirt is still wet. Her boots are too big, worn down by travel and time, and her braids—dark and glossy—stick to her face in long, wet ropes.

Still, she follows.

The door slams shut behind them.

The wind hits her like a slap.

Rain pelts her from every side, drenching her again within seconds. Her cardigan soaks through to the bone. Water streams down her cheeks. The path from the Big House to the cabins is nothing but mud and lightning-glimpsed shadow.

Luke walks several paces ahead, fast and deliberate.

He doesn’t look back.

Selene speeds up, boots slipping slightly in the muck. “Thalia would’ve loved this weather,” she says, half a smile tugging at her lips.

No answer.

She tries again, louder this time. “I used to wonder if you made it. If you were okay.”

Luke stops.

The rain drives harder. The thunder breaks somewhere overhead.

He turns around.

Selene falters. Her smile disappears.

He’s soaked through. His hoodie clings to him like armor, water running down his face, caught in the hollows of his collarbone. His eyes—gray, cold, and sharp as drawn steel—cut through the downpour.

She freezes. No one’s ever looked at her like that before: like she’s something wrong, broken. Something venomous.

“Okay?” Luke repeats. His voice isn’t raised, but the thunder seems to echo it anyway. “You thought I might be okay?”

She nods, unsure, heart pounding. “I hoped—”

“Don’t,” he snaps. “Don’t do that.”

“I was so scared,” she says quietly. “After Thalia—I didn’t know if you—”

“Don’t,” Luke says. His voice is low. Controlled. Wrapping rage in ice.

Selene stares at him, blinking against the rain.

Luke steps closer.

“You don’t get to do that,” he says, each word precise. “You don’t get to show up and act like we’re picking up where we left off.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not what?” he snaps. “Pretending we’re friends? Pretending she didn’t die?”

Selene flinches.

“I didn’t want her to—”

“You weren’t there.”

The words are loud. Raw. They cut through the storm louder than thunder.

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

“I—I didn’t know what would happen,” she whispers.

“No,” Luke says, stepping even closer, looming now. “You didn’t. Because you’re a kid. And you got to go home.”

Selene shakes her head.

“You had one!” he roars, and thunder answers him. “You had a mother. You had walls. You didn’t have to drag a dying girl in hopes of safety. You didn’t have to bury her  with nothing but a name and a scream.”

Selene stares up at him, soaked and shivering, her braids limp and clinging to her cheeks. Her lips are pale. Her knuckles whiten where she clutches the talisman under her cardigan.

She says nothing.

Luke exhales. It shakes.

He looks down at her and sees her again: the child beneath the name, with threads of gold under her skin. Sees that she is small and terrified. Her nose is red from the cold. Her eyes—those terrible, seeing eyes—are wide with grief she hasn’t earned.

And something in him rages.

Because she’s here.

Alive.

And Thalia is not.

“You don’t belong here,” he says, voice lower now. Cracked open. “You think you do, but you don’t. This place—it’ll chew you up. And when it does, don’t expect anyone to save you.”

Selene blinks. A tear slips down her cheek, indistinguishable from the rain.

She nods once. Doesn’t say a word.

She turns and walks toward Cabin Seven with slow, careful steps. Like she’s afraid of making a sound. She picks up her suitcase. Her knees buckle a little under its weight. She doesn’t look back.

The golden door of the cabin swings open for her, warm light spilling out like a pulse. It swallows her whole.

Luke stays frozen in place, chest rising and falling like he’s just run for miles.

He presses a palm to his face. He doesn’t know what hurts more—the look in her eyes, or the cold satisfaction of seeing it there.

“I hate you,” he whispers.

But it’s not her he’s talking to.

Not really.

Ψ

The rain falls soft and steady now, in thick sheets that blanket the hills of Camp Half-Blood.

The worst of the storm is over, but thunder still echoes through the trees like drumbeats in a distant war. Lightning flickers once—then again—brief enough to light up the hollow silence of Cabin 7.

Selene hasn’t left the cabin in days.

No one tells her to stay inside, and no one comes to ask her out, either. That’s fine. That’s better.

She sits cross-legged on the floor, her fingers trailing over the knots in the cabin’s wooden beams. The hearth isn’t lit. There’s no point. It feels wrong, somehow, to strike a flame in a place that doesn’t know her yet.

Cabin 7 is meant for the children of Apollo. The walls are etched with symbols of healing, light, song. A lyre carved in golden thread above the beds. Laurel crowns are at each headboard.

Luke may be right. She doesn’t belong here.

The silence is thick. Familiar. Selene doesn’t hate it, but she doesn’t like it either.

Outside, she hears voices from the courtyard—campers training under the pavilion awning, sparring with wooden swords. The occasional shout. A laugh. Then a lull.

Selene presses her back to the wall and draws her knees to her chest.

“Que de la gueule,” she whispers to herself.

Her confidence fled the moment she crossed the cabin’s threshold. Her mother had told her to expect backlash the moment she entered camp, but she didn’t quite imagine it’d be to this extent.

Campers don’t talk to her. Not rudely. Just not at all. They glance once. Then away. Like she’s a mirror they’re afraid to look too long into.

And Selene – well, she doesn’t try to fix it. She’s good at hiding.

She chews the inside of her cheek, thoughtful. The rain has eased a bit, by the sound of it, so maybe she’ll take a walk. Breathe in fresh air.

She hears a shimmer in the air, followed by the sound of water trickling, though there’s none in the room. Then colors – soft and prismatic – ripple across the far wall.

She scrambles up, nearly tripping over her own foot, and stands up straight just as the rainbow sharpens.

“Maman?” she asks, voice tight.

Delphine’s face appears in the air, softly glowing, surrounded by candlelight. She’s brushing her hair out of her face, startled for only half a second before her expression melts into concern.

“Mon soleil,” she breathes. “You look—are you alright?”

Selene nods too quickly. Her throat closes.

“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Camp is nice, when it’s not raining. The air smells like pine all the time.”

Delphine doesn’t say anything.

“It’s quiet,” Selene adds. “There are no monsters here.”

“Ah,” her mother says gently, “so it’s paradise, then.”

Selene tries to laugh, but it breaks halfway through. She shakes her head. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

Silence.

Delphine’s voice softens. “Is it the storm?”

Selene’s shoulders jerk. “They think it’s my fault.”

Her mother hums—not disagreeing, not confirming. Just listening.

“I was expecting it, since you told me, but uh – maybe not to this extent. I didn’t want this.”

She means Zeus’ wrath, Luke’s hatred, and a thousand other things.

Delphine’s gaze is steady. “No one said you did.”

“But they’re scared. Of me. Like I’m going to crack the sky again just by walking near them.”

Her fingers curl in her lap.

“I think maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

Delphine’s expression doesn’t shift. But something in the air does. It’s not anger—it’s grief. Or maybe fear. Or both.

“Sélène,” she says, “you belong there.”

“You keep saying that – truth is, no one wants me here.”

“That doesn’t change that you belong.”

The silence stretches.

Then: “Do you want to come home?”

Selene opens her mouth. She doesn’t say yes. But she doesn’t say no.

Delphine nods slowly, like she expected it. “I’ll make the call if you ask me to. But not tonight. Give it one more day.”

Selene swallows.

“Okay.”

“I’m proud of you,” Delphine adds softly.

Selene’s eyes sting.

“You shouldn’t be,” she says. “I’m not doing anything brave. I haven’t left the cabin in three days.”

Delphine’s smile is quiet and deep. “Sometimes surviving is the bravest thing.”

The rainbow flickers. The connection’s waning.

“I’ll call again tomorrow,” her mother says.

Selene nods, biting her lip so hard it hurts.

“Je t’aime,” Delphine says.

“Me too,” Selene whispers.

The light vanishes.

She’s alone again. The cabin feels darker now.

Selene stares at the hearth. At the unlit torch. She curls into herself and breathes through the sob building in her chest.

Then she doesn’t.

She lets it come.

No one hears. No one knocks. She cries into her blanket and curls tighter, willing the world to go on without her.

She stays like that for hours.

And then – something shifts. Selene blinks. She sits up slowly.

She knows what’s coming before it does. The air smells like salt and metal. Thunder again—this time closer.

And then— the air thickens. It presses down on her skin, on her bones, like she’s sinking through oil instead of air.

She tries to move, but doesn’t have a body anymore. There is no light, but still her eyes burn. A scent fills her lungs – crushed bay leaves and sun-warmed metal, laurel and blood, old magic and wet stone. She’s tasted it before – war.

A voice speaks. It’s her father’s – not as she’s heard him before. Not the warm shape of Fred. This is Phoebus, radiant and wrathful.

I did what any father would do.

Selene turns, blindly, but there’s no face to see, only heat. Only burning light, the kind she’s not supposed to stand before.

Something cold brushes past her – a whisper, silk trailing over stone. She smells oranges and old wine. Someone chuckles, unkind.

She’s a threat.

A child.

Voices rise into her ears and clash. Some clap like hammers in the forge. Others slither. One cuts through them all – steady, dry, like parchment being folded.

And yet she lives.

There are hands around her, too big to be human. They’re not real, nor tactile, but she’s standing too close to power.

Plague, a male voice spits, harsh. The scent of iron follows it. Prophecy, another voice sighs.

Truth, a female voice cuts through the air, cool as a morning fog. This one is decisive.

Selene turns again, unbidden. Her head spins.

A feather touch to her cheek. A wolf growling, defending its pack. Silence.

Let her live – a verdict. The world holds its breath. She clutches her chest and feels the terrible stillness of balance tipping.

Let her live.

The words echo like bones rolling in a cup.

A flash of gold. A sun-scorched oath under war drums. A thread snaps.

The cabin returns, out of focus.

Selene’s on the floor, still curled under her blanket, cold with sweat, fingers white-knuckled around the edge of it. She heaves. Once. Twice.

Olympus voted in favor of keeping her alive. That matters.

She wipes her face on her sleeve, breath steadying at last. The dark of the cabin feels less heavy now, less like a cage. She stands upright, braids sticking to her damp skin.

She’s alive.

When morning comes, she resolves to walk out of the cabin as herself.

Unapologetically alive.

Ψ

Selene is lounging on the cabin’s porch when her world expands, yet again.

She’s halfway through a fascinating read on dracaena, the book’s weathered edges a familiar and comforting weight in her hands.

Today marks a week since she arrived at Camp. The storm let up abruptly three days ago – by now, campers seem to have regained their footing and settled back into their habits.

She’s tentatively tried reaching out to campers: mostly Hephaestus kids, her right-side neighbors.

(Her left-side neighbors, Ares’ children, seemed too rowdy when she finally gathered the courage to get out of her cabin.)

She met Charles Beckendorf, Cabin 9’s counselor. He’s kind and comes with a Cabin 10 fan club, which means she also met Aphrodite kids.

Silena Beauregard waves at her from where she stands at Cabin 10. Selene tentatively waves back.

A week already. She can barely believe it.

She’s learned the creaks of the cabin’s floorboards, the uneven tilt of the sun through its shutters, the way the breeze carries the scent of cedar and lemon through the rafters. It’s a quiet kind of knowing, the type to settle into her bones, earned by use and proximity.

Her space is the bunk by the window, the farthest from the entrance, the one bathed in gold before sunset and silver when night falls. Her notebook rests on the sill, and her sandals line up neatly at the foot of the bed. The silence, too, has grown familiar.

The sun is high when her attention drifts from her book to the voices she hears cresting over the edge of the hill.

The sound rolls down the path and curls around her like a tide coming in. Her throat tightens.

Underneath her, she feels the cabin shift.

It breathes. Straightens. The warmth of the air deepens like honey melting into the wood. From her spot, she sees the ceiling brightening, and laurel fills her nostrils. The air vibrates with something eager.

She feels the pull before she sees them – the unmistakable pull of shared essence echoes in her bone. The sun is calling itself home.

She barely has time to stand before a teenager comes barreling towards her, beaming.

“There you are!” he crows, grinning.

She distantly recognizes chestnut hair and blue eyes. Lee, her mind supplies.

“Selene, right?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer. He sweeps her into a hug that lifts her clean off the ground.

Selene makes a startled, undignified sound. Lee laughs and spins.

“You’re lighter than I thought,” he says, setting her down. “I’m Lee, by the way.”

“You’re stronger than you look,” she counters, smoothing down her hair. She offers a tentative smile. “Nice to meet you, Lee.”

The teen beams.

“Finally,” he says, bringing his hands up in prayer, “A little sister who doesn’t try to stab me in my sleep!”

“Yet,” adds a dry voice behind him.

Selene turns. Another one of her brothers is here, slouching lazily across the porch railing, battered guitar across his back. He has the air of someone who’s always exactly where he means to be.

“Don’t mind him,” Lee tells her, throwing an arm around her. They must look ridiculous. “No one’s raining on my parade today!”

“Lemme try,” Michael drawls.

Selene glances between them, amused. They don’t look very much alike except for their shining blond hair and glowing skin, and yet, no one can deny they’re brothers.

Lee squeezes her again. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

At Selene’s confused stare, he adds: “Dad’s been talking about you for months. Seriously.”

“Let her breathe, man,” Michael calls, rolling his eyes. He’s perched himself on the porch’s railing. “And look, here’s the rest of the circus.”

Selene lifts her head. Those are faces she recognizes: Austin and Kayla.

Kayla’s curls are longer than she remembers and pulled back into a high ponytail. Her violin case is strapped to her back. Austin, next to her and a whole head smaller, carries a saxophone.

Her sister doesn’t smile right away. Instead, she gives Selene a long, appraising look, like she’s measuring how sharp her edges are.

She breaks into a huge smile. “Hiya, sticker girl!”

Selene relaxes. She makes a show of blinking too slow, and drawls, “Hiya, Kayla.”

“You’re taller than I remember. It’s weird, don’t do that.”

“Still emotionally taller than you, though.”

Michael lets out a low whistle. “She bites.”

“I like her,” Kayla tells Michael, bumping shoulders with Selene on her way up the steps. “Guess it’s just two girls again. Vickie’s off being a grown-up. Oi, Austin, stop playing at being a fish and say hello to our new sis!””

The boy lifts a hand, then lowers it awkwardly. “Hey?”

Selene nods. “Hi. You’ve stopped glowing.”

Austin flushes to the roots of his hair. Kayla barks a laugh, clutching at Lee’s shoulder, and Michael wheezes.

“He never really stops,” Lee tells her, commiserating. She nods seriously. “It’s a pain for ambushes, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You guys are mean,” Austin mutters. “Enfoirés.”

“Tu brilles plus que moi, idiot, ” Selene answers back, making her eyes big and round. She struggles not to laugh as she sees Austin’s eyes widen with panic.

And then her littlest brother chooses to make himself known: Will comes bounding up the steps and throws himself at her with all his might. Selene groans and takes three steps back, falling into Lee, who lets out a delighted shout.

“Hi, Selene!” Will greets.

Something in her unlocks. “Hi, Will.”

“You’ve got more freckles.”

“You’ve got more people.”

He laughs. “I promise they’re super nice.”

She sure hopes so. She shakes him off and accepts Kayla’s offered hand.

“How long have you been here?” Will asks.

“A week,” she answers, dusting herself off.

“Woah, seriously?” Michael raises an eyebrow. “And you survived?”

Selene shrugs. “It’s been quiet.”

“Quiet, she says,” Lees bemoans. He sprawls down on his bed dramatically. “Quiet! When Dad’s been driving me insane!”

“Us,” Michael corrects.

“Gods, what a drama queen,” Kayla groans in turn. “I swear – every day, it was Will this, Selene that – like I wasn’t even there!”

“No offense,” Austin adds to Selene and Will.

They look at him, golden eyes wide. “Uh – what?” Will questions.

“You guys are his undisputed favorites, you know?” Michael tells them. “He literally manifested each of us a photo album of you two.”

Selene blinks.

“Complete with annotations,” Austin says solemnly. “Here’s Willy at five, healing a sparrow. Look at him. Flawless!”

Kayla swoons. “And this is Selene, the apple of my eye: here’s her holding an arrow like a spear.”

“She was three,” Lee says reverently.

Selene buries her face in her hands. “He didn’t.”

“He did.” Lee confirms. “He is so ridiculous about you. It’s beautiful.”

“Completely unhinged, you mean,” Selene deadpans.

“Hm. That too.”

The porch is full now — of limbs stretched out, music echoing faintly from Michael’s strings, of sandals kicked off and scattered bags beginning to open. Someone's unpacking snacks. Someone else (Kayla) is grumbling about sunscreen.

Selene doesn’t realize when the conversation drifts past her, carried forward by the centrifugal force of familiarity — of siblings falling back into rhythm.

Will's talking Austin through a new sketch he’s been working on, excited and breathless. Kayla's elbow-deep in Lee’s bag, clearly stealing something. Michael twirls a pencil between his fingers, gaze distant, already lost in the beginnings of a song.

And Selene — Selene leans back against the sun-warmed post, curls damp from the humidity, book forgotten in her lap.

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to.

Her siblings’ laughter curls around her like a ribbon. The porch creaks in the way she’s learned it always does near sunset. A breeze threads through the open door behind her and tugs gently at the curtains inside.

From this angle, she can see inside the cabin — her bed by the window, bathed in gold. Someone has set their bag down near hers. A sweater she doesn’t recognize is already hanging from one of the bunks.

The silence that used to live here — that had taken root in the corners of the walls, quiet and reverent — isn’t gone. It’s shifted. Softened.

Now, it hums with presence.

It’s not home, not yet, but it’s something close. It’s becoming.

Selene lets her head tilt back against the post. Closes her eyes.

For a moment, she lets herself belong.

Ψ

Honey-light filters through the trees as Selene focuses on her stance, bow trembling slightly in her hands. Her draw is improving—slowly. At least she’s no longer holding it backwards, which Lee still hasn’t stopped teasing her for.

She pulls the bowstring back with effort. It trembles in her grip, and she lets the arrow fly—

—and misses. Again.

“Well,” drawls a voice behind her. “At least the dirt is thoroughly intimidated.”

Selene freezes mid-draw. The arrow dips. She doesn’t turn.

Lee looks up from where he’s sprawled on the bench, chewing something. “Really?” he says. “You came all the way from your brooding tree perch to heckle a ten-year-old?”

Luke doesn’t answer. He steps into view, loose-limbed and calm. His expression is unreadable, which is how Selene knows it’s bad.

“You’re holding the bow wrong,” he says casually, crossing his arms.

“I know,” Selene replies, without looking at him.

“And your elbow’s too low.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why are you still doing it wrong?”

She finally turns. Her face is flushed, but not from embarrassment.

“Because,” she says, “I’m ten. And tired. And because this bow is mean and hates me personally.”

That almost gets a laugh from Michael. Lee snorts. Luke doesn’t smile.

He nods at the target. “It’s not going to shoot itself, you know.”

Selene mimics his posture—arms crossed, head tilted. “Is that what happened to you? No one told you bows needed actual effort?”

Will groans from his sketchbook. “Oh no. She’s doing it again.”

“Doing what?” Kayla asks.

“The thing where she goes soft-voice-snarky and suddenly everyone in a ten-foot radius needs a healing salve for their ego.”

Luke raises an eyebrow. “So this is what Cabin Seven’s like now? Comedy hour?”

“No,” Lee says, suddenly not joking. “This is what siblings are like.”

Luke’s eyes flicker to Selene. “She doesn’t belong here.”

The words are too quiet for the other campers to hear. But Selene hears them. And more importantly, she understands what he’s trying not to say.

She bites her lip. “I don’t think Thalia agrees with you.”

That lands. His jaw ticks once.

Lee rises. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Selene says quickly, but Luke speaks over her.

“She’s not what she seems.”

“Wow,” Kayla says. “Riddles. Very spooky.”

Luke turns to the others now. He’s not angry. Not loud. But something in his stillness sets the air on edge.

“She’s not just a demigod,” he says. “She’s a prophet.”

Selene goes still.

Will looks up sharply. “What?”

Luke’s voice stays calm. “Ask Chiron. Ask Mr. D. She’s not claimed. She’s not registered. She shouldn’t be here, and the gods are staying quiet for a reason.”

Silence.

Lee’s face shifts. “That’s a shit thing to say about a kid.”

“She’s not just a kid,” Luke replies, finally looking at Selene. “You all think she’s sweet. Quiet. Kind.”

He gestures toward her, eyes hard. “But she’s not claimed. That means she hasn’t been accepted. She’s undetermined by the gods’ own silence. And do you know what that means in prophecy terms?”

“No,” Selene says softly. “But I bet you’re about to tell us.”

Luke ignores her. “It means they don’t know what she is. They don’t know what she’ll become. That’s why they’re watching her.”

Selene swallows. She blinks too fast.

The wind catches the edge of her cardigan. She looks impossibly small. But the air around her starts to bend—just slightly, like heat over asphalt.

Kayla steps in front of her.

“You’re going after her because she’s small and strange and it makes you uncomfortable,” she says. “You think that’s leadership?”

“She’s dangerous,” Luke replies.

“She’s a ten-year-old with a hand-me-down bow,” Michael mutters. “You’re literally bullying a ten-year-old.”

Selene lifts her chin. Her voice is soft, careful.

“You don’t actually think I’m dangerous,” she says. “You think I’m inevitable. And that scares you.”

Luke flinches. Just enough.

She steps out from behind Kayla.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she says. “I didn’t ask to carry gods in my ribs. I didn’t ask to see things I can’t explain, or wake up with my mouth full of words that aren’t mine.”

Her fists are tight at her sides now.

“But I’m here. I’m trying. I’m a kid,” she repeats, voice cracking. “And if you’re scared of that? Then maybe the gods are right to stay silent.”

The wind stills.

Luke stares at her for one long moment, then turns and walks away. No flourish. No last word. Just footsteps fading into the grass.

For a while, no one moves.

Then Will mutters, “That was… a lot.”

Kayla looks down at Selene, eyebrows drawn together.

“Are you okay?” she asks, voice low.

Selene hesitates. She shakes her head. “No.”

Lee crouches beside her. “Hey. Sundrop.”

She glances over.

“You didn’t deserve that,” he says. “And you didn’t have to handle it like that either—but you did. That was brave.”

She sniffs. “No, it was stupid.”

He shrugs. “You’re ten. You’re allowed to be stupid sometimes.”

Then he bumps her shoulder with his.

“But you’re also a little terrifying.”

She leans into him just a little.

“Good,” Selene whispers. I hope the gods notice.

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Text

ACT I: Sunbound

Ψ

The porch of Cabin 7 is awash with lazy summer motion – Will is tracing idle spirals in his sketchbook, Kayla’s tuning her violin on the top step, and Lee is lying flat on his back, tossing grapes in the air and catching them in his mouth, with the confidence of someone who never misses. Michael lounges nearby, half-asleep on his guitar.

Selene is curled at the edge of the porch, hair loose for once, her cheek pressed to the wood. Her fingers toy with a leaf that fell earlier. The heat is steady against her spine. A single wasp hums nearby, and she can almost pretend the world is slow.

Almost.

A grape lands squarely on Michael’s cheek. He jolts upright with a noise of betrayal.

“Lee,” he warns.

“I’m practicing,” Lee says innocently. “I need to perfect my precision.”

“You’re a pest,” Kayla offers helpfully, not looking up.

Michael grumbles something unkind in ancient Greek.

Selene doesn’t laugh, though she wants to. She keeps her head pressed to the floor, watching sunlight drip through the porch slats. Her heart’s been beating oddly today.

“I swear to the gods, Lee,” Michael continues to mutter. “Is this payback for yesterday?”

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” Lee refutes. “I have talent. You’re just jealous.”

“I’ll show you jealous –”

“Selene?” Will’s voice cuts in,  soft and gentle, the way it always is when he’s not sure he’s allowed to interrupt. “You’re really quiet. Are you okay?”

Selene opens her mouth to answer – but the world shifts before she can.

Everything slows. Sound warps. Light breaks across her vision like glass.

She’s no longer on the porch. She’s –

A blade. Twisted and dark, with the feel of something ancient.

Someone’s screaming her name. A boy. His voice is raw, his hands reaching for something – someone – who’s already gone.

A little girl cries, silent and still and alone in a place that smells like damp stone.

Salt. Lemongrass. Strawberry fields.

The taste of copper in her mouth.

The knowing arrives, sharp and inevitable, and settles into her bones like a second heartbeat. The vision fades, but its echo never does.

She gasps.

Sound returns, sudden and violent, dragging her back into herself. She lurches forward, hands splayed flat against the porch.

She heaves, ears ringing.

“ – lene. Selene!”

She blinks rapidly. The world snaps back into place.

The wasp is gone. Kayla’s violin is no longer in her lap. Michael’s halfway up, his mouth open.

Selene lifts her chin. Her gaze lands on Will first. He looks frightened. Her heart twists.

“Sorry,” she says, breathless but calm. Too calm. “I spaced out.”

Kayla stares at her, brow furrowed. “Was that prophecy?”

“Yes,” Selene nods. She quickly adds, “I’m fine. It happens sometimes. Nothing to worry about.”

Michael’s still watching her, expression carefully blank. Lee’s eyes flick towards the railing and back again. “Didn’t sound like nothing. Something about a sword and…screaming?”

Selene forces out a laugh. It’s thin and fragile, and certainly not fooling anybody.

“It’s doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it.”

Will inches closer on his hands and knees, sketchbook abandoned. “Was it bad?”

His voice is a whisper. The words themselves feel heavy coming from him.

Selene – hesitates.

She wants to lie. She wants to say no – it was fine, great even. But Will is looking at her with her own eyes. She breathes.

“A bit,” she says instead.

“Are they always bad?”

“Sometimes.”

She doesn’t mention how frequent the visions have been getting. How quickly they’re coming, and how little warning she gets now. More often than not, she wakes up gasping, her skin damp with sweat and her jaw sore from clenching her teeth too hard.

Prophecy is a gift that comes with rules attached, but no instruction manual. It comes with consequences and too many strings attached, with a careful balance upset at the simplest of acts.

But Selene’s handled it. Always. It used to frighten her – back when she was four and feeling so small, shaking in the dark, but she’s learned to rein it in. She knew not to tell her mother every time, because there was nothing she could do about it. No one can carry this but her.

“It’s fine,” she repeats, more to herself than her siblings. “I always have. It’s fine.”

Kayla and Lee exchange a look. “You don’t have to. You’re not alone.”

“I am, though. I don’t need your help.”

 The words come out sharper than she intended, but she doesn’t take them back.

The silence that follows is awkward.

Selene gets to her feet. Her hands are steady now, her face smooth, controlled.

“I’m going for a walk,” she says.

Will stands too. “I’ll come with you –”

Lee catches his ankle before he can step towards her. “Sundrop. Let her be, will ya?”

Selene smiles at her oldest brother gratefully and turns before anyone else can offer help or questions, or concern. Her sandals slap softly against the porch steps as she goes. The heat clings to her skin. Her stomach is hollow and tight.

As she disappears around the side of the cabin, she releases a slow breath and presses two fingers to her sternum, where her heart still pounds under her ribs like a caged bird.

She doesn’t need help. She needs control.

If she loses that – if the visions keep coming, faster, darker, louder – she’s not sure what she’ll become.

And she’s not sure who’ll still be there when she does.

Ψ

Every morning is a ritual in the Apollo cabin. The air warms before the sun crests the hill. The smell of pine and citrus filters through the window, and the floorboards creak as if the god himself kisses the wood. Someone always hums or cracks a joke before dawn.

Selene is awake long before the sun can find her, bundled beneath her covers, golden eyes fixed on the beams overhead. She listens to the sounds of her siblings stretching, and laughing, soft footsteps over floorboards, Kayla muttering about missing arrows, Michael doing the same over loose strings, and Will sneezing three times in a row.

She pulls the blanket higher over her head and wills herself not to feel like a shadow in her own cabin.

Ψ

They’re gathered under the cedar tree behind the armory – the light there dapples through a dozen layers of green, casting soft shadows that shift like water.

Kayla’s arrow splits another, straight through the shaft.

“That, my good losers, is how it’s done,” she says, spinning on her heel and bowing. “Dead center. Again.”

“Show-off,” Michael mutters, biting viciously into his apple.

“I’m just better than you,” Kayla singsongs, already lining up another arrow.

Will sketches in a quiet corner, an anatomy book open in his lap. Austin is chewing his lips and scratching his head, clearly at a loss for the next part of his solo.

Lee demonstrates his latest stunt: whistling a full chorus while juggling three bows. Selene claps politely while the others roar.

“Alright, champs – the winner of archery – Kaylala,” Lee announces. “Not that anyone’s surprised.”

Kayla flashes a grin; “As if I’d let any of you poor sods take my title.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Puh-lease. If I had any upper body strength, you’d be toast.”

“Uh uh. That a challenge, bard?”

Lee stops their bickering with a wave of his hands. “Mike, you’re a healer and a bard. Play to your strengths.”

“She started it!”

Kayla turns towards Selene. “Alright, your turn. We already know you’re terrible with a bow, and you see some spooky shit.”

Lee frowns. “Language.”

Her sister continues, unbothered. “Anything else in your magic hat?”

“What do you mean?” Selene asks, despite knowing exactly what she means.

Michael sits down beside her. “Well, every one of us has their thing, y‘know. A primary gift, if you will, but usually there’s a few minor ones as well. Take Austin, for example: he’s a human torch, but not completely useless with a sax, and terrible at healing.”

“Hey!”

“Me, on the other hand,” Lee takes over. “I’m strongest with music, but I can stitch up a wound if needed. Kayla’s an archer, but she can hold a mean pitch.”

He nudges her. “Dad’s made us all weird in different ways. You must’ve noticed something?”

Selene’s skin goes tight, fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeve.

With great difficulty, she says, “I don’t know,” and ignores the burning in her throat.  “I’m still figuring it out, I guess.”

Will leans forward from his place beside Austin. “Can you sing?”

Selene forces a smile. “Not well. And I’m no good at archery, if that wasn’t obvious,” Lee and Kayla snicker at that. “Oh, and music’s no good either. A harp bit me once.”

“Understandable,” Kayla mutters. “Rude instrument.”

“That’s okay,” Lee is quick to reassure. “You still have plenty of time to find things out.”

The conversation rolls on, but her heartbeat doesn’t slow. She doesn’t dare to tell them she does know her gifts.

She knows them all too well.

Ψ

She’s told there’s an order.

First prophecy, then truth, and finally, plague.

Prophétie, Vérité, Fléau.

Truth came the winter after prophecy, quietly. Slipping in like frost beneath a door.

She remembers sitting at her desk, blue paper stars taped to the windows. The classroom was warm, filled with the scratch of pencils and the whirr of the heating vents.

Sophie had turned to her like usual, face bright with hope, and held up a drawing.

“Do you like it?”

Selene had wanted to say yes. She’d opened her mouth with the lie balancing on her tongue – what came out was something else entirely.

Sophie had burst into tears before she’d even finished. The teacher had stared, aghast. “Sélène! Why would you say that?”

The school had called her grandmother, worried something was wrong at home.

Selene hadn’t dared to tell them she was the wrong.

That night, and all the others that followed, Katina had sat Selene at the kitchen table.

“Repeat these sentences,” she’d said, “and do not stop until your tongue learns how to shape them.”

Selene had done so – over and over again, until the burning in her throat lulled into a faint sting.

She learned to twist her speech. To mask declarations with questions, to speak in circles and careful silences.

She pauses before she answers, always, lest truth come bursting out.

Ψ

Her siblings don’t press her – not at first.

She learned to bend truth like sunlight, though she rarely needs to. Her silence became enough, and it’s what betrays her now. Her siblings are not stupid – they see the space she takes up, and the space she doesn’t.

It’s only a matter of time before they figure it out.

She’s both looking forward to it and utterly terrified of the outcome.

One afternoon, as she comes back from the forge, she hears her name.

She freezes.

Michael and Austin look deep in thought, half-shadowed under the eaves.

“It’s weird, right?” Austin says. His voice is low, not cruel, but not kind either. “I mean, she doesn’t act like any of us. Sure, she has prophecy, but – are we sure she’s really… y’know… Dad’s?”

Michael glares at him. “Stop being an idiot, glowstick.”

“She’s our sister. End of story. Maybe not the kind we’re used to, but she is. There’s no other possibility.”

She hears the doubt in his voice, and the hurt blooms in her chest like a poisonous garden.

She skips dinner that night.

Ψ

Days pass.

The space between Selene and her siblings grows wider, into a hungry chasm, and she has no idea if a bridge can be built to cross it.

She starts wandering the paths behind the Hermes cabin, past the blackberry thickets and down the creek beds, where moss grows thick and wet beneath her sandals.

She finds a new place to sit each day – under the sycamores, near the strawberry fields when no one’s around, behind the forge where she lets the clang of metal lull her to sleep.

Sometimes she brings a book. A pencil. Her notebook with its soft, creased pages and delicate spine, full of half-remembered secrets. Sometimes, she doesn’t.

She hums when she walks now. It helps keep the visions at bay, if only for a breath.

She’s lost all hope of stopping them.

Camp pulses with old magic, Chiron told her. It lives and breathes it, and she’s its lungs.

One afternoon, she’s tracing the edge of a golden thread — not real, but there, shimmering just out of sight — when the world tilts.

A vision strikes. No warning. No shift in air.

She sees—

—smoke. A battlefield scorched black. A girl lying still beside a broken chariot. A boy with sea-green eyes dropping to his knees.

The smell of salt and thunder.

She gasps, and the thread snaps.

When she comes back to herself, she’s crouched in the shade of an olive tree, the bark rough beneath her palms. Her knuckles ache from how tightly she’s clenching.

She exhales.

Something’s wrong.

It’s coming faster now — not just the visions, but the weight of them. Hurried, like the time is drawing closer. The threads are fraying faster.

She stares at her hands. They’re shaking again.

She stands back up and walks past the forest’s edge. She walks past the climbing wall, past the canoes and the strawberry fields and Thalia’s tree.

She forgets to stop.

She returns only when her feet ache, when her lips are cracked from sun and wind, when her legs tremble slightly on the path back to the cabin.

“Where in Olympus have you been?!” Lee’s voice cracks through the air as she comes ahead.

She blinks up. Notices the moon starting her journey in the sky, and shivers.

Lee is winded. His hoodie’s inside-out. He’s barefoot, his face flushed with something halfway between panic and fury.

“I—” she begins.

“You vanished,” he says. “You were gone for hours. We looked everywhere. You weren’t at lunch, you weren’t in the cabin, you missed your session with Chiron—”

“I didn’t realize,” she says, and that part, at least, is true.

Lee exhales hard. His shoulders drop. He crouches beside her, not touching. “You scared us.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t mean to.”

The words sit between them. He doesn't press. Not today.

They walk back together in silence.

As they reach the cabin, Selene pauses. Her foot catches on the flagstone near the Big House. She looks up.

The attic window glints.

The inside of the cabin is warm.

The shutters are half-open, letting in the very last light of day – golden, heavy, slow. The hearth crackles in the corner. Michael’s guitar lies abandoned on his bunk, a bowl of chips forgotten beside it.

Selene steps in quietly, half-hiding behind Lee.

The door shuts behind her like a line drawn.

“You were gone”, Kayla’s voice accuses. It’s not a yell – it’s sharper than that, disappointment honed to a point.

“I know.”

“Do you? Kayla crosses her arms. “Because the sun was past the strawberry fields an hour ago, and nobody knew where you were.”

“She was on her way back,” Lee interjects quickly, pulling his hoodie off, still flushed from the sprint.

“She was on her way back,” Kayla mocks. “Never mind that monsters are circling aplenty this time of year!”

“I’m sorry,” Selene whispers. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Kayla takes one look at her and exhales, seemingly losing all fight.

“Please warn us next time,” she lifts a hand to Selene’s head. Selene nods.

“We checked all the places you usually go,” Will tells her. She can’t tell if he’s angry, relieved, or both. It’s jarring to see on his young face. “Twice.”

Selene closes her eyes and prays they don’t see the tremors in her hands.

Of course, as if hearing her, Michael clocks it.

“Did you have a vision?” he asks, and everyone stills, fretting forgotten. Austin grimaces.

Selene opens her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I didn’t mean to –”

“That’s not what he asked,” Lee doesn’t raise his voice, but her throat tightens at his tone. “Did you have a vision?”

Selene nods. “Yes.”

“Did you fall?” She shakes her head. “Did it hurt?” She hesitates.

And that – the pause – says enough.

Lee sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You should’ve told someone where you were going.”

“I didn’t think I’d be gone so long.”

“But you were.”

The room goes quiet again.

The only sound is the distant screech of a harpy scolding someone near the climbing wall.

Lee paces once, then turns toward her. “You worried us sick.”

Selene looks at him then — really looks — and sees it. The red flush of his ears. The tension in his jaw. His bare feet.

She swallows and repeats: “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Is it because of what Austin said?” Michael asks. Selene blinks.

“I know you heard us,” he drawls. Austin throws him a panicked look. Kayla exhales through her nose.

Selene says nothing.

“Selene.” Michael calls. He looks uncomfortable, under the harsh exterior he gives himself. “I’m sorry you heard that.”

But not sorry you said it, a tired part of her accuses.

“We are glad you’re here. I’m sorry, what I said was stupid,” Austin says gently.

“You’re right, though. You don’t know what I am,” she says. Quiet. Flat. It’s not an accusation — it’s a fact.

Lee sighs. “You’re our sister.”

Selene doesn’t answer. Her silence means too many things.

Michael folds his arms. “You think we’d look for someone for hours if we didn’t care?”

“I’m not saying you don’t care,” she replies, looking straight at him. “You just seem pretty sure I’m lying about belonging here.”

“You’re idiots,” Kayla mutters. “All of you. If she weren’t Dad’s, she would’ve been smited the minute she tried coming into his cabin.”

Selene huffs a breath, almost a laugh, as Lee hits both Michael and Austin on the head.

“Storm-brained, the two of you, Gods grant me patience,” he rolls his eyes. He approaches her like one would a skittish cat. “Y’know, we don’t need to know everything. Take your time. We’ll love you either way. Us weirdos gotta stick together, y’know?”

The air softens.

For the first time in days, she feels almost part of the symphony again.

But later, when they sleep, she finds herself lying awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling beams above her bunk.

There’s still a weight on her chest.

A name hasn’t been spoken yet. A silence is pulling her elsewhere.

And across the camp, the attic window remains shuttered.

Waiting.

Ψ

The sun is low over the horizon, casting long shadows through the training fields of Camp Half-Blood. It's warm today—not hot, not unbearable—just a golden warmth that drapes over shoulders like a shawl. The scent of cedar and wildflowers rides the breeze, a lull between storms. In the center of the sparring arena, Cabin Seven has gathered, sunlight painting their hair every shade of gold and amber. Their laughter echoes over the sand.

Selene sits cross-legged under the shade of the arena archway, head tilted against one of the columns, watching her siblings.

Lee is trying to teach Kayla how to juggle, using healing salves, and failing miserably. Austin’s breathless from sparring with Michael, who keeps insisting form matters more than flash, while Austin insists his flash is the form.

Selene smiles faintly. For the first time in days, she feels almost grounded. Almost.

(She still hasn’t lit the hearth. Hasn’t prayed. She’s scared.)

Beneath the laughter and gold, she feels off. Not unwelcome, like she did, but strange. Watched, always.

“Earth to Moonface,” Lee calls, tossing her an apple. She catches it without looking. “Get your demidivine little butt over here. Kayla wants to duel.”

Kayla snorts. “That’s not what I said.”

“Okay, but it is what I heard.”

Selene rises slowly, brushing sand from her tee. She steps onto the training floor, boots sinking slightly into the scorched arena. The heat’s different here—more concentrated. It feels like the sun is waiting.

She’s just opened her mouth to accept the offer when a voice cuts clean through the space.

“Let me spar her,” Luke says.

The arena stills.

Selene turns toward him slowly. Luke stands at the far edge of the circle, arms loose at his sides, face unreadable. His sword—Backbiter—gleams wicked and dark at his hip. He doesn’t smile.

Lee straightens beside her. “Absolutely not.”

“Not with live steel, you bastard,” Michael snaps.

Luke ignores them. His gaze is fixed on Selene.

(She no longer flinches at the anger and grief there.)

Her siblings bristle, instinctively closing in around her. The tension shifts – the sun pulls back, watchful.

“It’s fine, I’ll do it,” Selene says quietly.

“Selene,” Lee warns. “You don’t have anything to prove to him.”

She knows that. She knows that.

And yet.

She steps forward.

The spar begins civil.

It does not stay that way.

Selene moves as best she can, but she’s no fighter. Not yet, at least – she knows enough to defend herself against monsters, but she’s used to daggers, not a sword – the weight of it feels unfamiliar and wrong in her grip.

Her arms strain to parry. Her hands slip. She stumbles.

Luke moves like water shaped into violence. There’s no room for mercy in his strikes. He knocks her off-balance again and again, each hit precise and barely pulled. He’s not trying to kill her, but he doesn’t try to miss, either.

She scrapes her knee. Her shoulder throbs. The bronze sword is wrenched from her grip.

She stumbles back, panting, and he disarms her entirely with a flick of his wrist.

He kicks at her feet, and she falls onto her bum.

“I expected more,” Luke says, eyes narrowing.

Something inside her breaks – a crack so soft it’s almost a whimper.

She thinks, plainly: I can’t do this.

Her sword lies a few feet away, buried in the sand. She doesn’t reach for it.

She grits her teeth. Lifts her chin.

“How funny,” she says, voice dry. “I thought the same.”

Something ugly twists in Luke’s face. He lunges forward, and Selene barely dodges. His blade slices through the air, a breath away from her ribs.

“Luke!” Lee’s voice cracks like a whip. “Stand down!”

But Luke doesn’t hear him. He’s shaking now. Just barely. His breath is ragged. His grief has teeth.

“You weren’t there,” he hisses. “You didn’t see her fall. You didn’t watch her burn.”

“I dreamed it,” Selene replies. “I tried to help.”

Luke’s voice shatters. “You think that makes you worthy?”

“No,” Selene says, and this time, her voice rises. “But wishing someone else had died instead doesn’t make you worthy either.”

Silence.

His voice is like poison. “Maybe Thalia would still be alive if you hadn’t warned us. Maybe your help was just enough to get her killed.”

Selene goes still.

(How dare you, she wants to shout. She wants to grab his head and burn the truth into his eyes–)

For a beat, all is silent. No one moves, no one breathes.

There’s a sound – sharp and ancient. She doesn’t know if she’s the only one to hear it. It sounds like a string, pulled taut across the cosmos, finally snapping.

A golden thread snaps behind her eyes.

She looks up at Luke, and then down at her hands. The sun stops moving. The air thickens.

Luke lifts his sword again – to strike her down, probably, make her feel a fraction of his pain – but she’s done giving him the pleasure.

She grabs a fistful of sand and throws it at his face.

She crawls back, evading the second swipe meant for her head, and – there, glinting, waiting – is a golden arrow.

It hasn’t aged a day.

Selene gets up hastily and grabs onto it – the shaft thrums beneath her fingers, in echo with her heartbeat. Her hand closes around it, and she moves.

She doesn’t know how to fight properly. She has no lunge technique, nor parry – she knows no stances or techniques.

But she knows how to survive – and more than that, she’s angry.

The arrow is too small to be a sword, too large for a dagger—but she uses it like both. She blocks Luke’s next strike and twists, catching his shoulder with the edge.

He grunts. Steps back.

She doesn’t let him.

(She’s ten. Her strikes are imprecise, her aim off, her form flawed, but she has more than enough rage in her to make up for it.)

Her siblings shout.

But Selene sees nothing except the boy who blamed her for Thalia’s death, and the grief he wears like skin.

She knocks the sword from his hand. It clatters into the sand.

She brings the arrow to his neck, trembling. There’s blood on the tip. Just a little. Enough.

Luke stares up at her, chest heaving. He doesn’t move.

The arena is silent.

And then—light erupts.

A column of golden light crashes down from the sky, blinding. Selene stands bathed in it.

Above her, a sigil flares: a golden lyre. Apollo’s sigil.

A crown of sunlight wraps around her head, warm and a blessing.

“It is decided,” Chiron calls from the arena steps, his voice steady. “Hail, Sélène Arnaud, daughter of Apollo, God of Prophecy, Truth, and Plague.”

She barely hears him.

Luke is pale, mouth slightly open. His fingers twitch uselessly against the sand.

Selene exhales.

Hail, Austin Lake, Son of Apollo, God of Light, Healing and Music. Hail, Kayla Knowles, Daughter of Apollo, God of Light, Healing and Music. Hail, Lee Fletcher, Son of Apollo, God of Music, Healing and Protector of the Young.

Never Prophecy. Never Truth. Never Plague.

“I should have known you’d plan for this,” she whispers.

Around her, silence falls like rain.

Her siblings stare. Kayla has gone white. Austin looks like he might be sick. Even Lee — bright, ever-smiling—has lost the expression from his face.

No one speaks.

Selene steps back. She lowers the arrow. Her eyes shimmer.

She turns on her heel. She doesn’t run, not this time, but she doesn’t stay to hear what they’ll say, either.

She’s already heard enough.

(Apollo is as kind as he is cruel. Selene can only deal with the consequences.)

Ψ

TO BE CONTINUED