chapter seven

─── if there's something worse than prophecies, it's dreams

          ℑ don't know what I ate that night, but I was having weird dreams. Like, really weird dreams. First, I dreamt of wolves.

I was standing in a clearing in a large redwood forest, trees towering around me like a cage, too thick to really get through. In front of me were the ruins of a stone mansion, grey clouds blending into the ground fog around them. A pack of large wolves milled around me, brushing against my legs, snarling and baring their teeth as they pushed me towards the ruins.

I gulped, obliging as I didn't particularly feel like getting eaten today even if it was in dream form.

The ground squelched under my boots as I walked. Stone spires of chimneys, no longer attached to anything, rose up from the floor, meaning I had to watch my step. The house must've been enormous once, multi-storied with massive brick walls and a soaring gabled roof, but now nothing remained but its stone skeleton. I passed under a crumbling archway, coming out in a courtyard.

Before me was a drained reflecting pool. The bottom was filled with mist, as I struggled to tell how deep it was. A dirt path led all the way around, and the house's uneven walls rose on either side. Wolves paced under the archways of rough red volcanic stone.

At the far end of the pool sat a giant she-wolf, far taller than me. Her eyes glowed silver in the fog, and her coat was the same colour as the rocks—warm chocolaty red.

"I know this place," I stated.

The wolf regarded me. She didn't exactly speak, but I could understand her. The movements of her ears and whiskers, the flash of her eyes, the way she curled her lips—all of these were part of her language.

Of course, the she-wolf said. You began your journey here as a pup. Now you must find your way back. A new quest, a new start.

"That isn't fair," I shook my head, but the she-wolf just shrugged. They were trying to make me, an amnesiac, find my way back to a place that I didn't remember.

Wolves didn't feel sympathy. They never expected fairness. The wolf said: Conquer or die. This is always our way.

I wanted to protest that I couldn't conquer if I didn't know who I was, or where I was supposed to go. But I knew this wolf. Her name was simply Lupa, the Mother Wolf, the greatest of her kind. Long ago she'd found me in this place, protected me, nurtured me, chosen me, but if I showed weakness, she would tear me to shreds. Rather than being her pup, I would become her dinner. In the wolf pack, weakness was not an option.

"Can you guide me?" I questioned.

Lupa made a rumbling noise deep in her throat, and the mist in the pool dissolved.

At first I wasn't sure what I was seeing. At opposite ends of the pool, two dark spires had erupted from the cement floor like the drill bits of some massive tunnelling machines boring through the surface. I couldn't tell if the spires were made of rock or petrified vines, but they were formed of thick tendrils that came together in a point at the top. Each spire was about five feet tall, but they weren't identical. The one closest to me was darker and seemed like a solid mass, its tendrils fused together. As I watched, it pushed a little farther out of the earth and expanded a little wider.

On Lupa's end of the pool, the second spire's tendrils were more open, like the bars of a cage. Inside, I could vaguely see a misty figure struggling, shifting within its confines.

"Hera," I stated.

The she-wolf growled in agreement. The other wolves circled the pool, their fur standing up on their backs as they snarled at the spires.

The enemy has chosen this place to awaken her most powerful son, the giant king, Lupa said. Our sacred place, where demigods are claimed—the place of death or life. The burned house. The house of the wolf. It is an abomination. You must stop it.

"You mean her?" I was sincerely confused. "Hera?"

The she-wolf gnashed her teeth impatiently. Use your senses, pup. I care nothing for Juno, but if she falls, our enemy wakes. And that will be the end for all of us. You know this place. You can find it again. Cleanse our house. Stop this before it is too late.

The dark spire grew slowly larger, like the bulb of some horrible flower. I didn't want to meet whatever was inside it

"Who am I?" I turned back to the she-wolf. "At least tell me that."

Wolves don't have much of a sense of humour, but I could tell the question amused Lupa.

You are our saving grace, as always. The she-wolf curled her lip, as if she had just made a clever joke. Do not fail me, daughter of Jupiter.

Before I could ask her more questions, I was dragged backwards, spinning quickly until I landed somewhere else. I was in a room, a bed pushed in one corner and a desk at the other end, layered with paper. My eyebrows furrowed, before I hurried for the table, away from the messy bed, trying to find something of note on the paper, a name, a place to start, anything?

All of the words were blurred, or redacted, causing me to growl in annoyance at it, before voices came to my attention.

"This will end badly! We've exhausted our efforts." It's a female voice, speaking loudly. "We've gone up and down the coast, to her usual haunts, to the monsters areas, to the Mountain, everywhere! She's not there."

"Then widen the search!" This one's a male voice. He's speaking quieter than the woman, but there's a desperation in his voice that makes my heart ache for whoever he's lost. "What about the Wolf House?"

"You know that doesn't reopen for older members and we can't get back. That whole magical boundary still stands and Lupa won't make an exception, even for us!" I crept towards the door, looking between the opening of it. I can see the back of the man, who's tall and lean, dressed in jeans and a large, oversized hoodie, his arms folded. Opposite him is a slightly smaller woman, her dark hair braided back and the start of a scowl on her face, in a purple shirt similar to the one that I was in. "We don't have enough people. We're spread thin as it is, and I can't risk losing anyone else."

"But we've got to find her! You don't understand, we have to! Broaden the search, I will go looking, whatever we have to do." The girl runs a tired hand down her face as both of them take a moment to recompose themselves. "The legions are restless. If a Daughter of Jupiter can go missing, then anyone can. They're worried. She's one of our best and now she's gone."

They were talking about me. I stepped further in, wondering if they could see me, if they knew that I was alright. Both of them were sitting down now but they didn't show any indications that they'd seen me.

"I've been consulting the gods for days to find a location, nothing. They've just gone silent on us, right when we need them."

"Look, if she was dead, we'd know."

"Makes me feel so much better."

"No news is good news." The girl reiterated, before rolling her shoulders. "Look, I get that you're stressed. Both of us are stressed and obviously worried for her, but we have to keep going. I can't show weakness and you're the Augur, you have to remain impartial."

"You want me to remain impartial when the one person that I care about in this entire, godsforsaken camp is missing?" He hissed, eyes narrowing as the girl sighed. "What do you want me to do? Sit there, smile and laugh? I can't do that."

"No, what I'm asking is that you do your job and I do mine and we hope that somewhere, Cressida's doing hers and she's coming back." The girl snapped. "I get that you're upset, Octavian. I understand, trust me, I do. She's my friend too, and I love her to pieces so of course I'm worried, but what can we do. What can we do now? We've tried everything! It's four in the morning, we're not going to be able to get anything done now so just leave it."

"Leaving it means that I've failed." His voice cracks at the end, but the boy, Octavian, pushes through. "What happens if she's dead or in trouble and we can't get to her in time because I missed something in the offerings? What happens if I wasn't good enough and she ends up dead because of it. I'm the augur, this is supposed to be my job and I've failed."

"You haven't failed, we don't know what's going on." The girl stood, squeezing Octavian's shoulder. "She's the Daughter of Jupiter. If anyone can make it, it's her."

"She's a teenager, we're all teenagers!" The boy hissed again, turning and I caught a glimpse of his face for the first time, marred by anger, blond hair falling into his eyes and deep bags beneath them. "You know how she's been, what she was like after everything. You know how much the war took a toll on her, I'm worried for her. She's somewhere alone, without us, without anyone who understands her and everyone just expects me to be fine. Or, sorry, they don't expect me to be fine, they think that I've killed her."

"Octavian, you know that's not true."

"Please, I've heard all of the little rumours and whispers. I knew they never liked me and Goldie as friends, but this is another fucking level of hatred!" He finally snapped as the nickname registered in my head. Goldie. That was me! I knew that! That was me, these were my people. "If I don't find her, not only do I lose her but I get the entire 'you killed Cressida' thing attached to my name."

"And I'll stop that. Listen." The girl smacks his shoulder a few times. "Listen to me."

The man turned away, eyes narrowing.

"Listen to me, you stubborn man." She growled, as Octavian turned back to look at her. "Everyone is stressed, that rumour is just a rumour, nothing else. It'll calm down. We'll find Cressida, we'll get her home and back to us and then, we'll sort everything else out. Alright? Now go to sleep. You're in a foul mood because you're running on no sleep and no food."

"But-"

"That's an order, Octavian." The man sighed. "Cressida isn't here to drag you to bed, so I'll do it for her. Gods knows that if she saw you in this state, she'd be so upset."

Octavian untensed, the fight going out of him as he looked down at the words. I'd obviously meant a lot to him, to both of them, if the my being upset with him caused all the fight to leave his body.

"Go on." The girl squeezed his shoulder, before bringing him into a hug. "I'll come and drag you to get food in the morning, then we have senate and then you can go back to the temple. For now, just sleep."

"Sure thing." He nodded, before both looked outside at the weather, the torrential rain coming down around them. "I'm sleeping in Goldie's room tonight."

"You just don't want to walk back to Barracks in the rain."

"Pretty much." He muttered, before turning and walking towards me. I yelped, hurrying out of the way and backwards as I tried not to let him bump into me. He flicked the light on, sighing and closing the door as he looked around.

His blue eyes were sad, lips downturned and he let his hand trace some armor that was on a rack, golden like my sword. He watched it for a moment, before closing his eyes.

"Come on, Goldie. Where are you?" He muttered, looking around at everything. "You've got to come home."

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Hiya,

So this is actually one of my favourite chapters because the other two got introduced. Octavian and Reyna are here, and I thought that I'd spice up Cressida's chapters with them. I'm really excited for you guys to see more of them, but let me know what you think of Octavian and Reyna so far.

Let me know what you think,

Love Li xx