VALERIE CAN'T BREATHE.

    The dream is so fresh in her mind that terror grips her like iron shackles, and she is paralyzed in her cot in the infirmary, frozen and unable to move or breathe or think of anything besides the overwhelming pain she feels.

    She hasn't dreamed of Noelle in over a year, and she had forgotten the pitch of her voice, the precise shade of red that her hair had been, how the freckles on her left cheek formed a constellation, the grassy green of her eyes.

    The dream feels like a punishment two years too late, like her littlest sister, the kindest person she's ever known, is haunting her.

    Everything hurts, pain flaring at every inch of her body and soul. It's not just the physical injury from the cynocephalus, the bite that had cracked her hip bone. No, it's deeper than that. Deeper than bone, deeper than her bloodstream. The very string of Fate that ties her to her humanity, to the earthly plane, burns with the agony of death.

    It's a blinding, deafening pain. She can't feel the sheets against her skin, can't feel the bandage binding her broken hip, can't feel the hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. She's blind, deaf, and numb to everything except her own pain.

    The sound of Noelle's laughter morphs from a beautiful, tinkling, happy sound to something more deranged, more cruel.

    "Please," Valerie whispers, voice hoarse. "Please, Father. Don't use her against me again. I can't do this again."

    Someone answers, but whoever speaks does so far too quietly to hear. Or maybe it isn't someone speaking—it's a presence, stronger than the pain and colder than the fever that wracked her body.

    It takes her several heartbeats to recognize the feeling.

    It's a dream. Someone else's dream, brushing up against the edges of her consciousness, calling to her like a siren's song.

    She grabs onto that dream like it's her lifeline, and she yanks herself upwards, out of the pain and the fever and the scraps of the nightmare that still hold her.

    Valerie claws her way out. Her nails dig into the walls of the tunnel between her mind and that dream.

    She has never, in her entire life, had to force her way into a dream in this way, ripping into a dream like her life depended on it. For all she knows, her life does depend on it.

    The human mind is a fragile, delicate thing. She's known that for a long time. She has broken human minds a time or two, and while demigods are built slightly differently—the children of gods are meant to burn bright and quick, and they are forged for battle, made to be stronger, faster, and smarter—they crack just as easily when pressure is applied to their minds.

    If she was broken by her own abilities, if she was trapped inside of her own mind...

    She has to get out, no matter what it takes.

    When she falls into the dream, it feels like she is seeing the sun for the first time in years. The fever breaks, her pain subsides, and she can think clearly again.

    Instinct replaces fear, and strength replaces agony. She feels like herself, even as she tumbles into a foreign plane of existence.

    "Val?"

    She jumps, her father's gifted shadows lashing out from her. They stop short, inches away from slicing into Travis's face. "It was you. Your dream." She says.

    Of course it had been his dream. She's not surprised.

    His dream is, for a lack of a better word, cozy. They stand in the middle of a wooden cottage, somewhere deep in the mountains judging from the view out the window. It's nowhere Valerie has been before.

    "I heard about the attack at the border." Travis says, and his bright blue eyes hold a sort of concern she isn't used to, even from him. "Are you okay?"

    She walks to the window and looks out at the scenery. It will hurt to see the look on his face, so she doesn't meet his gaze. "No. Yes. I don't know. I think I'm okay now. I don't remember much between the bite and now, but it was bad, I think."

    His step towards her is audible. "Bite?"

    Valerie pulls her shirt up slightly to show off the bandage wrapped around her hips. "I was bitten by a cynocephalus, and its teeth broke my hip. The hallucinations from the venom were worse than the bite, though." She says, casually, as if she hadn't been inches from death, both mere minutes ago and on the hill.

    As much as it bothers her to say it, Valerie knows she has to thank Katie Gardner.

    "I'm glad you're alive." He says, and she shudders when his hand lands on her shoulder. "I'll come see you when you wake up."

    She resists the urge to shove off his hand, recalling how worried Alyssa had looked the first time she'd woken up. "You shouldn't. It's not a pretty sight."

    When she turns around and finally has the courage to glance at him, he looks like he knows. Knows something, knows what her nightmare had held, knows too much about the inside of her mind. His face makes it seem like he was there that month in Manhattan, by her side from the minute she woke up the morning of her mother's wedding, to when she at last managed to sleep the night of Noelle's funeral.

    He's always known too much. She hadn't spoken a single word for the first eight years of her life, and he'd still figured her out.

    She realizes that just like she'd been in his dream, he had been in hers. It's an epiphany that threatens to crack her in two, and words escape her. He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows.

    "Valerie—"

    She's out of his dream before he can finish his sentence, and she slams back into her body with the force of a semi-truck hitting a brick wall. She's dizzy, and her fingertips tingle.

    "Your fever broke last night. I've been waiting for you to wake up." Alyssa smiles when Valerie opens her eyes, but she looks exhausted, like she hasn't slept in days.

    Valerie sits up on the small cot she's been confined to in the infirmary, feeling the stretch and ache of limbs that have been immoble. "How long did I sleep?" She asks, eyes flitting to the small window. She sees the sun coming up over the strawberry fields, orange and red clouds painted across the sky.

    When she'd woken up after the attack on the hill, it was just before dawn, and, from her nightmare about Noelle, it had been mid-morning.

    Alyssa twists at her fingers. "Four days. You never woke up after the cynocephalus, so we've been force-feeding you nectar and ambrosia to try to get the fever down." There's a sharpness to her voice. "We thought you were dead. Your shroud was going to be black, by the way."

    Four days. Four days.

    Panic seizes in Valerie's chest. She lurches off of the bed, legs weak but hip shockingly no longer in pain, and her dark eyes are wild. "You never promised to call Josslyn." It's a question that is phrased like an accusation, and she can't decide whether to be grateful for that.

    "No. The last time we talked was on the hill. You mumbled in your sleep, but that was it. Nothing coherent."

    It had all been a dream. Waking up the first time had not happened.

    Valerie curses her father in her mind, and there is the barest hint of a dark chuckle in response.

    She pulls the oversized shirt they'd dressed her in further down her thighs. "Please tell me you have clothes for me so I don't have to walk across camp like this."

    Alyssa nods curtly. "I had April grab stuff from your room while I sat with you." She stands from her chair next to the cot and crosses the room to the chest of drawers next to the door, and she pulls out a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. "I figured you'd want to be comfortable."

    "Thank you. For sitting with me and for making sure I didn't die."

    The words come out strangled, as if they atrophied from not being said often. But Alyssa smiles, a real smile, nonetheless.

|

A note slides under the door of Cabin 21 just before dinner, and Valerie looks up from her book at the sound of paper hissing against hardwood floor.

    She sets down the book, a history of myths about her father and his curses, and cautiously creeps towards the stained-glass door, brows furrowed in curiosity. She peers through the window, and a distorted shape retreats into the distance, walking towards the rest of the cabins.

    The paper is made of a thick parchment, and it reads her name on the front in neat handwritten print. She unfolds it.

    Valerie,
    Counselor meeting at 6pm. Your presence is expected. Please show up this time.
    —Chiron

    Valerie has half a mind to rip up the note. Her presence is expected? Chiron has taken many, many liberties in raising her these last ten years, but this was something else. Invitations to meetings had always been simply that—an invitation. Never mandatory, never required.

    She has always been given free reign, as long as she behaves, trains, and doesn't terrorize the other campers. They'd made an agreement a decade ago: don't cause chaos, don't hurt others, and don't stray from routine, but apart from that, do what you want and don't do what you don't want.

    All of which she's done in the past week.

    She's angry as she strips out of the sweatpants that Alyssa had helped her into, her back turned away from the mirror to avoid seeing her reflection or, more specifically, the brand that marred her shoulder.

    She's furious as she straps a sheath to her thigh. Before the first war, counselor meetings happened with the one expectation that its attendants came unarmed. After enemy demigods and monsters had come up through the Labyrinth three years ago, however, campers old enough to understand the brewing war were rarely found without at least one weapon.

    Needless to say, Valerie rarely leaves her cabin without protection. In the month after the Battle of Manhattan, she didn't leave the penthouse without loading herself up with as much celestial bronze as she could carry, walking around New York City covered in weapons that the mortals couldn't see.

    She stalks up to the Big House, the blue paint of the siding matching almost exactly to the color of the sky.

    She's late, but that is mostly on purpose. The other counselors already expect so little of her, so she might as well rise to the occasion.

    Their voices echo through the hallway that leads to the rec room, and despite the fact that Valerie Greenwood can silence her approach if she wants to, she doesn't. She makes sure her footfalls are heavy and loud, ensuring that her dagger clangs against the metal buckle of her thigh sheath.

    The voices go silent. There isn't even a whisper. She can hear them breathing, and she can feel their shock, fear, and confusion pressing against her brainstem in the form of daydreams.

    When she crosses the threshold into the rec room, all eyes, from the starry silver-gray of Athena's representative to the molten violet of Dionysus's oldest daughter, snap to her.

    She'd worn lower-rise pants on purpose, so when she leans against the doorway with her arms crossed, her shirt rides up and shows off the scar on her hip in the shape of the cynocephalus's teeth.

    "Sorry I'm late." She says, a devilish grin spreading across her face. "Hope I didn't miss too much."

    She relishes in the terror on most of their faces. The only people not staring at her, jaws dropped, are Althea Knight, the counselor of the Dionysus cabin, and Travis. Everyone else looks like they are somewhere between shell-shocked and scared out of their minds.

    Chiron clears his throat and gestures to the only empty seat, coincidentally next to Katie Gardner. He doesn't speak until Valerie is firmly planted in the chair. "As I was saying, there has been an increase in attacks at the border. In the past six months, we have had twice as many monsters lurking than in the six months prior."

    Katie's eyes flit over to Valerie, as if she can still see the cynocephalus in her mind and wants to see if Valerie has the same reaction.

    Valerie's face stays expressionless as Chiron continues:

     "Since there has been a rise in attacks, we will be doubling the amount of guards on the hill at night, at least until we get to the root of the problem." He says firmly, surveying each of them with his face set in stone. "Another thing—strife between cabins is at an all time high. There have been many reports of vandalism and pranks going too far. This has to stop. You all might have different parentage, different personalities, but we stand for the same ideals.

    "In order to fix this, to resolve this tension, we will be playing Capture the Flag tomorrow night. Participation is expected but not required." He finishes.

    Valerie's eye twitches. There he goes again, with that word. Expected.

    Chiron clasps his hands in his lap. "I look forward to seeing you all there. And, as always, if there are any comments or concerns, or if you have anything to report, there is a complaint box outside of my office."

    She's about to jump out of her seat and book it back to her cabin to avoid speaking to anyone else when Chiron gives her a look.

    It's not his you're in trouble look, but the expression on his face is concerning.

    Valerie stays behind as everyone files out of the room, and she kicks her feet up onto the ping pong table, boots making the table rattle. She looks at Chiron with raised eyebrows.

    "No shoes on the furniture, Valerie." is all he says at first, and he pauses to wait for her to have both of her feet on the floor. "Your mother sent a letter for you. It arrived several days ago."

    He pulls an envelope out of his suit's breast pocket, and she eyes it warily. It's the signature Greenwood emerald-colored stationary, and the wax seal is a silver laurel wreath.

    "What is it?" She asks, and she takes it gingerly between her thumb and pointer finger, not wanting to touch it. She hasn't heard from her mother since Noelle's funeral, apart from birthday checks that Valerie has no want or way of cashing.

    Chiron's chin tips down. "I'm not sure."

    Her face pinches, and she runs the tip of her finger over the address on the back of the envelope. It's written in her mother's elegant cursive, with her squiggly S's and loopy O's. The handwriting feels like a memory, bittersweet and melancholic. Reading her mother's handwriting takes her back in time to when she would play in her mother's office, sorting through the Greenwood Hotel's paperwork.

    She doesn't open the envelope until she's back in her cabin, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The writing inside is typed, with messy scrawl handwritten below it.

    You are cordially invited to Eloise Greenwood's Sweet Sixteen, a night of dancing, eating, and extravagant celebration! In lieu of presents, please make a donation to the charity of your choice in Eloise's name.

    Theme: Sparkling Gemstones
  Date, Time & Location: June 21st, 2018, 7pm, the Golden Ballroom of the Greenwood Hotel
    Dress Code: Black tie

    Val,
    Please come. We all miss you. Or at least call to tell me you're not coming. I miss your voice. Don't let us go another year and a half without talking.
    Love, Eloise ❤︎

    Valerie blinks at the words. It hadn't been a letter from her mother—it was from Eloise, and it hadn't even been a letter. It was a plea, a voice begging her from miles away to come home.

    Eloise's birthday, the Summer Solstice, is a month and a half away. Gods know that the invitations went out six months ago, because Melissa Greenwood was always ahead of schedule. It had probably been a last minute decision to extend an olive branch to Valerie, perhaps one that her mother isn't even aware of.

    Valerie slides the invitation back into the envelope, re-warms the wax seal, and fastens the envelope closed once more, as if it had never been opened.

    The idea of going back to the penthouse hurts—seeing Noelle's face every time she sees Clara, enduring her own failure to be the sister and daughter she was raised to be. The pain makes a sharp agony flare in her chest.

    She has a month and a half to decide whether or not she can stomach the thought of returning.