HE'S IN HER DREAMS AGAIN.

The cold, cruel, cunning man that has haunted her for the past twenty years of her life. The thing whose laughter she can hear in the back of her mind, whose shadows linger in the corners of her vision when she has been awake for too long, whose deadly power she has inherited.

"Valerie."

She stiffens, paralyzed by his shadows. "Father. What an honor." She says through gritted teeth, sarcasm dripping from every word.

Morpheus smiles, lips spreading to show gleaming white teeth. "Such an attitude. Have you always been this combative?" He shakes his head in disbelief. "I distinctly remember you being much more obedient."

"Maybe if you hadn't killed my sister, I'd be more willing to do what you want."

He laughs at that, a full-blown cackle that has him throwing his head back. "You're still mad about that? Humans are so strange with their grudges and morals. I killed my brother when I was a child, and he killed me the week after that. Siblings come and go."

The rage that flares up inside of Valerie is white-hot. It burns in her chest, in her throat, in her stomach. It blazes through her body like a lightning strike, like her bones and veins are lighting up with electricity. It threatens to bubble out of her from every pore of her body.

"You took my sister from me. She was a child." She's trembling with hatred, shaking within the confines of his shadows. "So I will ask you again—what the hell do you want?"

His breath fans over her face, rotten and pungent, as he laughs at her again. "Just a reminder, dear daughter, that I am still here. I am still watching, I am still waiting. I have not forgotten your choice to disobey me, and I will come calling again. Maybe for another one of your sisters."

|

Valerie Greenwood wakes up on the floor of her cabin, sheets tangled around her legs. Her bronze-brown hair is plastered to her sweaty forehead, and there is a lump on her temple. She must have hit her head on the nightstand when she fell, because the bump is throbbing with every beat of her heart.

The door to Cabin 21 opens and a shadowy figure is bursting in, and she screams, throat already raw with overuse. She scrambles back until her spine hits the nightstand, and she claws under her pillow for a dagger, which she brandishes outward.

"Get out!" She shrieks, head pounding. "Get the hell out of my room!"

She's still attempting to shake the dream from her mind, to differentiate nightmare from reality. The shadows blur together in the darkness of the cabin, making every piece of furniture look menacing.

The shadowy figure grabs her by the biceps, and the hands against her bare skin make her scream again.

"Val, you were having a bad dream. You're okay." Alyssa's voice is soft and kind and tired, and the hands on Valerie's arms loosen their grip, no longer holding but resting. "Come on, V. Breathe with me."

It takes a Herculean effort for Valerie to stop shaking. It's not often that a nightmare rattles her to the extent that this one has, although her father tends to have that effect. Every time he's appeared in her dreams, she doesn't sleep for three days after, just to avoid him.

Alyssa smiles when Valerie finally looks at her. "Hey there, Sandman. Thought I lost you for a minute. You were screaming in your sleep."

A weak groan escapes Valerie as she allows Alyssa to help her back into bed. "I woke everyone up, didn't I?"

"Sure did. Had to block Loverboy from barging in before I did." Alyssa's grin turns wicked. "He was running towards your cabin. Tripped over himself trying to get here first. It was kind of cute, to be honest."

Valerie thanks the gods for the darkness of the room, the only light coming from the watery moonlight filtering through the gauzy curtains. If it hadn't been so dark, Valerie's flushed face would have been apparent.

She scrubs her hand over the tattoo on her bicep. "I'm fine, Lyss. It was just a bad dream."

Judging by the look on Alyssa's face, it's clear that she knows that it was no ordinary bad dream. After all, Valerie is the only person in existence, other than her father, capable of controlling the things that happen in dreams. It's her gift, the power she was born with.

Blessed with.

Cursed with.

As a child, it had felt like a blessing, something to set her apart from her sisters, something to prove that she was special. The older she gets, however, the more the power feels like a punishment.

"Go back to sleep, Val." Alyssa says, stern and teasing all in the same breath.

She waits there, kneeling at Valerie's bedside, until the only sound in the cabin is deep, even breathing and an occasional snore.

She's silent as she leaves, shutting the door far more quietly than she'd opened it. Crickets chirp in the grass outside, and the moonlight casts everything in a pale silvery glow, including Travis Stoll, who sits with his back against Cabin 21's dark wood paneling.

"She doesn't want to see you." Alyssa says, not unkindly. Her voice is soft, not quite sweet, but her eyes glint mischievously.

Travis's mouth twitches. "Trust me. I know." He mutters, almost to himself. "I know she doesn't want me around. She's been saying that for ten years." He looks like he's going to say more, but he trails off.

Alyssa knows so much—too much. She's never been able to keep her feelings from being displayed loudly and proudly on her face, and this moment is no different. "I don't need to know. I don't want to know. Whatever is going on between you and Valerie is none of my business. Figure it out on your own."

Her words are monotone, but she can see Valerie's face in her mind, a year and a half ago, when every single thing Valerie had relied on had fractured into tiny, broken pieces.

"Thanks, Winslow." Travis says, making no move to get up. He gives Alyssa a mock-salute as she walks away before leaning his head back against the wall.

He'd never woken up so terrified in his life. He'd heard Valerie's bone-chilling screams, both in his dream and after he'd jolted awake, and the panic that seized in his chest was so great that he was paralyzed. He'd stared up at the ceiling for several minutes, unable to move anything but his face, blinking in the dark of the Hermes cabin. And when he'd finally gained control of his body, he'd sprinted here, using an old trick of Luke Castellan's to avoid the harpies monitoring for those sneaking out after curfew.

And now he's exhausted, the adrenaline wearing off after realizing she was alright, not being murdered like her screams led him to believe.

She's been having nightmares for as long as he can remember. Travis has been there for all of them, whether she knows it or not. As much as she can pull herself into his dreams, he's been able to go into hers. The path between their dreams has always been a two-way street, although he's not quite sure if she's realized that.

Either way, whether or not she's aware, he's been there.

When he falls asleep by accident, she's waiting for him.

It's raining in the void of her dream, and her bronze-brown hair is plastered to her face. Her eyes are dark, and her pale arms are bare, showcasing her tattoos and the brand on her shoulder.

"Do you ever get tired of me telling you to go away?" She says, and it's clear that she's trying to make light of the situation but failing miserably.

The usual lilt to her voice, the confidence and humor, that is always hiding beneath the surface of her words is gone, and she looks rattled, tired.

Her father has taken the self-assured supernova of a girl, shaken her until something snapped, and left her here, like this.

Every day that passes, Travis's vendetta against Morpheus grows.

Despite this, he smiles crookedly. "Nope. You gotta try harder to get rid of me." He says. He drags his eyes off of her to look at where the sky would have been. "Any chance you could stop the rain, though?"

He's barely finished speaking when the downpour halts completely, and she takes in a gulp of air, bracing a hand on her chest like she is struggling to catch her breath. He doesn't blame her for it.

"Thanks." He says, taking in the sight of her. Her shoulders are curved inward, and her arms are wrapped around herself, as if protecting the inner mechanisms of her chest.

Valerie is tall—five feet, ten inches, just a few inches shorter than him—but she looks small at this moment, both in body and spirit.

She nods once, her chin barely tipping up. Another heartbeat passes, and she's straightening, her spine alining and shoulders pulling back. It seems like she has stepped onto a stage for a performance and puts on a mask of someone else's face and mannerisms, someone she pretends to be. Even though her jaw resumes its stubborn set, the bags under her eyes are heavy.

It's hard to distinguish, what is real and what isn't.

"You missed your watch with Katie tonight."

She shrugs, unapologetic. "I know. She didn't care. I talked to her before I went to sleep."

The air in her void is cool, still damp from the rain that had poured from where the sky should be. It's dark for as far as the eye can see, a sort of murky darkness that isn't quite shadow.

Travis takes a step back from her, spinning on his heel to turn in a circle as he surveys the void. "Is this where your dreams are, when you're not in mine?" He asks, even though he already assumes the answer:

This is where she hides—when her father has driven her so out of her mind that this is the only place where she can hide from him, from Travis, from anyone who might be looking in. It's a fortress of her power, somewhere in which she can control everything and anything.

It's the place she hides when she sleeps well into the afternoon, so far away from the scents and tastes and temptations of the dreams of her peers. He's never seen this place, not in all of his years of observing her mind.

The realization that Valerie Greenwood is so gods damned smart hits him in the chest like a ton of bricks. This is her suit of armor, her shield. Nothing can hurt her here—the void might as well be made from walls of bulletproof metal, impenetrable.

As if she can track his train of thought, she smiles, spreading her arms in a welcoming gesture. "It's nothing compared to the penthouse, but it's something."

The snark that is always just underneath the surface of her is still missing, but the sarcasm is relieving. He isn't prepared for the honesty that comes after it:

"The silence in here...it helps. When the dreams are worse than they usually are." She says, immediately regretting admitting this small bit of truth. She likes it better when he doesn't know what the inside of her head looks like, despite quite literally being in the deepest part of her mind.

"I get it." He says, and it's not a lie. It's easy to understand how the girl who hears, senses, feels every thought and dream in a thousand-mile radius needs peace and quiet, needs stillness and to be alone.

She starts to walk, glancing over her shoulder as if to tell him to follow. "Alyssa asked me where I go, once. A long time ago." She keeps her voice steady as they walk farther into the void. "I showed her this place, and she hated it so much. She immediately wanted out. She didn't understand how the emptiness helps."

Valerie pauses, and she cocks her head, one ear angled towards what should be the sky.

"It's morning, isn't it?" Travis asks. He wonders if someone has already discovered his sleeping body outside of Cabin 21 and misunderstood the situation.

She nods. "The sun's about to come up. You should go back to your own cabin before Chiron catches you stalking me."

She grins wickedly when he balks at her, half mortified and half questioning how the hell she knows.

"Goodnight, Sandman." He says, and he laughs as her nose wrinkles in annoyance. "Thanks for saving my life last night. We're even."

Valerie shakes her head, that grin slipping from her face as a stony expression takes its place. "We're not even. But that's okay." She shrugs, her narrow shoulders rising until they are nearly at her ears. "Wake up, Travis. I'll be fine in here."

He doesn't wake up on his own—no, she has forced him into the land of the living, woken him by throwing him out of his own dream.

When his eyes open, Connor is standing over him, the watery light of dawn making his blue eyes look gray. "Girlfriend kick you out?" He asks, barely able to speak around his teasing laughter. He extends a hand to his older brother and pulls him to his feet.

"Shut up, jackass. You know she's not my girlfriend." Travis manages to say, although his thoughts are still whirring, still so shocked by the piece of brutal honesty Valerie had given him.

It isn't that she is a liar. She just hides the truth so far within herself, within that palace of darkness inside of her mind, that it rarely makes it to the surface.

If he's learned anything about Valerie Greenwood over these past however-many years, it's that the version of her that her peers see—the nickname, the lore behind her very presence at camp, the rumors and whispers and gossip that surround her every move—protects her more than any suit of armor ever could.

Connor's snort brings him out of his thoughts. "Whatever you say, man." His tone isn't unkind, isn't full of judgement. He's making fun of Travis, but not in a malicious way.

Travis smiles in the beginning rays of dawn's sun. With his brother walking ahead of him, he turns back, just once, and presses the tips of his fingers on the stained glass door of Cabin 21.

An attempt at a prayer of peace for her, knowing all she has seen and done and been through.