Chapter One

Mother

Brandon Kephalos Valentine was claimed on an ordinary day/night. Except for, well, the lightning storm and the visit from the unhappily married woman and the blood-red sky, not in that order.

It started out like most nights. It was a year after Kronos was defeated, and Bran was the only unclaimed camper left.

Nobody had quite figured out why. Although Bran's build resembled that of a swimmer, his eyes were an uncommon light violet never found in the children of the sea god. He was only an average swordsman, a slightly better archer, and he hated heights but also feared deep water to some extent. He never seemed to tan or burn in the sunlight, which ruled out Apollo kids with their California skin, and his manner of speaking, was deliberate and thoughtful but not creative, and he despised sitting still long enough to read an architecture book. He detested drinking, had shown no interest in either gender as of yet, interrupted Hermes cabin pranks out of moral conduct, and all of the minor gods were trying so hard to be submissive to Olympus it was unlikely he was their unclaimed child, and furthermore the satyrs reported his scent to be unusually strong. He had none of the morbidity of Hades, though some mused upon it, and had shown none of the ability to attract shadows, and his father was supposedly biological as he resembled the mortal to some degree. He lacked a green thumb as well. His family history was unremarkable, as half-blood children went- a father left alone with the child after a year's liaison with a goddess Robert Valentine refused to name, if he could. No stepparents, but two adopted sisters that were mortal cousins. The only strange thing about his mundane family was that clear sight ran through the generations, and Bran had a greater ability to notice small details about the world and multi-task than most of the demigods.

Though Chiron may have had a few suspicions, no one truly predicted what was to happen next.

The day half-dawned- well, dawned is the wrong word. The half-bloods were awoken sometime past four by a giant peal of thunder and crash of lightning. A tree fell someplace in the clearing before Hermes cabin, where Bran was staying by default. "What the freak?" muttered Travis Stoll. "That almost landed on the roof!"

Thunder boomed even louder. There was the sound of splintering wood.

"Connor, you didn't steal anything from anyone huge, recently?" accused Kris, his sibling.

"What do you think, I'm that stupid!" mumbled Connor, rubbing his eyes. "I've never offended Zeus. Anyone else?"

They shook their heads, but Bran just blinked, dazed. "It's for me," Bran murmured, shocked. Why hadn't he seen it before?

Twelve pairs of mischevious eyes turned on him. "What did you do, man?" sputtered Dan.

"I was born," managed Bran, dizzied by the revelation.

"Crap! Is he a son of Hades after all?" managed Travis.

"No, that's not it," mumbled Bran. "I don't know how I know... but I think I'm kind of… a son of Hera." The lightning grew louder, the thunder rolling not a mile away.

"Dude, is he on drugs?" asked Dan. "I mean, Hera's never-."

Promptly, the roof was ripped off the cabin. The demigods clutched their blankets and yelped as cold rain drenched them. Bran, for his part, merely gazed up at the sky with blank, unseeing eyes.

To prove his statement, a peacock feather floated down to Earth.

"Holy shit, man," blinked Travis. "Look, dude!" he yelled at the sky. "Some of us are just Hermes kids here!"

The thunder moved to focus on Bran. Kris yelped as Dan smacked Travis. The girl tried to yank Bran down to the floor, because she was a good person despite her trickster ways, but Bran was paralyzed by fear and the irony of it all. He was going to die. Wasn't he?

All of a sudden, the thunder and rain cleared. The sky was blue and happy, as in normal summer, for a perfect instant.

Then, it went blood-red. Bran thumped to the floor at last.

"We're taking you to the Big House," insisted Kris stubbornly, tugging on his frozen arms. "C'mon, Bran!"

Shaking his head, the boy spiraled back to Earth and ran as the Hermes cabin dragged him to the porch steps. Connor rapped on the doorway. Mr. D. answered.

"Well," said the god with an unpleasant smirk and real anger in his eyes, "it seems my stepmother finally caved."

Recalling her mythology, Kris remembered vaguely that Hera had persecuted and killed Mr. D.'s mother. Crap. "Can you please get Chiron?"

Luckily, the centaur burst through the door, curlers still in his tail, while Mr. D. was still staring at Bran like he would an unpleasant insect in need of squashing. "Thanks, Kris. I'll get the whole story out of Bran. No one will hurt him here." Chiron made this assertion slightly less reassuring by shooting an anxious glance at the wine god.

Not wasting any time, Chiron flung the boy onto his back and set him down on a hallway chair. Bran's ADHD brain- which was working in overdrive at last- wondered how they prevented hoof prints on the hardwood floors.

"Your mother is Hera?" Bran nodded, going shy now. He'd assumed his mother was one of the less well-reputed minor goddesses. "Zeus tried to kill you?"

"Then the sky went blood-red," muttered Bran, chilled. "Why did it do that?"

Chiron's eyes narrowed. "Someone..." he said finally, "would have had to make a blood sacrifice. Take the lightning bolt for you."

"But- Oh." Bran shivered. "My-,"

Chiron nodded grimly. "Your mother cares for you. She loved your father, you know," mused Chiron. "I would not speak harshly to her, Brandon," The centaur advised him. "She may not have a benevolent reputation, but she has much kindness in her and she did not willingly marry- you know who I mean," he continued urgently.

"As kind as always, Chiron," whispered the beautiful woman in the doorway, as though her throat was very sore. She wore a white bathrobe, ducky pajama pants and a Yankees T-shirt, no makeup, and had a bruise on the side of her forehead. Her brown hair, the same color as his own, fell in waves that resembled his and was hopelessly tangled. Violet eyes were concealed with reading glasses, and her feet had blue fuzzy bunny slippers.

Bran blinked. She looked so much like a normal mom he loved her on sight. This was what he'd dreamed of having. A real mother, who wore normal clothes and smiled at him even when she was tired. A lump built in his throat as he considered the impossibility.

"Come here," said the Queen of Heaven, tears building in her eyes as she opened her arms hesitantly, as though unsure of how he'd react.

Bran did what he most wanted to do.

For once in his life, he trusted someone absolutely and completely and ran into her embrace, squeezing her with all the love he'd longed to give.

"I thought I'd never see you again," sniffled the goddess, a mother to the core. "You were a beautiful baby, and now you're so old and I don't know what to do," she admitted, as though to herself.

"Did you watch me?" he asked thickly, wanting to hope that she cared for him, that his mother knew him, at least a little.

"Of course I did," she told him. Bran blinked. "Your birthday is July 13th. On your seventh birthday you threw a fit because there was no chocolate cake. Your cousins, Cally and Jennifer, annoy you but you love them like the sisters they are. You've been growing so much lately that your largest shoes don't fit anymore and your father's jeans from his college days work better. You worry about Cally's clear sight, because she doesn't really belong in the world of Greek myth. You want to protect her. Your father is your hero, according to an essay you wrote, as it should be."

Bran's mouth dropped open. "I send letters to your father twice a week," Hera continued. "He keeps me up-to-date. I'm sorry I couldn't claim you earlier, my son." The last two words, my son, were savored on the tongue. "Do you understand?"

Bran smiled a sheepish grin up at his... mother. "I do," he told her, sincerely. He cleared his throat. "Can you visit sometimes?" he asked her piteously.

"I'll see you once a week, no matter where you are," she vowed. "I swear it by the River Styx."

Bran's heart swelled. "Do you have to leave?" he asked her, trying not to let his voice crack.

For answer, she smoothed his hair and asked, "I only got to hold you once. Indulge your mother for me?"

The little boy in Bran nodded.

Chiron having long since left, they sat down together on the couch. His mother put his head on her lap, stroking it gently. "Love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," the woman said with a kind of quiet rapture. "Always have. Always will."

"Me too," Bran mumbled as he fought exhaustion. The lightning had tired him out.

"Sleep," she told him. Bran yawned, and rested soundly, a child once more. His slow, even breathing made Hera feel alive again, for the first time in four thousand years. This is what I would live with, if I could. Oh, Robert. If I could I would marry you and have countless children and I love you and him. Please. Don't stop returning my affections, the goddess prayed, unsure of who to ask. Her chest bled ichor, and her heartache was greater.

But she found solace in her child's company. After all, only a life lived for others is worth living.

X X X

When he woke up, Bran managed to extract a promise from his mother to write to him, and she swore on the River Styx to visit him in person once a week. A chill went up his backbone at that- what would Zeus do to her?- but he blinked away tears of gratitude. Then, she'd given him a compass. "It will point you towards the nearest being with whom your fate is intertwined," she said, matter-of-factly, like compasses of destiny were common things. "It possesses other traits, too. But do not hesitate to leave it behind if necessary. And don't name it. Names make you forget it is only a tool, and not as important as any one life." Then she looked up at him, eyes sparkling. "Happy belated thirteenth birthday." Then she kissed him on the cheek. "The only safety for you from a storm is in a church, temple, or any place of great faith. Remember your father and I love you. I'll see you, wherever you are, on Thursday." Bran nodded, trying not to beam, but she understood. He tucked the compass not away, but gripped it lightly in his hand and resolved to have Beckendorf find a chain for it.

Her form began to glow. Bran almost didn't look away, but he averted his eyes in time to merely catch a glimpse of her celestial beauty. The beauty made him illogically proud, in the way little kids are defensive of their parents. Appropriate, I guess.

He looked outside and tried to judge whether it was noon yet by the position of the sun. Probably, but he didn't feel like going to archery right now.

Bran had always been a thinker, one to puzzle through things slowly. Now, he felt as though he needed answers.

And he knew who had them. Bran searched his pockets for a drachma, but none presented themselves. A quick glance around the room ensured there were no phones. How could he reach his father?

Stepping quietly through the corridors of the Big House, his plans changed as he ran into the young woman who would one day hold everything that he was- honor, heart, loyalty and life itself- in her hands. However, at the time, it was not apparent that C.C. Talbot was anything to Brandon Kephalos Valentine but a hostile and possibly promiscuous knife-wielder.

Even though Bran rarely made snap judgments, the dangerously beautiful demigod was gripping the handle of an army knife, her hands clutched against a pathetic Dionysus kid's shirt. "Now, what did I say about trying to cop a feel, Winslow?" the Amazon-like girl said in a teacher-like, overly calm voice. She was perhaps a year older than him, as tall, her age making her speech all the more strange and the physical epitome of femme fatale. The widely reputed C.C. was slim, with kinky but not curly brunette hair, strangely green eyes, and was wearing nothing but a blue lace tank top and skintight jeans. Somehow, Bran had the feeling the outfit didn't inhibit her ability to fight, even though he'd never met her in the flesh before. His traitorous body tried to avoid noticing how much flesh there was.

"That it was all fine as long as it was only you I was feeling, I didn't reach for anything I shouldn't, and never did it while you were on business?" stammered the half-drunk pretty boy.

She smiled grimly and dropped the tipsy kid like a stone. "Hope we don't see each other again for a while." Winslow scrambled away without as much as a backward glance.

C.C. then turned to him. "Heard you're a son of Hera," she said, those lively green eyes scanning him up and down. Bran tried to meet her unsettling gaze. "Well, the eyes are right," she murmured. "Have you heard? Lord Zeus is demanding you prove yourself… Bran is it?"

"I haven't heard anything about a quest, and yes, it's Bran. What's it to you?" he asked curiously.

"I'm coming along, that's what it is to me. And in case you were wondering who I am, it's C.C. Talbot, daughter of Persephone."

"So what's with the knife?" he asked without thinking.

"And Ares was my sperm donor," she admitted reluctantly. "Anyways, let's go see the new Oracle. Heard she gives great prophecies of doom and such. Don't look so green." She tugged on his arm. Bran struggled to keep up as she half-dragged him through the corridor. Thankfully, the Oracle's guest room was close by.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare opened the door to them. "Hey," she smiled. "Just give me a minute to get this Esmeralda thing on the road. And what's with the compass?"

Bran looked down at the compass which he was still gripping tightly. "My mother gave it to me," he told her.

Rachel nodded. "All right. Just a warning, I won't remember anything I said and these tend to come on sudden-,"

She gripped her red curls frantically as her normally blue eyes went green. "What I speak is for the son of Hera only," hissed the voice of Delphi.

C.C. rolled her eyes and left the room. Bran faced the ancient power head-on. "Approach, seeker, and ask," the Oracle said through Rachel.

"What is my fate?" asked Bran shyly.

The Oracle was not kind. "Two go north, then four of shadowed birth plan to go to the backwards land. Son of Hera, pity you cannot guard your heart- to love that which becomes immortal is to die when they betray you, with lies from the start. Apollo has cursed you with Aphrodite's hand."

And then he was with Rachel again. "I hate not knowing what I've said," mumbled the clear-sighted priestess. "Did it have a good rhyme scheme?" She noted Bran's open-mouthed, devastated expression. "Oh. Well- let's just say Delphi's a little cryptic and prophecies are rarely what they seem."

Bran nodded blankly, and walked out of the room, a lump in his throat and his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

C.C. loomed over him, tall, dangerously gorgeous, and her eyes glinting with the faintest hint of warmth.

"So… rough prophecy, huh?"

He just sighed and nodded.