Snakes were far from my favorite animal. As a daughter of Persephone and granddaughter of Demeter, I thought Sophie would surely just talk to the vibrant green serpent and it would slither away to wherever snakes hung out. But as she spotted the snake, I saw her face go pale as she backed away slowly.

"This is bad, very bad," Sophie stated. Nico unsheathed his sword and pushed Sophie behind him. I found that funny, since mere hours ago she had burned a goddess-sent bear with violet fire. "What do you think Demeter wants?"

"Her daughter?" Will quipped. I laughed as Nico gave him a deadpan look. "What? I'm right, aren't I?"

"Take care of which path you will take, for one leads to the answers you seek while the other leads to pain and sorrow. Only two can take each one or none of you will leave to see tomorrow." The serpent didn't blink once as it spoke nor did it hiss whenever it said a word with the letter 's' in it like I expected. (Not going to do the obvious stereotype, thank you very much.) A yellow aura surrounded it before it faded away.

"What just happened?" I asked. Sophie shook her head and just shrugged at me. It was almost like some person, maybe an author, needed to get the plot going but couldn't find a clever way to do it so she just placed a random serpent in the story to help. That didn't sound right so I ignored the thought and focused my eyes on the path Sophie had chosen for us to take. As I stared, the dirt path changed from muddy brown to pitch black. And the path in the opposite direction became a mix of gold and pink.

"Guess we know who takes which path," Nico muttered. I didn't like it, but he was right. The North trail was black for the children of Hades. Meanwhile the South footpath was gold for Will, the son of Apollo, and pink for me, the daughter of Aphrodite. (AN: Why do so many Greek gods and goddesses have names starting with the letter 'a'?)

"I don't like this," Sophie stated. I couldn't help but agree with her. It was like the beginning of a bad horror movie where the teens split up and get killed off one by one. "It's not going to end well."

"Well at least none of us will be alone. And I'd rather not anger Demeter anymore than I already have," Sophie looked up when she spoke, probably praying to a god or goddess for luck. Or maybe a long life.

"We better get going."

Will kept his eyes on Nico even after we started to walk away. He mouthed something that looked like strangely similar to the words 'I love you'. Even after we had put some distance between us, neither one of us talked for awhile. I don't know what Will's excuse was, but I wanted to think about something.

The prophecy, to be exact. The first line said something about the child of desire. My dad, Eros/Cupid, is the god of love and desire. Which meant me. Then it said I would face death's fire. Sophie was the daughter of Hades, the literal king of Death. Clearly it meant her and that strange fire power of hers.

That line had already come true, so I chose to focus on the next part. Daughter of flower. Persephone was all about flowers, and her daughter just so happened to be Sophie. The only other daughter I could think of would be Melinoe, but that didn't make sense. She had already done her part by trying to warn us earlier.

Bask in eternal power was the second part. I knew bask meant to be exposed to something. That something had to be eternal power, whatever that meant. Whose power? If it was eternal, then it had to be one of the gods or goddesses…..right?

I turned to ask Will what he thought when I felt something hit my head. Before I could process the pain, everything went dark.

AN: The prophecy will now be in each chapter just in case someone forgot or doesn't want to go chapter-jumping to find it.

Child of Desire will face

Death's Fire.

Daughter of Flower bask in

Eternal Power.

Two become one as

Fate is Undone.

Kitkat Out!