11. Innocence
You wouldn't think so but Reyna was something of an innocent.
For example, she had never killed anybody. That was rare for a demigod. Of course she had killed monsters, a giant or two and any bug she came across because she was scared of creepy crawlies (don't ask), but she had never actually killed a person. Except for a couple of pirates at some sort of spa…?
In the Giant War many demigods had deserted the gods side to join the giants because they lost hope in their parents or wanted to see them brought down. Some were convinced by Gaea, others by their friends, some left just because they wanted to. So in the war the demigods that were on the gods side had had to fight the ones on Gaea's.
They had killed them to survive.
Reyna was one of the few demigods who never did.
There was a difference between killing monsters and killing demigods. Demigods that you once knew.
Leo found that the moment he really lost his innocence was the moment that he had to help Jason subdue and kill a couple of guys from the Hermes cabin at Camp. Guys Leo remembered seeing in the mess hall at home.
Reyna had always made sure to knock whatever poor demigod she fought out. Leo loved that about her. She had told him late one night that she couldn't bring herself to stab them. She had tried, once, looking at a boy's face, a boy who would have killed her given the chance, and she still couldn't do it.
It was a huge deal to Leo, the fact that the girl beside him couldn't stand to be a murderer. Despite what had happened to her in the past, Leo treasured that innocence about her, wanted to keep it there, wanted to keep it safe. She was by no definition naive, but she did have a freedom no other demigod did, and that was the ability to honestly say she had never killed a fellow demigod.
Reyna didn't go to sleep picturing the faces of men whose lives she'd ended. She didn't wake up from nightmares of her victims eyes staring at her.
But she was always there when Leo did.