Word spread quickly around those parts Lea learned. The second she had stepped foot into the camp and led over to Cabin 3; eyes darted to her and wouldn't leave.
It didn't help that she was only with Luke and Chiron as the gods stayed back to talk. She would have glared at everyone that stared at her, but she instead chose to focus on the thought of the fact that her entire life has been a life and that her Father was honestly just a trip to the beach away and still couldn't find time to send a birthday card.
(But she wasn't supposed to be born in the first place. Why bring attention to her lest she be killed before she even truly knew life?)
She grimaced as she passed by the cabins overflowing with children. Did the gods not have any kind of celestial protection? They slowed to a stop in front of what she suspected to be her Father's cabin. Her eyes took it in, somehow knowing that this was where she belonged and yet—
Lea wanted nothing more than to turn away.
"It's only you and Percy here now," Luke told her before rushing off to a kid calling his name.
And neither of them was supposed to be there either.
Lea sighed before opening the door and could easily see where Percy had just about moved in. It looked almost exactly like his side of their room. Her gaze roamed over it, taking it all in. "It's—," she started. "It's nice."
Could be better. They were gods of immeasurable power, weren't they? Surely, they could afford five-star establishments.
Then again, aliens from space probably thought this was good enough for mortals.
Lea blinked when one corner of the room seemed to swirl. The twin beds morphed into queen sized beds that looked like seashells straight from the ocean floor. The trunk that she guessed was for their clothing shifted until they were two luxury closets standing against the walls. Paintings of what she assumed to be the seafloor and her Father's palace lined the walls alongside framed photographs of her and Percy.
Lea found herself moving to trace the pictures before she could stop herself.
She had never thought that she could miss someone this much, but—
She and Percy had never been away from each other for so long.
Two days was pushing it and summer school had only been bearable because she was allowed to call him, but two weeks? Weeks.
And her Mother?
Lea found herself sniffling before she could stop herself, tears streaming down her face like rain. She curled into herself because she wasn't stupid, and she had noticed how none of them had mentioned anything about her Mother.
(Was she dead?)
(Was Lea all alone now?)
Lea never heard the door close, but she felt the arms around her—familiar despite the fact they had only held her once— as she sunk to the ground, grief on her tongue. She buried her face into her soulmate's chest, breathing in the fresh scent of crocus flowers as she cried and cried and cried.
"Tis alright, asteri mu," he whispered into her hair. "I am here. I will not leave you alone."
And the words sounded like an oath.
Lea awakened tucked in one of the beds.
It was dark outside, but strangely, Lea did not find that unnerving, especially not with the way the stars seemed to sparkle as she looked at them. She frowned, remembering something about how just about all the constellations in the sky came from greek mythology since the gods or something kept putting people up there like a storage closet.
She guessed she couldn't really call them myths anymore if the gods really were still walking the earth, but honestly? Lea still hasn't ruled out aliens or interdimensional beings.
(Because Lea did not believe in science, but she believed in math even if it was her worst subject. Seriously, whose fucking bright idea was it to add the alphabet to it? She struggled enough when they were separated! Why add to it?)
Lea focused on the room, taking note of the plate of food that sat on one of the desks. She was hungry, but Lea did not trust it at all.
She had to shake herself to remind her what was going on. She had been kidnapped; by her soulmate yes, but still very much kidnapped. And sure, they spoke of her brother and him being on some quest even though the cabin had what she recognized as his clothing, but— if the so-called gods could lie to the world, then they could lie to her also.
Lea may have been unreasonably paranoid, but she figured she had the right to be.
Leaneira Jackson did not believe in soulmates.
And suddenly, this forest green eyed male–person—being laid claim to the mark on her skin and her entire worldview gets turned on its head. She was allowed to be cautious!
She paced around the cabin that she was to live in with Percy. The cabin for children of Poseidôn. It was nice to finally have a name and he had almost thirteen years of child support to pay. A cabin in half blood ville was not going to make all that go away.
(And who named it Camp Half-Blood? If she didn't know any better, she would've thought they were throwing slurs around. They probably were. What if 'halfblood' was what the people of the old times used to call the children of the gods when they weren't around?)
Lea found herself tracing her soulmark. She hated how it brought her such comfort even if she wanted nothing more than to pretend that it was just a tattoo that she managed to sneak and get for the right price off 79th street.
She turned back towards the bed, planning to remove the duvet and a few pillows to make a mat on the floor when she caught sight of the books situated in the corner. She moved closer, noting that it was the books that her soulmate kept trying to get her to read. Lea grimaced. She had not realized that it was enough to fill a bookshelf and yet— here she was.
The first book she saw was titled: "How to Survive the Monsters and the Gods Above Us " subtitled "So, You're A Demigod Now". It was written by someone called the Stolls. Maybe they were siblings like the Grimm Brothers from her favorite fairy tales. She found herself smiling when she realized that there was a translator key—her own now that she gave it more attention—peeking through the pages.
Lea turned back towards the window seat, using the glow of the moon as a light, and she began to read.
The sound of yelling drew her attention and Lea startled to realize that it was daylight. She had spent so much time reading the book and making notes on the things that she read that she lost track of it.
Lea stood slowly, stretching out her muscles as she eased before easing over to the door. When she peeked out, she saw dozens of children in bright orange shirts the same shade as highlighters arguing with each other.
Lea was awed at the sight of so many different ethnicities. She could also feel herself begin to blush at the few people whose features became clear. They were… they were very attractive.
Though if she were being honest, there was no comparison to the three gods that she met the day before.
No, as she thought of the jade green eyes and golden blond hair and wine-kissed skin. There was definitely no comparison.
Lea shook her head, startling when she looked up and made eye contact with one of the people observing the current argument. She didn't have much time to take note of anything past the asian features before he made his way over.
"So, you're our newest camper," he muttered when he stopped in front of the door. He was a little older than her, probably two or three years with black hair a shade lighter than her own and dark eyes like the shadows of the night.
Lea raised a brow. "I never agreed to that."
"Most of them never do," he told her. "Percy Jackson's sister, huh. The Daughter of Poseidôn. Lord Hermês' khaos-blessed. Is there a name to go along with the title?"
"Depends," she replied, ignoring everything he said after her brother's name. She was the daughter of Sally Jackson, and she was more of a curse than a blessing. "What's yours?"
"Ethan," he said immediately. "Ethan Nakamura."
"Hello, Ethan. My name is Leaneira Jackson. Call me anything other than Leaneira and I will kick you in the nuts."
The boy winced, shifting to keep his lower half out of her line of attack. "Not a fan of nicknames?"
She snorted. "My mom, brother, and my friends are the only ones to call me a nickname. Anyone else well…" She shrugged. It was one of the boundaries that she insisted on when her Mother sat her and Percy down to explain that they had them. She had a right to people not intruding on her space and behaving as if they were doing her favor by calling her a nickname.
Unlike Percy, she liked her first name just as she liked being called Lea, Neira, and Nene. What she didn't like was people that didn't actually know her calling her by a nickname and she hated authority figures calling her nicknames trying to establish a friendly vibe with the students. No, there needed to be a distinction.
Lea loved her boundaries and she loved enforcing them—just as much as she loved her Mother enforcing them because even Gabe had to call her Leaneira and they had been married for years.
"If you keep going like that, you'd stay as one of the most hated kids in the camp" he told her. Lea raised a brow. "I haven't been here long enough to be the most hated."
Ethan laughed. "You're a child of the Big Three meaning you're incredibly powerful—"
"Boring."
"And you're the khaos-bless of an Olympian Major god."
"Theoretically."
"Word around the camp is that his name and epithet is on your chest."
"This is a birthmark," she lied. "Of random symbols."
"Symbols that just so happen to be ancient greek letters that spell out his name and epithets."
"I can't control what rash showed up on my skin."
To her astonishment, he laughed at her words and at the sound of it, she found herself relaxing like something within her shifted and all was right with the world. Ironically enough, that made her hackles rise and suspicion rise within her. "Who's your parent or are you a hidden 'god'? Am I right to call you a boy or are you something else entirely?"
"I'm a male demigod. My Mother is Nemesis. The daimona goddess of indignation. The Dispenser of Dues if you will though most will simplify her to being the goddess of revenge."
Lea thought over the stuff she had read before, "She cursed someone, didn't she? They died because they took self-love to an entirely different level."
"Narkissos," Ethan muttered. "He loved the attention that his feats granted him, but he turned down everyone that asked for more. Anyone that tried to get close to him whether as just a friend or a lover, he made fun of them. It made Lady Aphrodite and Mother mad. And one day, he made fun of the wrong suitor. They prayed to Mother and Lady Aphrodite for vengeance… for retribution. And the goddesses made Narkissos fall in love with his reflection. So, he loved—and never won his love!"
Terrifying.
He pointed over to the most hideous cabin around. Lea really thought her eyes were about to burn out. "That's the Aphrodite Cabin. Number 10."
"That's Aphrodite's cabin," she gaped. "Aphrodite? The goddess of beauty? The goddess that either outright killed or brutally tortured like her daughter in law—" Because Lea read that. The Family Reunions must be wild. "Anyone that claimed or was claimed to look better than her? The goddess who in a very simplified version caused a decades' long war because of an apple for the 'fairest' goddess."
A simplified version because another one of those books had details about curses and prophecies that were all connected to the Trojan War and the Apple was nothing more than the fuse— like bomb components all mixing together.
(Lea was honestly rooting for Troy.)
(Paris could rot.)
Ethan nodded. "I did cabin inspections once. It looks much better on the inside once you get past the cloud of perfume and colognes though one of them told me it was more a defense mechanism than anything."
Lea hummed, taking note of that before turning to look at him. "So where's your cabin?"
He pulled her further out of the door and Lea scowled at him for touching her without permission before he pointed to a building at the end. "Cabin 11. Hermês cabin."
Lea startled. "What?" Was she— was she talking to another stepchild?
"I have not been officially claimed," Ethan explained though Lea didn't know what he meant. "It's hard to explain how I know she's my Mother, but she is. But either way, all the unclaimed children or kids without cabins stay in Cabin 11."
"Why?"
People loved Ancient Greece. Wasn't the country covered in ruins from those times? She vaguely remembers hearing a foreign exchange upperclassman make a remark that the greeks that most people seemed to like were the dead ones. So, why was a camp for their children as Luke helpfully explained the night before so scarce in places for the kids of the gods—aliens?
"It's just the way it is. Only the main twelve get cabins."
Lea furrowed her brows. The books had stated a number of other gods were described as Olympian. Most of them were functionaries or minions of the Twelve, but still Olympians. "That's stupid and prejudiced."
"You'll find a lot of that here," another voice stated from beside them. Lea spun around with a yelp, leg kicking out. The limb was caught by a sandy blond-haired male with sparkling green eyes—not like Lea or her soulmates' but it glowed like the neon green that Disney Villains used. "Names Alabaster. Son of Hekatê."
"The goddess of magic?"
He let her leg go to flutter his fingers through the air. "Goeteia," he said as a smoky haze twirled about his fingers. "If you want to get technical." The smoke morphed and curled and shifted until there was turtle hatchling in his hands. "A tortoise. One of the sacred animals of Hermês." He reached out to place the animal in her hand and the little thing smiled at her.
Lea hummed, turning her attention back to the yelling that was quite close to coming to physical blows. "And what's that about?"
The boys shared looks over her head and Lea scowled. "There are rumors," Alabaster told her. "That the gods are fighting. And with you and your brother coming here…"
"Despite the fact that we aren't supposed to be born," Lea continued dryly. They winced before nodding.
"With the two of you being proof of a broken law and being unable to, erm, correct it due to your mark," Ethan stumbled over his tongue. "Twins play a big role in our history also with the Divine Twin Archers and the Dioscuri, Herakles and Iphicles. No one knows if killing you may kill Percy and vice versa."
"You all talk about death a little too casually for me," Lea muttered.
"Well, my mother is a Khthonic goddess," Alabaster pointed out. Ethan nodded, "And my Grandmother is a Khthonic goddess." The latter then gave her a sly smile, "And with your mark, you also have ties to the Khthonioi gods."
"Wonderful," Lea stated. She brushed her thumb gently over the hatchling in her hand, tilting her head when a sound echoed around the camp. A conch horn. How she knew that she did not know.
"Come on," Ethan told her. "Let's go get breakfast and introduce you to our cabin mates." His voice trailed off into a snicker at the grimace that appeared on her face. His cabinmates included her stepchildren.
…
She was definitely going to need a different name for that. There was no way that she was going to keep referring to them like that.
"Hey," Alabaster stated as they walked across the camp. "What is it like to have a soulmark?"
"It's like… a best friend," Lea hummed, thinking it over as she kept her eyes on the animal in her hand while watching where she was walking. "But more. You know, like a stalker."
