Adora's arrival at Camp Halfblood also spells her beginning as her father's tool.
Not that he wishes to use her as one, not when he lets her rot among the other Unclaimed, not when his murmur oflittle godlinghas burned as her mother's flesh has burned, but the fact remains.
Adora is a halfblood first and foremost, the daughter of her divine father and with that alone comes with a burden, a leash to wrap around her throat made of thorns and the selfishness only an adult knows.
It's Luke Castellan who brings her to the forges. Since the son of Hermes has shared his marshmallows with her, he seems to think they are now friends.
And maybe they are friends, friends who exist in parallel planes, friends who cannot understand each other's hurt.
Yet somehow, Adora does not mind it. Much.
Luke's grip is a gentle thing around her wrist despite the callouses on his hands, rough patches of torn skin, yet another sacrifice to the altar of his own godly father.
"Cmon," he urges her with a small tug. "It's time for you to get your armor."
He says that as if it is something exciting, but his smile dies as he notices the grimness of her lips and the lack of anything in her eyes. Not excitement, nor any kind of emotions. Only quiet sorrow, the kind that drowns you quietly.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
Her lips part. Ready to brush off his concern, ready to weave something that will make him stop looking at her as if he cares, as if there is truly nothing more he wishes but to take her worries and slay them the way he so easily slays everyone else in the sword range.
Yet the word dies in the back of her throat. Instead, she asks, "Why are you so excited?"
He tilts his head. "It's your first armor fitting," Luke points out. "What isn't there to be excited about?"
Ah.
Adora shakes her ehad, softening her eyes. She cannot help it, cannot help both the endearment and the bitterness that swell on her tongue in the face of a boy who sees his bloodline as less of a curse than it actually is.
The boy who knows not that he is leading yet another lamb to the slaughter, bringing another sacrifice to the altar of the Gods.
Adora had expected it to happen sooner.
Mother, after all, had never been one to coat the harsh reality of their blood in sugar and honey, and had never been one to smooth the sharp edges of her bitterness for her daughter.
And there is a reason why Mother never once entertained the thought of sending Adora to Camp Halfblood. Even though it would have been much easier to get rid of the daughter she had never asked for, to be rid of the target that makes monsters nip at her heels when she had hidden herself so perfectly before Adora's greediness became their undoing.
It's because Camp Halfblood does not know anything other than survival, nothing but the worship of the Gods in hopes that maybe, maybe, they will be loved enough to live past adulthood.
An older boy welcomes them in the forges.
He's tall. Tanned, deep bronze skin and dark curls, soot on his cheek and sweat on his brow. He looks like how Adora imagines Atlas to look, with the world on his shoulders, and his entire being curled under its weight.
But there is no boulder, no world on Aymen's shoulders, at least, not one that Adora can see.
"Aymen," Luke greets with a cheer, dragging Adora forward, hands settling on her shoulders as he presents her like a child presents to its parents yet another craft. "This is Adora Delacour. She's here for her armor.
Here, goes the unsaid words. here is another lamb to kill.
And maybe Luke does not realize it, does not think the same poison that Adora drinks, but the sentiment is the same.
The ending is the same.
Aymen waves at her, scarred fingers wiggling into a friendly greeting. "Yo," he greets. "Nice to finally meet you, Adora."
His eyes roam her frame as if searching for more than the hollowness that is barely holding Adora's soul, more than the empty corpse with fraying strings and tired eyes. He must not like what he sees, does not like how Adora's collarbone peeks through the slip of her camp t-shirt or the lack of any interest in something he is clearly passionnate about.
But Adora smiles, brushes off his narrowed eyes, and offers a small, generic greeting:
"It's nice to meet you, too."
It's clear that Aymen has much to do in the forges, being one of the oldest there, and they do not lose time with empty pleasantries, though he chatters. He likes to tease Luke and then Adora, remarking on how elusive she can be.
"I'm glad I finally get to meet the camp's ghost," he teases.
"Well here I am," Adora responds with a sardonic twist of the lips.
Ghost, he calls her, and she can understand where the word comes from, can understand it, yet still wonders if there is malice in his words if it is a jest instead of an insult cleverly hidden in it.
Sure, Adora is there whenever her presence is required, but anything else, anything that isn't mandotory, well, she flees them the way she flees her reflection.
She has no interest in replacing Lily's ghost, does not want to see the other Halfbloods learn the same lessons as she did.
Sometimes, she wishes she could tell them of her mother's wise warnings so that they do not follow Adora's footsteps.
Gods do not love, she wants to shout, to make the world tremble with the words that linger in her mouth, like a storm in the ocean, mortal and dangerous and so very sudden.
But she cannot.
Adora cannot.
For she hadn't listened, had turned deaf ears to her mother's warning, so certain in her half divine arrogance, that she will be different.
Why would the others be any different?
And that's the thing about childhood, of being a child beholden to a parenté
You think the world of them.
Till they shatter you at their feet.
So yes, ghost he may call her, but Aymen doesn't know how right he is to call her so.
Instead, he only thinks of the small girl that easily slips past everyone's notice, who no one can find sometimes.
After all, the daughter of Death doubts that anyone would be near her whenever she seeks out the cannibal harpies in the hope they might kill her. It is a fool's errand because they fear her Father more than they hunger for mortal flesh, and they both know - both daughter and monster - that Father would never accept Adora in the Underworld.
Aymen examines her shoulders, the frailness of her arms, now more bones than flesh. He takes the sight in with pinched lips. "It sure took you a while to get fitted, huh," he then remarks as he digs around, probably searching for scraps of metal or whatever they call armor here.
Adora thinks she can hear a small accusation, a condemnation from one sacrifice to another. Maybe it's because Adora has not fallen over herself the way that Ethan Nakamura has done to prove himself worthy of a Claiming. Not that the older boy has been claimed, but she guesses that it's the general expectation of things.
To have starved children begging for scraps, begging for a seat at a table, never knowing that this same seat is made of the bones and ashes of previous halfbloods - all as unloved as they are.
Adora bristles at the small condemnation. "Daniel wanted me to wait," she says pointedly.
And of course, as Daniel says, his wants are listened. Adora thinks it would have been easy to dislike Daniel, dislike him the same that she sometimes dislikes Luke, both guys beloved and abhorred the same.
She guesses Daniel did not wish to put a sword in Adora's hands, the same way that he took away Mother's dagger, citing her too young to have it without any training.
Adora could have told him that Mother had made sure that Adora had the training. That the cuts on her hands, on her fingers are more wanted than accidental, but then, it would open another damn she does not want to disturb.
Mother is a wound that belongs solely to Adora.
"Of course he did," Aymen snorts.
Luke, having drifted a bit further in the forge, calls out to the son of the God of forges. "Is that mine?!" he exclaims, dark eyes sparkling. He's holding a sword, admiring its blade through the flickers of the fire that roars in its nest.
What a sight he is.
A boy holding a sword.
A soldier holding its death.
"No, it isn't," Aymen calls back, rolling his eyes at Luke's pout. "Yours still a work in progress, Golden Boy. Now go, before Ryan skins my ass because you were late for sword practice."
Luke hesitates, glancing at Adora. "Daniel told me to keep Adora company."
"What," Aymen teases. "You don't trust me?"
Hermes's son scowls. "I do," he protests. "But Daniel was really insistent."
"Daniel doesn't have to know," Aymen turns, moving Adora's ebony hair gently to the side. He's gentle, careful. "Now run."
And so, Luke Castellan runs.
"Have you started your sword lessons?" Aymen then asks once they are alone.
Adora shakes her head. "Not yet."
But soon.
And this - this armor fitting - is the first step.
Because though Daniel likes to call her little fish, though he looks at her like she is a child that would crumble without his steady, loathsome eyes, he can hardly keep the world at bay, can hardly delay her execution.
Because the excuses have run out.
Her childhood came with an expiration date, and it has arrived.
Suddenly, Adora is no longer a child, no longer the small, frail girl so many see her as.
Instead, she becomes yet another halfblood, another soldier who regardless of her wants and abilities, is expected to don the armor and suddenly, it fits.
"Suits you like a glove," Aymen says as he finishes tying the back metal pad of her armor around the waist. He sounds proud of his work, but his lips have thinned into a sorrowful line.
Adora raises a brow. "It doesn't feel like it."
He barks out a laugh at that. "Give it time," he tells her. "You'll get used to it." His eyes falter at whatever they see in hers as he breathes, "We all did."
His whisper sounds like grief, the regret of a human - helpless in face of the Gods's wills. And suddenly, Aymen no longer looks like he is fifteen or even fourteen. No, instead, grief ages him, makes the bruises beneath his eyes that much more prevalent, and his shoulders slouch as if he is bearing a weight that should not have been his to bear.
Perhaps Adora pities him, at the very least, she feels the echo of empathy, of seeing yet another halfblood with his own scars made of divine hands. She wonders if he is his own victim the way that she is as they drink the self-mutilation expected of halfbloods.
Because isn't that the thing?
They will never be clean of sins that were not their own but instead a vicious legacy of those who birthed them.
They will never be clean.
Never again be children.
Because there is no God that can give them their childhood back.
Voices start echoing throughout camp and it slips into the forge despite the roaring of the flames. Adora's sapphire eyes glance towards the opened door as blurs of orange rush towards the gates.
Yell and cries of teenagers and children trying to outplay each other in their horror and their grief haunt the place with calls for healers, for anything.
Some in the forges rush outside too.
But Adora doesn't move, doesn't rush to help or see whatever is going on.
Neither does Aymen.
"Fuck," a girl spits with a sob building in the back of her throat as she chokes on it. She's rushing out, wrenching her apron away desperately. "It's Dave."
Aymen's hands tighten around Adora's wrist as he makes her lift her hands, grasp the bones in a tight grip and Adora thinks he could easily snap it. His feet remain rooted by Adora's side as if afraid to move.
Marble in his fear.
"You can leave if you want," she tells the son of Hephaestus softly as he lets her go. Gently pushes him to grieve, to see whoever is back.
You see, Adora is the daughter of Death, wears Death's face and has lingered at its doorstep more often than she has graced the floor of her father's worship place, a rundown thing that would look more at home among the other ruins of Greece - marble and stone withered by time, an altar of a God never so loved as he is feared by both mortals and other Gods alike.
She recognizes the stench.
The bite in the wind.
Aymen's jaw clenches, and his hands are strained as if itching for something to break, something to shatter other than his heart. "It wouldn't change a damn thing," he responds. "No, I'm more helpful here."
Adora tilts her head. "Here?"
They are the only ones left in the forges.
Aymen busies himself trying to fit a helmet around Adora's head, but it is clear that they are more used to having teenagers put armor on than children because his face disappears behind metal as he drops it on her head.
"I'm not a healer," his voice sounds almost different as she blinks from under the helmet, depreciating and almost bitter. "All I can do is make the best armor for everyone. After that, I can't do shit for them."
"Armor still helps, " Adora counters. She doesn't know why she offers such platitude and kindness, but it slips from her clumsily.
The helmet lifts up, and she blinks as Aymen's face comes back into focus.
"That's right," he says. Yet, despite the grief and the sorrow, there is a quiet pride glinting in his eyes as he fits another helmet around Adora's head. This time, it fits well, and he smiles. Beautifully. "I give them the best chance to survive when they're away. I give them the best protection I can. That's my job."
A broken wail welcomes Adora in the clearing.
It's a heartbreaking sound, the shattering of a soul, the cry of grief and brokenness.
But Adora can only remember Mother's death, the same cry that tore out from her own throat only weeks before.
Death's stench is stronger now, and through the frames of other halfbloods, Adora catches glimpses of whatever happened.
The same girl from the forget with her disregarded apron and soot-stained cheeks is on her knees, clutching and holding something desperately. She's rocking herself on her heels, mouth opened in a silent scream, or perhaps it had been her scream that Adora had heard, and the girl no longer has the heart to wail. No longer has the strength to do anything but hold the corpse of the boy she had called Dave.
Everyone else is crying or at the very least, struck speechless.
Daniel is on his knees, chanting chants and hymns and trying to knit back the torn throat of another girl, but Adora knows that she is already gone.
They all are.
Those children, more torn flesh and corpses, are nothing more than empty shells that will not hear the cries of their siblings, will never hear their plea to wake up.
They are dead.
Father has accepted them yet rejected her. She does not know why it stings so much.
Chiron joins them. Though sorrowful, the centaur's eyes remain dry as if his tears have long since run out, as if he has no more grief to give before it takes whatever kind of humanity he still holds.
"Take them away for burial," he says and though some, like Ryan McLloy whose scowl is frightening, move instantly to obey Chiron's order, others are not so pragmatic.
The girl from the forges, for one, is holding on to the boy's corpse desperately.
"Dave, dave, dave, dave" she mumbles like a chant, a broken rasp escaping her throat. It is almost like she thinks she can bring him back if she wishes it enough, as if his soul will find the sight of her so pitiful he will try to come back to her.
Stop holding him, Adora thinks. Unbeknown to her, she is trembling, fingers clenched into fists as her nails dig into the soft flesh of her balm till it stings and draws copper. He won't come back. Not even for you.
Mother didn't come back.
Neither did Lily.
No matter how much Adora had begged, how held their bodies till they grew cold, and she, along with shattered dreams and an ache in her chest that never goes away.
why would Dave come back to you when Mother didn't come back for Adora?
The son of Ares stomps towards the girl curled around her sibling's corpse. Around her, most of Cabin 9 has fallen apart on their knees, no longer halfbloods, no longer soldiers, but only children.
"Don't you dare," the girl snarls, baring her teeth like a wounded beast at the armor-clad boy with sweat on his brow and his sword, still unsheathed, live steel next to children.
Ryan sneers. "He's dead, Micah," he spits. The word dead twists his lips into a grimace, as if the word tastes loathsome in his mouth. Adora does not understand why the older boy spits it like it is a curse, like it is a personal failing of Dave.
He says it as if Death could be stopped.
Adora knows it isn't true.
(Or maybe, there is still a bit of that awed, childish worship in her, the one that all children hold for their father, the first man in their lives, the first man to hold them by the throat.)
"Dave's fucking dead. Let go."
But Micah does not move.
Some people have started walking away, eyes turned downwards as if willingly blinding themselves to whatever mockery of grief Ryan McLloy is capable of; others continue crying for the corpses found near the border, just shy away from the pine tree's protective ward.
Adora's eyes remain dry yet are unable to leave Micah and her corpse.
The other girl is older, and there is no blood staining her clothes, no crimson to paint her violently, but the dark-haired girl still sees into Micah an echo she wishes to forget.
It hurts.
Father has always prided himself on being the Reaper of Souls. The God of Death, for it is an honorable duty, a power that all must bow to because, at the end of the day, they are all equals in the eyes of Death.
He had made it sound poetic. Beautiful.
Adora had believed it. She still does, she still longs for death, but not for its beauty, if only for the respite, the promise that life will stop hurting.
Adora had forgetten herself in her folly, in the time she had thought that Mother's story was the exception rather than the rule. She forgot herself and the line that separates holy and mortal - how godhood makes one able to see something shattered beyond measure and still remain unmoved.
In Micah's grief, Adora finds her own.
It's a wretched sight.
"Micah," Ryan growls. He stomps closer and his shadow looms over the other girl like a nightmare. "He's gone."
The brunette shakes her head. Her half-brother's name still tumbles from her lips mindlessly, blind to the fury that steadily builds in Ryan's eyes, a fury that Adora recognizes enough to take a few steps away, too used to the eventual crossfire and explosion of temper.
"MICAH!" the son of Ares roars. "The kid failed. Stop embarrassing yourself for this shit."
Micah cups Dave's face, features twisting in grief and anger, though Adora fails to understand why she would do that.
Ah.
Something like bitterness lingers on her tongue.
Adora has mistaken Micah's gesture, has seen herself in the older girl till she forgets whichever is the past and the present.
Because Micah isn't holding on to her half-sibling's corpse.
Instead, she is pressing her trembling hands to the younger boy's ears as if she could shield him from Ryan's harsh words. "Don't call him that," she protests. "You know he doesn't like hearing your insults."
But McLloy has no sympathy for the dead, and his anger is a sharp knife that he easily thrust into Micah's chest as his hand flashes down and flesh meets flesh.
No one says anything.
No one bats an eye.
like it is a sight they have grown used to, as if violence has so often bled into their life they are no longer surprised when it takes yet another form, creates yet another stain.
Micah spits at Ryan's feet as blood drips from her lips, forever stubborn even with a bruised cheek.
Even after a slap.
It hadn't been an awkward move; there hadn't been any kind of hesitation, Adora noticed.
Instead, the slap is a quick and easy thing with only the flaring of Ryan's nostrils before he brings his anger down on them. "Thank the fuckings Gods he's dead then," he retorts.
Adora can see most of Cabin 9 bristle at his words, wrath and resentment thick in their eyes even as they keep them lowered.
"McLloy," Daniel intervenes.
He walks up to the other Counselor, his feet dragging behind him and his blonde hair plastered to his forehead. Unlike the others, he neither flinches nor braces himself as he nears the son of Ares.
They make a compelling sight, the blonde drenched in blood and his medical belt hanging low on his waist while the other is armored, with live steel in his hand. Daniel and Ryan stare at each other, gauging each other with narrowed eyes and tense spines.
"Whatever," Ryan spits, turning back and grabbing another corpse, disregarding or not noticing how the blood seeps into the fabric of his shirt as the body jerks in his arms like a broken doll, with stiffer limbs than before. He walks up to Daniel, digs his index into the white blouse of the healing cabin, leaving behind a bloody fingerprint. "That's why the kid's dead, sunny boy," he sneers. "You're too soft with them."
Daniel smiles. It's bitter and heartbreak on sunshine. "And you're too heartless, McLloy."
Ryan then turns to the rest of the halfbloods watching. "MOVE," he yells, and like frightened deers, they scatter.
If Daniel wears his sorrow wretchedly with red-rimmed eyes and pale, livid skin, then Ryan wears his angrily.
That means more bruises. More yelling. It is almost as if Camp is haunted by his anger, now a house with shaking foundations and eggshells littering the floor and in which Ryan's footsteps echo loudly. From everyone, Adora thinks that Ryan is his father's son, even more so than most of all his siblings, because no other can wear rage as aggressively as he does.
But this anger, no matter how much the older boy pretends, shows that he cares. Cared, at the very least.
Adora wonders what that says about her, the child of the Reaper of souls with no grief for a stranger.
She thinks she would have cared once.
But that's the thing about grief.
About drowning in your feelings.
At a certain point, you feel everything.
And then –
Nothing at all.
"Dave worshipped Ryan," Luke whispers. He's watching Cabin 6 from the corner of his eyes, watching as Annabeth argues with an older sibling, shoving her book in the other girl's face to further prove her point. He sounds fond as he remembers the dead boy. Ah. That's right. He's practically the same age as Luke. It's hard to reconcile the corpse – pale in death and crushed beneath his armor- with Luke, who still wears his childhood well. "He couldn't fight for shit, but he wanted to be as fearless as Ryan."
Why was he sent to die, then?
It's not a thought that Adora can voice, but it lingers in her mind, lingers on her tongue till it turns to ash. Instead, she says, "You sound like you miss him."
Luke turns to her. "I do," he breathes. His voice doesn't tremble or falter, but it could be a close thing. "He arrived at camp two days after me."
He wasn't a stranger then.
Dave seems to be more than just another halfblood. More than another son of Hephaestus.
It's jarring.
Adora both loathes it and envies it.
She turns to gaze at Luke Castellan who remains close by her side. He's a shadow she's growing used to, a quiet warmth to him that makes the chill that settled into her bones when Lily was eaten alive lessen.
To be frank, she does not understand him.
Cannot reconcile the image of him - beloved son of the Gods, golden and the perfect hero - with the boy who stands every morning by the pine tree with something bitter and hateful in his eyes.
Do you see the world as I do? Adora thinks.
The answer is no.
She doesn't know why disappointment swells into her heart when she realizes that Luke does not see it as she does, does not see the infection in this Camp, and grows hateful from its rotten roots.
No, Luke is more of a dichotomy than that.
He loves his godly father, loves him the way all halfbloods love their godly parents till death comes and claims them, and they realize that those same Gods do not care. And Luke Castellan loves Camp Halfblood.
There's nothing Adora can do about it.
Like everyone else, there's some soot smeared on Luke's cheek.
It might seem odd, you would find Luke more often sporting bruises and callouses than soot of all things, but it is the sole way that Chiron has allowed them to grieve Dave and most of the camp has done so.
Dave have been known. Appreciated.
but he wasn't the only one who died.
There are other children too who have died on that day, but those, people forget.
Why would they remember?
They were Unclaimed.
Disregarded kids shoved into a Cabin that will never truly be theirs. Thus, there is no specific Cabin to mourn them, no sibling to be reminded of their absence with an empty bed and space.
Instead, in Cabin Eleven, by the time that Adora comes back at night, someone already snatched Kelly's sleeping bag. Her shroud has yet to be burned, orange and simple, but already, it's like Kelly has been erased from the Cabin.
The other Cabins don't truly mourn the Unclaimed either. They do not cry as they finish the funeral shrouds, because they do not know them.
After all, it's easier to grieve when they are strangers and not someone you cried and laughed with.
Maybe that's why the children here are so marginalized. So divided, though, they share the same misery. One would think it would be a comfort, to be left behind begging for scraps together, but when those same scraps are so rare yet so easily bestowed to a select few, it's easy for resentment to fester.
Love isn't the way of the Gods. Nor it is the way of the Halfbloods.
Or maybe it is, and Adora has simply fallen from that fine line that separates love and hatred.
Adora does not know the boy, did not know him till he came back with a crushed chest, but he had been liked. Grown-up before most of the other's eyes, the kind of teenager who did not lose his awe and worship though it shifted from the Gods to the Halfbloods.
Most in Camp are not grieving a stranger.
But Adora is.
It feels almost as if traitorous to wear the soot, a bit like a child dressing up as an adult. How dare she wear a token of love when she cannot feel the smallest sorrow?
Her eyes are dry.
She thinks the last time she cried was when her mother died.
She thinks she started losing her capacity to feel bit by bit. Like a tapestry that is slowly unwoven thread by thread. As if her humanity is slowly seeped out of her, like a wound constantly bleeding her dry till one day, she is more her Godly Father than her mortal mother.
Adora cannot mourn Dave and the others.
She hadn't even managed to grieve Lily as her friend deserved.
It haunts her sometimes. Mother had whisked her away after the funeral. Lily had been buried in her family crypt.
Lily hates the dark.
Adora thinks she would have preferred the medow.
But the Avangarde did not want to entertain her and her thoughts. "Why did you live while our daughter died," Lily's mother wailed as she fell to her knees before Adora, clutching at the smaller child's shoulders as if she could push her into the Underworld and have her own daughter returned. Her touch is no longer the gentle thing from Adora's childhood. Instead, it burns with the loathing of a grieving mother, of a mortal knowing that it is Adora's fault alone for Lily's death.
Why did you live while our daughter died?
Adora asks herself the same thing.
Yet she has no answers for Ms. Avangarde as Mother wretches the other woman away with a snarl.
'I'- her breath stutters as Lily's eyes glint in grief-stricken madness. Lily had her mother's eyes and they haunt her still. 'I didn't want to die.'
(no child wants to die. Not even Death's daughter. Not at first.
but then again, a child doesn't want to be left alone unloved either)
"How come he joined a quest?" Adora asks.
"He was chosen."
Chosen. Sacrificed. Thrown away.
Isn't that all the same thing?
"As a sacrifice?"
Luke's glare is sharp and heated as he bristles. "As a companion. He worked really hard for it." He eyes her as if challenging Adora to disagree. But before she can, before she can open her mouth, someone answers in her stead.
"And we all saw how that turned out," sneers Aymen. Gone is the boy with the quiet pride and small, gentle smile. Gone is Atlas who could no longer hold the world on his shoulders, who got crushed beneath the boulder.
They both turn to him, startled. Adora hadn't even noticed him.
"Aymen-" Luke calls out, his voice grief-stricken, reaching for the older boy, but Aymen is gone already, leaving scorched grass behind him.
Adora tilts her head. There's something that lingers on the older boy's shoulder, dark and wired, like a nose. Aymen is walking as though - even if he no longer bears Atlas's burden, he is weighed by something else. Grief. Agony.
Adora can almost see it.
How he struts, chin ironically held high as the shadow of a guillotine looms before him.
She feels her father in his shadow.
She sees her pain in his.
Ah.
(Looking back, Adora thinks she could have done something. Said something. But Adora is a child who knows love like she knows her parents and knows grief like it is her favorite childhood toy.
And so, she says nothing. )
Later, Adora learns that what has been the finishing blow for one of the corpses was the caving of his armor, the metal bending to the monster's hand, crushing his ribs, and everything else beneath.
The next day, Aymen drowns himself in the lake.
It had been his youngest sibling, Dave, who died, crushed by the same armor that had protected him.
They do not hold a funeral for Aymen.
No one dares to protest the command, not directly.
After all, Aymen died in the name of selfishness, of weakness.
He did not die for the Gods.
But Chiron seems to have forgotten, in his immortal folly, that when you are all born from the same monsters with similarly drawn scars, it makes you care.
The Gods have forgotten - in their selfish blindness - that though they like to pretend their children tools instead of being with feelings, it does not change the fact that the halfblood have a mortal heart, capable of grief. Of love.
And how could Camp Halfblood not love Ayment with his deft fingers and quiet passion?
How can they not love the boy who protected them better than their own parents?
They all are sacrifices for the altar of their parent's godhood. Born and raised to be less than human, nothing like a child, yet here they are
Children who have learned to love and loathe in the same breath.
And they did love Aymen.
Not enough to save him, but enough that even the Gods could not stop them from silently grieving.
"At least he died peacefully," Luke whispers.
It must be a comfort to him. The illusion of thinking death is kinder than it actually is, thinking that Aymen's wounds were healed by her Father's touch, though she knows it does not. If anything, all that her Godly Father touches wilts and rots, Death in all the senses of the word.
Cabin Seven is strumming soft, sorrowful songs and the fire has mellowed in its camper's grief, a muffled blaze of flames yet its hue is blue. Angry. Spiteful.
Chiron should have known that though you can stifle a yell, a cry, you can not stifle the shattering of a heart.
Adora's smile tightens at his words. She pats Annabeth's dark locks, the younger girl tucked into Luke's side though her eyes are narrowed, determined not to cry.
Adora too wondered if Aymen died peacefully. She hoped he did.
(but Adora knows that it was not a peaceful nor painless death.
After all, she had died the same way once.)