gambler: percy jackson²

002

In which: Minho thinks about the
roman empire a lot- but that's
because it was home.

Reyna was exactly where she'd been for the past few months- slumped in her Praetor chair with her head in one hand and pages upon pages fanned out on the table in front of her.

Old files dragged out from senate house storage, records from Roman safe houses and old military operations to each and every deity and monster that the legion had ever encountered. All in an attempt to find some semblance of a clue as to where Jason had been for the past eight months, but just like every day that had passed, there was nothing.

"What's all this about an invasion then?" Minho called, storming his way in the Principia. "And what exactly is our plan?"

She sighed, shuffling around some of the sheets in front of her before settling on a sketched map of the camp. "There's an army. It's marching from the south-"

"Hang on." Minho cut in, narrowing his eyes at her. "Army? What army?

"Octavian has read auguries of a giant, leading an army to our gates."

"I've been with Octavian all day. Is he petty enough to not mention a whole damn army?" He growled.

Reyna spun her dagger idly in her right hand, golden blade catching the light that streamed in from above. "It was four days ago. I asked him to keep quiet."

"Four days? So you knew about this invasion?"

"Yes."

"You knew for four days that there was an army heading for us and you didn't tell me?" Minho growled, placing his hands on the table as he lent forwards to look at the map she'd sketched out. It was a crude thing- she always left the sketches up to Jason, and well, Minho took that up in his absence. But Reyna's handwriting was neat and slated in perfect lines, depicting the southern side of camp, circles drawn to represent troops, all colour coded to each cohort with matching directional lines to simulate where they would fan out over The Field of Mars.

It would be a decent battle plan, if they had the forces for it. The last war had been hard on the legion, and despite their victory over the titans, spirits were at an all time low.

She levelled him with a stern gaze. "Yes."

He glanced up at her, brows creasing. "What- you thought that an invasion heading for us wasn't worth telling me about?"

"I was thinking about the best course of action to save Camp."

"Am I not privy to that information?" He tossed the paper back onto the table, skidding across it to and in front of Reyna as he scowled at her. "Camp is my home."

She gripped her dagger's hilt tighter in her palm. "It's mine too."

"So let me defend it!" Minho shouted.

And that was where Reyna drew the line, her dagger slamming into the table, the imperial gold stabbing through the centre of her sketched out battle plan and into the wooden table. "If you are so keen to defend it then tell me, why do you refuse to sit in the chair beside mine!"

Silence lapsed between them for a moment.

"Ten days." Minho raked his hands down his face with a sigh, feeling the tension collapse from his muscles as he slumped into the chair across from her that he'd taken as his own in the past few months. "Ten days Reyna."

"Camp needs a leader." She insists.

"They have you. They have Jason." He waved his hand in her direction, in the chair she stood in front of  and the empty one that rested beside it.