Sunburn- phoebus apollo

--iii. into the dangerous maze

RHEA DIDN'T WANT TO be a hero--she hardly even wanted to be a demigod most days, but it seemed like the Fates had a bigger plan for her than connecting her life with Apollo and making her his lover.

The thing was: this quest into the Labyrinth was cursed. Rhea knew it would be the moment she saw it in her dreams when she was practicing her seer powers, but the tragedy of it all didn't hit her until Annabeth brought her up into the attic with her to hear the Oracle's prophecy.

Suffice to say, it wasn't good. Prophecies rarely were.

Rhea hadn't been surprised when Annabeth had left out the last line when they came back to tell the others about it. The entire prophecy as a whole was rather bleak, even for normal standards, but the final line in particular had brought a chill down Rhea's spine. Annabeth had shot her a pleading glance not to inform anyone of it, and well, Rhea had complied easily enough. Mainly because she had her own secrets.

Rhea had been honest when she told her friends about the hazy glimpses she'd seen of the Labyrinth, but she'd also left out a... good portion of the details. A lot of details, actually.

Partly because most of them couldn't be changed, and she knew the others would try to prevent them regardless (which would have disastrous consequences Rhea didn't even want to think about), but it was also because she knew there were some things she'd rather tackle on her own. And now that she'd heard the prophecy for this quest herself, she knew enough information to put some of the pieces together.

She wanted to work for a happier future, where everyone got a happy ending--but she knew real life didn't work that way, especially not in a world like theirs.

Her powers this time around proved that.

Apollo's eldest son at camp, Lee Fletcher, dying gruesomely; Dionysus's boy, Castor, dying and leaving his twin behind. Calypso's Island, a place where only doomed heroes washed up. Typhon, escaping from his prison and leaving an eruption in his wake. And Kronos, rising from his tomb, with his golden eyes, with a living host.

(Rhea had a terrible feeling she knew exactly who that living host would be.)

Because Annabeth would soon 'lose a love to worse than death,' and last winter, Luke Castellan had set himself irrevocably on a path towards destruction.

Rhea wasn't quite sure what to think of him. Luke had been there when she had first shown up to camp, acted as a brother and friend to her and Percy. He seemed to switch from that caring side to a bitter murderer in a whiplash. So much tragedy had bound itself to him, from the moment he was born. And yet he had also chosen his own destiny, despite being given multiple chances to pick a different fate. Perhaps Luke Castellan would eventually die a hero, but in the eyes of many, he would forever leave a legacy of becoming a villain. And there wasn't a way to change that--not anymore.

So much of what Rhea was seeing, really, couldn't be changed.. but perhaps she could save a few lives. It would be risky, and it would take a bit of maneuvering, but she could do it. She'd done it before with lower stakes--she could do it again. She had to do it, or she had to at least try.

Her father seemed to agree with her.

The moment she had closed her eyes, her father, Poseidon, had pulled her in for a conversation. They were standing on an empty beach with the smell of the ocean occupying her senses. She realized after a moment that it was where her father and mother met, at the beaches of Montauk. It was calm and quiet with no people on for miles, a perfect place for an important conversation.

"You will soon be meeting a certain demigod when you delve into the Labyrinth," he told her. "Perhaps you can save him. Perhaps you can't. But his fate is not entirely sealed."