✓ | 𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀, luke castellan

ᴇɪɢʜᴛʏ

The Prisoner and the Spy.

🌃

It was that very night when she had another visitor. Rory could tell these sorts of things, even trapped without access to the sky. She had lost count of how long she had been here, but she still knew. She always knew. The cycles of day and night, the shifting air, the way the camp above her settled into stillness when the sun went down—she felt it all.

She just never paid much attention anymore.

But this time, something was different.

The basement door creaked open, the hinges groaning in protest, and a sliver of moonlight slipped through the crack before vanishing as the door shut behind the intruder. Footsteps echoed down the stairs, hesitant but determined, and Rory knew who it was before she even saw her.

Silena Beauregard.

The Aphrodite girl looked awful. Which was saying a lot for an Aphrodite kid. Her face was pale, her eyes rimmed with red and swollen as though she hadn’t stopped crying for hours—maybe longer. Her usually perfect hair was tangled, her posture slumped in a way that made her look smaller, more fragile. She had always been beautiful, even in battle, even when she was fighting wars she never wanted to be part of. But now? Now she just looked broken.

Rory didn’t need to ask why.

She already knew.

And yet, Silena still said it.

"Charlie’s dead," she whispered, the words barely making it past her lips, as if saying them any louder would shatter her completely.

Rory felt something sharp twist in her chest.

Pity. Sympathy.

Empathy.

Because she knew what that kind of loss felt like. The kind that hollowed you out from the inside. The kind that left you grasping at memories like they were slipping sand.

Silena’s next words were even softer, but somehow heavier.

"It’s my fault."

Rory had heard those words before. From other people. From herself.

And for once, she spoke.

"It’s my fault Luke’s dead too."

Silena’s head snapped up in shock, her tear-filled eyes locking onto Rory’s as though she hadn’t expected her to say anything at all. No one did anymore. That was the reputation she had gained since her imprisonment—silent, detached, lost to whatever guilt and grief had consumed her. Maybe Silena hadn’t come looking for a conversation at all. Maybe she had just needed to talk to someone who knew. Someone who wouldn’t look at her with pity or tell her that none of this was her fault.

Maybe she had wanted someone to blame.

That was what Rory was here for, wasn’t it? The scapegoat. The traitor.

She had chosen this.

Silena opened her mouth, maybe to respond, maybe to argue, but now that Rory had started talking, she couldn’t stop. The words poured out of her like floodwaters through a broken dam.

"He gave himself up because Kronos threatened me," she said, her voice raw. "He wanted to run away before. I refused. I told him no. I could’ve saved him. I should have left with him. But I didn’t. And now he’s—" Her breath hitched, her fingers clenching into fists against the cold stone floor. "He did it for me. To protect me. To save me."

And she had let him.

She had let him die.

Silena was trembling, her body wracked with sobs that seemed to come from the very depths of her soul. She wiped her eyes furiously, as though trying to will away the tears, but they kept coming, relentless and unbidden. Rory, however, had stopped crying long ago. The tears had dried up, leaving only the hollow ache of loss in their place. It had been too much, too long, and she was simply numb now, the rawness of emotion dulled by time and the weight of everything that had happened.