Death's Daughter

Chapter 4

I woke up to someone screaming my name and a person hovering over me. I fully opened my eyes to find a familiar curly haired boy staring at me: Leo.

"What are you doing here?"

"You have archery with the Hephaestus cabin in twenty minutes."

I looked around the torchlit room. "Where's Nico?"

Leo looked really uncomfortable. "Nico kinda does his own thing. He might not be back for... a while."

I sighed and got up to go change. Leo cleared his throat. "What?" I asked with a sigh.

"Your Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Here." He held an orange shirt with a Pegasus on it. I smiled coldly.

I came out of the bathroom and Leo was still there. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, staring at the floor. I rolled my eyes.
"Let's go."

Leo raised his head and smiled at me. He extended his arm. I shoved past him out the door, not even meeting his eyes.

Leo ran to catch up to me. "Frankie, I'm sorry about yesterday. I just didn't expect you to be Hades' daughter."
When I didn't respond, he continued. "One of my best friends is a daughter of Hades. Er, Pluto. But it's the same idea."

He stopped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "Please talk to me. Almost everyone is afraid of Hades. He's one of the Big Three and he is incredibly powerful. Most of his kids have terrifying powers: Nico can raise the dead , and he's called the Ghost King. We're just afraid of him."

"So, you suddenly became terrified of me when you found out that my dad was Hades."

"No. You need to unde-"

He stopped short when I yanked on his arm. He stared into my blue eyes as I stared into his brown ones.

"What did you do that for?" he asked me.

I looked away. "Arrow. I just saved your life. Watch where you're going next time."

•••

Archery practice went swimmingly. I shot with deadly accuracy. Not bad for never picking up a bow in my life. I did much better than most of the Hephaestus kids. Especially Leo. As I walked by him on my way to the climbing wall, I hissed in his ear, "I'd stick to the forge, Fire Boy." He looked hurt as I stalked away. Good. I continued my vigorous training until dinner. Dang, I missed lunch. I walked up and offered a portion of my food to my dad like the others showed me. When I sat down at a table, Nico joined me.

"Hey, where have you been?"

He smiled teasingly at me. "Nowhere." He nodded to a group of five demigods walking our way. "I'd like you to meet my friends."

Three boys and two girls sat down across from us. One boy had long black hair and eyes the color of the sea. He had his arm around a blonde with intelligent grey eyes. There was another couple: a blond boy who had a strange scar on his lip and a brunette who was staring intently at a triangular dagger. Then, oh boy,  there was Leo. He was watching me but turned away once I'd noticed.

Nico smiled at me. "This is Percy, Annabeth, Jason, Piper, and you know Leo."

"Yeah, I do," I mumbled under my breath. But Nico wasn't paying attention to me, rather. he was facing the five kids in front of us.

"This is my sister, Frankie."

"What's that?" I asked, indicating to the dagger laid in front of Piper.
"Katoptris."

"Bless you?"

Piper chuckled. "No, that's the name of my blade. Katoptris. When you look into it, you can see glimpses of the future."

"I still think," said a voice behind me. "my prophecies are so much better than... that."

Percy smiled at our new guest. She was a girl with bright, firey red hair and ink tattooed jeans. "Hey, Rachel."

I looked at the girl as she took a seat beside me. "Prophecies? Are you a fortune teller?"

She laughed, her freckles squishing together. "No. I'm an oracle. The Spirit of Delphi kind of possesses me and spews rhymes to everyone every once in a while. But since I do tell the future, I guess you could call me that. But I'm not fake." She frowned at me.

"What?" I asked. There was something off about the way she was watching me.

"Come see me after dinner. I have a feeling you're going to be leaving soon."

My eyes widened. "Leaving? But I can't leave, I only just got here."

Rachel shook her head. "I didn't mean like that. You're going on a quest."