There's no love without pain // Jeyna

19. The Underworld

1 DAY TILL CHRISTMAS 

Reyna's POV

Reyna hadn't slept a wink. 

They had shadow travelled twice more and she knew for a fact that Nico was sleeping, only because he had passed out right after their last shadow travel onto Half Blood Hill. Mrs. O 'Leary was at the sword arena which, the others had told her, was her turf once she got to Camp Half-Blood.

Before the last shadow jump, Reyna remembered that she hadn't exactly told Chiron that they would be coming. So, she sent an Iris message (with Nico's help, of course) and explained the situation at hand.

They  had appeared out of the shadows on the crest of Half-Blood Hill, shivering from the snow. They were right beside Thalia's tree where she saw the dragon Peleus Nico had told her about. When they crossed the property line, Reyna felt much warmer. The snow couldn't penetrate through to camp but there was still a cold chill in the air.

Piper was the first person to spot them and, at first, Reyna was a bit apprehensive. But Piper was smiling at her. Maybe she was going crazy from all the shadow travel because she had a weird feeling that the daughter of Aphrodite wasn't really mad at her.

Mrs. O 'Leary had bounded towards the sword arena, with admittedly less energy than usual, completely ignoring Piper.

Reyna was practically carrying Nico and the unconscious son of Hades was not as easy to carry around as you would think, even if he was all bones.

"A little help here?" She asked Piper, who came over to help immediately.

The camp hadn't changed since the last time she was here, except that there were much less campers than there had been in the summer. It seemed that most of them were at Camp Jupiter or had probably gone home.

It was extremely quiet and Reyna expected it to become eerily so, once it was completely dark. In the slowly fading light after sunset she saw the Big House. She figured that they should go there to ask for Chiron but Piper said that they should probably drop Nico off at the infirmary first.

They were behaving with much more civility than she had expected and Reyna was glad. She didn't want to make an enemy of the daughter of Aphrodite.

Kayla, a daughter of Apollo, was in the infirmary. She wasn't an expert in the medical field (that was more of Will's thing) but she knew enough to take care of Nico.

"Put him on that bed there, the one next to the window." She said, with the briefest glance at them when they entered. It seemed that she had been anticipating their arrival. She started checking his vitals, once he was comfortably lying on the bed.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" Asked Piper.

It was then that Reyna properly looked at Piper. She didn't look too different but Reyna noticed the bags underneath her eyes and her more serious expression. Most people's attention would immediatly be drawn to the mesmerizing and ever-changing colour of her eyes but Reyna wasn't among the 'most people' category. It seemed to her that Piper wasn't getting proper sleep at night. She had learned to read people from a young age, though she rarely cared about the observations she made. It was a survival instinct, not something you would use to find others problems and pity them.

"Hello? Anybody home?" She said again, waving her hands in front of Reyna's face.

"Oh- yeah, I'm alright." Reyna replied. Piper looked her in the eye as though she was trying to gauge whether she was telling the truth.

"We should probably inform Chiron of our arrival." Said Reyna, intruding Piper's intense staring. Piper nodded with a smile on her lips.

When they arrived at the Big House, Chiron was in deep conversation with a girl who had long, curly, red hair and was sitting with her back facing the door. Chiron looked up when they came in and seemed as though he had come out of a trance. Reyna wondered what they were talking about to become so immersed in the subject to not even know what was going on around them. The red headed girl turned to look at them and Reyna immediately recognized her as the camp Oracle, Rachel Dare.

 Chiron looked pleasantly surprised to see them. He was about to get out of the wheelchair he was resting in (Reyna believed that if he got up he would look like the centaur she was told that he was) when Rachel stood up straight. Reyna looked into her eyes only to see pure green. Mist of the same colour unfurled around her. Rachel was looking right at her and, when she started speaking, it felt like three of her were speaking at once,