no matter how many times a snake shed its skin, it would always be a snake. no matter how hard kit dempsey tried to prove he was no longer a traitor, camp half-blood would always view him as the boy who betrayed them for kronos. but not leo valdez...
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CHAPTER SEVEN: JEALOUSY, JEALOUSY
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“WHAT’S HER NAME?” LEO demanded from Cal the moment the others followed the girl upstairs. Cal frowned at him in confusion, oblivious to his lovesick stare, whilst Kit just rolled his eyes. He knew a girl like that would never go for any demigod let alone one like Leo, but clearly Leo was a man ruled by hope and too much self-confidence. He asked Cal again and again until the brawny boy finally told him.
“Khione,” he said. “She’s my sister.”
Khione. It sounded awfully familiar. Kit was almost certain that Annabeth had spoken about her at some point, but like with the giants, it was safe to say he hadn’t paid attention. In the end, the name was nothing to him, and yet it was everything to Leo, who heaved a breathy sigh and repeated it under his breath like a sailor being lured in by a siren.
“Cal, my good friend,” he smirked, ambling over to the frowning Boread. “Do you happen to know if Khione is single?”
“Single?” he repeated, like he didn’t know what the word meant.
Leo’s face dropped into a glower as Kit started to snicker. Cal was still confused, so he reached out to pat him on his beefy shoulder. “Nevermind, dude. Forget I asked.”
“You’ve reached a new low if you’re asking Cal the Boread for relationship advice,” Kit said to him once he’d left the boy in the corner and joined him in sitting beside Festus.
“I wasn’t asking him for relationship advice,” he huffed. “I just… wanted to know if she’s single. Maybe, she can be my prom date.”
Kit rolled his eyes. “The day Khione agrees to date you is the day my father tells me he loves me.”
Leo frowned at him, chuckling nervously at the serious edge to his voice. “I’m sensing daddy issues.”
“You know what? I take back calling you a genius.”
For a while, they just sat in silence, Leo picking through his tool belt while Kit eyed Cal pacing around the room. It would be so easy to just take him out now. His back was to them, nobody else but Leo was around and he couldn’t do much, really, if it came down to it. But almost like he could read Kit’s mind, the son of Hephaestus stood up and blocked his view of the Boread with a pointed glare. Kit sighed and reluctantly let Leo pull him up and over to where Cal had stopped to gawp at them.
“Cal, my man, is there a bathroom in this joint?” he asked. “I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m not looking my best.”
Cal just blinked before pointing at a door on the opposite side of the foyer. “There.”
