"Daughter of magic."
"Shadow-walker."
"Clarianna Sinclair."
"Heir of the witches."
"Daughter of Hecate, goddess of the crossroads."
"Wake up."
I gasped, my eyes flying open, the rings on my fingers snapping into daggers as I-
I blinked, freezing.
Darkness, from all directions, surrounded me. Blackness darker than the night sky, inky and thick, obscuring even my night-vision, leaving me, for the second time in my life, utterly blind.
"Where am I?" I whispered out loud, getting my feet underneath me as my weapons shifted back into rings.
What was I doing here? Hadn't I been at a coffee shop with Luke a minute ago?
A dull throb speared its way through my head and I flinched, remembering the pain that had probably knocked me unconscious.
I'm dreaming, I realized, turning around in a circle, trying to peer through the shadows. It was futile. I couldn't see, even as I summoned my own.
This darkness was not mine, I realized. It wasn't mine. Not dangerous, I sensed, as I speared my magic into the blackness around me. Just different.
I unsheathed my sword and prodded the ground in front of me. It hit the surface with a solid thunk. Satisfied that I wouldn't fall into some sort of hole on a one-way trip to Tartarus, I took a step forward.
Then, the darkness moved, shooting forwards towards a pinprick of light that appeared in the distance before me. My head throbbed again, and I gasped, leaning against my sword as stars burst across my vision. When they faded, the impenetrable darkness was gone. Instead, towering walls of black glass surrounded me, jutting up into nothingness.
I'm . . . in a maze, I realized, walking silently through the corridors made of shining black stone. Glass, actually, I thought, as I reached forwards to gingerly brush my fingers across the surface in front of me. A maze of black mirrors.
Sure enough, as I turned a corner, shadows of myself flitting along the walls, an image of myself appeared, staring back at me. A girl with waist-long blond hair, tangled and dirty, and shadowed green eyes filled with thoughts that would keep most people up at night. And yet . . . it wasn't me.
I held up my hand, peering at my slightly tanned skin from the months in the sun, and raised my gaze to the girl in the mirror. The girl who had skin so pale it was almost translucent.
The girl with shadows peeking out from her shoulder blades.
Wings.
I swallowed my scream and fought the urge to sprint through the maze blindly, ignoring my instinctual urge to put as much distance between myself and the thing in the mirror.
Just breathe, I told myself, my hand tightening around my sword. And then, realizing it would be useless in such cramped corridors, I sheathed it and clenched a hand against my daggers.
There must be a reason you're having this dream, I reminded myself. Look.
I forced myself to step up to my reflection and hesitantly placed my fingers against the glass. I peered at myself, searching, looking, both in the me in the mirror, and the me standing before it.
Down and down, I plunged, through my mist, into the sea of shadows inside me. Deeper I went, tunnelling into myself as the girl in the mirror stared at me.
After a few moments, when I still hadn't hit my bottom, I started to feel apprehensive. My powers hadn't been this extensive before. I'd passed the bottom of my limits a while ago.
And yet, the well was showing no sign of ending.
Panic started to set in in my veins as I continued, though a distant part of me knew that this new chamber of my magic would help me greatly in the final battle. The question was not if I could control it because I knew I could, but where. Where did it come from?
I got my answer a moment later when the floor of the black sea came into my sight. I landed softly on the bottom of my pit of magic, and my gaze immediately sprung towards a fissure in the ground, a giant, black lock in the middle of a net of chains stretching over the chasm.
Made of stygian iron.
Distantly, I was aware of my feet moving towards the rip in the earth, almost unconsciously, and I peered through the chains into the yawning darkness beyond. Somehow, I knew that if I broke this lock, shattered it, that chasm would lead me to a whole new bastion of power.
Trembling, I slowly reached out a hand towards it.
When my fingers, pale as the moon, was a mere whisper away from the lock that pulsed with cold energy, a sudden force ripped me away, dragging me with blinding speed back up to the surface. Up and up, until I slammed back into my body with a gasp, my eyes flying open to see the girl in the mirror smiling at me.
She tucked her wings against her body, wings that shimmered like a raven's, withdrew her hand, and walked away.
Before I could even blink, the darkness swept in, the maze vanishing, replaced by a snowy cliff overlooking a forest and a huge black castle with towers reaching up to the sky. The smell of the sea, salty and wild, surrounded me, and I turned around to see the churning grey ocean frothing at my back. The Atlantic, I realized, looking back towards the castle. I'm on the East coast again.
"Don't drop my cards!" a voice yelled, and I whirled around to see a boy, about ten, sprinting out of the building. "That's a limited edition!"
He ran towards me, and I fought the urge to disappear, knowing that I was invisible, and shot a glance over my shoulder to see a girl grinning at him under a grey scarf. "You better hurry then, Nico!"
I turned around again to see Nico panting as he stumbled through the snow, his eyes alight with annoyance. "Sis, stop it."
He reached me, and I expected him to continue right ahead towards his sister, who had sighed and was walking back towards him, but he paused and glanced in my direction.
As if he could see me.
I wrapped my magic tighter around me, a jolt of trepidation shooting through me, even though I knew it should be impossible. He shouldn't be able to see me, even if he was a demigod.
But then, his brown eyes met mine, and suddenly, I saw his aura. A wave of power, of shadows like mine but not, hit me, and I realized who was standing before me.
A son of Hades.
Disbelief, fear, apprehension, dread, and another myriad of emotions tumbled through me, but I shoved them down, knowing that now, with a son of Hades staring at me, was not the time to panic.
I'd seen enough.
A cold wind whipped around us, sending a flurry of snow through the air, and when it settled, I was gone. I left the snowy cliff in Maine, the two children of the Lord of the Underworld, and shot back into the dream world, searching for myself, for my body, for my consciousness.
The black shadow that had transported me here didn't emerge, as if its job had been completed, and I tucked away that piece of information to analyze later. I had to find myself first.
I sent my shadows through the dream world, searching for that familiar pulse of light, and launched myself towards it like a falling star.
I slammed back into my own body just as I felt a physical presence at my side. Instantly, my eyes flew open, and I launched myself out of the . . . bed? I was in, flipping through the air and landing at the edge of the room, my dagger angled in front of me.
"Well, if you can do that, I suppose I have nothing to worry about," Luke said, eyeing me with relief as he turned around to face me. "Though you almost stabbed me in the face."
I blinked, not fully comprehending, and then . . . "Oh." I flushed, sheathing my dagger and rising out of my crouch. "Please never stare at me again when I'm unconscious. I might really stab you next time."
"Are you okay?" Luke asked, striding across the room, in the inn, I realized, to fold me into his arms. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
"I . . . I don't know," I replied, allowing myself to breathe in his comforting scent before pulling back. "One moment, I was fine, and then the next . . . " I shook my head. "I don't know."
Luke scanned me from head to toe, and, satisfied that I wasn't in any imminent danger, met my gaze. "You were out for a whole day."
I blinked. "What?"
"A day," Luke repeated, his gaze worried.
"Did-did you meet with Atlas yet?" I asked. Not good, not good, not good if I'd missed such an important meeting. I was screw-
"No, not yet," Luke replied, turning around to stare out the window at the shadow of Mount Tam. "We're due in an hour."
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, I guess I woke up just in time."
"Mmm," Luke said, sending a smirk at me, though his eyes were still worried. "And Ri, I'm sorry about what happened on the mountain. I know you don't like surprises. I promise, no more secrets. Everything that Kronos or Atlas tells me, I tell you. I promise."
"Promises aren't one to be made lightly," I warned, though I smiled as I walked over kiss him lightly on the cheek. "But thank you. No more secrets."
I swallowed my own guilt, burying it deep down inside me, down to that chasm that I'd spotted in my dream. I'd already broken that promise before I even made it in a thousand different ways. But he didn't have to know that. Even though I suddenly found myself wanting to tell him.
"Well, I can't have my first lieutenant stumbling around blindly," Luke chuckled. He turned to look out the window, but not before I caught a glimpse of a shadow crossing his face. But then I blinked, and it was gone. Maybe I was imagining it. The lighting with the stormy grey clouds over 'Frisco made for awful lighting, especially in this dingy inn.
"Oh, and that was definitely a case of deja vu."
I blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the sudden topic change. And then recalled last summer when I'd woken up from my near-death encounter to see Luke sitting at my side. And that brought back what had gone down, or almost had, at the coffee shop yesterday.
Do you love me?
My pulse jumped, speeding up, and suddenly, the cramped room we were in seemed even smaller.
"You're red," Luke said, turning around and stepping towards me to place a hand on my forehead. "Do you have a fever?"
"N-no," I stammered, yanking myself out of his grasp. "Just . . . hot."
"It's December," Luke said, eyeing me suspiciously. "You're hot."
"Yes . . ." I said flatly, turning around towards my black duffel on the drawer in the corner. "This room is stuffy. We should get going," I continued, changing the topic as I felt Luke open his mouth. "Atlas is waiting."
That caused Luke to snap his mouth shut and head over to his own bag, rifling through to take out a sword and two daggers. "Right. The meeting with this mysterious person, actually scratch that, monster."
"Luke," I said, turning to face him. "I also have to tell you something first before we go. I found new demigods."
***
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