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Cabin 11 was loud, the way it always was when no one in it wanted to be left alone with their own thoughts.
Not bright-loud. Not the wild kind of noise that came with stolen snacks, dumb bets, and campers too overtired to care about consequences. This was a lower thing. Softer. Worn around the edges. Cards tapping against wood. A bunk creaking in uneven rhythm. Blankets dragged and resettled. Half a dozen conversations layered over each other until no single silence had the chance to grow teeth.
Anything but quiet.
Quiet meant remembering.
Percy stepped inside and let the noise hit him.
It helped. Not enough to settle him. Enough to keep him moving.
His eyes still tracked automatically.
Door.
Windows.
Bodies.
Exits.
Always.
That part of him did not turn off anymore. Not after Tartarus. Not after poison and dark and gods and the shape of something inside him that felt too large for skin some nights. It stayed awake at the edges even when the rest of him wanted badly, desperately, to stop.
Connor was on Travis’ bunk.
That was the first thing Percy clocked.
Not standing. Not lounging. Sitting close enough that it meant something, though Connor would probably bite anyone who said so out loud. One leg hooked over the edge of the bed, body angled in toward his brother. His hand rested near Travis’ arm, not touching, but ready. One of his wings was half-furled behind him, feathers not sleek, not settled. Slightly raised. Slightly roughened. A bird’s version of a frown.
Travis was lying down.
That was the second thing.
That one sat wrong immediately.
Travis lying down was suspicious even before you added the part where he wasn’t talking.
Percy slowed as he passed, blanket not yet around his shoulders, and glanced from one twin to the other. “He dead,” he asked, “or just pretending so no one gives him chores?”
Connor huffed. “If he was dead, he’d still find a way to be annoying.”
“Comforting.”
“I work hard at it.”
Travis, eyes half-closed, managed only a rude hand gesture without lifting his head.
That should have been funny.
Instead it was only a little reassuring, and Percy hated how much he noticed that.
He grabbed a blanket off an unclaimed bunk and dropped onto the one nearest the center of the room. Not his bunk. Never really his. Still the place he ended up in more often than not, because Cabin 3 had one bed and one son and far too much room for silence to echo in.
He dragged the blanket around his shoulders and settled where he could see most of the room without making it obvious. His body did it before his brain had time to think about it.
His teeth clicked once.
Soft.
Automatic.
Connor’s wing gave a quiet rustle in answer, feathers shifting and resettling.
Neither of them commented.
They didn’t have to.
Around them, Cabin 11 had already fallen into the shape it took on nights like this.
Katie sat cross-legged on the floor with three younger kids clustered around her knees and a deck of cards in her hands. She was messing up the same trick so dramatically it had to be deliberate. The youngest—a little Aphrodite girl with pale dove-feathers tucked around one ear—laughed every single time Katie “accidentally” dropped the wrong card into her own lap. Beside her, an Athena child with owl-soft down at the nape of her neck was losing a fight with sleep and refusing to admit it.
Malcolm leaned against a support beam nearby, arms folded, face unreadable. His eyes moved, though. Door to bunks. Bunks to floor. Floor to children. Back again. Counting too, probably. Different style, same impulse.
Near the darkest stretch of wall, Nico sat in his usual way: one knee drawn up, shoulders low, looking like he had grown out of shadow rather than chosen to sit in it. Dark ears rose through his curls, long and sharp-edged, every bit canine even if no one named the breed. They flicked once when the little Aphrodite girl squealed in laughter and then settled again.
Will was a few feet from him with his satchel open.
Not beside him-beside him.
Close enough to touch if either one leaned.
Close enough that they didn’t have to look to know the other was there.
Will’s fingers kept moving through the satchel in repetitive little circles. Bandages. Salves. Needles. Cloth. Fold. Refold. Put away. Pull back out. He had white feathers threaded through his hair, not many, just enough that they caught the light when he bowed his head. There was a set to his shoulders Percy knew too well from mirrors. Exhaustion. Not ordinary tired. The kind that sat behind the eyes and in the spine and made a body feel like one more demand might split it open. Once, very faintly, a sound escaped him—not a sigh, not quite a whine, but something small and hurt and young enough that Nico’s hand shifted against the floor, an inch nearer, before going still again.
Pollux sat on the floor with his back against the side of a bunk that wasn’t his.
Blond hair fell over his forehead in messy strands. Violet eyes looked dark in the low light until he glanced up and the color caught. Faint leopard spotting ghosted over the skin of his forearms and neck, more visible when his muscles tightened. His tail was wrapped around one ankle, not loose, not lazy. Tight.
There was space beside him.
No one filled it.
No one tried.
A handful of older campers from other cabins had drifted in too. Other campers Percy knew even if he didn’t always know what to say to them. A tired child of Demeter with green threaded through her hair like leaves had rooted there. An Ares girl with a vulture-sharp stare and hands held too still in her lap. A Hephaestus camper with faint ember-light under the skin of his forearms, glowing dully every time he crossed or uncrossed them. Claimed. Technically with homes elsewhere. Still here because elsewhere was too quiet, too bright, too empty, or simply too full of sleeping people to help when the night turned bad.
That was Cabin 11 too.
A holding place.
A waiting room.
A nest.
A border crossing.
A place for the children nobody quite knew what to do with.
The younger ones had gathered themselves into piles the way tired young creatures did when they felt safe enough not to fight it. Blankets shared. Knees tucked in. Tiny shoulders pressed close. A small Hermes boy with fluttering head-wings had folded himself against the side of the Aphrodite girl. A younger child with tiny antler buds sat nearly inside Katie’s elbow. An Apollo girl with faint gold at the edges of her hair had gone limp enough against another camper that she had probably been asleep for five full minutes and no one had moved her.
A quiet chirrup came from the blanket pile.
Then another.
Not all the same.
Not all from the same sort of throat.
Just little instinctive noises that meant I’m here and answer me back.
The answer came at once.
Low.
Steady.
Not from any child.
Percy’s head turned toward the doorway.
Hermes stood there.
No one had seen him arrive.
He just was, suddenly, as if the room had only now remembered it was supposed to include him.
He did not announce himself. He did not break the shape of the cabin. He slipped into it, and the shape adjusted around him. A hand over a child’s hair. Fingers at the base of a tiny wing to check it wasn’t bent oddly. A quiet murmur to a sleepy child whose head-wings trembled once and then settled the moment he answered.
That was what did it, more than anything.
The answer.
Immediate. Unthinking. Every small sound met.
The room loosened around him in tiny ways.
Connor’s feathers settled a fraction flatter.
The antlered child stopped fidgeting.
The Athena girl finally gave up and let her head droop against Katie’s shoulder.
Percy’s body did not relax. It did, however, stop expecting a spear through the wall for one whole breath.
Hermes moved through the room counting his flock in touch and glance and instinct. The little Hermes child chirruped again when he passed. Hermes touched two fingers lightly to the boy’s hair and the sound stopped, replaced by a little flutter of the head-wings.
He paused near Will.
“You’re making enough noise with your hands to bother me from the doorway,” Hermes said.
Will didn’t look up immediately. He finished folding one bandage into a square that did not need folding at all and then set it down. “That sounds like a you problem.”
Hermes’ mouth twitched. “Cute. You’re exhausted.”
Will exhaled through his nose. “Also a you problem.”
“It is now, apparently.”
That got the faintest, briefest almost-smile. Then it was gone.
Hermes’ gaze softened around the edges but his voice stayed light. “How bad.”
Will finally looked up.
Not with his whole face. Just enough.
“Tolerable.”
That was not an answer.
Hermes knew it.
Will knew he knew it.
Neither of them said so out loud.
Hermes’ eyes flicked to the satchel, then back to Will’s face. “Eat something tomorrow before noon or I’ll make your life difficult.”
“Bolder than the harpies tonight, aren’t you.”
“There was competition.”
That earned him a real breath of humor, if not quite a laugh.
Hermes moved on.
His attention settled, inevitably, near the middle of the room where Chris had gathered three younger campers and a coin was passing from finger to finger in that easy, lazy way he did when he wanted everyone around him to think he had not one concern in the world.
Chris looked fine.
That was the first problem.
Chris always looked fine.
One of the little kids leaned into him and whispered something too low for Percy to catch.
Chris huffed softly. “Yeah, well. It left, didn’t it?”
The child nodded with great seriousness, apparently reassured, and leaned back into the circle.
Hermes stopped.
“What left.”
Chris didn’t look at him. “Nothing worth talking about.”
Too smooth.
Hermes waited.
That was worse than pressure. Worse than accusation. Just… attention.
Chris gave in first, though only just. “One of the harpies got bold.”
“Hm.”
“Very articulate, thanks.”
“And?”
Chris shrugged. “And it regretted it.”
One of the younger kids chirped something small and pleased, looking up at him with the particular devotion reserved for older campers who had done something frightening on your behalf. “You made it go away.”
Chris rolled the coin across his knuckles. “That was the idea.”
Still easy.
Still smooth.
Too smooth.
Hermes tilted his head. “You volunteering for perimeter duty now?”
Chris finally looked at him. “Don’t make it weird.”
“It became weird the moment you started lying.”
That got him.
Not because the word was loud. Because it was accurate.
Chris’ annoyance flashed quick and hot. For just a heartbeat the skin at the side of his throat took on a faint dark sheen, like scales catching lantern light. His pupils narrowed too thin before he forced them round again.
“I’m not lying,” he said.
The lisp was slight. Barely there.
But it was there.
Hermes heard it.
Percy heard it too and turned his head just enough to see Chris’ shoulders go tight.
Hermes’ voice stayed gentle in the way that only made him sound more dangerous. “No? Then humor me.”
Chris stood.
Natural enough.
Except when he stepped, the motion hit wrong for half a beat. Not a limp. Not even a stumble. Just a tiny checked shift of weight his body corrected before anyone but the worst kind of observer could mark it.
Hermes marked it.
So did Percy.
Chris smirked as if he’d done it on purpose. “See?”
“You’re very good at making things look easy,” Hermes said.
“That’s a survival skill.”
“No,” Hermes replied softly. “That’s a confession.”
Chris’ mouth flattened.
Then Hermes’ attention shifted.
Not because he was done with Chris.
Because something else had finally scraped hard enough at his instincts to draw them.
Travis.
Too quiet. Too still. Too careful.
Connor noticed the glance and, because he had not yet figured out what it meant, offered, “He said he was sick.”
Travis didn’t look at him.
Connor’s hand shifted a little closer to his brother’s arm. “Didn’t want to move.”
Hermes approached the bunk slowly enough not to make the younger children tense. He didn’t say anything at first. He just watched. Travis’ shoulders. The way one wing lay wrong against the blankets. Not obviously wrong. Not bent. Not flared. Just… held. As if the body under it was doing the work of keeping it from becoming more noticeable.
He reached carefully.
Not grabbing. Not even really touching yet. Just meaning to check.
And panic hit Travis before contact did.
A sharp little distressed chirrup burst out of him before he could stop it.
His good wing flared wide.
Hard.
The movement was pure instinct. Not anger. Not dramatics. The body’s answer to sudden threat. Feathers snapped outward hard enough to strike Connor’s shoulder and the bunk frame—
—and Chris, standing too near, got knocked sideways.
He went straight into Percy.
Percy folded around his side at once with a breath too sharp to hide.
His hand snapped there like it had lived there all week.
Because it had.
The blanket shifted just enough to show a flash of pale, sea-dark scales along his ribs before he dragged it back.
Will was moving before Percy had fully stopped.
Connor stared, caught between his brother and Percy and the sudden, ugly possibility that he had missed something huge in both directions.
Hermes stayed with Travis.
Because the fear came first.
“Easy,” he said.
Travis barely managed to look at him. Another tiny sound tried to work loose and got swallowed before it fully formed. His good wing trembled. The trapped one did not move at all.
Connor’s hand landed properly on his forearm then, firm and grounding.
Hermes lowered his voice. “Show me.”
Travis looked trapped.
Not cornered by people.
Cornered by the shape of what came next.
Because to show it meant to admit it.
And admitting it meant letting someone touch it.
And letting someone touch it meant pain.
He obeyed anyway.
Slowly. Reluctantly. Jaw hard enough to crack.
The wing unfolded in increments.
Dark feathers.
Swelling near the joint.
A wrongness of angle so subtle at first that Percy’s stomach only dropped when the whole shape of it resolved at once.
Connor went pale.
Not angry first.
Not even frightened first.
Guilty.
He had been sitting here. Right here. And had not known.
Will dropped to his knees by the bed immediately. “That’s bad.”
No edge in it. No temper. Just tired certainty.
Travis’ good wing quivered once.
He looked everywhere but at any of them.
Hermes let his presence skim the injured wing carefully, mapping it with old instinct before he trusted hands to it. Every fine bone. Every alignment that might go wrong. Wings were delicate things. Unforgiving things. Hurt them badly enough and the body remembered forever.
A poor set here would not merely ache.
It could become a lifetime’s wrongness.
A lifetime’s catch in the air.
His stomach went cold.
Recoverable.
Probably.
If it was handled right.
If the child attached to it did not panic too hard to let them.
“How long,” Hermes asked quietly.
Travis did not answer.
Connor did.
Voice rough.
“How long.”
“Two days.”
Connor shut his eyes.
Travis muttered, still not looking at him, “I said I was sick.”
“You were hurt.”
“Same general vibe.”
Connor made a wounded noise that was almost anger and almost not.
Will reached for the wing and paused before touching it. “I need you not to bite me.”
Travis looked at him, scandalized through the fear. “That feels rude.”
“That feels earned.”
A few of the younger kids giggled nervously.
Good.
The room needed that.
Will’s tone gentled a fraction. “It’s going to hurt. I know. But we need it set right.”
There it was.
Travis looked sick.
Because he knew that.
Because that was the thing he had been hiding from just as much as from everyone else.
Hermes kept one hand on his shoulder. Steady. Warm. Present. Not taking the fear away. Just keeping it from running wild.
Then he looked back at Chris.
“Now you.”
Chris sighed like the whole world had become embarrassing. “Fantastic.”
The lisp touched the s. Slight. There.
He shifted the edge of his shirt with all the resentment of someone being publicly inconvenienced. The bandage beneath was rough. Too tight. Dark at the edges where blood had dried through.
Hermes moved it only enough to confirm the claw marks beneath.
Fresh.
Painful.
Not mortal.
Still not fine.
“It’s fine,” Chris said, which would have sounded more convincing if the word had not come out theth.
“It isn’t,” Hermes said.
Chris’ scales flashed dark at his throat. “You don’t know that.”
Hermes raised a brow. “I am literally looking at it.”
That shut him up.
Then Percy.
Still half-curled around his own side.
Still trying to disappear in the blanket.
Hermes crossed to him.
Not quickly. Not sharply.
“You.”
Percy didn’t look up. “Busy.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
It was snark, but it landed dull.
Hermes studied him for a beat. The faint scales at his side had disappeared under the blanket again, but the shape of him had changed. Drawn tighter. Wrong.
“You are not required to know what to do every second of your life,” Hermes said quietly.
That hit somewhere too close to the center.
Percy looked up then, expression sharpening automatically even while the rest of him looked tired. “That’s a bold thing to tell me now.”
Because when would have been the better time, really?
Before the gods and wars and monsters had started looking at him like he was both child and weapon?
Before Tartarus had hollowed something out and left something bigger rattling around in the space?
Before he had started feeling too large for his own skin some nights, like one wrong move would split him open into something not-boy and everyone around him would only nod and call it inevitable?
He loved Poseidon.
That had not changed.
What had changed was that lately he could not look too long at the line between himself and his father without wondering whether that line was thinning in ways he did not want to name.
He wanted peace.
Five minutes of ordinary.
Five minutes of no one expecting storms from him.
Hermes did not soften his gaze. He did soften his voice. “Show me.”
Percy held the silence for several seconds.
Then gave up.
Slowly.
He shifted the blanket and lifted the edge of his shirt.
Will looked over and went very still.
Old bruising.
Older than it should have been.
The claw-raked wound lower down had been wrapped badly enough that the skin around it was red and angry. Percy had clearly bound it fast and looked away before he could really see it.
Hermes saw why.
Too much gold in the blood.
Not said aloud.
Not needed.
“How long,” Will asked.
Percy looked at the wall instead of him.
Will’s voice stayed quiet. That made it hurt more.
“How long.”
“A week.”
The room stopped.
Connor swore softly.
Chris stared at him.
Even Travis looked betrayed through the panic and pain.
A week.
Percy had been walking around with that for a week.
Wrapped it fast.
Never really looked at it again.
Will shut his eyes for one brief second and opened them looking more sad than angry.
“You should have told me.”
Percy looked away. “Been busy.”
Hermes’ expression did not change.
Busy.
As if children should have workloads that outranked injury.
As if everyone older than Percy had not spent years teaching him that being useful mattered more than being held together.
He put a hand to Percy’s uninjured side.
Warmth spread.
Deep.
Careful.
Old enough to command the body into unclenching whether pride liked it or not.
Percy’s teeth clacked softly.
The scales along his ribs flashed once in the low light.
Hermes saw all of it.
The sea in him.
The colt-instinct in the clacking teeth.
The way even now he sat angled toward the smaller children in the room instead of toward himself.
The pressure around him too. The almost. The dangerous feeling of a child standing too close to becoming something else and hating that he could feel the shape of it.
No wonder he had pulled back from Poseidon.
No wonder love and fear had tangled.
Hermes looked around the room.
At Travis with panic still under his skin and a wing he was going to worry over until it healed straight.
At Connor, who looked sick from not having known.
At Chris with irritation standing in for vulnerability.
At Percy with a week-old wound and no idea how to ask for help.
At Will with swan-feathers in his hair and too much grief and responsibility packed into one narrow frame.
At Nico in the shadows, ears low, watching every shift in Will’s breathing.
At Pollux with his violet eyes gone brighter and his tail locked around his ankle.
Young.
All of them.
Not grown.
Not close.
Kittens spitting and calling themselves lions.
Colts clacking their teeth and pretending that counted as calm.
Winged children hiding injuries until instinct dragged the truth into the open.
Snake-eyed boys stepping around pain so gracefully no one thought to look twice.
Too useful.
Too brave.
Too young.
“You are children,” Hermes said.
Connor huffed out a weak little laugh. “We’re really not.”
“You are.”
No room for argument.
Just truth.
“To each other, perhaps, you feel older. You have had to. Survival teaches a very convincing performance.”
His gaze moved over the older campers one by one.
“At looking capable. At making yourselves indispensable. At standing in a room while you bleed in it and trusting no one to notice.”
No one answered.
Because every single one of them knew exactly what he meant.
Hermes’ voice softened.
“That does not make you grown.”
A little chirrup came from the younger blanket pile.
Hermes answered at once.
The child settled.
Will looked down too quickly.
“He’s supposed to protect children,” he said quietly.
No one asked who.
They didn’t need to.
“That’s part of what he’s supposed to be.”
He rubbed a thumb over a clean bandage and stared at it like it might explain something to him.
“I used to be one of the youngest,” he added.
That hurt the room more than the first part.
Because now he wasn’t.
Now he was the one with the satchel and the quiet hands and the children looking to him.
“And maybe he’s trying now,” Will said. “But trying after the worst of it doesn’t make the nights less loud.”
Something in Nico’s posture sharpened at that, not outwardly. Just enough that the line of his shoulders moved, ears angling forward for a breath before settling again. His hand found Will’s wrist and stayed there.
Pollux spoke before the room could settle around Will’s words.
Quietly.
Which made it worse.
“I keep going back first,” he said, eyes fixed on the floor. “I tell myself I’m going to stay there tonight.”
His tail tightened around his ankle.
His violet eyes glowed a little brighter.
“And then it gets quiet.”
No one moved.
“I turn over anyway.”
A breath.
“He’s never there.”
There it was.
Castor without the name.
The room felt it.
Pollux’s ears flattened slightly. “My dad is.”
A longer pause.
“But somehow it’s still empty.”
That one landed hardest of all.
Because it was not accusation.
It was worse.
It was tired.
Hermes let it breathe in the room for one full beat.
Then he turned his head toward the doorway.
“Dionysus.”
The air pressed inward.
Heavier than Hermes. Less quicksilver, more weight.
Dionysus appeared at the threshold looking annoyed in the way he always did when summoned anywhere by anyone.
Then he saw the room.
Saw Travis and Connor and the wing.
Saw Chris with the rough bandage at his ribs.
Saw Percy with too much gold in his blood and too much pressure in his skin.
Saw Will with white feathers in his hair and a satchel in his lap and sadness so tired it had stopped dressing itself as anger.
Saw Pollux on the floor because his own bed hurt too much to lie in alone.
The annoyance dropped away.
Not dramatically.
Completely.
Hermes did not raise his voice.
He did not need to.
“Look.”
Dionysus did.
Really looked.
At his son.
At the way the blond head was bowed.
At the leopard spots along his skin.
At the way his tail was wrapped so tightly around his own ankle it might as well have been a knot.
At the floor instead of a bunk.
At the unspoken shape of the twin who should have been there.
“I didn’t know,” Dionysus said.
It was quiet.
Not defensive.
Pollux let out a small breath. Not quite a laugh. “Yeah.”
No anger in it.
That made it crueler.
Hermes stepped closer to his younger brother.
Not threatening.
Worse.
Personal.
He had, once, helped carry this god through childhood. Hidden him. Protected him. Walked him from one danger to the next until he was old enough to stand among them himself. That history sat under every word.
“You did not mean neglect,” Hermes said. “I know that.”
Dionysus’ face shifted.
Shame.
Recognition.
A grief so old it had started to calcify around the edges.
“You have been here too long,” Hermes continued quietly. “Watched too many children leave and not return. Let distance become easier than attachment because attachment keeps costing you things.”
The room was very still now.
“But children do not feel distance as mercy, little brother.”
That landed.
Deeply.
Dionysus flinched.
Small.
Real.
He looked at Pollux again.
This time not as part of the room.
Not as one more child in camp.
As his son.
One surviving child in a world that had already taken too much.
He lowered himself to the floor.
Not standing over Pollux.
Not at a remove.
Close.
Near enough to matter.
He didn’t touch him right away.
Pollux didn’t move either.
Didn’t lean.
Didn’t pull away.
He just stayed where he was, violet eyes fixed somewhere low and distant.
After a long moment, Dionysus shifted closer and laid an arm around him.
Careful.
Tentative.
A bull’s weight trying very hard not to crush something spotted and hurting beneath it.
Pollux’s tail went still.
Then moved once.
Then curled around both of them.
And something in the line of his shoulders eased.
Only a little.
Enough.
Hermes looked away then.
Because that moment did not belong to him.
The cabin softened around it.
Not fixed.
Not healed.
But held.
Connor still sat too close to Travis.
Will still had too much on his hands.
Percy still felt like one wrong step might crack him open.
Chris still looked irritated enough to bite someone for noticing him at all.
Nico still watched from the edge of the room like something half-wild and deeply loyal.
The younger children still chirped and fluttered and burrowed into blankets.
None of it was resolved.
But none of it was alone either.
Hermes moved back toward the center of the room and the room, in turn, adjusted around him. A blanket got tugged over a smaller child. A bunk shifted enough for a shoulder to lean where it needed to. Someone’s tail unwound and rewound around a safer ankle. Connor’s feathers finally smoothed by a fraction. Will let out one more small, exhausted huff that sounded too close to a pup’s whine and Nico’s hand tightened at his wrist.
“You come here,”
He said it again, softer this time.
Hermes tipped his head toward the center. “All of you. I’m not doing this in pieces.”
That was enough.
Katie gathered the cards into one stack and drew the younger campers closer without waking them fully. The little Aphrodite girl leaned into her side, feathers settling. The Athena child finally gave in and slumped against her shoulder.
The blanket pile widened.
Just enough.
Connor didn’t wait.
He slid off the bunk, hand firm on Travis’ arm now. His wing drew in tighter as he helped him sit up.
“Come on.”
Travis made a face. “I hate this.”
“Shocking.”
The moment his weight shifted, his breath caught. His good wing flared halfway, then snapped back in tight. A small, strained chirrup slipped out before he could stop it.
Connor stilled, then stepped closer without thinking. “I’ve got you.”
“Yeah,” Travis muttered thinly. “You keep saying that.”
Between the two of them, they made it down.
Careful.
Slow.
Not alone.
Will was already there, shifting onto his knees, satchel open. Hermes crouched opposite, one hand settling at the base of the injured wing.
Chris dropped down with a quiet, annoyed exhale when one of the younger kids leaned into him, settling at his side. His hand came up automatically to steady them.
Percy followed last, slower, blanket still around his shoulders, lowering himself at the edge of the circle. His teeth clicked once. He ignored it.
Pollux didn’t move far. Dionysus only shifted enough to give space, one arm still around him.
Nico stayed where he was, but his attention had shifted fully now—no longer on the room, but on Will.
They were all there.
Not neat.
Not orderly.
But together.
Hermes glanced once around them.
Counting.
Then nodded.
“Good.”
Will was already reaching for the wing.
“I need you not to bite me.”
Travis gave him a look. “That feels rude.”
“That feels earned.”
A few of the younger kids gave small, nervous giggles.
Will’s hands settled.
“Stay still.”
“That sounds fake,” Travis muttered.
“It’s not.”
Connor adjusted his grip without being told, one hand tightening at Travis’ arm, the other braced at his shoulder. His wing shifted in closer, feathers still unsettled.
Hermes’ hand stayed steady at the base of the wing.
“Look at me.”
Travis did.
Not happily.
But he did.
Will moved.
Fast.
Precise.
The wing set with one sharp correction.
Travis’ breath broke hard, the sound catching halfway into something instinctive before he forced it down. His good wing flared, striking Connor as Connor swore under his breath and held on tighter.
Hermes didn’t move.
“Stay.”
Will was already wrapping.
“Don’t move it.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Travis managed hoarsely.
It took a second for his breathing to steady.
Connor didn’t let go.
Not once.
Will tied off the wrap and leaned back slightly. “Done.”
Travis swallowed, then muttered, “I’m filing a complaint.”
Hermes’ mouth twitched. “You’re allowed two weeks of complaining.”
Travis blinked. “…only two?”
“After that,” Hermes said mildly, “I expect you to get more creative.”
A weak, crooked grin pulled at Travis’ mouth. “That’s deeply unfair.”
“I have high standards.”
Connor huffed something that almost sounded like a laugh.
Hermes’ gaze shifted.
Chris.
“Don’t think I forgot about you.”
Chris groaned. “I was really hoping you would.”
“How unfortunate.”
Chris shifted, tugging his shirt aside with exaggerated reluctance. The bandage beneath was rough and too tight.
Will moved toward him, sliding over on his knees.
“This is terrible,” Will said.
“I had confidence in it.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
Cleaning it hurt.
Chris went still for it, jaw tightening. Once, a quiet hiss slipped out before he caught it.
“There you are,” Hermes murmured.
Chris shot him a look. “I hate you.”
“That’s fine.”
Will rewrapped the wound properly and sat back. “Better.”
Chris let the shirt fall back immediately. “I’m never getting injured again.”
“That seems unlikely,” Connor muttered.
Chris pointed at Percy without looking. “You’re next.”
Percy didn’t move.
Hermes looked at him.
Percy exhaled through his nose. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
“That is not an answer.”
Percy’s mouth twitched faintly. “Didn’t say it was a good one.”
Hermes crouched in front of him.
“Show me.”
Percy held still for a second.
Then shifted the blanket and lifted the edge of his shirt.
Will stilled.
The bruising.
The wrap.
The gold.
Too much of it.
“How long,” Will asked quietly.
Percy didn’t look at him. “A week.”
Silence pulled tight for a beat.
Will closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “You should’ve told me.”
Percy shrugged, small. “Been busy.”
Will didn’t argue.
He just moved closer.
From where he sat, Nico’s posture tightened slightly—ears angling forward—but he didn’t move in.
“Look at me,” he said.
Percy did.
It helped.
A little.
Will worked carefully.
Slower.
More deliberate.
Percy’s breath caught once, hand tightening in the blanket.
His teeth clicked softly.
This time, he didn’t stop it.
The younger campers answered without thinking—small chirps, quiet sounds, a soft ripple through the blankets.
Hermes answered them just as easily.
Low.
Steady.
Will finished and tied off the wrap.
“There.”
Percy let the blanket fall back into place.
Didn’t look at it.
Just breathed.
Around him, the room had shifted.
Connor still close to Travis.
Chris quieter.
Will sitting back, exhaustion settling in now that his hands had stopped.
Nico still there.
Pollux not alone.
The younger kids tucked in, answering each other without thinking.
Nothing fixed.
Not really.
But the space between them—
smaller.
Quieter.
Held.
Percy let out a slow breath.
It wasn’t enough.
It wouldn’t last.
But for right now—
for tonight—
that was enough.
Will exhaled slowly, hands hovering over his satchel for a moment before finally—finally—closing it. The sound was soft, but it carried. Final, in a way nothing else had been tonight. He didn’t move far after, just shifted back until his shoulder brushed Nico’s. That was all. Enough.
Connor stayed pressed close to Travis, one wing angled instinctively, not quite covering, but there. Travis didn’t argue it this time. Chris had gone quieter, one hand still resting absently against the younger camper leaning into him, thumb tapping lightly like he didn’t realize he was doing it.
Across from them, Pollux hadn’t moved. Dionysus hadn’t either.
Not distance.
Not yet.
Hermes did.
Not away—but around.
A hand brushing over a smaller camper’s hair. A quiet check of a blanket not sitting right. A presence that moved through them all, light and constant and there, counting without counting.
Percy watched it happen without meaning to.
The blanket stayed loose around his shoulders. His side still ached, dull and present, but… manageable. For the first time in a while, the pressure under his skin didn’t feel like it was trying to split him open from the inside.
Not gone.
Just… quieter.
He let out a slow breath.
Didn’t fight it.
Around him, the cabin settled—not silent, never silent—but softer. Closer. Like something had shifted just enough to make space for them all to breathe.
Nothing fixed.
Not really.
But no one had to carry it alone.
And for now—
that was enough.