Megan and the Sibylline Books ~ Part 2

We kept everything concerning my mother and the Sibylline scraps to ourselves for a few months. I became distant with everyone around me. When elections came around in the fall, I didn’t run for office again, so I stopped going to the senate meetings entirely.

My friend Courtney, when she wasn’t spending her free time Iris messaging her boyfriend, Xavier Evangeline, a son of Thanatos, she was always trying to figure out what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her; I couldn’t tell anyone.

I still told Octavian about other secrets I had found out around camp. We had something on almost everyone. But we never talked about the Greeks or my mother or ever mentioned the Sibylline books we wanted to possess so much.

My mother Iris messaged me a couple times. She would tell me she found a secret way to exit the casino or she had figured out the cure for her cancer. But for her, it had only been less than a day between times when she saw me and I wouldn’t hear from her for weeks.

The Lotus Casino kept calling me. It wanted me to come. I could feel it pulling me over the hundreds of miles. It wanted me to leave my duties behind and meet my mother for real.

But I could never do that.

I would never be able to abandon my home and my friends as she had abandoned me. Camp Jupiter was where I belonged and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

News spread during this time about my ancestry. I received dirty looks from almost everyone in the legion, except my closest friends and colleagues. I didn’t blame them, we were all fed the same material here “Greeks are bad and they are not to be trusted.” If they hadn’t known me, I would have gotten the same response Octavian gave Percy Jackson when he showed up. Long story I hate to get into.

I kept working and leading. Cohort 3 continued to prosper. And one day, nearing the end of the year, Octavian mentioned what had been tearing at me over the last few months.

He sat down at my table during dinner and whispered into my ear. “Reyna says we can have our quest. She says if we have a good solid lead, we can go, just the two of us.”

I stared at him. This was our quest. The one thing we had always wanted to find, together, and we had a chance. For years, we had wanted to go, but no one else thought it was a good plan. They never really thought any pieces, other than the scraps we had, had survived. We didn’t know if any of the prophecies were the same, because I could never read them thoroughly through the Iris Message. I couldn’t even see a perfect view of my mother threw it.

I sighed and looked away, but that nagging bit wouldn’t go away. I quietly replied. “Are you sure about this? Can you promise not to get mad at my mother? At me?”

He nodded. “We leave at dawn.”

I hoped those around me didn’t hear us at all.

I attended that night’s senate meeting for the first time in months. What Octavian said was true, our quest had been approved. He told them where we were headed, so it may take us a bit longer to return than expected.

The ambassador of Pluto, Nico di Angelo, confronted me after the meeting. We had never been on good terms since I had confronted him about being a Greek over a year before.

“Do not trust anyone who works in the Casino. Do not eat the Lotus cookies.”

That was it. I tried to ask him if he had been there, but he wouldn’t say another word to me. I had seen my mother eat cookies a couple times in the Iris messages. If I shouldn’t eat them, then why was she?

What made time run so differently there? My dad was the god of luck, but I had never been that lucky. Perhaps, I would be lucky enough to find some answers in the Lotus Hotel.