DISCLAIMER: I am not the owner of either the characters or songs!

Silena came to Camp Half-Blood when she was ten. She had never been to New York prior to that, being from a small town in South Carolina.

The first friend she made was an eleven year old boy named Charles Beckendorf whose sleeping bag was next to hers in the Hermes cabin. They were claimed on the same day, two weeks into her being there; she went to Aphrodite and he went to Hephaestus. Luke Castellan, the second friend she'd made there, had laughed at the irony of it, though, at the time, she didn't fully understand it.

And over the next two years, they kind of grew apart. They'd still hang out if their cabins intersected anywhere, but other than that, he stuck to the forges and she became friends with the girls around camp.

Something happened between her and Charlie around the time Percy Jackson showed up. They were instantly best friends again, connected at the hip as much as camp rules would let them be. Their elections to head counselor certainly helped, but after what had transpired around the time of her fourteenth birthday, she was afraid they would never be the same.

Silena left camp to visit her dad once a year. She wasn't a high-risk demigod, not really, but still stayed at camp year round. The one thing that was problematic with her was how often her appearance would change, a side effect of Aphrodite's parentage. On top of all that, Silena had been homeschooled all her life, so she and her father had decided for her to just stay at camp. However, he wanted to be closer to her nonetheless, and he moved to Greenwich Village, where he opened up the chocolate store he'd wanted to own for as long as she could remember. Her family wasn't religious, so it wasn't for Christmas or Chanukah or anything, but rather Silena's birthday was the week she and her dad spent together, just the two of them. The only downside was that her birthday was February 13, which meant that they were together for Valentine's Day, the one day out of the year that her father hated more than anything else in the world, because it was the day that he meant Aphrodite and, one year later, the day she broke his heart when she left.

She had volunteered to run to the store when her dad ran out of milk making her birthday cake. He didn't love that, but she took her sword, and her father had long ago learned not to mess with Silena and her sword. She would do just fine.

"Silena Beauregard, as I live and breathe."

Silena froze, because she knew that voice. Celestial bronze could be used on demigods, right? And how much trouble would she get in, really, if she killed a traitor?

"Silena, stop." The hand that had slowly been edging to her purse and her bag of enchanted make-up stopped of its own accord, and the fact that he was using magic pissed Silena off more than the fact that Luke was there. She may have been Aphrodite's daughter, and she might not turn fourteen until the next day, but there was still a lot of anger in her small stature. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Oh really?" Silena laughed bitterly, "Like you didn't want to hurt Percy?"

"That was necessary."

"For what? Annabeth cried for a week when she found out about all this!" She thought he saw his face contort into something like regret at that, but quickly his mask came back onto his face.

"I need your help, Silena."

"I don't want to give it."

"Silena," he said sweetly, running a hand across her cheek. She watched his hand out of the corner of her eye and tried to steady the loud thundering of her heart underneath her jacket. "I need your help."

She was silent for several minutes, Luke continuing to stare into her eyes, and her resolve crumbled, though she didn't know if it was because of magic or his beautiful blue eyes.

"What do you need?"

"A pair of eyes. On the inside. You'll be saving lives, Silena."

Saving lives. For which side?

"Saving lives? Everyone at Camp Half-Blood would be safe?"

"As safe as a demigod can be, of course."

She hesitated, and could feel him staring at her, begging for her to make a decision. She could keep everyone safe…

"I won't hurt Charles Beckendorf," he added.

Her eyes snapped to his.

"What does Charlie have to do with anything?"

"Silena," Luke laughed, "You care about him. I know that; everyone does."

"He's my friend; of course I care about him."

"And don't you want him to be safe?"

She glanced down to the sidewalk, faces circling through her mind. There was Charlie, and Annabeth, and Percy, and Katie, and the Stolls she still couldn't tell apart, and her brothers and sisters, and even Clarisse and the Ares cabin, and everyone else at Camp Half-Blood that she had grown close to in her three years there. She could save them.

When she returned to camp the next Monday, she had her new scythe necklace buried in her duffel bag, a new found interest in studying magic, and a sinking feeling in her stomach whenever she met Charlie's eye.