Haunted || Leo Valdez

58 - Anne Receives an Invite to an Exclusive Queen Meeting

Anne decided she'd had enough excitement for one night and that she was going to sleep. Unfortunately, her body decided that wasn't going to happen, no matter how many times she tossed and turned.

She'd just have to lay there, wide awake.

"Ugh," She muttered to herself. There was nothing more frustrating than laying awake for hours, watching the clock tick on, knowing her opportunity to sleep was growing shorter by the second, unable to do anything about it.

Soon she got tired of laying around, so she got up and looked around her cabin for something to do. There was a magic rainbow Anne used for Iris-Messaging — at least, she would use it for Iris-Messaging if she had anyone to talk to that wasn't already on this ship.

Anne crossed the room and fished out a gold drachma from her desk drawer. Then she put it back. There was nobody she wanted to talk to that wasn't already on this ship, except possibly Nico, and she highly doubted IM-ing him at this point was possible.

"Ugh," she said again, this time with contempt. Maybe there was something she could use in the kitchen to make a sleeping potion. She stumbled down the hallway, dragging her feet. It was most unqueenly of her, but she didn't care, and she was glad that she didn't have to care.

Being a queen consort had been so much work. She'd had to keep up appearances, even while at home, in her private chambers. She'd had to pretend the comments about her being a witch didn't bother her, when she really wanted to kick the snot out of the idiot who'd made the comment.

Becoming Henry's queen had been the worst decision of her life. She'd resisted his advances for such a long time before figuring the only way to make him leave her alone was to give in. Well, he'd left her alone alright, after she'd had Elizabeth. He'd started seeing another woman, and Anne was cast to the side just as darling Catherine had been.

Henry 2.0 wasn't terrible when compared to Anne's ex-husband. As far as Anne was concerned, he was a happy-go-lucky airhead who deserved to be milling about Camp Jupiter, not going on a dangerous quest that would most likely end in his death. If it had been the original Henry, Anne would've sacrificed him to Shrimpzilla.

Anne stopped by Rebecca's room. Maybe Rebecca was still awake and would be willing to have a lighthearted chat they way they had at Camp Half-Blood. It would make the long night much less boring. Anne took care to open the door as quietly as possible in case she was asleep.

Rebecca, in fact, was asleep, but she wasn't alone. She was curled up in Leo's embrace, her forehead resting against his chest. The sight made Anne smile. All of that pushing and prodding she'd done nearly all winter had definitely paid off. She only wished she had a camera to capture the utter adorableness that was Rebecca and Leo.

She closed the door softly and continued on to the kitchen.

There were plenty of potion ingredients for a sleeping potion. Anne made a nice big batch. As long as she used one drop each night, the potion would last for weeks. She bottled the potion and toted it to her cabin. She grabbed an eyedropper and filled it with the potion. To anyone who didn't know magic, it would just look like a big bottle of blue food coloring. She'd have to keep it away from Percy in case he decided his food wasn't blue enough and went looking around for food coloring. It may have sounded outlandish, but Anne didn't put it past him.

She carefully squeezed one drop of the potion into a glass of water on her bedside table. The potion dissolved in a blue cloud into the water. She stored the potion in a drawer in the side of her bed.

"People of the world," Anne muttered to herself as she raised the glass to her lips, "I give you 'Sleepy Water.' "

She climbed into her bed, not even amused by her own joke, and fell asleep.