THE SANDMAN ☞ TRAVIS STOLL

TWO

VALERIE CAN'T SLEEP. The mid-afternoon sun beats hotly against the curtains lining the windows of Cabin 21, warming up the small space, and despite the fact that Valerie is cozy in her bed, with music playing softly from the corner of the cabin, she can't seem to find sleep.

    She knows her mother would laugh at the irony of it all, and Chiron wouldn't believe her, but a child forged by and built out of dreams being unable to sleep is nearly unheard of.

    A few years ago, she would have prayed to her father. Even after the branding, as painful as it was, she would have prayed to him, sought him out for a few hours of peaceful sleep.

    She doesn't pray anymore. Not to him, at least. Not after the dreams in the weeks leading up to that day in Manhattan, and that day itself.

    As a substitute, she prays to her grandfather.

    And it almost works. Her eyes begin to grow heavy, her breaths evening out, and she can smell the sweet, tangy scent of the dreams of those who, like her, are sleeping in the middle of the afternoon.

    But there's a knock on her door, and instead of Hypnos dragging her gently into the realm of sleep, someone is standing outside of Cabin 21, asking to be let in.

    There are exactly two people who would have the audacity and the courage to bother Valerie Greenwood—Alyssa, who wouldn't have knocked, and Travis, who should know better.

    Lo and behold, when Valerie throws the door open, it's not Alyssa. It's not Chiron, or anyone else worth talking to.

    It's Travis Stoll, still in his clothes and armor from training. He looks surprised to see her, and his eyes drift down to her bare shoulder and the brand gracing the skin there.

    "I didn't think you'd answer." He says after meeting her eyes again. "Can I come in?"

    She barks out a mirthless laugh. "No. What do you want?"

    She wishes it had been Alyssa. Alyssa, who can be in the room with her and sit in a comfortable silence, who can finish her sentence before she'd even begun to speak, who knows not to show up when she's not wanted.

    Travis doesn't let her tone get to him. "A bunch of the senior counselors are meeting up after curfew in the arena to play baseball. Chiron already signed off on it. And since you're a senior counselor..." He trails off, picking at the stitching of the straps of his armor.

    "I'm not a senior counselor." That's a lie. The minute she got her own cabin—the minute she was declared, formally and publicly, as the only known, living demigod child of Morpheus—she was made a senior counselor, invited formally to every war meeting, supposed to be in the room when important conversations were had.

    She's gone to one single counselor meeting in the year and a half since she'd been appointed to the position, and it was a war counsel, where they decided how to defend the camp against the Roman invaders.

    The looks she got when she walked into that room made it very clear that she was not welcome among them. So she hasn't gone since.

    Travis's eyebrows pull together. "Listen, the teams are uneven. I know you don't want to go, but there's eight of us and six for the minor gods' cabins." He pauses. "You could play for a couple innings, then leave. No one would mind."

    Valerie knows he doesn't mean it in a derogatory way, but the way he says us makes anger prickle at her spine. Us, like there is a definitive line between him and his friends, and her and the other children of minor gods. She knows he doesn't mean it like that, not one bit. But it stings.