Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

THE SNAKE-HAIRED LADIES WERE more annoying than psycho at this point, Percy decided.

They should have died three days ago when he dropped a crate of bowling balls on them at the Napa Bargain Mart. They should have died two days ago when he ran over them with a police car in Martinez. They definitely should have died this morning when he cut off their heads in Tilden Park.

No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept reforming like large evil dust bunnies. He couldn’t even seem to outrun them.

He reached the top of the hill and caught his breath. How long since he’d last killed them? Maybe two hours. They never seemed to stay dead longer than that.

The past few days, he’d hardly slept. He’d eaten whatever he could scrounge—vending machine gummi bears, stale bagels, even a Jack in the Crack burrito, which was a new personal low. His clothes were torn, burned, and splattered with monster slime.

He’d only survived this long because the two snake-haired-ladies—gorgons, they called themselves—couldn’t seem to kill him either. Their claws didn’t cut his skin. Their teeth broke whenever they tried to bite him. But Percy couldn’t keep going much longer. Soon he’d collapse from exhaustion, and then—as hard as he was to kill, he was pretty sure the gorgons would find a way.

Where to run?

He scanned his surroundings. Under different circumstances, he might’ve enjoyed the view. To his left, golden hills rolled inland, dotted with lakes, woods, and a few herds of cows. To his right, the flatlands of Berkeley and Oakland marched west—a vast checkerboard of neighborhoods, with several million people who probably did not want their morning interrupted by two monsters and a filthy demigod. Farther west, San Francisco Bay glittered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog had swallowed most of San Francisco, leaving just the tops of skyscrapers and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A vague sadness weighed on Percy’s chest. Something told him he’d been to San Francisco before. With Annabeth. Definitely with Annabeth.

Who Annabeth was… Percy didn’t honestly know. All he knew was that she was the only person from his past that he could remember. The wolf had promised he would see her again and regain his memory if he succeeded in his journey.

That kind of seemed like an unfair deal, but there wasn’t much he could do about it if he wanted answers.

Percy was tempted to cross the bay. He could feel the power of the ocean just over the horizon. Water always revived him. Salt water was the best. He’d discovered that two days ago when he had strangled a sea monster in the Carquinez Strait. If he could reach the bay, he might be able to make a last stand. Maybe he could even drown the gorgons. But the shore was at least two miles away. He’d have to cross an entire city.

He hesitated for another reason. The she-wolf Lupa had taught him to sharpen his senses—to trust the instincts that had been guiding him south. His homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of his journey was close—almost right under his feet. But how could that be? There was nothing on the hilltop.

Also… he had the strangest feeling that he would find the end—and survive. Deja vu. Ugh, gods, that was annoying.

The wind changed. Percy caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods—snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing.

Gorgons.

For the millionth time, Percy wished their noses weren’t so good. They had always said they could smell him because he was a demigod—the half-blood son of some old Roman god. Percy had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, even keeping air-freshener sticks in his pockets so he’d have that new car smell; but apparently demigod stink was hard to mask.

He scrambled to the west side of the summit. It was too steep to descend. The slope plummeted eighty feet, straight to the roof of an apartment complex built into the hillside. Fifty feet below that, a highway emerged from the hill’s base and wound its way toward Berkeley.

Great. No other way off the hill. He’d managed to get himself cornered.

He stared at the stream of cars flowing west toward San Francisco and wished he were in one of them. Then he realized the highway must cut through the hill. There must be a tunnel… right under his feet.

His internal radar went nuts. He was in the right place, just too high up. He had to check out that tunnel. He needed a way down to the highway—fast.

He slung off his backpack. He’d managed to grab a lot of supplies at the Napa Bargain Mart: a portable GPS, duct tape, lighter, superglue, water bottle, camping roll, a Comfy Panda Pillow Pet (as seen on TV), and a Swiss army knife—pretty much every tool a modern demigod could want. But he had nothing that would serve as a parachute or a sled.

That left him two options: jump eighty feet to his death, or stand and fight. Both options sounded pretty bad.

He cursed and pulled his pen from his pocket.

The pen didn’t look like much, just a regular cheap ballpoint, but when Percy uncapped it, it grew into a glowing bronze sword. The blade balanced perfectly. The leather grip fit his hand like it had been custom designed for him. Etched along the guard was an Ancient Greek word Percy somehow understood: Anaklusmos—Riptide.

He’d woken up with this sword his first night at the Wolf House—two months ago? More? He’d lost track. He’d found himself in the courtyard of a burned-out mansion in the middle of the woods, wearing shorts, an orange T-shirt, and a leather necklace with a bunch of strange clay beads. Riptide had been in his hand, but Percy had had no idea how he’d gotten there, and only the vaguest idea who he was. He’d been barefoot, freezing, and confused. And then the wolves came…

Right next to him, a familiar voice jolted him back to the present: “There you are!”

Percy stumbled away from the gorgon, almost falling off the edge of the hill.

It was the smiley one—Beano.

Okay, her name wasn’t really Beano. As near as Percy could figure, he was dyslexic, because words got twisted around when he tried to read.

The first time he’d seen the gorgon, posing as a Bargain Mart greeter with a big green button that read: Welcome! My name is STHENO , he’d thought it said BEANO .

She was still wearing her green Bargain Mart employee vest over a flower-print dress. If you looked just at her body, you might think she was somebody’s dumpy old grandmother—until you looked down and realized she had rooster feet. Or you looked up and saw bronze boar tusks sticking out of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes glowed red, and her hair was a writhing nest of bright green snakes.

The most horrible thing about her? She was still holding her big silver platter of free samples: Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. Her platter was dented from all the times Percy had killed her, but those little samples looked perfectly fine. Stheno just kept toting them across California so she could offer Percy a snack before she killed him. Percy didn’t know why she kept doing that, but if he ever needed a suit of armor, he was going to make it out of Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. They were indestructible.

“Try one?” Stheno offered.

Percy fended her off with his sword. “Where’s your sister?”

“Oh, put the sword away,” Stheno chided. “You know by now that even Celestial bronze can’t kill us for long. Have a Cheese ’n’ Wiener! They’re on sale this week, and I’d hate to kill you on an empty stomach.”

“Stheno!” The second gorgon appeared on Percy’s right so fast, he didn’t have time to react. Fortunately she was too busy glaring at her sister to pay him much attention. “I told you to sneak up on him and kill him!”

Stheno’s smile wavered. “But, Euryale…” She said the nameso it rhymed with Muriel. “Can’t I give him a sample first?”

“No, you imbecile!” Euryale turned toward Percy and bared her fangs.

Except for her hair, which was a nest of coral snakes instead of green vipers, she looked exactly like her sister. Her Bargain Mart vest, her flowery dress, even her tusks were decorated with 50% off stickers. Her name badge read: Hello! My name is DIE,DEMIGODSCUM!

“You’ve led us on quite a chase, Percy Jackson,” Euryale said. “But now you’re trapped, and we’ll have our revenge!”

“The Cheese ’n’ Wieners are only $2.99,” Stheno added helpfully. “Grocery department, aisle three.”

Euryale snarled. “Stheno, the Bargain Mart was a front!

You’re going native! Now, put down that ridiculous tray and help me kill this demigod. Or have you forgotten that he’s the one who vaporized Medusa?”

Percy stepped back. Six more inches, and he’d be tumbling through thin air. “Look, ladies, we’ve been over this. I don’t even remember killing Medusa. I don’t remember anything! Can’t we just call a truce and talk about your weekly specials?”

Stheno gave her sister a pouty look, which was hard to do with giant bronze tusks. “Can we?”

“No!” Euryale’s red eyes bored into Percy. “I don’t care what you remember, son of the sea god. I can smell Medusa’s blood on you. It’s faint, yes, several years old, but you were the last one to defeat her. She still has not returned from Tartarus. It’s your fault!”

Percy didn’t really get that. The whole “dying then returning from Tartarus” concept gave him a headache. Of course, so did the idea that a ballpoint pen could turn into a sword, or that monsters could disguise themselves with something called the Mist, or that Percy was the son of a barnacle-encrusted god from five thousand years ago. But he did believe it. Even though his memory was erased, he knew he was a demigod the same way he knew his name was Percy Jackson. From his very first conversation with Lupa the wolf, he’d accepted that this crazy messed-up world of gods and monsters was his reality. Which pretty much sucked.

“How about we call it a draw?” he said. “I can’t kill you. You can’t kill me. If you’re Medusa’s sisters—like the Medusa who turned people to stone—shouldn’t I be petrified by now?”

“Heroes!” Euryale said with disgust. “They always bring that up, just like our mother! ‘Why can’t you turn people to stone? Your sister can turn people to stone.’ Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, boy! That was Medusa’s curse alone. She was the most hideous one in the family. She got all the luck!”

Stheno looked hurt. “Mother said I was the most hideous.”

“Quiet!” Euryale snapped. “As for you, Percy Jackson, it’s true you bear the mark of Achilles. That makes you a little tougher to kill. But don’t worry. We’ll find a way.”

“The mark of what?”

“Achilles,” Stheno said cheerfully. “Oh, he was gorgeous! Dipped in the River Styx as a child, you know, so he was invulnerable except for a tiny spot on his ankle. That’s what happened to you, dear. Someone must’ve dumped you in the Styx and made your skin like iron. But not to worry. Heroes like you always have a weak spot. We just have to find it, and then we can kill you. Won’t that be lovely? Have a Cheese ’n’ Wiener!”

Percy tried to think. There was a vague memory of a dark river and a dark haired boy. But just as soon as it swam into his mind, it disappeared, fading away until he couldn’t remember what he’d seen.

That did give him an idea though. If his skin was iron, that would explain how he’d held out so long against the gorgons. Maybe if he just fell down the mountain… would he survive? He didn’t want to risk it—not without something to slow the fall, or a sled, or…

He looked at Stheno’s large silver platter of free samples.

Hmm…

“Reconsidering?” Stheno asked. “Very wise, dear. I added some gorgon’s blood to these, so your death will be quick and painless.”

Percy’s throat constricted. “You added your blood to the Cheese ’n’ Wieners?”

“Just a little.” Stheno smiled. “A tiny nick on my arm, but you’re sweet to be concerned. Blood from our right side can cure anything, you know, but blood from our left side is deadly—”

“You dimwit!” Euryale screeched. “You’re not supposed to tell him that! He won’t eat the wieners if you tell him they’re poisoned!”

Stheno looked stunned. “He won’t? But I said it would be quick and painless.”

“Never mind!” Euryale’s fingernails grew into claws. “We’ll kill him the hard way—just keep slashing until we find the weak spot. Once we defeat Percy Jackson, we’ll be more famous than Medusa! Our patron will reward us greatly!”

Percy gripped his sword. He’d have to time his move perfectly—a few seconds of confusion, grab the platter with his left hand...

Keep them talking, he thought.

Talking. That was something Annabeth did to buy time. He didn’t remember how he knew that.

“Before you slash me to bits,” he said, “who’s this patron you mentioned?”

Euryale sneered. “The goddess Gaea, of course! The one who brought us back from oblivion! You won’t live long enough to meet her, but your friends below will soon face her wrath. Even now, her armies are marching south. At the Feast of Fortune, she’ll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like—like—”

“Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!” Stheno suggested.

“Gah!” Euryale stormed toward her sister. Percy took the opening. He grabbed Stheno’s platter, scattering poisoned Cheese ’n’ Wieners, and slashed Riptide across Euryale’s waist, cutting her in half. He raised the platter, and Stheno found herself facing her own greasy reflection.

“Medusa!” she screamed.

Her sister Euryale had crumbled to dust, but she was already starting to reform, like a snowman unmelting. “Stheno, you fool!” she gurgled as her half-made face rose from the mound of dust. “That’s just your own reflection! Get him!”

Percy slammed the metal tray on top of Stheno’s head, and she passed out cold.

He put the platter behind his butt, said a silent prayer to whatever Roman god oversaw stupid sledding tricks, and jumped off the side of the hill.

Chapter Text

THE THING ABOUT PLUMMETING DOWNHILL at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter—if you realize it’s a bad idea when you’re halfway down, it’s too late.

Percy narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three-sixty as he shot toward the highway. The stupid snack tray did not have power steering. He heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale’s coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below him like the prow of a battleship. Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight…

He managed to swivel sideways to avoid breaking his legs on impact. The snack platter skittered across the roof and sailed through the air. The platter went one way. Percy went the other.

As he fell toward the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through his mind: his body smashing against an SUV’s windshield, some annoyed commuter trying to push him off with the wipers. Stupid sixteen-year-old kid falling from the sky! I’m late!

Miraculously, a gust of wind blew him to one side—just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn’t a soft landing, but it was better than asphalt. Percy groaned. He wanted to lie there and pass out, but he had to keep moving. He struggled to his feet. His hands were scratched up, but no bones seemed to be broken. He still had his backpack. Somewhere on the sled ride he’d lost his sword, but Percy knew it would eventually reappear in his pocket in pen form. That was part of its magic.

He glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colorful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than Percy but with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must’ve been good for climbing. Percy figured he had maybe five minutes before they reached him.

Next to him, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighborhood of winding streets, cozy houses, and tall eucalyptus trees. The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things—like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays—but the chain-link was full of big holes. Percy could easily slip through into the neighborhood. Maybe he could find a car and drive west to the ocean. He didn’t like stealing cars, but over the past few weeks, in life-and-death situations, he’d “borrowed” several, including a police cruiser. He’d meant to return them, but they never seemed to last very long.

He glanced east. Just as he’d figured, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at him like eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker.

It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That’s probably what mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all. But they couldn’t see through the Mist. Percy knew the door was more than that.

Two kids in armor flanked the entrance. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts, and white athletic shoes. The guard on the right looked like a girl, though it was hard to tell for sure with all the armor. The one on the left was a stocky guy with a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held long wooden staffs with iron spear tips, like old-fashioned harpoons. There was another boy with them. He wasn’t in armor, but rather a brown aviator jacket and black pants. A black sword was sheathed at his side. For some reason, the kid seemed familiar.

Percy’s internal radar was pinging like crazy. After so many horrible days, he’d finally reached his goal. His instincts told him that if he could make it inside that door, he might find safety for the first time since the wolves had sent him south.

So why did he feel such dread?

Farther up the hill, the gorgons were scrambling over the roof of the apartment complex. Three minutes away—maybe less.

Part of him wanted to run to the door in the hill. He’d have to cross to the median of the highway, but then it would be a short sprint. He could make it before the gorgons reached him. Part of him wanted to head west to the ocean. That’s where he’d be safest. That’s where his power would be greatest. Those Roman guards at the door made him uneasy. Something inside him said: This isn’t my territory. This is dangerous.

“You’re right, of course,” said a voice next to him.

Percy jumped. At first he thought Beano had managed to sneak up on him again, but the old lady sitting in the bushes was even more repulsive than a gorgon. She looked like a hippie who’d been kicked to the side of the road maybe forty years ago, where she’d been collecting trash and rags ever since. She wore a dress made of tie-dyed cloth, ripped-up quilts, and plastic grocery bags. Her frizzy mop of hair was gray-brown, like root-beer foam, tied back with a peace-sign headband. Warts and moles covered her face. When she smiled, she showed exactly three teeth.

“It isn’t a maintenance tunnel,” she confided. “It’s the entrance to camp.”

A jolt went up Percy’s spine. Camp. Yes, that’s where he was from. A camp. Maybe this was his home. Maybe Annabeth was close by.

But something felt wrong.

The gorgons were still on the roof of the apartment building. Then Stheno shrieked in delight and pointed in Percy’s direction.

The old hippie lady raised her eyebrows. “Not much time, child. You need to make your choice.”

“Who are you?” Percy asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The last thing he needed was another harmless mortal who turned out to be a monster.

“Oh, you can call me June.” The old lady’s eyes sparkled as if she’d made an excellent joke. “It is June, isn’t it? They named the month after me!”

“Okay… Look, I should go. Two gorgons are coming. I don’t want them to hurt you.”

June clasped her hands over her heart. “How sweet! But that’s part of your choice!”

“My choice…” Percy glanced nervously toward the hill. The gorgons had taken off their green vests. Wings sprouted from their backs—small bat wings, which glinted like brass. Since when did they have wings? Maybe they were ornamental. Maybe they were too small to get a gorgon into the air. Then the two sisters leaped off the apartment building and soared toward him.

Great. Just great.

“Yes, a choice,” June said, as if she were in no hurry. “You could leave me here at the mercy of the gorgons and go to the ocean. You’d make it there safely, I guarantee. The gorgons will be quite happy to attack me and let you go. In the sea, no monster would bother you. You could begin a new life, live to a ripe old age, and escape a great deal of pain and misery that is in your future.”

Percy was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like the second option. “Or?”

“Or you could do a good deed for an old lady,” she said. “Carry me to the camp with you.”

“Carry you?” Percy hoped she was kidding. Then June hiked up her skirts and showed him her swollen purple feet.

“I can’t get there by myself,” she said. “Carry me to camp—across the highway, through the tunnel, across the river.”

Percy didn’t know what river she meant, but it didn’t sound easy. June looked pretty heavy.

The gorgons were only fifty yards away now—leisurely gliding toward him as if they knew the hunt was almost over.

Percy looked at the old lady. “And I’d carry you to this camp because—?”

“Because it’s a kindness!” she said. “And if you don’t, the gods will die, the world we know will perish, and everyone from your old life will be destroyed. Of course, you wouldn’t remember them, so I suppose it won’t matter. You’d be safe at the bottom of the sea…”

Percy swallowed. The gorgons shrieked with laughter as they soared in for the kill.

“If I go to the camp,” he said, “will I get my memory back?”

“Eventually,” June said. “But be warned, you will sacrifice much! You’ll lose the mark of Achilles. You’ll feel pain, misery, and loss beyond anything you’ve ever known. But you might have a chance to save your old friends and family, to reclaim your old life.”

The gorgons were circling right overhead. They were probably studying the old woman, trying to figure out who the new player was before they struck.

“What about those guards at the door?” Percy asked.

June smiled. “Oh, they’ll let you in, dear. You can trust those three. So, what do you say? Will you help a defenseless old woman?”

Percy doubted June was defenseless. At worst, this was a trap. At best, it was some kind of test. Percy hated tests. Since he’d lost his memory, his whole life was one big fill-in-the-blank. He was ___, from ___. He felt like ___, and if the monsters caught him, he’d be ___.

Then he thought about Annabeth, the only part of his old life he was sure about. He had to find her.

“I’ll carry you.” He scooped up the old woman.

She was lighter than he expected. Percy tried to ignore her sour breath and her calloused hands clinging to his neck. He made it across the first lane of traffic. A driver honked. Another yelled something that was lost in the wind. Most just swerved and looked irritated, as if they had to deal with a lot of ratty teenagers carrying old hippie women across the freeway here in Berkeley.

A shadow fell over him. Stheno called down gleefully, “Clever boy! Found a goddess to carry, did you?”

A goddess?

June cackled with delight, muttering, “Whoops!” as a car almost killed them.

Somewhere off to his left, Euryale screamed, “Get them! Two prizes are better than one!”

Percy bolted across the remaining lanes. Somehow he made it to the median alive. He saw the gorgons swooping down, cars swerving as the monsters passed overhead. He wondered what the mortals saw through the Mist—giant pelicans? Off-course hang gliders? The wolf Lupa had told him that mortal minds could believe just about anything—except the truth.

Percy ran for the door in the hillside. June got heavier with every step. Percy’s heart pounded. His ribs ached.

One of the guards yelled. The guy with the bow nocked an arrow. Percy shouted, “Wait!”

But the boy wasn’t aiming at him. The arrow flew over Percy’s head. A gorgon wailed in pain. The second guard readied her spear, gesturing frantically at Percy to hurry.

Fifty feet from the door. Thirty feet.

“Gotcha!” shrieked Euryale. Percy turned as an arrow thudded into her forehead.

Euryale tumbled into the fast lane. A truck slammed into her and carried her backward a hundred yards, but she just climbed over the cab, pulled the arrow out of her head, and launched back into the air.

Percy reached the door. “Thanks,” he told the guards. “Good shot.”

“That should’ve killed her!” the archer protested.

“Welcome to my world,” Percy muttered.

“Frank,” the girl said. “Get them inside, quick! Those are gorgons.”

“Gorgons?” The archer’s voice squeaked. It was hard to tell much about him under the helmet, but he looked stout like a wrestler, maybe fourteen or fifteen. “Will the door hold them?”

In Percy’s arms, June cackled. “No, no it won’t. Onward, Percy Jackson! Through the tunnel, over the river!”

“Hazel, go with Frank,” the boy in black said, drawing his sword. “I’ll hold them off. Get Percy to Camp.”

Looking back on it, Percy would find it strange that the boy spoke his name so easily.

“Percy Jackson?” The female guard, Hazel, was darker-skinned, with curly hair sticking out the sides of her helmet. She looked younger than Frank—maybe thirteen. Her sword scabbard came down almost to her ankle. Still, she sounded like she was the one in charge. “Okay, you’re obviously a demigod. But who’s the—?” She glanced at June. “Never mind. Just get inside. I’ll hold them off. Nico, you go with them.”

“Hazel,” Frank said. “Don’t be crazy.”

“Yes, don’t be crazy,” Nico agreed.

Hazel glared at them. “Go!”

Frank cursed in another language—was that Latin?—and opened the door. “Come on!”

Nico growled and stalked off through the door. Percy followed, staggering under the weight of the old lady, who was definitely getting heavier. He didn’t know how that girl Hazel would hold off the gorgons by herself, but he was too tired to argue.

“Stop,” Nico ordered. He grabbed Frank’s shoulder and yanked Percy’s arm. Miraculously, Percy didn’t drop June, but he almost did after Nico pulled them through the shadows.

Nico staggered, leaning against Frank who looked uncomfortable with the situation. He shook himself and gestured forward. “Come on.”

The old lady was heavier now than a pile of sandbags. Percy’s arms shook from the strain. June mumbled a song in Latin, like a lullaby, which didn’t help Percy concentrate.

Behind them, the gorgons’ voices echoed in the tunnel. Hazel shouted. Percy was tempted to dump June and runback to help, but then the entire tunnel shook with the rumble of falling stone. There was a squawking sound, just like the gorgons had made when Percy had dropped a crate of bowling balls on them in Napa. He glanced back. The west end of the tunnel was now filled with dust.

“Shouldn’t we check on Hazel?” he asked.

Nico looked back. A flash of concern crossed his face. “No. My sister, Hazel, I mean, she’s good underground. Better than me. She’ll be fine.”

“Just keep moving!” Frank said. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?”

June chuckled. “All roads lead there, child. You should know that.”

“Detention?” Percy asked.

“Rome, child,” the old woman said. “Rome.”

Percy wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. True, his memory was gone. His brain hadn’t felt right since he had woken up at the Wolf House. But he was pretty sure Rome wasn’t in California.

They burst out of the tunnel and into the sunlight.

Percy froze. Spread out at his feet was a bowl-shaped valley several miles wide. The basin floor was rumpled with smaller hills, golden plains, and stretches of forest. A small clear rivercut a winding course from a lake in the center and around the perimeter, like a capital G.

The geography could’ve been anywhere in northern California—live oaks and eucalyptus trees, gold hills and blue skies. That big inland mountain—what was it called, Mount Diablo?—rose in the distance, right where it should be.

But Percy felt like he’d stepped into a secret world. In the center of the valley, nestled by the lake, was a small city of white marble buildings with red-tiled roofs. Some had domes and columned porticoes, like national monuments. Others looked like palaces, with golden doors and large gardens. He could see an open plaza with free-standing columns, fountains, and statues. A five-story-tall Roman coliseum gleamed in the sun, next to a long oval arena like a racetrack.

Across the lake to the south, another hill was dotted with even more impressive buildings—temples, Percy guessed. Several stone bridges crossed the river as it wound through the valley, and in the north, a long line of brickwork arches stretched from the hills into the town. Percy thought it looked like an elevated train track. Then he realized it must be an aqueduct.

The strangest part of the valley was right below him. About two hundred yards away, just across the river, was some sort of military encampment. It was about a quarter mile square, with earthen ramparts on all four sides, the tops lined with sharpened spikes.

Outside the walls ran a dry moat, also studded with spikes. Wooden watchtowers rose at each corner, manned by sentries with oversized, mounted crossbows. Purple banners hung from the towers. A wide gateway opened on the far side of camp, leading toward the city. A narrower gate stood closed on the riverbank side. Inside, the fortress bustled with activity: dozens of kids going to and from barracks, carrying weapons, polishing armor.

Percy heard the clank of hammers at a forge and smelled meat cooking over a fire. Something about this place felt very familiar, yet not quite right.

“Camp Jupiter,” Frank said. “We’ll be safe once—”

Footsteps echoed in the tunnel behind them. Hazel burst into the light. She was covered with stone dust and breathing hard. She’d lost her helmet, so her curly brown hair fell around her shoulders. Her armor had long slash marks in front from the claws of a gorgon. One of the monsters had tagged her with a 50% off sticker.

“I slowed them down,” she said. “But they’ll be here any second.”

Frank cursed. “We have to get across the river.”

June squeezed Percy’s neck tighter. “Oh, yes, please. I can’t get my dress wet.”

Nico made a small noise that Percy wasn’t sure if it was laughter or indignation. He settled on it being a mix of both. Personally, he was leaning towards feeling indignation. If this lady was a goddess, she must’ve been the goddess of smelly, heavy, useless hippies. But he’d come this far. He’d better keep lugging her along. It’s a kindness, she’d said. And if you don’t, the gods will die, the world we know will perish, and everyone from your old life will be destroyed.

If this was a test, he couldn’t afford to get an F.

He stumbled a few times as they ran for the river. Frank, Nico, and Hazel kept him on his feet.

They reached the riverbank, and Percy stopped to catch his breath. The current was fast, but the river didn’t look deep. Only a stone’s throw across stood the gates of the fort.

“Go, Hazel.” Frank nocked two arrows at once. “Escort Percy so the sentries don’t shoot him. It’s my turn to hold off the baddies.”

Hazel nodded and waded into the stream.

“Nico, you better go too. You look like you’re about to fall over,” Frank added.

That was true. Nico had a pale, olive complexion outside the maintenance tunnel, but now his face was chalk white and his eyes blinked slowly. Whatever that crazy teleportation thing was, it tired Nico out.

Percy started to follow Hazel, but something made him hesitate. Usually he loved the water, but this river seemed… powerful, and not necessarily friendly.

“The Little Tiber,” said June sympathetically. “It flows with the power of the original Tiber, river of the empire. This is your last chance to back out, child. The mark of Achilles is a Greek blessing. You can’t retain it if you cross into Roman territory. The Tiber will wash it away.”

Nico squawked. “Can’t he just walk over the water?”

June eyed Nico. “You would wish a Greek blessing on a child of Rome?”

“I’m just saying it could be useful,” Nico muttered. He said something under his breath that sounded like, And it was hard to convince him .

“You could walk over the water, Percy Jackson,” June said. “If you wish to retain the mark.”

“I can keep my iron skin?” Percy asked. “Or I can get rid of it?”

June smiled. “So what will it be?”

Behind him, the gorgons screeched as they flew from the tunnel. Frank let his arrows fly.

From the middle of the river, Hazel yelled, “Percy, Nico, come on!”

Up on the watchtowers, horns blew. The sentries shouted and swiveled their crossbows toward the gorgons.

Percy didn’t remember why he had the iron skin, but if he had the iron skin, then it had to have been for a good reason. Annabeth probably wouldn’t have let him do anything that was bad. He closed his eyes and concentrated on parting the river.

The flow of water made an arch through the air. Nico’s eyes widened and he ordered Percy to cross first. There was something in Nico’s eyes like he was remembering a bad memory. Percy didn’t argue. He dashed across the place where the river had been and didn’t stop until he reached the other side. Percy dropped the water as soon as Nico stumbled across. He put the woman down as the camp’s gates opened. Dozens of kids in armor poured out.

Hazel turned with a relieved smile. Then she looked over Percy’s shoulder, and her expression changed to horror. “Frank!”

Frank was halfway across the river when the gorgons caught him. They swooped out of the sky and grabbed him by either arm. He screamed in pain as their claws dug into his skin.

Nico lifted his sword, but his eyes glazed over and he fell to his knees.

The sentries yelled, but Percy knew they couldn’t get a clear shot. They’d end up killing Frank. The other kids drew swords and got ready to charge into the water, but they’d be too late.

There was only one way.

Percy thrust out his hands. An intense tugging sensation filled his gut, and the Tiber obeyed his will. The river surged. Whirlpools formed on either side of Frank. Giant watery hands erupted from the stream, copying Percy’s movements. The giant hands grabbed the gorgons, who dropped Frank in surprise. Then the hands lifted the squawking monsters in a liquid vise grip.

Percy heard the other kids yelping and backing away, but he stayed focused on his task. He made a smashing gesture with his fists, and the giant hands plunged the gorgons into the Tiber. The monsters hit bottom and broke into dust. Glittering clouds of gorgon essence struggled to re-form, but the river pulled them apart like a blender. Soon every trace of the gorgons was swept downstream. The whirlpools vanished, and the current returned to normal.

In the middle of the Tiber, Frank stumbled around, looking stunned but perfectly fine. Hazel waded out and helped him ashore. Only then did Percy realize how quiet the other kids had become.

Everyone was staring at him. Only the old lady June looked unfazed.

“Well, that was a lovely trip,” she said. “Thank you, Percy Jackson, for bringing me to Camp Jupiter.”

One of the girls made a choking sound. “Percy… Jackson?”

She sounded as if she recognized his name. Percy focused on her, hoping to see a familiar face. She was obviously a leader. She wore a regal purple cloak over her armor. Her chest was decorated with medals. She must have been about Percy’s age, with dark, piercing eyes and long black hair. Percy didn’t recognize her, but the girl stared at him as if she’d seen him in her nightmares.

June laughed with delight. “Oh, yes. You’ll have such fun together!”

Then, just because the day hadn’t been weird enough already, the old lady began to glow and change form. She grew until she was a shining, seven-foot-tall goddess in a blue dress, with a cloak that looked like a goat's skin over her shoulders. Her face was stern and stately. In her hand was a staff topped with a lotus flower. If it was possible for the campers to look more stunned, they did. The girl with the purple cloak knelt. The others followed her lead. One kid got down so hastily he almost impaled himself on his sword.

Hazel was the first to speak. “Juno.”

She and Frank also fell to their knees, leaving Percy the only one standing. He knew he should probably kneel too, but after carrying the old lady so far, he didn’t feel like showing her that much respect.

“Juno, huh?” he said. “If I passed your test, can I have my memory and my life back?”

The goddess smiled. “In time, Percy Jackson, if you succeed here at camp. You’ve done well today, which is a good start. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.” She turned to the other kids. “Romans, I present to you the son of Neptune. For months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. His fate is in your hands. The Feast of Fortune comes quickly, and Death must be unleashed if you are to stand any hope in the battle. Do not fail me!”

Juno shimmered and disappeared. Percy looked at Hazel and Frank for some kind of explanation, but they seemed just as confused as he was. Frank was holding something Percy hadn’t noticed before—two small clay flasks with cork stoppers, like potions, one in each hand. Percy had no idea where they’d come from, but he saw Frank slip them into his pockets. Frank gave him a look like: We’ll talk about it later.

The girl in the purple cloak stepped forward. She examined Percy warily, and Percy couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to run him through with her dagger.

“So,” she said coldly, “a son of Neptune, who comes to us with the blessing of Juno.”

“Look,” he said, “my memory’s a little fuzzy. Um, it’s gone, actually. Do I know you?”

The girl hesitated. “I am Reyna, praetor of the Twelfth Legion. And… no, I don’t know you.”

That last part was a lie. Percy could tell from her eyes. But he also understood that if he argued with her about it here, in front of her soldiers, she wouldn’t appreciate it.

“Hazel,” said Reyna, “bring him inside. I want to question him at the principia. Then we’ll send him to Octavian. We must consult the auguries before we decide what to do with him.”

“What do you mean,” Percy asked, “‘decide what to do with’ me?”

Reyna’s hand tightened on her dagger. Obviously she was not used to having her orders questioned. “Before we accept anyone into camp, we must interrogate them and read the auguries. Juno said your fate is in our hands. We have to know whether the goddess has brought us as a new recruit…”

Reyna studied Percy as if she found that doubtful.

“Or,” she said more hopefully, “if she’s brought us an enemy to kill.”

Chapter Text

PERCY WASN’T SCARED OF GHOSTS, which was lucky. Half the people in camp were dead. Shimmering purple warriors stood outside the armory, polishing ethereal swords. Others hung out in front of the barracks. A ghostly boy chased a ghostly dog down the street. And at the stables, a big glowing red dude with the head of a wolf guarded a herd of… Were those unicorns?

None of the campers paid the ghosts much attention, but as Percy’s entourage walked by, with Reyna in the lead next to Nico and Frank and Hazel on either side of Percy, all the spirits stopped what they were doing and stared at Percy. A few looked angry. The little boy ghost shrieked something like “Greggus!” and turned invisible.

Percy wished he could turn invisible too. After weeks on his own, all this attention made him uneasy. He stayed between Hazel and Frank and tried to look inconspicuous.

“Am I seeing things?” he asked. “Or are those—”

“Ghosts?” Hazel turned. She had startling eyes, like fourteen-karat gold. “They’re Lares. House gods.”

“House gods,” Percy said. “Like… smaller than real gods, but larger than apartment gods?”

Nico snorted. Reyna shot him a stern look.

“They’re ancestral spirits,” Frank explained. He’d removed his helmet, revealing a babyish face that didn’t go with his military haircut or his big burly frame. He looked like a toddler who’d taken steroids and joined the Marines. “The Lares are kind of like mascots,” he continued. “Mostly they’re harmless, but I’ve never seen them so agitated.”

“They’re staring at me,” Percy said. “That ghost kid called me Greggus. My name isn’t Greg.”

“Graecus,” Hazel said. “Once you’ve been here awhile, you’ll start understanding Latin. Demigods have a natural sense for it. Graecus means Greek.”

“Is that bad?” Percy asked.

Frank cleared his throat. “Maybe not. You’ve got that type of complexion, the dark hair and all. Maybe they think you’re actually Greek. Is your family from there?”

“Don’t know. Like I said, my memory is gone.”

“Or maybe…” Frank hesitated.

“What?” Percy asked.

“Probably nothing,” Frank said. “Romans and Greeks have an old rivalry. Sometimes Romans use graecus as an insult for someone who’s an outsider—an enemy. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He sounded pretty worried.

They stopped at the center of camp, where two wide stone-paved roads met at a T. A street sign labeled the road to the main gates as via praetoria. The other road, cutting across the middle of camp, was labeled via principalis. Under those markers were hand-painted signs like berkeley 5 miles; NEW ROME 1 MILE; OLD ROME 7280 MILES; HADES 2310 MILES—Nico snorted, looking amused—(pointing straight down); RENO 208 MILES, AND CERTAIN DEATH: YOU ARE HERE!

For certain death, the place looked pretty clean and orderly. The buildings were freshly whitewashed, laid out in neat grids like the camp had been designed by a fussy math teacher. The barracks had shady porches, where campers lounged in hammocks or played cards and drank sodas. Each dorm had a different collection of banners out front displaying Roman numerals and various animals—eagle, bear, wolf, horse, and something that looked like a hamster.

Along the Via Praetoria, rows of shops advertised food, armor, weapons, coffee, gladiator equipment, and toga rentals. A chariot dealership had a big advertisement out front: CAESAR XLS W/ANTI-LOCK BRAKES, NO DENARII DOWN!

At one corner of the crossroads stood the most impressive building—a two-story wedge of white marble with a columned portico like an old-fashioned bank. Roman guards stood out front. Over the doorway hung a big purple banner with the gold letters SPQR embroidered inside a laurel wreath.

“Your headquarters?” Percy asked.

Reyna faced him, her eyes still cold and hostile. “It’s called the principia.”

She scanned the mob of curious campers who had followed them from the river.

“Everyone back to your duties. I’ll give you an update at evening muster. Remember, we have war games after dinner.”

The thought of dinner made Percy’s stomach rumble. The scent of barbecue from the dining hall made his mouth water. The bakery down the street smelled pretty wonderful too, but he doubted Reyna would let him get an order to go.

The crowd dispersed reluctantly. Some muttered comments about Percy’s chances.

“He’s dead,” said one.

“Would be those three who found him,” said another.

“Yeah,” muttered another. “Let him join the Fifth Cohort. Greeks and geeks.”

Several kids laughed at that, but Reyna scowled at them, and they cleared off.

“Hazel,” Reyna said. “Come with us. I want your report on what happened at the gates.”

“Me too?” Frank said. “Percy saved my life. We’ve got to let him—”

Reyna gave Frank such a harsh look, he stepped back.

“I’d remind you, Frank Zhang,” she said, “you are on probatio yourself. You’ve caused enough trouble this week.”

Frank’s ears turned red. He fiddled with a little tablet on a cord around his neck. Percy hadn’t paid much attention to it, but it looked like a name tag made out of lead.

“Go to the armory,” Reyna told him. “Check our inventory. I’ll call you if I need you.”

“But—” Frank caught himself. “Yes, Reyna.” He hurried off.

Reyna waved Nico, Hazel, and Percy toward the headquarters. “Now, Percy Jackson, let’s see if we can improve your memory.”

The principia was even more impressive inside. On the ceiling glittered a mosaic of Romulus and Remus under their adopted mama she-wolf (Lupa had told Percy that story a million times). The floor was polished marble. The walls were draped in velvet, so Percy felt like he was inside the world’s most expensive camping tent. Along the back wall stood a display of banners and wooden poles studded with bronze medals—military symbols, Percy guessed. In the center was one empty display stand, as if the main banner had been taken down for cleaning or something.

In the back corner, a stairwell led down. It was blocked by a row of iron bars like a prison door. Percy wondered what was down there—monsters? Treasure? Amnesiac demigods who had gotten on Reyna’s bad side?

In the center of the room, a long wooden table was cluttered with scrolls, notebooks, tablet computers, daggers, and a large bowl filled with jelly beans, which seemed kind of out of place. Two life-sized statues of greyhounds—one silver, one gold—flanked the table. Reyna walked behind the table and sat in one of two high-backed chairs. Percy wished he could sit in the other, but Hazel remained standing. Percy got the feeling he was supposed to also.

“So…” he started to say.

The dog statues bared their teeth and growled.

Percy froze. Normally he liked dogs, but these glared at him with ruby eyes. Their fangs looked sharp as razors.

“Easy, guys,” Reyna told the greyhounds.

They stopped growling, but kept eyeing Percy as though they were imagining him in a doggie bag.

“They won’t attack,” Reyna said, “unless you try to steal something, or unless I tell them to. That’s Argentum and Aurum.”

“Silver and Gold,” Percy said. The Latin meanings popped into his head like Hazel had said they would. He almost asked which dog was which. Then he realized that that was a stupid question.

Reyna set her dagger on the table. Percy had the vague feeling he’d seen her before. Her hair was black and glossy as volcanic rock, woven in a single braid down her back. She had the poise of a sword fighter—relaxed yet vigilant, as if ready to spring into action at any moment. The worry lines around her eyes made her look older than she probably was.

“We have met,” he decided. “I don’t remember when. Please, if you can tell me anything—”

“First things first,” Reyna said. “I want to hear your story. What do you remember? How did you get here? And don’t lie. My dogs don’t like liars.”

Argentum and Aurum snarled to emphasize the point.

Percy told his story—how he’d woken up at the ruined mansion in the woods of Sonoma. He described his time with Lupa and her pack, learning their language of gestures and expressions, learning to survive and fight. Lupa had taught him about demigods, monsters, and gods. She’d explained that she was one of the guardian spirits of Ancient Rome. Demigods like Percy were still responsible for carrying on Roman traditions in modern times—fighting monsters, serving the gods, protecting mortals, and upholding the memory of the empire. She’d spent weeks training him, until he was as strong and tough and vicious as a wolf. When she was satisfied with his skills, she’d sent him south, telling him that if he survived the journey, he might find a new home and regain his memory.

None of it seemed to surprise Reyna. In fact, she seemed to find it pretty ordinary—except for one thing.

“No memory at all?” she asked. “You still remember nothing?”

“Fuzzy bits and pieces.” Percy glanced at the greyhounds. He didn’t want to mention Annabeth. It seemed too private, and he was still confused about where to find her. He was sure they’d met at a camp—but this one didn’t feel like the right place.

Also, he was reluctant to share his one clear memory: Annabeth’s face, her blond hair and gray eyes, the way she laughed, threw her arms around him, and gave him a kiss whenever he did something stupid.

She must have kissed me a lot , Percy thought.

He feared that if he spoke about that memory to anyone, it would evaporate like a dream. He couldn’t risk that.

Reyna spun her dagger. “Most of what you’re describing is normal for demigods. At a certain age, one way or another, we find our way to the Wolf House. We’re tested and trained. If Lupa thinks we’re worthy, she sends us south to join the legion. But I’ve never heard of someone losing his memory. How did you find Camp Jupiter?”

Percy told her about the last three days—the gorgons who wouldn’t die, the old lady who turned out to be a goddess, and finally meeting Nico, Hazel, and Frank at the tunnel in the hill. Hazel took the story from there. She described Percy as brave and heroic, which made him uncomfortable. All he’d done was carry a hippie bag lady.

Reyna studied him. “You’re old for a recruit. You’re what, sixteen?”

“I think so,” Percy said.

“If you spent that many years on your own, without training or help, you should be dead. A son of Neptune? You’d have a powerful aura that would attract all kinds of monsters.”

“Yeah,” Percy said. “I’ve been told that I smell.”

Reyna almost cracked a smile, which gave Percy hope. Maybe she was human after all. “You must’ve been somewhere before the Wolf House,” she said. She looked at Nico. “You travel around for your father. Have you ever met anyone like Percy?”

Nico didn’t respond for a moment. “Yes,” he said carefully. “Not amnesia or anything, but I’ve run into other demigods that never made their way to Camp Jupiter.” He gave her an expression like drop it.

Reyna’s dogs looked satisfied with that answer, but Reyna frowned. Percy agreed with her. He didn’t like how vague Nico was being.

Reyna sighed. “Well, my dogs haven’t eaten you, Percy Jackson, so I suppose you’re telling the truth.”

“Great,” Percy said. “Next time, can I take a polygraph?”

Reyna stood. She paced in front of the banners. Her metal dogs watched her go back and forth. “Even if I accept that you’re not an enemy,” she said, “you’re not a typical recruit. The Queen of Olympus simply doesn’t appear at camp, announcing a new demigod. The last time a major god visited us in person like that…” She shook her head. “I’ve only heard legends about such things. And a son of Neptune…that’s not a good omen. Especially now.”

“What’s wrong with Neptune?” Percy asked. “And what do you mean, ‘especially now’?”

Hazel shot him a warning look.

Reyna kept pacing. “You’ve fought Medusa’s sisters, who haven’t been seen in thousands of years. You’ve agitated our Lares, who are calling you a graecus. And you wear strange symbols—that shirt, the beads on your necklace. What do they mean?”

Percy looked down at his tattered orange T-shirt. It might have had words on it at one point, but they were too faded to read. He should have thrown the shirt away weeks ago. It was worn to shreds, but he couldn’t bear to get rid of it. He just kept washing it in streams and water fountains as best he could and putting it back on.

As for the necklace, the four clay beads were each decorated with a different symbol. One showed a trident. Another displayed a miniature Golden Fleece. The third was etched with the design of a maze, and the last had an image of a building—maybe the Empire State Building?—with names Percy didn’t recognize engraved around it. The beads felt important, like pictures from a family album, but he couldn’t remember what they meant.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“And your sword?” Reyna asked.

Percy checked his pocket. The pen had reappeared as it always did. He pulled it out, but then realized he’d never shown Reyna the sword. Nico, Hazel, and Frank hadn’t seen it either. How had Reyna known about it?

Too late to pretend it didn’t exist… He uncapped the pen. Riptide sprang to full form.

Hazel gasped. The greyhounds barked apprehensively.

“What is that?” Hazel asked. “I’ve never seen a sword like that.”

“I have,” Reyna said darkly. “It’s very old—a Greek design. We used to have a few in the armory before…” She stopped herself. “The metal is called Celestial bronze. It’s deadly to monsters, like Imperial gold, but even rarer.”

“Imperial gold?” Percy asked.

Reyna unsheathed her dagger. Sure enough, the blade was gold. “The metal was consecrated in ancient times, at the Pantheon in Rome. Its existence was a closely guarded secret of the emperors—a way for their champions to slay monsters that threatened the empire. We used to have more weapons like this, but now… well, we scrape by. I use this dagger. Hazel has a spatha, a cavalry sword. Most legionnaires use a shorter sword called a gladius.” She gestured to Nico. “Nico uses a falcata. He is the only demigod at Camp to use a non-Roman blade.”

“The falcata is from pre-Roman Iberia,” Nico said defensively.

“Pre-Roman,” Hazel teased.

Nico rolled his eyes.

“At least, it is close enough to Roman blades,” Reyna said. She turned back to Percy. “But that weapon of yours is not Roman at all. It’s another sign you’re not a typical demigod. And your arm…”

“What about it?” Percy asked.

Reyna held up her own forearm. Percy hadn’t noticed before, but she had a tattoo on the inside: the letters SPQR, a crossed sword and torch, and under that, four parallel lines like score marks.

Percy glanced at Hazel.

“We all have them,” she confirmed, holding up her arm. “All full members of the legion do.”

Hazel’s tattoo also had the letters SPQR, but she only had one score mark, and her emblem was different: a black glyph like a cross with curved arms and a head: Percy looked at his own arms. A few scrapes, some mud, and a fleck of Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wiener, but no tattoos.

“So you’ve never been a member of the legion,” Reyna said. “These marks can’t be removed. I thought perhaps…” She shook her head, as if dismissing an idea.

Hazel leaned forward. “If he’s survived as a loner all this time, maybe he’s seen Jason.” She turned to Percy. “Have you ever met a demigod like us before? A guy in a purple shirt, with marks on his arm—”

“Hazel.” Reyna’s voice tightened. “Percy’s got enough to worry about.”

Percy touched the point of his sword, and Riptide shrank back into a pen. “I haven’t seen anyone like you guys before. Who’s Jason?”

Reyna gave Hazel an irritated look. “He is…he was my colleague.” She waved her hand at the second empty chair. “The legion normally has two elected praetors. Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, was our other praetor until he disappeared last October.”

Percy tried to calculate. He hadn’t paid much attention to the calendar out in the wilderness, but Juno had mentioned that it was now June. “You mean he’s been gone eight months, and you haven’t replaced him?”

“He might not be dead,” Hazel said. “We haven’t given up.”

“He’s not dead,” Nico said firmly. “I told you, if he was, I would know.”

Reyna grimaced. Percy got the feeling this guy Jason might’ve been more to her than just a colleague.

“Elections only happen in two ways,” Reyna said. “Either the legion raises someone on a shield after a major success on the battlefield—and we haven’t had any major battles—or we hold a ballot on the evening of June 24, at the Feast of Fortuna. That’s in five days.”

Percy frowned. “You have a feast for tuna?”

“Yee, gods,” Nico muttered.

“Fortuna,” Hazel corrected. “She’s the goddess of luck. Whatever happens on her feast day can affect the entire rest of the year. She can grant the camp good luck…or really bad luck.”

Reyna and Hazel both glanced at the empty display stand, as if thinking about what was missing.

A chill went down Percy’s back. “The Feast of Fortune…The gorgons mentioned that. So did Juno. They said the camp was going to be attacked on that day, something about a big bad goddess named Gaea, and an army, and Death being unleashed. You’re telling me that day is this week?”

Reyna’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her dagger.

“You will say nothing about that outside this room,” she ordered. “I will not have you spreading more panic in the camp.”

“So it’s true,” Percy said. “Do you know what’s going to happen? Can we stop it?”

Percy had just met these people. He wasn’t sure he even liked Reyna. But he wanted to help. They were demigods, the same as him. They had the same enemies. Besides, Percy remembered what Juno had told him: it wasn’t just this camp at risk. His old life, the gods, and the entire world might be destroyed. Whatever was coming down, it was huge.

“We’ve talked enough for now,” Reyna said. “Hazel, take him to Temple Hill. Find Octavian. On the way you can answer Percy’s questions. Tell him about the legion.”

“Yes, Reyna.”

“Nico…” Reyna trailed off. “Go with Hazel if you wish.”

Nico had a wistful look as he turned away. Percy wondered if maybe he liked Reyna, but as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he rejected it like it would be wrong for Nico to like her. That look was more of a sibling look. He would have to add the strange feelings like that to his list of questions.

Reyna sheathed her dagger. The metal dogs stood and growled, inching toward Percy. “Good luck with the augury, Percy Jackson,” she said. “If Octavian lets you live, perhaps we can compare notes… about your past.”

Chapter Text

ON THE WAY OUT OF CAMP, Hazel bought him an espresso drink and a cherry muffin from Bombilo the two-headed coffee merchant. Percy inhaled the muffin. The coffee was great. Now, Percy thought, if he could just get a shower, a change of clothes, and some sleep, he’d be golden. Maybe even Imperial golden.

He watched a bunch of kids in swimsuits and towels head into a building that had steam coming out of a row of chimneys. Laughter and watery sounds echoed from inside, like it was an indoor pool—Percy’s kind of place.

“Bath house,” Hazel said. “We’ll get you in there before dinner, hopefully. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a Roman bath.”

Percy sighed with anticipation.

As they approached the front gate, the barracks got bigger and nicer. Even the ghosts looked better—with fancier armor and shinier auras. Percy tried to decipher the banners and symbols hanging in front of the buildings.

“You guys are divided into different cabins?” he asked.

“Sort of.” Hazel ducked as a kid riding a giant eagle swooped overhead. “We have five cohorts of about forty kids each. Each cohort is divided into barracks of ten—like roommates, kind of.”

Percy had never been great at math, but he tried to multiply. “You’re telling me there’s two hundred kids at camp?”

“Roughly.”

“And all of them are children of the gods? The gods have been busy.”

Hazel laughed. “Not all of them are children of major gods. There are hundreds of minor Roman gods. Plus, a lot of the campers are legacies—second or third generation. Maybe their parents were demigods. Or their grandparents.”

Percy blinked. “Children of demigods?”

“Not all of us have short lives,” Nico said.

Percy jumped. He’d almost forgotten Nico was there. A smile crept across Nico’s face like he knew why Percy had jumped.

“Does that surprise you?” Hazel asked.

Percy wasn’t sure. The last few weeks he’d been so worried about surviving day to day. The idea of living long enough to be an adult and have kids of his own—that seemed like an impossible dream.

“These Legos—”

“Legacies,” Hazel corrected.

“They have powers like a demigod?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. But they can be trained. All the best Roman generals and emperors—you know, they all claimed to be descended from gods. Most of the time, they were telling the truth. The camp augur we’re going to meet, Octavian, he’s a legacy, descendant of Apollo. He’s got the gift of prophecy, supposedly.”

Nico scowled. “As if,” he muttered.

Hazel elbowed him sharply. “Be nice.”

“You don’t like him?” Percy asked Nico.

“I could name a million children of Apollo or descendants of Apollo better than him,” Nico said darkly. “You’ll see when you meet him.”

That didn’t make Percy feel so great, if this dude Octavian had Percy’s fate in his hands.

“So the divisions,” he asked, “the cohorts, whatever—you’re divided according to who your godly parent is?”

Hazel stared at him. “What a horrible idea! No, the officers decide where to assign recruits. If we were divided according to god, the cohorts would be all uneven. I’d be alone.” She cast a look at Nico. “Well, most of the time.”

That’s right. Nico had said Hazel was his sister.

“You’re siblings, right?” Percy said. “Why would you be alone most of the time. What’s your ancestry?”

Before either of them could answer, someone behind them yelled, “Wait!”

A ghost ran toward them—an old man with a medicine-ball belly and toga so long he kept tripping on it. He caught up to them and gasped for air, his purple aura flickering around him.

“This is him?” the ghost panted. “A new recruit for the Fifth, perhaps?”

“Vitellius,” Hazel said, “we’re sort of in a hurry.”

The ghost scowled at Percy and walked around him, inspecting him like a used car. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “We need only the best for the cohort. Does he have all his teeth? Can he fight? Does he clean stables?”

“Yes, yes, and no,” Percy said. “Who are you?”

“Vitellius,” Nico said sharply.

If it was possible for a ghost to turn paler, Vitellius did. His eyes widened. “Nico.”

Nico frowned. “Percy, this is Vitellius. He’s one of the Lares here. Vitellius, my sister and I are escorting Percy to the augur. We really don’t have time for this.”

“Yes,” Hazel nodded. “We’ve got to get Percy’s augury. Why don’t you check on Frank? He’s in the armory doing inventory. You know how much he values your help.”

The ghost’s furry purple eyebrows shot up. “Mars Almighty! They let the probatio check the armor? We’ll be ruined!” He stumbled off down the street, stopping every few feet to pick up his sword or rearrange his toga.

“O-h-h-kay,” Percy said.

“Sorry,” Hazel said. “He’s eccentric, but he’s one of the oldest Lares. Been around since the legion was founded.”

“You didn’t have to do that to Frank,” Nico said.

Hazel flushed. “It was the only thing I could think of. Besides, you would have done something to scare him.”

“If it works, it works.”

Hazel shook her head. “Come on, Percy.”

They stopped outside the main gates. The fort was situated on the highest point in the valley, so they could see pretty much everything.

The road led down to the river and divided. One path led south across a bridge, up to the hill with all the temples. The other road led north into the city, a miniature version of Ancient Rome. Unlike the military camp, the city looked chaotic and colorful, with buildings crowded together at haphazard angles. Even from this far away, Percy could see people gathered in the plaza, shoppers milling around an open-air market, parents with kids playing in the parks.

“You’ve got families here?” he asked.

“In the city, absolutely,” Hazel said. “When you’re accepted into the legion, you do ten years of service. After that, you can muster out whenever you want. Most demigods go into the mortal world. But for some—well, it’s pretty dangerous out there. This valley is a sanctuary. You can go to college in the city, get married, have kids, retire when you get old. It’s the only safe place on earth for people like us. So yeah, a lot of veterans make their homes there, under the protection of the legion.”

Adult demigods. Demigods who could live without fear, get married, raise a family. Percy couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that. It seemed too good to be true. “But if this valley is attacked?”

Nico looked away. “Well, there’s defenses. The borders are magical.” He was quiet.

“Yes, but our strength isn’t what it used to be. Lately, the monster attacks have been increasing. What you said about the gorgons not dying… we’ve noticed that too, with other monsters.”

“Do you know what’s causing it?” Percy asked.

Hazel and Nico exchanged a look. “It’s complicated,” they said together.

Percy got the feeling they both had different definitions of complicated.

Someone behind them shouted, “Make way!”

Hazel dragged Percy out of the road as a demigod rode past on a full-grown pachyderm covered in black Kevlar armor. The word elephant was printed on the side of his armor, which seemed a little obvious to Percy. The elephant thundered down the road and turned north, heading toward a big open field where some fortifications were under construction.

Percy spit dust out of his mouth. “What the—?”

“Elephant,” Hazel explained.

“Yeah, I read the sign. Why do you have an elephant in a bulletproof vest?”

“War games tonight,” Hazel said. “That’s Hannibal. If we didn’t include him, he’d get upset.”

“We can’t have that.”

Hazel laughed. Percy couldn’t figure her out. She seemed nice and easy going, mature for somebody who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. But she also seemed to be hiding a deep sadness, like she felt guilty about something.

Hazel pointed south across the river. Dark clouds were gathering over Temple Hill. Red flashes of lightning washed the monuments in blood-colored light.

“Octavian is busy,” Hazel said. “We’d better get over there.”

“Yes, let’s hurry,” Nico grumbled.

On the way, they passed some goat-legged guys hanging out on the side of the road.

“Hazel!” one of them cried.

He trotted over with a big grin on his face. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt and nothing for pants except thick brown goat fur. His massive Afro jiggled. His eyes were hidden behind little round rainbow-tinted glasses. He held a cardboard sign that read: WILL WORK SING TALK go away for denarii.

“Hi, Don,” Hazel said. “Sorry, we don’t have time—”

“Oh, that’s cool! That’s cool!” Don trotted along with them. “Hey, this guy’s new!” He grinned at Percy. “Do you have three denarii for the bus? Because I left my wallet at home, and I’ve got to get to work, and—”

“Don,” Hazel chided. “Fauns don’t have wallets. Or jobs. Or homes. And we don’t have buses.”

“Right,” he said cheerfully, “but do you have denarii?”

“Your name is Don the Faun?” Percy asked.

“Yeah. So?”

“Nothing.” Percy tried to keep a straight face. “Why don’t fauns have jobs? Shouldn’t they work for the camp?”

Don bleated. “Fauns! Work for the camp! Hilarious!”

“ Fauns are free spirits,” Nico said.

Hazel nodded. “They hang out here because, well, it’s a safe place to hang out and beg. We tolerate them, but—”

“Oh, Hazel is awesome,” Don said. “She’s so nice! All the other campers are like, ‘Go away, Don.’ But she’s like, ‘Please go away, Don.’ I love her!”

The faun seemed harmless, but Percy still found him unsettling. He couldn’t shake the feeling that fauns should be more than just homeless guys begging for denarii.

Don looked at the ground in front of them and gasped. “Score!”

He reached for something, but Hazel screamed, “Don, no!”

She pushed him out of the way and snatched up a small shiny object. Percy caught a glimpse of it before Hazel slipped it into her pocket. He could have sworn it was a diamond.

“Come on, Hazel,” Don complained. “I could’ve bought a year’s worth of doughnuts with that!”

“Don, please,” Hazel said. “Go away.” She sounded shaken, like she’d just saved Don from a charging bulletproof elephant.

The faun sighed. “Aw, I can’t stay mad at you. But I swear, it’s like you’re good luck. Every time you walk by—”

“Here,” Nico said quickly, passing a coin to Don. “We really should be going now.”

Nico, too, was hard to figure out. One moment, he was scowling at the mention of Octavian, now he was urging them to hurry up and go meet him.

“Goodbye, Don,” Hazel said. She started jogging away. Percy and Nico had to sprint to keep up with her.

“What was that about?” Percy asked. “That diamond in the road—”

“Please,” she said. “Don’t ask.”

They walked in uneasy silence the rest of the way to Temple Hill. A crooked stone path led past a crazy assortment of tiny altars and massive domed vaults. Statues of gods seemed to follow Percy with their eyes.

Hazel pointed out the Temple of Bellona. “Goddess of war,” she said. “That’s Reyna’s mom.” Then they passed a massive red crypt decorated with human skulls on iron spikes.

“Please tell me we’re not going in there,” Percy said.

Hazel shook her head. “That’s the Temple of Mars Ultor.”

“Mars… Ares, the war god?”

“That’s his Greek name,” Hazel said. “But, yeah, same guy. Ultor means ‘the Avenger.’ He’s the second-most important god of Rome.”

Percy wasn’t thrilled to hear that. For some reason, just looking at the ugly red building made him feel angry. He pointed toward the summit. Clouds swirled over the largest temple, a round pavilion with a ring of white columns supporting a domed roof. “I’m guessing that’s Zeus—uh, I mean, Jupiter’s? That’s where we’re heading?”

“Yeah.” Hazel sounded edgy. “Octavian reads auguries there—the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.”

Percy had to think about it, but the Latin words clicked into English. “Jupiter… the best and the greatest?”

“Right.”

“What’s Neptune’s title?” Percy asked. “The coolest and most awesome?”

“Um, not quite.” Hazel gestured to a small blue building the size of a toolshed. A cobweb-covered trident was nailed above the door.

Percy peeked inside. On a small altar sat a bowl with three dried-up, moldy apples. His heart sank. “Popular place.”

“Romans fear Neptune, but they don’t love him very much,” Nico said. He looked sympathetic like he understood.

“Having a child of Neptune around has always been a bad omen,” Hazel said. “The last time one joined the legion… well, it was 1906, when Camp Jupiter was located across the bay in San Francisco. There was this huge earthquake—”

“You’re telling me a child of Neptune caused that?”

“So they say.” Hazel looked apologetic.

Percy stared at the cobwebs on the trident. Great, he thought. Even if he joined the camp, he would never be loved. His best hope was to be scary to his new campmates. Maybe if he did really well, they’d give him some moldy apples.

Still… standing at Neptune’s altar, he felt something stirring inside him, like waves rippling through his veins. He reached in his backpack and dug out the last bit of food from his trip—a stale bagel. It wasn’t much, but he set it on the altar.

“Hey… uh, Dad.” He felt pretty stupid talking to a bowl of fruit. “If you can hear me, help me out, okay? Give me my memory back. Tell me—tell me what to do.”

His voice cracked. He hadn’t meant to get emotional, but he was exhausted and scared, and he’d been lost for so long, he would’ve given anything for some guidance. He wanted to know something about his life for sure, without grabbing for missing memories.

Hazel put her hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay. You’re here now. You’re one of us.”

He felt awkward, depending on an eighth-grade girl he barely knew for comfort, but he was glad she was there.

Above them, thunder rumbled. Red lightning lit up the hill.

“Octavian’s almost done,” Hazel said. “Let’s go.”

Compared to Neptune’s tool shed, Jupiter’s temple was definitely optimus and maximus. The marble floor was etched with fancy mosaics and Latin inscriptions. Sixty feet above, the domed ceiling sparkled gold. The whole temple was open to the wind. In the center stood a marble altar, where a kid in a toga was doing some sort of ritual in front of a massive golden statue of the big dude himself: Jupiter the sky god, dressed in a silk XXXL purple toga, holding a lightning bolt.

“It doesn’t look like that,” Percy muttered.

“What?” Hazel asked.

“The master bolt,” Percy said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I—” Percy frowned. For a second, he’d thought he remembered something. Now it was gone. “Nothing, I guess.”

The kid at the altar raised his hands. More red lightning flashed in the sky, shaking the temple. Then he put his hands down, and the rumbling stopped. The clouds turned from gray to white and broke apart.

A pretty impressive trick, considering the kid didn’t look like much. He was tall and skinny, with straw-colored hair, oversized jeans, a baggy T-shirt, and a drooping toga. He looked like a scarecrow wearing a bed sheet.

“What’s he doing?” Percy murmured.

The guy in the toga turned. He had a crooked smile and a slightly crazy look in his eyes, like he’d just been playing an intense video game. In one hand he held a knife. In the other hand was something like a dead animal. That didn’t make him look any less crazy.

“Percy,” Hazel said, “this is Octavian.”

“The graecus!” Octavian announced. “How interesting.”

“Uh, hi,” Percy said. “Are you killing small animals?”

“As if,” Nico said under his breath like he didn’t think Octavian was capable of it. Or maybe he meant something along the lines of, As if we’d let this psychopath near real animals . Judging by Nico’s opinion of Octavian and the general impression Percy had so far, he was leaning towards the second option.

Octavian looked at the fuzzy thing in his hand and laughed. “No, no. Once upon a time, yes. We used to read the will of the gods by examining animal guts—chickens, goats, that sort of thing. Nowadays, we use these.”

He tossed the fuzzy thing to Percy. It was a disemboweled teddy bear. Then Percy noticed that there was a whole pile of mutilated stuffed animals at the foot of Jupiter’s statue.

“Seriously?” Percy asked.

Octavian stepped off the dais. He was probably about eighteen, but so skinny and sickly pale, he could’ve passed for younger. At first he looked harmless, but as he got closer, Percy wasn’t so sure. Octavian’s eyes glittered with harsh curiosity, like he might gut Percy just as easily as a teddy bear if he thought he could learn something from it.

Octavian narrowed his eyes. “You seem nervous.”

“You remind me of someone,” Percy said. “I can’t remember who.”

“Possibly my namesake, Octavian—Augustus Caesar. Everyone says I bear a remarkable resemblance.”

Percy didn’t think that was it, but he couldn’t pin down the memory. “Why did you call me ‘the Greek’?”

“I saw it in the auguries.” Octavian waved his knife at the pile of stuffing on the altar. “The message said: The Greek has arrived. Or possibly: The goose has cried. I’m thinking the first interpretation is correct. You seek to join the legion?”

Hazel spoke for him. She told Octavian everything that had happened since they met at the tunnel—the gorgons, the fight at the river, the appearance of Juno, their conversation with Reyna. When she mentioned Juno, Octavian looked surprised.

“Juno,” he mused. “We call her Juno Moneta. Juno the Warner. She appears in times of crisis, to counsel Rome about great threats.” He glanced at Percy, as if to say: like mysterious Greeks, for instance.

“I hear the Feast of Fortuna is this week,” Percy said. “The gorgons warned there’d be an invasion on that day. Did you see that in your stuffing?”

“Sadly, no.” Octavian sighed. “The will of the gods is hard to discern. And these days, my vision is even darker.”

“Don’t you have…I don’t know,” Percy said, “an oracle or something?”

“An oracle!” Octavian smiled. “What a cute idea. No, I’m afraid we’re fresh out of oracles. Now, if we’d gone questing for the Sibylline books, like I recommended—”

“The Siba-what?” Percy asked.

“Books of prophecy,” Hazel said, “which Octavian is obsessed with. Romans used to consult them when disasters happened. Most people believe they burned up when Rome fell.”

“Because they did,” Nico said. “The Sibyl of Cumae burnt eight of them herself when the Emperor Tarquin refused to buy them from her. He bought the last one, but it was lost when Rome fell.” He raised an eyebrow when everyone looked at him. “What? You learn things when you talk to ghosts.”

Octavian gave Nico a sour look. “Yes. Some people believe that,” Octavian corrected. “But there is no evidence to suggest the knowledge is lost. Unfortunately our present leadership won’t authorize a quest to look for them—”

“Because Reyna isn’t stupid,” Hazel said.

“—so we have only a few remaining scraps from the books,” Octavian continued. “A few mysterious predictions, like these.”

He nodded to the inscriptions on the marble floor. Percy stared at the lines of words, not really expecting to understand them. He almost choked.

“That one.” He pointed, translating as he read aloud: “ Seven half-bloods shall answer the call / To storm or fire the world must fall / Delivered for wisdom on Rome’s wings —”

“Yes, yes.” Octavian finished it without looking: “ Ones prepared with knowledge of all things / An oath to keep with a final breath / And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death .”

“I—I know that one.” Percy thought thunder was shaking the temple again. Then he realized his whole body was trembling. “That’s important.”

Octavian arched an eyebrow. “Of course it’s important. We call it the Prophecy of Seven, but it’s several thousand years old. We don’t know what it means. Every time someone tries to interpret it… Well, Hazel can tell you. Bad things happen.”

Hazel glared at him. “Just read the augury for Percy. Can he join the legion or not?”

Percy could almost see Octavian’s mind working, calculating whether or not Percy would be useful. He held out his hand for Percy’s backpack. “That’s a beautiful specimen. May I?” Then he jumped back.

Nico smirked. “Sorry,” he said. “My fault.”

A skeletal figure had taken the Bargain Mart panda pillow out of Percy’s bag. It was just a silly stuffed toy, but Percy had carried it a long way. He was kind of fond of it. He almost snatched it out of the skeleton’s hands, but then he realized that the skeleton was the only thing keeping the pillow from Octavian.

Octavian backed up to the altar and grabbed a different stuffed animal. As he raised the knife and slashed open the toy, Percy offered a silent prayer for it. Octavian poured its stuffing over the altar. He tossed the carcass aside, muttered a few words over the fluff, and turned with a big smile on his face.

“Good news!” he said. “Percy may join the legion. We’ll assign him a cohort at evening muster. Tell Reyna that I approve.”

Hazel’s shoulders relaxed. “Uh… great. Come on, Percy.”

“Oh, and Hazel,” Octavian said. “I’m happy to welcome Percy into the legion. But when the election for praetor comes up, I hope you’ll remember—”

“Jason isn’t dead,” Hazel snapped. “You’re the augur. You’re supposed to be looking for him!”

“Oh, I am!” Octavian pointed at the pile of gutted stuffed animals. “I consult the gods every day! Alas, after eight months, I’ve found nothing. Of course, I’m still looking. But if Jason doesn’t return by the Feast of Fortuna, we must act. We can’t have a power vacuum any longer. I hope you’ll support me for praetor. It would mean so much to me.”

Hazel clenched her fists. “Me. Support. You?”

Octavian took off his toga, setting it and his knife on the altar. Percy noticed seven lines on Octavian’s arm—seven years of camp, Percy guessed. Octavian’s mark was a harp, the symbol of Apollo.

“After all,” Octavian told Hazel, “I might be able to help you—”

“My sister doesn’t need your help , Octavian,” Nico said coldly. “And I don’t like what you’re implying.” He grabbed Hazel’s hand and pulled her towards the exit. The skeleton that was still playing with Percy’s pillow pet followed.

“How long will you be staying?” Octavian called.

Nico paused. “Days? Hours? Weeks? I don’t know, Octavian.”

Octavian shot Percy a smile that looked more like a smirk. “Nice to meet you, Percy.”

Percy didn’t say anything. He turned and hurried out of the temple after Nico and Hazel.

“I hate that guy,” Hazel muttered. “If I had my way—”

Nico tilted his head. “What happened to ‘be nice’?”

Hazel glared at him.

“He won’t really get elected praetor, will he?” Percy asked.

“I wish I could be certain,” Hazel sighed. “Octavian has a lot of friends, most of them bought. The rest of the campers are afraid of him.”

“Afraid of that skinny little guy?”

“Don’t underestimate him. Reyna’s not so bad by herself, but if Octavian shares her power…” Hazel shuddered.

“Octavian isn’t going to become a praetor,” Nico said firmly. “I won’t let that happen.”

“It’s not really up to you,” Hazel said miserably. “You can’t even vote.”

Percy blinked. “I still don’t get it. Why would you be alone if you were organized by a godly parent? And why can’t Nico vote for praetor?”

“Our father is Pluto,” Nico said. “God of the Underworld, the dead, and the riches of the earth. I’m his ambassador, so I’m not a member of the legion. I spend some time here, some time in the Underworld, and some time wandering around the world. I’m not here very often.”

Something in the back of Percy’s mind was waving a red flag. Nico’s answer was truthful on the surface, that much he was sure, but for some reason, Percy didn’t think that was the whole truth.

“Do I know you?” Percy asked Nico.

Nico paused. He took the pillow pet back from the skeleton. The bones clattered to the ground. He tossed the pillow to Percy.

“No,” Nico said. “No, I don’t think we’ve ever met before.”

Chapter Text

HAZEL FELT LIKE SHE’D JUST WALKED into a room with a nuclear bomb. Now she was waiting to see what would set it off.

Until that morning, her brother Nico had been the most powerful demigod she knew.

The others at Camp Jupiter saw him as a traveling oddball, about as harmless as the fauns. Hazel knew better. She hadn’t grown up with Nico, hadn’t even known him very long. But she knew Nico was more dangerous than Reyna, or Octavian, or maybe even Jason.

Then she’d met Percy.

At first, when she saw him stumbling up the highway with the old lady in his arms, Hazel had thought he might be a god in disguise. Even though he was beat up, dirty, and stooped with exhaustion, he’d had an aura of power. He had the good looks of a Roman god, with sea-green eyes and wind blown black hair.

She’d ordered Frank not to fire on him. She thought the gods might be testing them. She’d heard myths like that: a kid with an old lady begs for shelter, and when the rude mortals refuse—boom, they get turned into banana slugs.

Nico had backed up her order. As the Ambassador to Pluto, he wasn’t exactly in any position to be giving legionnaires orders, but Nico’s support meant a lot. There was a glint in his eyes like he was anticipating that moment.

Then Percy had controlled the river and destroyed the gorgons. He’d turned a pen into a bronze sword. He’d stirred up the whole camp with talk about the graecus.

A son of the sea god…

Long ago, Hazel had been told that a descendant of Neptune would save her. But could Percy really take away her curse? It seemed too much to hope for.

Percy shrugged off the question. “Okay. I just thought… you seem really familiar.”

“Do I?” Nico said. He looked tense and Hazel knew right then that Nico already knew Percy. She was sure of it. Why was he pretending otherwise?

“Maybe you saw him somewhere,” Hazel suggested. “Nico, you travel all over, are you sure you’ve never…”

Nico’s expression turned as dark as Tartarus. Hazel didn’t understand why, but she got the message: Drop it.

It was times like these when Hazel remembered what Nico could do. He didn’t appear scary. He was skinny and sloppy in his rumpled black clothes. His hair, as always, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.

Hazel remembered when she’d met him. The first time she’d seen him draw that black sword of his, she’d almost laughed. The way he called it “Stygian iron,” all serious-like—he’d looked ridiculous. This scrawny white boy was no fighter. She certainly hadn’t believed they were related.

She had changed her mind about that quick enough.

“Who is Gaea?” Percy asked. “We told Reyna about her, but I still don’t know who that is.”

Hazel’s mouth went dry. Just hearing that name… It was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling. She remembered a woman’s soft sleepy voice, a glowing cave, and feeling her lungs fill with black oil.

“She’s the earth goddess.” Nico glanced at the ground as if it might be listening. “The oldest goddess of all. She’s in a deep sleep most of the time, but she hates the gods and their children.”

“Mother Earth… is evil?” Percy asked.

“Very,” Nico said gravely. “She convinced her son, the Titan Saturn to kill his dad, Uranus, and take over the world. The Titans ruled for a long time. Then the Titans’ children, the Olympian gods, overthrew them.”

“That story seems familiar,” Percy sounded surprised, like an old memory had partially surfaced. “But I don’t think I ever heard the part about Gaea.”

Nico shrugged. “She got mad when the gods took over. She took a new husband—Tartarus, the spirit of the abyss—and gave birth to a race of giants. They tried to destroy Mount Olympus, but the gods finally beat them. At least…the first time.”

“The first time?” Percy repeated.

Nico glanced at Hazel. He probably wasn’t meaning to make her feel guilty, but she couldn’t help it. If Percy knew the truth about her, and the horrible things she’d done…

“Last summer,” Nico continued, “Saturn tried to make a comeback. There was a second Titan war. The Romans at Camp Jupiter stormed his headquarters on Mount Othrys, across the bay, and destroyed his throne. Saturn disappeared—” He hesitated, watching Percy’s face. Hazel got the feeling her brother was nervous that more of Percy’s memory might come back.

“Um, anyway,” Nico continued, “Saturn probably faded back to the abyss. We all thought the war was over. Now it looks like the Titans’ defeat stirred up Gaea. She’s starting to wake. I’ve heard reports of giants being reborn. If they mean to challenge the gods again, they’ll probably start by destroying the demigods…”

“You’ve told Reyna this?” Percy asked.

“Of course.” Nico’s jaw tensed. “The Romans don’t trust me. That’s why I was hoping she’d listen to you. Children of Pluto… well, no offense, but they think we’re even worse than children of Neptune. We’re bad luck.”

“They let Hazel stay here,” Percy noted.

“That’s different,” Nico said.

“Why?”

“Percy,” Hazel cut in, “look, the giants aren’t the worst problem. Even… even Gaea isn’t the worst problem. The thing you noticed about the gorgons, how they wouldn’t die, that’s our biggest worry.” She looked at Nico. She was getting dangerously close to her own secret now, but for some reason Hazel trusted Percy. Maybe because he was also an outsider, maybe because he’d saved Frank at the river. He deserved to know what they were facing. “Nico and I,” she said carefully, “we think that what’s happening is… Death isn’t—”

Before she could finish, a shout came from down the hill.

Frank jogged toward them, wearing his jeans, purple camp shirt, and denim jacket. His hands were covered with grease from cleaning weapons.

As it did every time she saw Frank, Hazel’s heart performed a little skip-beat tapdance—which really irritated her. Sure, he was a good friend—one of the only people at camp who didn’t treat her as if she had a contagious disease. But she didn’t like him in that way.

He was three years older than she was, and he wasn’t exactly Prince Charming, with that strange combination of baby face and bulky wrestler’s body. He looked like a cuddly koala bear with muscles. The fact that everyone always tried to pair them up— the two biggest losers at camp! You guys are perfect for each other —just made Hazel more determined not to like him. But her heart wasn’t with the program. It went nuts whenever Frank was around. She hadn’t felt like that since… well, since Sammy.

Stop it, she thought. You’re here for one reason—and it isn’t to get a new boyfriend.

Besides, Frank didn’t know her secret. If he knew, he wouldn’t be so nice to her.

He reached the shrine. “Hey, Nico…”

“Frank.” Nico smiled. He seemed to find Frank amusing, maybe because Frank was the only one at camp who wasn’t uneasy around the children of Pluto.

“Reyna sent me to get Percy,” Frank said. “Did Octavian accept you?”

“Yeah,” Percy said. “He almost slaughtered my panda.” He held up the pillow that Nico had given back to him.

“He…Oh. The augury? Yeah, teddy bears must have nightmares about that guy. But you’re in! We need to get you cleaned up before evening muster.”

Hazel realized the sun was getting low over the hills. How had the day gone so fast?

“You’re right,” she said. “We’d better—”

“Frank,” Nico interrupted, “why don’t you take Percy down? Hazel and I will be along soon.”

Uh-oh, Hazel thought. She tried not to look anxious.

“That’s—that’s a good idea,” she managed. “Go ahead, guys. We’ll catch up.”

Percy looked at Nico one more time, as though he was still trying to place a memory. “I’d like to talk with you some more. I can’t shake the feeling—”

“Sure,” Nico agreed. “Later. I’ll be staying overnight.”

“You will?” Hazel blurted. The campers were going to love that—the son of Neptune and the son of Pluto in Camp. Together. Now all they needed was some black cats and broken mirrors.

“Go on, Percy,” Nico said. “Settle in.” He turned to Hazel, and she got the sense that the worst part of her day was yet to come. “My sister and I need to talk.”

“You know him, don’t you,” Hazel said.

They sat on the roof of Pluto’s shrine, which was covered with bones and diamonds. As far as Hazel knew, the bones had always been there. The diamonds were her fault. If she sat anywhere too long, or just got anxious, they started popping up all around her like mushrooms after a rain. Several million dollars’ worth of stones glittered on the roof, but fortunately the other campers wouldn’t touch them. They knew better than to steal from temples—especially Pluto’s—and the fauns never came up here.

Hazel shuddered, remembering her close call with Don that afternoon. If she hadn’t moved quickly and snatched that diamond off the road… She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t need another death on her conscience.

Nico swung his feet like a little kid. His Stygian iron sword lay by his side, next to Hazel’s spatha. He gazed across the valley, where construction crews were working in the Field of Mars, building fortifications for tonight’s games.

“Hazel…”

“It’s something to do with those certain forces, isn’t it? The things you can’t tell me.”

Nico didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I’m really sorry, Hazel. I have to be careful what I say. Some secrets need to stay secret. You of all people should understand that.”

Hazel’s cheeks felt hot. “But he’s not like… like me?”

“No,” Nico said. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. I can’t interfere. Percy has to find his own way at this camp.”

“Is he dangerous?” she asked.

Nico managed a dry smile. “Very. To his enemies. But he’s not a threat to Camp Jupiter. You can trust him.”

“Like I trust you,” Hazel said bitterly.

Nico twisted his skull ring. Around him, bones began to quiver as if they were trying to form a new skeleton. Whenever he got moody, Nico had that effect on the dead, kind of like Hazel’s curse. Between them, they represented Pluto’s two spheres of control: death and riches. Sometimes Hazel thought Nico had gotten the better end of the deal.

“Look, I know this is hard,” Nico said. “But you have a second chance. You can make things right.”

“Nothing about this is right,” Hazel said. “If they find out the truth about me—”

“They won’t,” Nico promised. “They’ll call a quest soon. They have to. You’ll make me proud. Trust me, Hazel.”

“Then it’s true about Death? Is Alcyoneus to blame?”

“I think so,” Nico said. “It’s getting bad in the Underworld. Dad’s going crazy trying to keep things under control. From what Percy said about the gorgons, things are getting worse up here, too. But look, that’s why you’re here. All that stuff in your past—you can make something good come out of it. You belong at Camp Jupiter.”

That sounded so ridiculous, Hazel almost laughed. She didn’t belong in this place. She didn’t even belong in this century.

She should have known better than to focus on the past, but she remembered the day when her old life had been shattered. The blackout hit her so suddenly, she didn’t even have time to say, Uh-oh. She shifted back in time. Not a dream or a vision. The memory washed over her with such perfect clarity, she felt she was actually there.

Her most recent birthday. She’d just turned thirteen. But not last December—December 17, 1941, the last day she had lived in New Orleans.

Chapter Text

NICO WAS SHAKING HER SHOULDERS. “You did it again.”

Hazel blinked. They were still sitting on the roof of Pluto’s shrine. The sun was lower in the sky. More diamonds had surfaced around her, and her eyes stung from crying.

“S-sorry,” she murmured.

“Don’t be,” Nico said. “Where were you?”

“My mother’s apartment. The day we moved.”

Nico nodded. He understood her history better than most people could. He was also a kid from the past. He’d been born roughly around the same time as Hazel, though Nico said he was never completely sure when that was, and had been locked away in a magic hotel for decades. But Hazel’s past was much worse that Nico’s. She’s caused so much damage and misery…

“You have to work on controlling those memories,” Nico warned. “If a flashback like that happens when you’re in combat—”

“I know,” she said. “I’m trying.”

Nico squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I think it’s a side effect from… you know, your time in the Underworld. Hopefully it’ll get easier.”

Hazel wasn’t so sure. After eight months, the blackouts seemed to be getting worse, as if her soul were attempting to live in two different time periods at once. No one had ever come back from the dead before—at least, not the way she had. Nico was trying to reassure her, but neither of them knew what would happen.

“I can’t go north again,” Hazel said. “Nico, if I have to go back to where it happened—”

“You’ll be fine,” he promised. “You’ll have friends this time. Percy Jackson—he’s got a role to play in this. You can sense that, can’t you? He’s a good person to have at your side.”

Hazel remembered what Pluto told her long ago: A descendant of Neptune will wash away your curse and give you peace.

Was Percy the one? Maybe, but Hazel sensed it wouldn’t be so easy. She wasn’t sure even Percy could survive what was waiting in the north.

“Where did he come from?” she asked. “Why do the ghosts call him the Greek?”

Before Nico could respond, horns blew across the river. The legionnaires were gathering for evening muster.

“We’d better get down there,” Nico said. “I have a feeling tonight’s war games are going to be interesting.”

On the way back, Hazel tripped over a gold bar. She should have known not to run so fast, but she was afraid of being late for muster.

The Fifth Cohort had the nicest centurions in camp. Still, even they would have to punish her if she was tardy. Roman punishments were harsh: scrubbing the streets with a toothbrush, cleaning the bullpens at the coliseum, getting sewn inside a sack full of angry weasels and dumped into the Little Tiber—the options were not great.

The gold bar popped out of the ground just in time for her foot to hit it. Nico tried to catch her, but she took a spill and scraped her hands.

“You okay?” Nico knelt next to her and reached for the bar of gold.

“Don’t!” Hazel warned.

Nico froze. “Right. Sorry. It’s just… jeez. Oh, your hands.” He pulled a flash of nectar from his aviator jacket and poured a little on Hazel’s hands. Immediately the cuts started to heal. “I’d wrap them if I had bandages. Sorry, Hazel. Can you stand?” He helped her up.

“Did you learn this from your doctor friend?” Hazel asked.

Nico turned pink. “Maybe.” He glanced down at the gold. It was the size of a bread loaf, stamped with a serial number and the words U.S. Treasury.

Nico shook his head. “How in the gods—?”

“I don’t know,” Hazel said miserably. “It could’ve been buried there by robbers or dropped off a wagon a hundred years ago. Maybe it migrated from the nearest bank vault. Whatever’s in the ground, anywhere close to me—it just pops up. And the more valuable it is—”

“The more dangerous it is.” Nico frowned. “Should we cover it up? If the fauns find it…”

Hazel imagined a mushroom cloud billowing up from the road, charbroiled fauns tossed in every direction. It was too horrible to consider. “It should sink back underground after I leave, eventually, but just to be sure…”

She’d been practicing this trick, but never with something so heavy and dense. She pointed at the gold bar and tried to concentrate.

The gold levitated. She channeled her anger, which wasn’t hard—she hated that gold, she hated her curse, she hated thinking about her past and all the ways she’d failed. Her fingers tingled. The gold bar glowed with heat.

She made a fist. The gold bent like putty. Hazel forced it to twist into a giant, lumpy ring. Then she flicked her hand toward the ground. Her million-dollar doughnut slammed into the earth. It sank so deep, nothing was left but a scar of fresh dirt.

Nico’s eyes widened. “That was… terrifying.”

Hazel didn’t think it was so impressive compared to the powers of a guy who could reanimate skeletons and bring people back from the dead, but it felt good to surprise him for a change.

Inside the camp, horns blew again. The cohorts would be starting roll call, and Hazel had no desire to be sewn into a sack of weasels.

“Hurry!” she told Nico, and they ran for the gates.

The first time Hazel had seen the legion assemble, she’d been so intimidated, she’d almost slunk back to the barracks to hide. Even after being at camp for nine months, she still found it an impressive sight.

The first four cohorts, each forty kids strong, stood in rows in front of their barracks on either side of the Via Praetoria. The Fifth Cohort assembled at the very end, in front of the principia, since their barracks were tucked in the back corner of camp next to the stables and the latrines. Hazel had to run right down the middle of the legion to reach her place.

The campers were dressed for war. Their polished chain mail and greaves gleamed over purple T-shirts and jeans. Sword-and-skull designs decorated their helmets. Even their leather combat boots looked ferocious with their iron cleats, great for marching through mud or stomping on faces.

In front of the legionnaires, like a line of giant dominoes, stood their red and gold shields, each the size of a refrigerator door. Every legionnaire carried a harpoonlike spear called a pilum, a gladius, a dagger, and about a hundred pounds of other equipment. If you were out of shape when you came to the legion, you didn’t stay that way for long. Just walking around in your armor was a full-body workout.

Hazel and Nico jogged down the street as everyone was coming to attention, so their entrance was really obvious. Their footsteps echoed on the stones. Hazel tried to avoid eye contact, but she caught Octavian at the head of the First Cohort smirking at her, looking smug in his plumed centurion’s helmet with a dozen medals pinned on his chest. Hazel was still seething from earlier. Stupid augur and his gift of prophecy—of all the people at camp to discover her secrets, why did it have to be him? She was sure he would have told on her weeks ago, except that he knew her secrets were worth more to him as leverage. She wished she’d kept that bar of gold so she could hit him in the face with it.

She ran past Reyna, who was cantering back and forth on her pegasus Scipio—nicknamed Skippy because he was the color of peanut butter. The metal dogs Aurum and Argentum trotted at her side. Her purple officer’s cape billowed behind her.

“Hazel Levesque,” she called, “so glad you could join us.”

Hazel knew better than to respond. She was missing most of her equipment, but she hurried to her place in line next to Frank and stood at attention. Their lead centurion, a big seventeen-year-old guy named Dakota, was just calling her name—the last one on the roll.

“Present!” she squeaked.

Thank the gods. Technically, she wasn’t late.

Nico joined Percy Jackson, who was standing off to one side with a couple of guards. Percy’s hair was wet from the baths. He’d put on fresh clothes, but he still looked uncomfortable. Hazel couldn’t blame him. He was about to be introduced to two hundred heavily armed kids.

The Lares were the last ones to fall in. Their purple forms flickered as they jockeyed for places. They had an annoying habit of standing halfway inside living people, so that the ranks looked like a blurry photograph, but finally the centurions got them sorted out.

Octavian shouted, “Colors!”

The standard-bearers stepped forward. They wore lion-skin capes and held poles decorated with each cohort’s emblems. The last to present his standard was Jacob, the legion’s eagle bearer. He held a long pole with absolutely nothing on top. The job was supposed to be a big honor, but Jacob obviously hated it. Even though Reyna insisted on following tradition, every time the eagleless pole was raised, Hazel could feel embarrassment rippling through the legion.

Reyna brought her pegasus to a halt.

“Romans!” she announced. “You’ve probably heard about the incursion today. Two gorgons were swept into the river by this newcomer, Percy Jackson. Juno herself guided him here, and proclaimed him a son of Neptune.”

The kids in the back rows craned their necks to see Percy. He raised his hand and said, “Hi.”

“He seeks to join the legion,” Reyna continued. “What do the auguries say?”

“I have read the entrails!” Octavian announced, as if he’d killed a lion with his bare hands rather than ripping up a stuffed animal. “The auguries are favorable. He is qualified to serve!”

The campers gave a shout: “Ave!” Hail!

Frank was a little late with his “ave,” so it came out as a high-pitched echo. The other legionnaires snickered.

Reyna motioned the senior officers forward—one from each cohort. Octavian, as the most senior centurion, turned to Percy.

“Recruit,” he asked, “do you have credentials? Letters of reference?”

Hazel remembered this from her own arrival. A lot of kids brought letters from older demigods in the outside world, adults who were veterans of the camp. Some recruits had rich and famous sponsors. Some were third—or fourth—generation campers. A good letter could get you a position in the better cohorts, sometimes even special jobs like legion messenger, which made you exempt from the grunt work like digging ditches or conjugating Latin verbs.

Percy shifted. “Letters? Um, no.”

Octavian wrinkled his nose.

Unfair! Hazel wanted to shout. Percy had carried a goddess into camp. What better recommendation could you want?

But Octavian’s family had been sending kids to camp for over a century. He loved reminding recruits that they were less important than he was.

“No letters,” Octavian said regretfully. “Will any legionnaires stand for him?”

“I will!” Frank stepped forward. “He saved my life!”

Immediately there were shouts of protest from the other cohorts. Reyna raised her hand for quiet and glared at Frank.

“Frank Zhang,” she said, “for the second time today, I remind you that you are on probatio. Your godly parent has not even claimed you yet. You’re not eligible to stand for another camper until you’ve earned your first stripe.”

Frank looked like he might die of embarrassment.

Hazel couldn’t leave him hanging. She stepped out of line and said, “What Frank means is that Percy saved both our lives. I am a full member of the legion. I will stand for Percy Jackson.”

Frank glanced at her gratefully, but the other campers started to mutter. Hazel was barely eligible. She’d only gotten her stripe a few weeks ago, and the “act of valor” that earned it for her had been mostly an accident. Besides, she was a daughter of Pluto, and a member of the disgraced Fifth Cohort. She wasn’t doing Percy much of a favor by giving him her support.

Reyna wrinkled her nose, but she turned to Octavian. The augur smiled and shrugged, like the idea amused him.

Why not? Hazel thought. Putting Percy in the Fifth would make him less of a threat, and Octavian liked to keep all his enemies in one place.

“Very well,” Reyna announced. “Hazel Levesque, you may stand for the recruit. Does your cohort accept him?”

The other cohorts started coughing, trying not to laugh. Hazel knew what they were thinking: Another loser for the Fifth.

Frank pounded his shield against the ground. The other members of the Fifth followed his lead, though they didn’t seem very excited. Their centurions, Dakota and Gwen, exchanged pained looks, like: Here we go again.

“My cohort has spoken,” Dakota said. “We accept the recruit.”

Reyna looked at Percy with pity. “Congratulations, Percy Jackson. You stand on probatio. You will be given a tablet with your name and cohort. In one year’s time, or as soon as you complete an act of valor, you will become a full member of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. Serve Rome, obey the rules of the legion, and defend the camp with honor. Senatus Populusque Romanus!”

The rest of the legion echoed the cheer.

Reyna wheeled her pegasus away from Percy, like she was glad to be done with him. Skippy spread his beautiful wings. Hazel couldn’t help feeling a pang of envy. She’d give anything for a horse like that, but it would never happen. Horses were for officers only, or barbarian cavalry, not for Roman legionnaires.

“Centurions,” Reyna said, “you and your troops have one hour for dinner. Then we will meet on the Field of Mars. The First and Second Cohorts will defend. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth will attack. Good fortune!”

A bigger cheer went up—for the war games and for dinner. The cohorts broke ranks and ran for the mess hall.

Hazel waved at Percy, who made his way through the crowd with Nico at his side. To Hazel’s surprise, Nico was beaming at her.

“Good job, Sis,” he said. “That took guts, standing for him.”

One of the guards had given Percy his probatio nameplate. Percy strung it on his leather necklace with the strange beads.

“Thanks, Hazel,” he said. “Um, what exactly does it mean—your standing for me?”

“I guarantee your good behavior,” Hazel explained. “I teach you the rules, answer your questions, make sure you don’t disgrace the legion.”

“And… if I do something wrong?”

“Then I get killed along with you,” Hazel said. “Hungry? Let’s eat.”

Chapter Text

AT LEAST THE CAMP FOOD WAS GOOD. Invisible wind spirits—aurae—waited on the campers and seemed to know exactly what everyone wanted. They blew plates and cups around so quickly, the mess hall looked like a delicious hurricane. If you got up too fast, you were likely to get beaned by beans or potted by a pot roast.

Hazel got shrimp gumbo—her favorite comfort food. It made her think about being a little girl in New Orleans, before her curse set in and her mom got so bitter. Percy got a cheeseburger and a strange-looking soda that was bright blue. Hazel didn’t understand that, but Percy tried it and grinned.

“This makes me happy,” he said. “I don’t know why… but it does.”

Just for a moment, one of the aurae became visible—an elfin girl in a white silk dress. She giggled as she topped off Percy’s glass, then disappeared in a gust.

The mess hall seemed especially noisy tonight. Laughter echoed off the walls. War banners rustled from cedar ceiling beams as aurae blew back and forth, keeping everyone’s plates full. The campers dined Roman style, sitting on couches around low tables. Kids were constantly getting up and trading places, spreading rumors about who liked whom and all the other gossip.

As usual, the Fifth Cohort took the place of least honor. Their tables were at the back of the dining hall next to the kitchen. Hazel’s table was always the least crowded. Tonight it was she and Frank, as usual, with Percy and Nico and their centurion Dakota, who sat there, Hazel figured, because he felt obligated to welcome the new recruit.

Dakota reclined glumly on his couch, mixing sugar into his drink and chugging it. He was a beefy guy with curly black hair and eyes that didn’t quite line up straight, so Hazel felt like the world was leaning whenever she looked at him. It wasn’t a good sign that he was drinking so much so early in the night.

“So.” He burped, waving his goblet. “Welcome to the Percy, party.” He frowned. “Party, Percy. Whatever.”

“Um, thanks,” Percy said, but his attention was focused on Nico. “I was wondering if we could talk, you know… about where I might have seen you before.”

“Sure,” Nico said a little too quickly. “The thing is, I spend most of my time in the Underworld. So unless I met you there somehow—”

Dakota belched. “Ambassador from Pluto, they call him. Reyna’s never sure what to do with this guy when he visits. You should have seen her face when he showed up with Hazel, asking Reyna to take her in. Um, no offense.”

“None taken.” Nico seemed relieved to change the topic. “Dakota was really helpful, standing for Hazel.”

Dakota blushed. “Yeah, well… She seemed like a good kid. Turned out I was right. Last month, when she saved me from, uh, you know.”

“Oh, man!” Frank looked up from his fish and chips. “Percy, you should have seen her! That’s how Hazel got her stripe. The unicorns decided to stampede—”

“It was nothing,” Hazel said.

“Nothing?” Frank protested. “Dakota would’ve gotten trampled! You stood right in front of them, shooed them away, saved his hide. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Hazel bit her lip. She didn’t like to talk about it, and she felt uncomfortable, the way Frank made her sound like a hero. In truth, she’d been mostly afraid that the unicorns would hurt themselves in their panic. Their horns were precious metal—silver and gold—so she’d managed to turn them aside simply by concentrating, steering the animals by their horns and guiding them back to the stables. It had gotten her a full place in the legion, but it had also started rumors about her strange powers—rumors that reminded her of the bad old days.

Percy studied her. Those sea-green eyes made her unsettled.

“Did you and Nico grow up together?” he asked.

“No,” Nico answered for her. “I found out that Hazel was my sister only recently. She’s from New Orleans.”

That was true, of course, but not the whole truth. Nico let people think he’d stumbled upon her in modern New Orleans and brought her to camp. It was easier than telling the real story.

Hazel had tried to pass herself off as a modern kid. It wasn’t easy. Thankfully, demigods didn’t use a lot of technology at camp. Their powers tended to make electronic gadgets go haywire. But the first time she went on furlough to Berkeley, she had nearly had a stroke. Televisions, computers, iPods, the Internet… It made her glad to get back to the world of ghosts, unicorns, and gods. That seemed much less of a fantasy than the twenty-first century.

Nico was still talking about the children of Pluto. “There aren’t many of us,” he said, “so we have to stick together. When I found Hazel—”

“You have other sisters?” Percy asked, almost as if he knew the answer. Hazel wondered again when he and Nico had met, and what her brother was hiding.

“One,” Nico admitted. “She, ah, she joined the Hunters of Diana a few years ago. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

That wasn’t the whole truth. Bianca di Angelo, according to Nico, had decided not to rejoin the Hunters after she was brought back to life by who knows what power. Hazel didn’t know where Bianca was, but Nico hadn’t brought her to Camp yet, and Hazel didn’t press the issue.

“I miss her,” Nico continued. “So it’s nice to have Hazel.”

Dakota grunted. “Unless you believe the rumors. Not saying that I do.”

“Rumors?” Percy asked.

From across the room, Don the faun yelled, “Hazel!”

Hazel had never been so glad to see the faun. He wasn’t allowed in camp, but of course he always managed to get in. He was working his way toward their table, grinning at everybody, sneaking food off plates, and pointing at campers: “Hey! Call me!” A flying pizza smacked him in the head, and he disappeared behind a couch. Then he popped up, still grinning, and made his way over.

“My favorite girl!” He smelled like a wet goat wrapped in old cheese. He leaned over their couches and checked out their food. “Say, new kid, you going to eat that?”

Percy frowned. “Aren’t fauns vegetarian?”

“Not the cheeseburger, man! The plate!” He sniffed Percy’s hair. “Hey… what’s that smell?”

“Don!” Hazel said. “Don’t be rude.”

“No, man, I just—”

Their house god Vitellius shimmered into existence, standing half embedded in Frank’s couch. “Fauns in the dining hall! What are we coming to? Centurion Dakota, do your duty!”

“I am,” Dakota grumbled into his goblet. “I’m having dinner!”

Don was still sniffing around Percy. “Man, you’ve got an empathy link with a faun!”

Percy leaned away from him. “A what?”

“An empathy link! It’s real faint, like somebody’s suppressed it, but—”

“I know what!” Nico stood suddenly. “Hazel, how about we give you and Frank time to get Percy oriented? Dakota and I can visit the praetor’s table. Don and Vitellius, you come too. We can discuss strategies for the war games.”

“Strategies for losing?” Dakota muttered.

“Death Boy is right!” Vitellius said.

“Do not call me Death Boy,” Nico snapped.

“This legion fights worse than we did in Judea,” Vitellius continued as if he hadn’t heard Nico, “and that was the first time we lost our eagle. Why, if I were in charge—”

“Could I just eat the silverware first?” Don asked.

“Let’s go!” Nico stood and grabbed Don and Vitellius by the ears.

Nobody but Nico could actually touch the Lares. Vitellius spluttered with outrage as he was dragged off to the praetor’s table.

“Ow!” Don protested. “Man, watch the ’fro!”

“Come on, Dakota!” Nico called over his shoulder.

The centurion got up reluctantly. He wiped his mouth—uselessly, since it was permanently stained red. “Back soon.” He shook all over, like a dog trying to get dry. Then he staggered away, his goblet sloshing.

“What was that about?” Percy asked. “And what’s wrong with Dakota?”

Frank sighed. “He’s okay. He’s a son of Bacchus, the wine god. He’s got a drinking problem.”

Percy’s eyes widened. “You let him drink wine?”

“Gods, no!” Hazel said. “That would be a disaster. He’s addicted to red Kool-Aid. Drinks it with three times the normal sugar, and he’s already ADHD—you know, attention deficit/hyperactive. One of these days, his head is going to explode.”

Percy looked over at the praetor’s table. Most of the senior officers were in deep conversation with Reyna. Nico and his two captives, Don and Vitellius, stood on the periphery. Dakota was running back and forth along a line of stacked shields, banging his goblet on them like they were a xylophone.

“ADHD,” Percy said. “You don’t say.”

Hazel tried not to laugh. “Well… most demigods are. Or dyslexic. Just being a demigod means that our brains are wired differently. Like you—you said you had trouble reading.”

“Are you guys that way too?” Percy asked.

“I don’t know,” Hazel admitted. “Maybe. Back in my day, they just called kids like us ‘lazy.’”

Percy frowned. “Back in your day?”

Hazel cursed herself.

Luckily for her, Frank spoke up: “I wish I was ADHD or dyslexic. All I got is lactose intolerance.”

Percy grinned. “Seriously?”

Frank might’ve been the silliest demigod ever, but Hazel thought he was cute when he pouted. His shoulders slumped. “And I love ice cream, too…”

Percy laughed. Hazel couldn’t help joining in. It was good to sit at dinner and actually feel like she was among friends.

“Okay, so tell me,” Percy said, “why is it bad to be in the Fifth Cohort? You guys are great.”

The compliment made Hazel’s toes tingle. “It’s… complicated. Aside from being Pluto’s kid, I want to ride horses.”

“That’s why you use a cavalry sword?”

She nodded. “It’s stupid, I guess. Wishful thinking. There’s only one pegasus at camp—Reyna’s. The unicorns are just kept for medicine, because the shavings off their horns cure poison and stuff. Anyway, Roman fighting is always done on foot. Cavalry… they kind of look down on that. So they look down on me.”

“Their loss,” Percy said. “What about you, Frank?”

“Archery,” he muttered. “They don’t like that either, unless you’re a child of Apollo. Then you’ve got an excuse. I hope my dad is Apollo, but I don’t know. I can’t do poetry very well. And I’m not sure I want to be related to Octavian.”

“Can’t blame you,” Percy said. “But you’re excellent with the bow—the way you pegged those gorgons? Forget what other people think.”

Frank’s face turned as red as Dakota’s Kool-Aid. “Wish I could. They all think I should be a sword fighter because I’m big and bulky.” He looked down at his body, like he couldn’t quite believe it was his. “They say I’m too stocky for an archer. Maybe if my dad would ever claim me…”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. A dad who wouldn’t claim you… Hazel knew that feeling. She sensed Percy could relate, too.

“You asked about the Fifth,” she said at last. “Why it’s the worst cohort. That actually started way before us.” She pointed to the back wall, where the legion’s standards were on display. “See the empty pole in the middle?”

“The eagle,” Percy said.

Hazel was stunned. “How’d you know?”

Percy frowned. “I… I don’t know,” he said. “I just know there’s supposed to be an eagle there. The Fifth Cohort… they lost it, right?”

Hazel made a mental note not to underestimate Percy again. When he’d first arrived, she’d thought he was a little goofy from the questions he’d asked—about the Feast of Tuna and all—but clearly he was smarter than he let on.

“You’re right,” she said. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“So what is this eagle, anyway? Why is it a big deal?”

Frank looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “It’s the symbol of the whole camp—a big eagle made of gold. It’s supposed to protect us in battle and make our enemies afraid. Each legion’s eagle gave it all sorts of power, and ours came from Jupiter himself. Supposedly Julius Caesar nicknamed our legion ‘Fulminata’—armed with lightning—because of what the eagle could do.”

“I don’t like lightning,” Percy said.

“Yeah, well,” Hazel said, “it didn’t make us invincible. The Twelfth lost its eagle the first time way back in ancient days, during the Jewish Rebellion.”

“I think I saw a movie like that,” Percy said.

Hazel shrugged. “Could be. There have been lots of books and movies about legions losing their eagles. Unfortunately it happened quite a few times. The eagle was so important… well, archaeologists have never recovered a single eagle from ancient Rome. Each legion guarded theirs to the last man, because it was charged with power from the gods. They’d rather hide it or melt it down than surrender it to an enemy. The Twelfth was lucky the first time. We got our eagle back. But the second time…”

“You guys were there?” Percy asked.

They both shook their heads.

“I’m almost as new as you.” Frank tapped his probatio plate. “Just got here last month. But everyone’s heard the story. It’s bad luck to even talk about this. There was this huge expedition to Alaska back in the eighties.…”

“That prophecy you noticed in the temple,” Hazel continued, “the one about the seven demigods and the Doors of Death? Our senior praetor at the time was Michael Varus, from the Fifth Cohort. Back then the Fifth was the best in camp. He thought it would bring glory to the legion if he could figure out the prophecy and make it come true—save the world from storm and fire and all that. He talked to the augur, and the augur said the answer was in Alaska. But he warned Michael it wasn’t time yet. The prophecy wasn’t for him.”

“But he went anyway,” Percy guessed. “What happened?”

Frank lowered his voice. “Long, gruesome story. Almost the entire Fifth Cohort was wiped out. Most of legion’s Imperial gold weapons were lost, along with the eagle. The survivors went crazy or refused to talk about what had attacked them.”

I know, Hazel thought solemnly. But she kept silent.

“Since the eagle was lost,” Frank continued, “the camp has been getting weaker. Quests are more dangerous. Monsters attack the borders more often. Morale is lower. The last month or so, things have been getting much worse, much faster.”

“And the Fifth Cohort took the blame,” Percy guessed. “So now everyone thinks we’re cursed.”

Hazel realized her gumbo was cold. She sipped a spoonful, but the comfort food didn’t taste very comforting. “We’ve been the outcasts of the legion since… well, since the Alaska disaster. Our reputation got better when Jason became praetor—”

“The kid who’s missing?” Percy asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I never met him. Before my time. But I hear he was a good leader. He practically grew up in the Fifth Cohort. He didn’t care what people thought about us. He started to rebuild our reputation. Then he disappeared.”

“Which put us back at square one,” Hazel said bitterly. “Made us look cursed all over again. I’m sorry, Percy. Now you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Percy sipped his blue soda and gazed thoughtfully across the dining hall. “I don’t even know where I come from… but I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the first time I’ve been an underdog.” He focused on Hazel and managed a smile. “Besides, joining the legion is better than being chased through the wilderness by monsters. I’ve got myself some new friends. Maybe together we can turn things around for the Fifth Cohort, huh?”

A horn blew at the end of the hall. The officers at the praetor’s table got to their feet—even Dakota, his mouth vampire-red from Kool-Aid.

“The games begin!” Reyna announced. The campers cheered and rushed to collect their equipment from the stacks along the walls.

“So we’re the attacking team?” Percy asked over the noise. “Is that good?”

Hazel shrugged. “Good news: we get the elephant. Bad news—”

“Let me guess,” said Percy. “The Fifth Cohort always loses.”

Frank slapped Percy on the shoulder. “I love this guy. Come on, new friend. Let’s go chalk up my thirteenth defeat in a row!”

Chapter Text

IF ASKED HOW HIS LIFE HAD COME TO THIS, Magnus probably wouldn’t have been able to give a good answer. Truth be told, he didn’t really understand it either.

No. Scratch that. He kind of did.

It all started going downhill on January 13, 2011. His sixteenth birthday. The day he died.

Since then, Magnus had moved into a hotel where everything was done to the death, stopped Ragnarok not once but twice, fought fire giants and wolves, nearly froze to death, and almost got shrunk by words. Whoever came up with the phrase sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me was completely wrong. Words could hurt.

He thought that maybe things were looking up for him when he had fallen in love with the gender fluid child of Loki, Alex Fierro, who had once cut his head off, but then…

He woke up in a forest. A forest. In the middle of Maine, USA. Normally, Magnus would have liked forests, but after he woke up in this forest, he crashed a school dance that coincidentally, his cousin Annabeth and her friends Percy, Thalia, and Grover were also crashing in order to rescue two demigods. That was great.

Not to mention everything that happened after that.

Such as Alex getting kidnapped. Or traversing across the country to rescue Alex and the Greek goddess Artemis. Or fighting—to the death—at Camp Half-Blood when an army of monsters invaded through the Labyrinth tunnel. Or fighting an actual war against the Greek Titans in Manhattan for three days.

Yes. Magnus had a life that everyone envied. Absolutely.

He knew it was too good to hope that after all that, he and Alex could finally relax and catch a break before their impending deaths—which hopefully wouldn’t happen either, but Magnus wasn’t super optimistic at this point.

And then Annabeth called to ask if they would mind looking for Bianca di Angelo who had somehow managed to resurrect from the dead.

Considering everything they had been through at this point, Magnus should have known that finding Bianca after barely two months of searching was too good to be true.

“Do you think I could turn into an earthworm and burrow my way out?” Alex mused. “I’d come back for you of course. Bring a whole army and everything.”

Magnus leaned back against the wall of the cell he was in. “Can earthworms burrow through solid concrete?”

Alex didn’t say anything. The only sound coming from her cell was the sound of pebbles bouncing off the concrete.

“What about a hellhound?” Magnus suggested. “Shadow travel out of here.”

“Mmm, tried that last… month? Remember? Didn’t work.”

The days were all kind of blending together at this point. They’d been stuck for… well, months for sure. How many months? Magnus didn’t know the answer to that. If he had to guess a number, he’d probably say at least four or five.

It had been December when they were caught. End of December really. They escaped once in February—the newspaper they found had said it was February anyway. The escape felt like it happened months ago.

It could have been a year for all Magnus knew though. That would suck. They wouldn’t have much time before Fenris Wolf escaped and started Ragnarok.

“We should have stayed far away from Boston,” Magnus said.

“ You were the one who wanted to come back here,” Alex said.

“You didn’t try to convince me otherwise though.”

Magnus couldn’t see Alex, but he could practically hear her raise her eyebrows.

“Okay, fine. Coming back was my fault,” Magnus admitted.

Alex sighed. “Eh, I’m willing to share. It was eighty percent your fault and twenty percent my fault. Actually, maybe eighty-five and fifteen.”

Magnus snorted.

“How can you two possibly remain this… whatever?” Sam’s voice asked.

Magnus stopped laughing at the sound of her voice. He couldn’t blame Sam for the predicament, but he couldn’t completely absolve her either.

“Would you rather we dissolve into tears?” Alex asked sarcastically. “Or, I don’t know, lose our minds?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam insisted. “I never meant to—”

“I know, Sam,” Alex said. “Not your fault you have a gods awful dad.”

“Or yours with your horrible mother.”

“When you fail at both fatherhood and motherhood.”

“Loki in a nutshell.”

Magnus didn’t disagree with the sisters. He didn’t chime in though.

“How have you held out this long?” Sam asked. “I… I’m not saying you should give in, but… you could have. If you wanted to. Why haven’t you?”

Magnus took his time answering. “I don’t want to see the world end. I have a cousin who lives in this world. She has a boyfriend. They both have friends. And… they’d do the same for me.”

“Do they know you’re missing?”

How many monthly IMs had he and Alex missed from Annabeth? Was Annabeth looking for them too? She didn’t need to add that to her busy plate. Building the Argo II and finding Percy were monumental tasks already.

The Argo II …

Magnus and Alex weren’t part of the Prophecy of Seven, but they had promised to do anything they could to help. Why wouldn’t they? Annabeth was his cousin, Percy was their friend. Jason, Piper, and Leo were likeable enough even though they’d only known them for a few days.

Magnus didn’t know if help meant stowing away aboard the Argo II , or running into the Greeks and Romans somewhere along the way, but there was no way neither he nor Alex would be of any use in these cells.

“Maybe,” Magnus finally answered Sam. “My cousin contacted me regularly. I don’t know if she was planning on keeping that up. She’s… she’s got her own stuff going on.”

They fell into silence.

Magnus closed his eyes and thought back to December.

Chapter Text

THEIR BRIEF STAY AT CAMP Half-Blood was over before Magnus knew it. He almost caved and asked Alex if she wanted to stay for a while. Just until the whole Gaea situation had blown over. But he didn’t.

Allegra had worried about them leaving with Gaea on the rise, but they had assured her that they would be in no danger. Given that Boston was the Norse capital of the modern world, it seemed unlikely that Gaea would go anywhere near them. Not that they could tell her that.

Magnus had been relieved when Allegra didn’t question them about claiming. He and Alex had shrugged it off when Annabeth brought the issue up the day they arrived, but Magnus had no idea what they would say if someone asked about that.

Worst case they could just say they had been claimed while away and just go from there. Magnus could always say Apollo claimed him, and Alex… Alex hadn’t made her disdain of her mother a secret. Everyone knew Alex knew who her mother was, but they also knew that Alex didn’t like her mother and probably wouldn’t question Alex not wanting to talk about it.

“Don’t hesitate to contact us,” Alex said. “Seriously. Doesn’t matter if Blitz and Hearth see. If you need help, call us.”

Annabeth smiled. “I know. Same for you guys. If you need help, call us.”

“You’ve got enough going on with Gaea,” Magnus protested. “Besides, what kind of trouble do you think we’re going to get into anyway?”

Annabeth gave him a look. “Is that supposed to be a trick question? A lot. You could get into a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, but we aren’t going to,” Magnus said.

Annabeth shook her head. “Here,” she said, holding out something. “I had Beckendorf work on this. It’s not enchanted like Jack or anything, but I’d feel better knowing you have something you can use to defend yourself without hesitation.”

Magnus took the Celestial bronze dagger from his cousin. The design was very similar to Jack’s design. A leather wrapped grip, double-edged blade, and definitely better for hacking than stabbing.

“It’s Celestial bronze so it won’t hurt mortals, but it should work on Norse monsters,” Annabeth said.

“Thanks,” Magnus said. “I missed you, you know?”

Annabeth hugged him. “Yeah. I know. Get going, you butt. Take care of my cousin, Alex.”

“I’ll try,” Alex said.

Magnus frowned. “Hey.”

“Come on, Maggie,” Alex said, pulling Magnus down the hill.

The last image of Camp Half-Blood that Magnus saw was Annabeth laughing at the top of Half-Blood Hill. That was the last time he saw his cousin.

Using the World Tree was risky. Magnus had opened it three times already in the last week alone. This would make it the fourth time.

At least now Annabeth had given him a dagger he could use in place of Jack. Alex suggested that he try to open the portal with said dagger so it wasn’t as risky as it might have been with Jack.

The portal opened fine, and Alex promptly named his dagger gáttaropnari.

“Roughly means portal opener,” Alex explained.

Magnus sighed. “What does gátt mean?”

“Portal.”

“I’m just going to call it Gátt.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can we get going before the squirrel finds us?”

They didn’t run into the squirrel which was a welcome blessing. Gátt didn’t do the glow-when-you-get-close-to-your-destination thing like Jack did, but they found their way to the Make Way for Ducklings.

“Home sweet home,” Alex murmured. “Let’s go find us a nice bridge to camp under. Think we should find Blitz and Hearth and let them know I haven’t killed you yet?”

“The fact that you added yet to the end of that sentence.”

“Hey, I’m looking forward to all the centuries of decapitations.”

“You sound like a sociopath.”

Alex gave him a look.

“A very attractive sociopath,” he amended.

Alex closed her eyes with a slight smile on her face. “Your cousin’s right. You are a butt.”

“An attractive butt?” Magnus yelped as Alex shoved him. “Hey! Alex!”

“A sarcastic butt,” Alex said.

The next morning was Christmas. Not that either of them were going to be doing much to celebrate.

“Merry Christmas,” Magnus yawned. “Happy Hanukkah. Yuletide. Random day in December. Whatever.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Merry Christmas, Magnus.”

They spent the day wandering around Boston. If he didn’t know any better, Magnus might have thought they were just a normal couple having a normal Christmas. In reality, they were a couple of homeless Norse demigods just trying to remain inconspicuous and alive. Just until they could go off galavanting around the Nine Realms, saving the world. You know, the usual.

They stopped by Fadlan’s Falafels. Abdel Fadlan—may all the gods bless that man—gave them some food.

“This is the best falafel I’ve ever had,” Magnus said through a mouthful of food.

Alex was eating his falafel much more neatly. “You say that every time we get falafel.”

“This is the first time I’ve had falafel in over a month, Alex,” Magnus said. “It’s perfection.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to dump me for your falafel?”

“I love falafel,” Magnus said. “But you’re way better.” He swallowed a large chunk of falafel. “Sorry. Confession alert.”

A smile stretched across Alex’s face. His cheeks were tinted pink. “I’m actually curious if random confessions are some requirement you’re fulfilling or if it’s the falafel that’s inducing it.”

“Probably the falafel. Guess I should keep eating it. All the time.”

Alex laughed.

Now two days after they had arrived in Boston, Magnus was getting worried. They hadn’t seen any sign of Blitz or Hearth. It was concerning since that probably meant they were chatting it up with Mimir about how Magnus had disappeared in November with a child of Loki and they hadn’t been able to follow or find him.

So here Alex and he were, attempting to find some homeless acquaintances that might know the whereabouts of the dwarf and the elf. Not that they called them that.

“Maybe they did some weird magic stuff to track us,” Alex mused. “They might be in Colorado right now.”

“If that’s the case, I’m not looking forward to that conversation,” Magnus said, making a face.

Alex grinned. “Magnus, how did you go from Colorado to DC?” she asked, mimicking Blitz’s voice.

“Golly gee, Blitz, I don’t know,” Magnus said sarcastically. “How did you know I went from Colorado to DC?”

“It’s going to be so funny to see them try to ask you about this.”

“Magnus Chase and Alex Fierro?” someone asked.

Magnus jumped. Neither he nor Alex had used last names. He was just Magnus and Alex was just Alex. The same reason Blitzen was just Blitz and Hearthstone was just Hearth. The only people that would use their real names would be people from Camp Half-Blood or police and social workers that were looking specifically for them.

Magnus and Alex turned around to see a young girl walking towards them. She wasn’t dressed in whatever clothes she could get. This girl was clearly not one of the few homeless friends they had made during their time on the streets of Boston.

“Who’s asking?” Alex called.

As she got closer, Magnus could make out the green scarf wrapped around the girl’s head. The signature green hijab of…

“I’m Samirah al-Abbas,” the girl said. “I think we need to talk.”

Magnus closed his eyes. Great. Just great .

Looking back on it, he shouldn’t have closed his eyes. Because the next thing he knew, something hard hit the back of his head and Alex shouted his name.

Magnus woke up with a pounding headache. He was laying down on the cold, hard ground inside what looked like a cell. He sat up.

Stars swam in his eyes. He groaned.

“Magnus?” Alex called. “That you?”

“Alex? What happened?” Magnus slurred.

God, his head felt like he had just smashed it into Thalia’s pine tree repeatedly and then had the Hunter herself take a few swings at him.

“Well, Samirah knocked you out,” Alex said bitterly. “I tried to fight her off, but apparently, she had no reservations about hurting me. Anyway, we ended up… here.”

Magnus looked around for Alex, but he didn’t see her anywhere. She must have been put in a different cell.

“Why would Samirah kidnap us?”

“Who knows,” Alex said. “All I know is—”

“I didn’t mean to kidnap you,” someone said quietly. “I… I’m so sorry.”

A girl stood outside Magnus’s cell door. Samirah al-Abbas. Her eyes were wet and she looked sorrowful.

“He made me do it,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Samirah!” a man snapped. “Away from the cells.”

Sam jumped. She backed away obediently.

“Mother,” Magnus heard Alex growl.

A man came to stand opposite the cell Magnus was in though he was looking off to the right. Alex must be in the cell next to him. The man had a scarred face and reddish brown hair. A smirk was present on his scarred lips.

“Hello, Alex, sweetheart,” Loki said. He turned to look at Magnus. “Hello, Magnus. Good to see you again.”

Chapter Text

LOKI’S SMILE WAS MORE TWISTED THAN A CURLY FRY and more venomous than a snake’s bite.

“You killed my mom!” Magnus shouted.

Loki sighed. “Yes, yes. That was unfortunate. But she wouldn’t give me what I wanted to know, Magnus. I’m looking for your father’s sword.”

“My father’s sword?” Magnus repeated, hoping his voice reflected the right amount of anger, fear, and curiosity to convince Loki that he didn’t know what the god was talking about. “What does my father have to do with a sword?”

“Dear Alex didn’t tell you then?” Loki tisked. “What a shame. Well, Magnus, it’s quite simple really. You’re descended from a god. The god Frey to be exact. And Frey used to be the owner of a sword. I’m looking for it.”

Jack buzzed angrily against Magnus’s chest. Magnus prayed that Loki couldn’t hear it or sense it somehow.

Jack, please, he thought. I can’t let him know I have you .

The sword stopped buzzing.

Loki’s eyes studied Magnus carefully. “You had in your possession a bronze dagger. I have that now of course. It wouldn’t do you much good here. The blade though…” he trailed off. “If I’m not mistaken, the design is Greek, yes? And the metal… Celestial bronze?” He shook his head, chuckling. “Is that why I had trouble finding you, Alex? You were hiding out with the Greeks?”

“Better than seeing your ugly face,” Alex snarled.

“Is that any way to treat your mother?”

“Is this any way to treat your daughter?”

Magnus could almost see the defiant look Alex was probably giving Loki. Her heterochromatic eyes, hard and piercing. He almost lost it as he thought about the very real possibility of never seeing that look in person again.

Loki turned back to Magnus. “Magnus, when I visited your mother, I was hoping to find you. You at least would have been more helpful than she was. I’m looking for your father’s sword, the Sword of Summer. Sumarbrander as it is called. Now, this sword can open rifts between the Nine Realms.” He smiled. “In combination with a son of the god of summer, well, those rifts are easily navigated and manipulated. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Not really,” Magnus said.

“There’s been a surge in rifts within the past few months,” Loki said, ignoring Magnus. “Which means, either some god decided it would be fun to climb the World Tree rather than use the Bifrost, or someone is using Sumarbrander to open rifts. I know the sword has been found, but I still do not know who has it. Which leads me to you.”

“Yeah? Well, hate to break it to you, but I don’t have any summer swords,” Magnus snapped. “Just Gátt.”

Loki blinked. “Gátt?”

“My dagger?” Magnus said pointedly. “According to Alex, gátt means portal. I used it to open one of those rifts you were talking about.”

Magnus regretted every word he said as soon as he said it.

“So you do not need Sumarbrander to open a portal,” Loki asked, eyes gleaming.

“That’s not what I said,” Magnus said quickly.

Loki held up a hand. “Yes, that’s exactly what you said. Hmm, well, Samirah and I must be off. She’s a Valkyrie, you know. I can’t have anyone missing her. Alex dear, perhaps you might be let out if you stop resisting.”

“Never,” Alex hissed.

“Come, Samirah,” Loki called, walking away.

Sam trailed behind her father miserably. The sound of doors opening and shutting echoed.

Magnus waited what felt like hours before speaking. “We have to get out of here.”

“You think?” Alex muttered.

“We can’t let him find that sword,” Magnus said. “The longer we stay here, the easier it will be for him to find it. If we get out, we can stop him or hold him off long enough.”

“How are we supposed to get out of here?” Alex wondered.

Magnus stared at the wall he imagined Alex on the other side of. “I don’t know.”

Magnus shook himself out of the memories of the day Loki captured them. They’d escaped once, but that hadn’t lasted very long. It had also probably cost Magnus a lot more than he was willing to admit.

He reached up to touch the pendant around his neck, but his fingers only touched the fabric of his shirt. Even after however many months it had been, he still wasn’t used to the empty feeling around his neck.

“Alex?” he asked in the silence of the prison.

“Maggie,” Alex replied.

“Would you kill me if I made one of those random confessions right now?”

Alex didn’t answer for a while. She went still in her cell, or at least, Magnus thought she was still. It was kind of hard to tell when you couldn’t actually see the other person.

“Maybe not,” she finally answered. “Not like I could reach you to kill you. You can go off on a rant about how much you hate me for all I care.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Obviously.”

“The opposite of hate, really.”

“Magnus—”

“I really like you, Alex,” Magnus said. His heart was pounding and his palms were sweaty. “And maybe it’s the situation making me say this, but I feel like I’ve had as much time to think about this as you had to think about us.” He swallowed. “I love you, Alex. And I really want to see you again.” He blinked back tears he didn’t even know he had and drew in a shaky breath.

“Dammit, Magnus,” Alex whispered.

Something smacked against concrete. Magnus guessed it was Alex’s hand since he didn’t really know why Sam would be hitting the walls or floor.

“Why do you always have to be so sappy?” She sounded like she was crying. Or at least close to it.

“I mean it.”

“I know,” Alex said. “I… why me, Magnus? Why pick me?”

Magnus thought back to the conversation they’d had months ago in the middle of the Junkyard of the Gods.

“Whatever he told you isn’t true,” Magnus said.

“I know,” Alex snapped, voice cracking slightly.

Magnus tentatively reached for her hand. Alex let him take it. He squeezed her hand reassuringly.

“We should get started looking for clues or whatever,” Alex said.

“Yeah,” Magnus said, pulling Alex to her feet. “Just don’t touch anything. The last time I was here, a statue attacked us when Bianca took something. She died trying to stop it.”

They went past three mounds of godly trash before Alex stopped, forcing Magnus to come to a halt.

“Alex—”

“I really like you, you know?”

“Y-yeah. I know that. I like you too. A lot.”

Alex nodded. “Just… just making sure.”

He remembered later how he told Alex: “Anyone would be lucky to even just be your friend.”

“Magnus?”

“I told you,” he said. “Anyone would be lucky to even just be your friend. You… I don’t know, Alex. Ever since day one, there’s always been something about you. You’re beautiful and handsome and overall amazing. You’re witty and sarcastic like me, and…” he shifted awkwardly even though Alex couldn’t see him. “I’m not really good with emotions, but… being around you makes me feel… happy.”

“Gods, Magnus. I’m not sure if I want to kill you or kiss you.”

“The second one please?”

Alex laughed. The sound reverberated through the cells. For a few moments, it almost seemed like things were back to normal.

“Magnus,” she said when she was done laughing.

“Yeah?”

Alex hesitated. “I love you too.”

The situation, if you could even call it that, was definitely par for the course in Magnus’s downhill life spiral, but he thought that maybe for a second, that hill had leveled out.

Chapter Text

AS HE MARCHED TO THE WAR GAMES, Frank replayed the day in his mind. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to death.

That morning on sentry duty, before Percy showed up, Frank had almost told Hazel his secret. The two of them had been standing for hours in the chilly fog, watching the commuter traffic on Highway 24. Hazel had been complaining about the cold.

“I’d give anything to be warm,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I wish we had a fire.”

Even with her armor on, she looked great. Frank liked the way her cinnamon-toast–colored hair curled around the edges of her helmet, and the way her chin dimpled when she frowned. She was tiny compared to Frank, which made him feel like a big clumsy ox. He wanted to put his arms around her to warm her up, but he’d never do that. She’d probably hit him, and he’d lose the only friend he had at camp.

I could make a really impressive fire, he thought. Of course, it would only burn for a few minutes, and then I’d die…

It was scary that he even considered it. Hazel had that effect on him. Whenever she wanted something, he had the irrational urge to provide it. He wanted to be the old-fashioned knight riding to her rescue, which was stupid, as she was way more capable at everything than he was.

He imagined what his grandmother would say: Frank Zhang riding to the rescue? Ha! He’d fall off his horse and break his neck.

Hard to believe it had been only six weeks since he’d left his grandmother’s house—six weeks since his mom’s funeral.

Everything had happened since then: wolves arriving at his grandmother’s door, the journey to Camp Jupiter, the weeks he’d spent in the Fifth Cohort trying not to be a complete failure. Through it all, he’d kept the half-burned piece of firewood wrapped in a cloth in his coat pocket.

Keep it close, his grandmother had warned. As long as it is safe, you are safe.

The problem was that it burned so easily. He remembered the trip south from Vancouver. When the temperature dropped below freezing near Mount Hood, Frank had brought out the piece of tinder and held it in his hands, imagining how nice it would be to have some fire. Immediately, the charred end blazed with a searing yellow flame. It lit up the night and warmed Frank to the bone, but he could feel his life slipping away, as if he were being consumed rather than the wood. He’d thrust the flame into a snowbank. For a horrible moment it kept burning. When it finally went out, Frank got his panic under control. He wrapped the piece of wood and put it back in his coat pocket, determined not to bring it out again. But he couldn’t forget it.

It was as though someone had said, “Whatever you do, don’t think about that stick bursting into flame!”

So of course, that’s all he thought about.

On sentry duty with Hazel, he would try to take his mind off it. He loved spending time with her. He asked her about growing up in New Orleans, but she got edgy at his questions, so they made small talk instead. Just for fun, they tried to speak French to each other. Hazel had some Creole blood on her mother’s side. Frank had taken French in school. Neither of them was very fluent, and Louisiana French was so different from Canadian French it was almost impossible to converse. When Frank asked Hazel how her beef was feeling today, and she replied that his shoe was green, they decided to give up.

Then Hazel’s brother Nico had showed up.

Nico di Angelo was this really pale Italian kid that only stayed at Camp Jupiter for short and random amounts of time. He was a son of Pluto, but also the Ambassador to Pluto. Naturally, this led to most of the legionnaires avoiding him, but Frank didn’t really mind him. They had discovered that they both liked Mythomagic, though Nico claimed he didn’t play anymore—a lie because when Frank had played against Nico the first time, the son of Pluto won in minutes. That was the most animated Frank had ever seen Nico get.

Anyway, after Nico had joined them, Frank stopped trying to talk with Hazel.

Nico had this strange effect on Frank. Whenever Frank was with Hazel and Nico was there, Nico’s eyes would glitter challengingly like he was daring—or expecting—Frank to ask Hazel out. He was like that a lot. Like he knew more than he should.

That kind of made Frank nervous. He had a sneaking suspicion that Nico probably had an idea what his secret was. Nico had never said anything, but there were some days when Frank just knew that Nico knew.

Fortunately, Frank didn’t have too long to dwell on this because that’s when Percy Jackson arrived.

Sure, Frank had seen kids fight monsters before. He’d fought plenty of them himself on his journey from Vancouver. But he’d never seen gorgons. He’d never seen a goddess in person. And the way Percy had controlled the Little Tiber—wow. Frank wished he had powers like that.

He could still feel the gorgons’ claws pressing into his arms and smell their snaky breath—like dead mice and poison. If not for Percy, those grotesque hags would have carried him away. He’d be a pile of bones in the back of a Bargain Mart by now.

After the incident at the river, Reyna had sent Frank to the armory, which had given him way too much time to think.

While he polished swords, he remembered Juno, warning them to unleash Death. Unfortunately Frank had a pretty good idea of what the goddess meant. He had tried to hide his shock when Juno had appeared, but she looked exactly like his grandmother had described—right down to the goatskin cape.

She chose your path years ago , Grandmother had told him. And it will not be easy.

Frank glanced at his bow in the corner of the armory. He’d feel better if Apollo would claim him as a son. Frank had been sure his godly parent would speak up on his sixteenth birthday, which had passed two weeks ago.

Sixteen was an important milestone for Romans. It had been Frank’s first birthday at camp. But nothing had happened. Now Frank hoped he would be claimed on the Feast of Fortuna, though from what Juno had said, they’d be in a battle for their lives on that day.

His father had to be Apollo. Archery was the only thing Frank was good at. Years ago, his mother had told him that their family name, Zhang, meant “master of bows” in Chinese. That must have been a hint about his dad.

Frank put down his polishing rags. He looked at the ceiling. “Please, Apollo, if you’re my dad, tell me. I want to be an archer like you.”

“No, you don’t,” a voice grumbled.

Frank jumped out of his seat. Vitellius, the Fifth Cohort’s Lar, was shimmering behind him. His full name was Gaius Vitellius Reticulus, but the other cohorts called him Vitellius the Ridiculous.

“Hazel Levesque sent me to check on you,” Vitellius said, hiking up his sword belt. “Good thing, too. Look at the state of this armor!”

Vitellius wasn’t one to talk. His toga was baggy, his tunic barely fit over his belly, and his scabbard fell off his belt every three seconds, but Frank didn’t bother pointing that out.

“As for archers,” the ghost said, “they’re wimps! Back in my day, archery was a job for barbarians. A good Roman should be in the fray, gutting his enemy with a spear and sword like a civilized man! That’s how we did it in the Punic Wars. Roman up, boy!”

Frank sighed. “I thought you were in Caesar’s army.”

“I was!”

“Vitellius, Caesar was hundreds of years after the Punic Wars. You couldn’t have been alive that long.”

“Questioning my honor?” Vitellius looked so mad, his purple aura glowed. He drew his ghostly gladius and yelled, “Take that!” He ran the sword, which was about as deadly as a laser pointer, through Frank’s chest a few times.

“Ouch,” Frank said, just to be nice.

Vitellius looked satisfied and put his sword away. “Perhaps you’ll think twice about doubting your elders next time! Now… it was your sixteenth birthday recently, wasn’t it?”

Frank nodded. He wasn’t sure how Vitellius knew this, since Frank hadn’t told anyone except Hazel, but ghosts had ways of finding out secrets. Eavesdropping while invisible was probably one of them.

“So that’s why you’re such a grumpy gladiator,” the Lar said. “Understandable. The sixteenth birthday is your day of manhood! Your godly parent should have claimed you, no doubt about it, even if with only a small omen. Perhaps he thought you were younger. You look younger, you know, with that pudgy baby face.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Frank muttered.

“Yes, I remember my sixteenth,” Vitellius said happily. “Wonderful omen! A chicken in my underpants.”

“Excuse me?”

Vitellius puffed up with pride. “That’s right! I was at the river changing my clothes for my Liberalia. Rite of passage into manhood, you know. We did things properly back then. I’d taken off my childhood toga and was washing up to don the adult one. Suddenly, a pure-white chicken ran out of nowhere, dove into my loincloth, and ran off with it. I wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

“That’s good,” Frank said. “And can I just say: Too much information?”

“Mm.” Vitellius wasn’t listening. “That was the sign I was descended from Aesculapius, the god of medicine. I took my cognomen, my third name, Reticulus, because it meant undergarment, to remind me of the blessed day when a chicken stole my loincloth.”

“So… your name means Mr. Underwear?”

“Praise the gods! I became a surgeon in the legion, and the rest is history.” He spread his arms generously. “Don’t give up, boy. Maybe your father is running late. Most omens are not as dramatic as a chicken, of course. I knew a fellow once who got a dung beetle—”

“Thanks, Vitellius,” Frank said. “But I have to finish polishing this armor—”

“And the gorgon’s blood?”

Frank froze. He hadn’t told anyone about that. As far as he knew, only Percy had seen him pocket the vials at the river, and they hadn’t had a chance to talk about it.

“Come now,” Vitellius chided. “I’m a healer. I know the legends about gorgon’s blood. Show me the vials.”

Reluctantly, Frank brought out the two ceramic flasks he’d retrieved from the Little Tiber. Spoils of war were often left behind when a monster dissolved—sometimes a tooth, or a weapon, or even the monster’s entire head. Frank had known what the two vials were immediately. By tradition they belonged to Percy, who had killed the gorgons, but Frank couldn’t help thinking, What if I could use them?

“Yes.” Vitellius studied the vials approvingly. “Blood taken from the right side of a gorgon’s body can cure any disease, even bring the dead back to life. The goddess Minerva once gave a vial of it to my divine ancestor, Aesculapius. But blood taken from the left side of a gorgon—instantly fatal. So, which is which?”

Frank looked down at the vials. “I don’t know. They’re identical.”

“Ha! But you’re hoping the right vial could solve your problem with the burned stick, eh? Maybe break your curse?”

Frank was so stunned, he couldn’t talk.

“Oh, don’t worry, boy.” The ghost chuckled. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m a Lar, a protector of the cohort! I wouldn’t do anything to endanger you.”

“You stabbed me through the chest with your sword.”

“Trust me, boy! I have sympathy for you, carrying the curse of that Argonaut.”

“The… what?”

Vitellius waved away the question. “Don’t be modest. You’ve got ancient roots. Greek as well as Roman. It’s no wonder Juno—” He tilted his head, as if listening to a voice from above. His face went slack. His entire aura flickered green. “But I’ve said enough! At any rate, I’ll let you work out who gets the gorgon’s blood. I suppose that newcomer Percy could use it too, with his memory problem.”

Frank wondered what Vitellius had been about to say and what had made him so scared, but he got the feeling that for once Vitellius was going to keep his mouth shut.

He looked down at the two vials. He hadn’t even thought of Percy’s needing them. He felt guilty that he’d been intending to use the blood for himself. “Yeah. Of course. He should have it.”

“Ah, but if you want my advice…” Vitellius looked up nervously again. “You should both wait on that gorgon blood. If my sources are right, you’re going to need it on your quest.”

“Quest?”

The doors of the armory flew open.

Reyna stormed in with her metal greyhounds. Vitellius vanished. He might have liked chickens, but he did not like the praetor’s dogs.

“Frank.” Reyna looked troubled. “That’s enough with the armor. Go find Hazel and Nico. Get Percy Jackson down here. He’s been up there too long. I don’t want Octavian…” She hesitated. “Just get Percy down here.”

So Frank had run all the way to Temple Hill. Thought to be completely honest, if he was Reyna, he’d be more worried about what Nico could do to Octavian if left unchecked than what Octavian could do to Percy.

Walking back, Percy had asked tons of questions about Hazel’s brother, Nico, but Frank didn’t know that much.

“He’s okay,” Frank said. “He’s not like Hazel—”

“How do you mean?” Percy asked.

“Oh, um…” Frank coughed. He’d meant that Hazel was better looking and nicer, but he decided not to say that. “Nico is kind of mysterious. He makes everybody else nervous, being the son of Pluto, and all.”

“But not you?”

Frank shrugged. “Pluto’s cool. It’s not his fault he runs the Underworld. He just got bad luck when the gods were dividing up the world, you know? Jupiter got the sky, Neptune got the sea, and Pluto got the shaft.”

“Death doesn’t scare you?”

Frank almost wanted to laugh. Not at all! Got a match?

Instead he said, “Back in the old times, like the Greek times, when Pluto was called Hades, he was more of a death god. When he became Roman, he got more… I don’t know, respectable. He became the god of wealth, too. Everything under the earth belongs to him. So I don’t think of him as being really scary.”

Percy scratched his head. “How does a god become Roman? If he’s Greek, wouldn’t he stay Greek?”

Frank walked a few steps, thinking about that. Vitellius would’ve given Percy an hourlong lecture on the subject, probably with a PowerPoint presentation, but Frank took his best shot. “The way Romans saw it, they adopted the Greek stuff and perfected it.”

Percy made a sour face. “Perfected it? Like there was something wrong with it?”

Frank remembered what Vitellius had said: You’ve got ancient roots. Greek as well as Roman. His grandmother had said something similar.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Rome was more successful than Greece. They made this huge empire. The gods became a bigger deal in Roman times—more powerful and widely known. That’s why they’re still around today. So many civilizations base themselves on Rome. The gods changed to Roman because that’s where the center of power was. Jupiter was… well, more responsible as a Roman god than he had been when he was Zeus. Mars became a lot more important and disciplined.”

“And Juno became a hippie bag lady,” Percy noted. “So you’re saying the old Greek gods—they just changed permanently to Roman? There’s nothing left of the Greek?”

“Uh…” Frank looked around to make sure there were no campers or Lares nearby, but the main gates were still a hundred yards away. “That’s a sensitive topic. Some people say Greek influence is still around, like it’s still a part of the gods’ personalities. I’ve heard stories of demigods occasionally leaving Camp Jupiter. They reject Roman training and try to follow the older Greek style—like being solo heroes instead of working as a team the way the legion does. And back in the ancient days, when Rome fell, the eastern half of the empire survived—the Greek half.”

Percy frowned. “I’m sure the Greeks worked together.”

“Maybe,” Frank said. “Anyway, the eastern half was called Byzantium." Frank liked saying that word. It sounded cool. “The eastern empire lasted another thousand years, but it was always more Greek than Roman. For those of us who follow the Roman way, it’s kind of a sore subject. That’s why, whatever country we settle in, Camp Jupiter is always in the west—the Roman part of the territory. The east is considered bad luck.”

“Huh.” Percy frowned.

Frank couldn’t blame him for feeling confused. The Greek/Roman stuff gave him a headache, too.

They reached the gates.

“I’ll take you to the baths to get you cleaned up,” Frank said. “But first… about those vials I found at the river.”

“Gorgon’s blood,” Percy said. “One vial heals. One is deadly poison.”

Frank’s eyes widened. “You know about that? Listen, I wasn’t going to keep them. I just—”

“I know why you did it, Frank.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Percy smiled. “If I’d come into camp carrying a vial of poison, that would’ve looked bad. You were trying to protect me.”

“Oh… right.” Frank wiped the sweat off his palms. “But if we could figure out which vial was which, it might heal your memory.”

Percy’s smile faded. He gazed across the hills. “Maybe… I guess. But you should hang on to those vials for now. There’s a battle coming. We may need them to save lives.”

Frank stared at him, a little bit in awe. Percy had a chance to get his memory back, and he was willing to wait in case someone else needed the vial more? Romans were supposed to be unselfish and help their comrades, but Frank wasn’t sure anyone else at camp would have made that choice.

“So you don’t remember anything?” Frank asked. “Family, friends?”

Percy fingered the clay beads around his neck. “Only glimpses. Murky stuff. A girlfriend… I thought she’d be at camp.” He looked at Frank carefully, as if making a decision. “Her name was Annabeth. You don’t know her, do you?”

Frank shook his head. “I know everybody at camp, but no Annabeth. What about your family? Is your mom mortal?”

“I guess so… she’s probably worried out of her mind. Does your mom get to see you much?”

Frank stopped at the bathhouse entrance. He grabbed some towels from the supply shed. “She died.”

Percy knit his brow. “How?”

Usually Frank would lie. He’d say an accident and shut off the conversation. Otherwise his emotions got out of control. He couldn’t cry at Camp Jupiter. He couldn’t show weakness. But with Percy, Frank found it easier to talk.

“She died in the war,” he said. “Afghanistan.”

“She was in the military?”

“Canadian. Yeah.”

“Canada? I didn’t know—”

“Most Americans don’t.” Frank sighed. “But yeah, Canada has troops there. My mom was a captain. She was one of the first women to die in combat. She saved some soldiers who were pinned down by enemy fire. She… she didn’t make it. The funeral was right before I came down here.”

Percy nodded. He didn’t ask for more details, which Frank appreciated. He didn’t say he was sorry, or make any of the well-meaning comments Frank always hated: Oh, you poor guy. That must be so hard on you. You have my deepest condolences.

It was like Percy had faced death before, like he knew about grief. What mattered was listening. You didn’t need to say you were sorry. The only thing that helped was moving on—moving forward.

“How about you show me the baths now?” Percy suggested. “I’m filthy.”

Frank managed a smile. “Yeah. You kind of are.”

As they walked into the steam room, Frank thought of his grandmother, his mom, and his cursed childhood, thanks to Juno and her piece of firewood. He almost wished he could forget his past, the way Percy had.

Chapter Text

AS THEY WALKED TO WAR GAMES, Frank couldn't help but think about everything his grandmother said about the stick in his pocket or what it meant that Juno had appeared at Camp. Was he about to die? He hoped not. He hadn’t brought his family any honor yet—that was for sure. Maybe Apollo would claim him today and explain his powers and gifts.

Once they got out of camp, the Fifth Cohort formed two lines behind their centurions, Dakota and Gwen. They marched north, skirting the edge of the city, and headed to the Field of Mars—the largest, flattest part of the valley. The grass was cropped short by all the unicorns, bulls, and homeless fauns that grazed here. The earth was pitted with explosion craters and scarred with trenches from past games. At the north end of the field stood their target. The engineers had built a stone fortress with an iron portcullis, guard towers, scorpion ballistae, water cannons, and no doubt many other nasty surprises for the defenders to use.

“They did a good job today,” Hazel noted. “That’s bad for us.”

“Wait,” Percy said. “You’re telling me that fortress was built today?”

Hazel grinned. “Legionnaires are trained to build. If we had to, we could break down the entire camp and rebuild it somewhere else. Take maybe three or four days, but we could do it.”

“Let’s not,” Percy said. “So you attack a different fort every night?”

“Not every night,” Frank said. “We have different training exercises. Sometimes death ball—um, which is like paint-ball, except with… you know, poison and acid and fire balls. Sometimes we do chariots and gladiator competitions, sometimes war games.”

“Death ball,” Percy repeated. “Like, dodgeball to the death?”

Frank gave him a strange look. “Um, kind of, I guess. But… it’s mostly just more dangerous than deadly.”

Hazel pointed at the fort. “Somewhere inside, the First and Second Cohorts are keeping their banners. Our job is to get inside and capture them without getting slaughtered. We do that, we win.”

Percy’s eyes lit up. “Like capture-the-flag. I think I like capture-the-flag.”

Frank laughed. “Yeah, well… it’s harder than it sounds. We have to get past those scorpions and water cannons on the walls, fight through the inside of the fortress, find the banners, and defeat the guards, all while protecting our own banners and troops from capture. And our cohort is in competition with the other two attacking cohorts. We sort of work together, but not really. The cohort that captures the banners gets all the glory.”

Percy stumbled, trying to keep time with the left-right marching rhythm. Frank sympathized. He’d spent his first two weeks falling down.

“So why are we practicing this, anyway?” Percy asked. “Do you guys spend a lot of time laying siege to fortified cities?”

“Teamwork,” Hazel said. “Quick thinking. Tactics. Battle skills. You’d be surprised what you can learn in the war games.”

“Like who will stab you in the back,” Frank said.

“Especially that,” Hazel agreed.

They marched to the center of the Field of Mars and formed ranks. The Third and Fourth Cohorts assembled as far as possible from the Fifth. The centurions for the attacking side gathered for a conference. In the sky above them, Reyna circled on her pegasus, Scipio, ready to play referee.

Half a dozen giant eagles flew in formation behind her—prepared for ambulance airlift duty if necessary. The only person not participating in the game was Nico di Angelo, “Pluto’s ambassador,” who had climbed an observation tower about a hundred yards from the fort and would be watching with binoculars.

Frank propped his pilum against his shield and checked Percy’s armor. Every strap was correct. Every piece of armor was properly adjusted.

“You did it right,” he said in amazement. “Percy, you must’ve done war games before.”

Percy frowned. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know.”

The only thing that wasn’t regulation was Percy’s glowing bronze sword—not Imperial gold, and not a gladius. The blade was leaf-shaped, and the writing on the hilt was Greek. Looking at it made Frank uneasy.

Percy frowned. “We can use real weapons, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed. “For sure. I’ve just never seen a sword like that.”

“What if I hurt somebody?”

“We heal them,” Frank said. “Or try to. The legion medics are pretty good with ambrosia and nectar, and unicorn draught.”

“No one dies,” Hazel said. “Well, not usually. And if they do—”

Frank imitated the voice of Vitellius: “They’re wimps! Back in my day, we died all the time, and we liked it!”

Hazel laughed. “Just stay with us, Percy. Chances are we’ll get the worst duty and get eliminated early. They’ll throw us at the walls first to soften up the defenses. Then the Third and Fourth Cohorts will march in and get the honors, if they can even breach the fort.”

Horns blew. Dakota and Gwen walked back from the officers’ conference, looking grim.

“All right, here’s the plan!” Dakota took a quick swig of Kool-Aid from his travel flask. “They’re throwing us at the walls first to soften up the defenses.”

The whole cohort groaned.

“I know, I know,” Gwen said. “But maybe this time we’ll have some luck!”

Leave it to Gwen to be the optimist. Everybody liked her because she took care of her people and tried to keep their spirits up. She could even control Dakota during his hyperactive bug-juice fits. Still, the campers grumbled and complained. Nobody believed in luck for the Fifth.

“First line with Dakota,” Gwen said. “Lock shields and advance in turtle formation to the main gates. Try to stay in one piece. Draw their fire. Second line—” Gwen turned to Frank’s row without much enthusiasm. “You seventeen, from Bobby over, take charge of the elephant and the scaling ladders. Try a flanking attack on the western wall. Maybe we can spread the defenders too thin. Frank, Hazel, Percy… well, just do whatever. Show Percy the ropes. Try to keep him alive.” She turned back to the whole cohort. “If anybody gets over the wall first, I’ll make sure you get the Mural Crown. Victory for the Fifth!”

The cohort cheered half heartedly and broke ranks.

Percy frowned. “‘Do whatever?’”

“Yeah,” Hazel sighed. “Big vote of confidence.”

“What’s the Mural Crown?” he asked.

“Military medal,” Frank said. He’d been forced to memorize all the possible awards. “Big honor for the first soldier to breach an enemy fort. You’ll notice nobody in the Fifth is wearing one. Usually we don’t even get into the fort because we’re burning or drowning or…” He faltered, and looked at Percy. “Water cannons.”

“What?” Percy asked.

“The cannons on the walls,” Frank said, “they draw water from the aqueduct. There’s a pump system—heck, I don’t know how they work, but they’re under a lot of pressure. If you could control them, like you controlled the river—”

“Frank!” Hazel beamed. “That’s brilliant!”

Percy didn’t look so sure. “I don’t know how I did that at the river. I’m not sure I can control the cannons from this far away.”

“We’ll get you closer.” Frank pointed to the eastern wall of the fort, where the Fifth Cohort wouldn’t be attacking. “That’s where the defense will be weakest. They’ll never take three kids seriously. I think we can sneak up pretty close before they see us.”

“Sneak up how?” Percy asked.

Frank turned to Hazel. “Can you do that thing again?”

She punched him in the chest. “You said you wouldn’t tell anybody!”

Immediately Frank felt terrible. He’d gotten so caught up in the idea…

Hazel muttered under her breath. “Never mind. It’s fine. Percy, he’s talking about the trenches. The Field of Mars is riddled with tunnels from over the years. Some are collapsed, or buried deep, but a lot of them are still passable. I’m pretty good at finding them and using them. I can even collapse them if I have to.”

“Like you did with the gorgons,” Percy said, “to slow them down.”

Frank nodded approvingly. “I told you Pluto was cool. He’s the god of everything under the earth. Hazel can find caves, tunnels, trapdoors—”

“And it was our secret,” she grumbled.

Frank felt himself blushing. “Yeah, sorry. But if we can get close—”

“And if I can knock out the water cannons…” Percy nodded, like he was warming to the idea. “What do we do then?”

Frank checked his quiver. He always stocked up on special arrows. He’d never gotten to use them before, but maybe tonight was the night. Maybe he could finally do something good enough to get Apollo’s attention.

“The rest is up to me,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

FRANK HAD NEVER FELT SO SURE of anything, which made him nervous. Nothing he planned ever went right. He always managed to break, ruin, burn, sit on, or knock over something important. Yet he knew this strategy would work.

Hazel found them a tunnel with no problem. In fact, Frank had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t just find tunnels. It was as though tunnels manufactured themselves to suit her needs. Passages that had been filled in years ago suddenly unfilled, changing direction to lead Hazel where she wanted to go. They crept along by the light of Percy’s glowing sword, Riptide. Above, they heard the sounds of battle—kids shouting, Hannibal the elephant bellowing with glee, scorpion bolts exploding, and water cannons firing. The tunnel shook. Dirt rained down on them.

Frank slipped his hand inside his armor. The piece of wood was still safe and secure in his coat pocket, though one good shot from a scorpion might set his lifeline on fire…

Bad Frank, he chided himself. Fire is the “F-word.” Don’t think about it.

“There’s an opening just ahead,” Hazel announced. “We’ll come up ten feet from the east wall.”

“How can you tell?” Percy asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m sure.”

“Could we tunnel straight under the wall?” Frank wondered.

“No,” Hazel said. “The engineers were smart. They built the walls on old foundations that go down to bedrock. And don’t ask how I know. I just do.”

Frank stumbled over something and cursed. Percy brought this sword around for more light. The thing Frank had tripped on was gleaming silver. He crouched down.

“Don’t touch it!” Hazel said.

Frank’s hand stopped a few inches from the chunk of metal. It looked like a giant Hershey’s Kiss, about the size of his fist.

“It’s massive,” he said. “Silver?”

“Platinum.” Hazel sounded scared out of her wits. “It’ll go away in a second. Please don’t touch it. It’s dangerous.”

Frank didn’t understand how a lump of metal could be dangerous, but he took Hazel seriously. As they watched, the chunk of platinum sank into the ground.

He stared at Hazel. “How did you know?”

In the light of Percy’s sword, Hazel looked as ghostly as a Lar. “I’ll explain later,” she promised.

It didn’t occur to Frank until later that Percy seemed unsurprised by Hazel’s ability.

Another explosion rocked the tunnel, and they forged ahead.

They popped out of a hole just where Hazel had predicted. In front of them, the fort’s east wall loomed. Off to their left, Frank could see the main line of the Fifth Cohort advancing in turtle formation, shields forming a shell over their heads and sides. They were trying to reach the main gates, but the defenders above pelted them with rocks and shot flaming bolts from the scorpions, blasting craters around their feet. A water cannon discharged with a jaw-rattling THRUM, and a jet of liquid carved a trench in the dirt right in front of the cohort.

Percy whistled. “That’s a lot of pressure, all right.”

The Third and Fourth Cohorts weren’t even advancing. They stood back and laughed, watching their “allies” get beat up. The defenders clustered on the wall above the gates, yelling insults at the tortoise formation as it staggered back and forth. War games had deteriorated into “beat up the Fifth.”

Frank’s vision went red with anger.

“Let’s shake things up.” He reached in his quiver and pulled out an arrow heavier than the rest. The iron tip was shaped like the nose cone of a rocket. An ultra thin gold rope trailed from the fletching. Shooting it accurately up the wall would take more force and skill than most archers could manage, but Frank had strong arms and good aim.

Maybe Apollo is watching, he thought hopefully.

“What does that do?” Percy asked. “Grappling hook?”

“It’s called a hydra arrow,” Frank said. “Can you knock out the water cannons?”

A defender appeared on the wall above them. “Hey!” he shouted to his buddies. “Check it out! More victims!”

“Percy,” Frank said, “now would be good.”

More kids came across the battlements to laugh at them. A few ran to the nearest water cannon and swung the barrel toward Frank.

Percy closed his eyes. He raised his hand.

Up on the wall, somebody yelled, “Open wide, losers!”

KA-BOOM!

The cannon exploded in a starburst of blue, green, and white. Defenders screamed as a watery shock wave flattened them against the battlements. Kids toppled over the walls but were snatched by giant eagles and carried to safety. Then the entire eastern wall shuddered as the explosion backed up through the pipelines. One after another, the water cannons on the battlements exploded. The scorpions’ fires were doused. Defenders scattered in confusion or were tossed through the air, giving the rescue eagles quite a workout. At the main gates, the Fifth Cohort forgot about their formation. Mystified, they lowered their shields and stared at the chaos.

Frank shot his arrow. It streaked upward, carrying its glittering rope. When it reached the top, the metal point fractured into a dozen lines that lashed out and wrapped around anything they could find—parts of the wall, a scorpion, a broken water cannon, and a couple of defending campers, who yelped and found themselves slammed against the battlements as anchors. From the main rope, handholds extended at two-foot intervals, making a ladder.

“Go!” Frank said.

Percy grinned. “You first, Frank. This is your party.”

Frank hesitated. Then he slung his bow on his back and began to climb. He was halfway up before the defenders recovered their senses enough to sound the alarm. Frank glanced back at Fifth Cohort’s main group. They were staring up at him, dumbfounded.

“Well?” Frank screamed. “Attack!”

Gwen was the first to unfreeze. She grinned and repeated the order. A cheer went up from the battlefield. Hannibal the elephant trumpeted with happiness, but Frank couldn’t afford to watch. He clambered to the top of the wall, where three defenders were trying to hack down his rope ladder.

One good thing about being big, clumsy, and clad in metal: Frank was like a heavily armored bowling ball. He launched himself at the defenders, and they toppled like pins.

Frank got to his feet. He took command of the battlements, sweeping his pilum back and forth and knocking down defenders. Some shot arrows. Some tried to get under his guard with their swords, but Frank felt unstoppable. Then Hazel appeared next to him, swinging her big cavalry sword like she was born for battle.

Percy leaped onto the wall and raised Riptide. “Fun,” he said.

Together they cleared the defenders off the walls. Below them the gates broke.

Hannibal barreled into the fort, arrows and rocks bouncing harmlessly off his Kevlar armor. The Fifth Cohort charged in behind the elephant, and the battle went hand-to-hand.

Finally, from the edge of the Field of Mars, a battle cry went up. The Third and Fourth Cohorts ran to join the fight.

“A little late,” Hazel grumbled.

“We can’t let them get the banners,” Frank said.

“No,” Percy agreed. “Those are ours.”

No more talk was necessary. They moved like a team, as if the three of them had been working together for years. They rushed down the interior steps and into the enemy base.

Chapter Text

AFTER THAT, THE BATTLE WAS MAYHEM. Frank, Percy, and Hazel waded through the enemy, plowing down anyone who stood in their way. The First and Second Cohorts—pride of Camp Jupiter, a well-oiled, highly disciplined war machine—fell apart under the assault and the sheer novelty of being on the losing side.

Part of their problem was Percy. He fought like a demon, whirling through the defenders’ ranks in a completely unorthodox style, rolling under their feet, slashing with his sword instead of stabbing like a Roman would, whacking campers with the flat of his blade, and generally causing mass panic. Octavian screamed in a shrill voice—maybe ordering the First Cohort to stand their ground, maybe trying to sing soprano—but Percy put a stop to it. He somersaulted over a line of shields and slammed the butt of his sword into Octavian’s helmet. The centurion collapsed like a sock puppet. It looked like Percy relished in rendering the augur unconscious.

Frank shot arrows until his quiver was empty, using blunt-tipped missiles that wouldn’t kill but left some nasty bruises. He broke his pilum over a defender’s head, then reluctantly drew his gladius.

Meanwhile, Hazel climbed onto Hannibal’s back. She charged toward the center of the fort, grinning down at her friends. “Let’s go, slowpokes!”

Gods of Olympus, she’s beautiful, Frank thought.

They ran to the center of the base. The inner keep was virtually unguarded. Obviously the defenders never dreamed an assault would get this far. Hannibal busted down the huge doors. Inside, the First and Second Cohort standard-bearers were sitting around a table playing Mythomagic with cards and figurines. The cohort’s emblems were propped carelessly against one wall.

Hazel and Hannibal rode straight into the room, and the standard-bearers fell backward out of their chairs. Hannibal stepped on the table, and game pieces scattered.

By the time the rest of the cohort caught up with them, Percy and Frank had disarmed the enemies, grabbed the banners, and climbed onto Hannibal’s back with Hazel. They marched out of the keep triumphantly with the enemy colors.

The Fifth Cohort formed ranks around them. Together they paraded out of the fort, past stunned enemies and lines of equally mystified allies.

Reyna circled low overhead on her pegasus. “The game is won!” She sounded as if she were trying not to laugh. “Assemble for honors!”

Slowly the campers regrouped on the Field of Mars. Frank saw plenty of minor injuries—some burns, broken bones, black eyes, cuts and gashes, plus a lot of very interesting hairdos from fires and exploding water cannons—but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

He slid off the elephant. His comrades swarmed him, pounding him on the back and complimenting him. Frank wondered if he was dreaming. It was the best night of his life—until he saw Gwen.

“Help!” somebody yelled. A couple of campers rushed out of the fortress, carrying a girl on a stretcher. They set her down, and other kids started running over. Even from a distance, Frank could tell it was Gwen. She was in bad shape. She lay on her side on the stretcher with a pilum sticking out of her armor—almost like she was holding it between her chest and her arm, but there was too much blood.

Frank shook his head in disbelief. “No, no, no…” he muttered as he ran to her side.

The medics barked at everyone to stand back and give her air. Surprisingly, Nico di Angelo hurried over, murmuring under his breath with the healers. Frank had forgotten that Hazel mentioned her brother was friends with a doctor wannabe.

The whole legion fell silent as the healers worked—trying to get gauze and powdered unicorn horn under Gwen’s armor to stop the bleeding, trying to force some nectar into her mouth. Gwen didn’t move. Her face was ashen gray.

Finally one of the medics looked up at Reyna and shook his head.

For a moment, there was no sound except water from the ruined cannons trickling down the walls of the fort. Hannibal nuzzled Gwen’s hair with his trunk.

Reyna surveyed the campers from her pegasus. Her expression was as hard and dark as iron. “There will be an investigation. Whoever did this, you cost the legion a good officer. Honorable death is one thing, but this… ”

Frank wasn’t sure what she meant. Then he noticed the marks engraved in the wooden shaft of the pilum: CHT I LEGIO XII F. The weapon belonged to the First Cohort, and the point was sticking out the front of her armor. Gwen had been speared from behind—possibly after the game had ended.

Frank scanned the crowd for Octavian. The centurion was watching with more interest than concern, as if he were examining one of his stupid gutted teddy bears. He didn’t have a pilum.

Blood roared in Frank’s ears. He wanted to strangle Octavian with his bare hands, but at that moment, Gwen gasped.

Everyone stepped back. Gwen opened her eyes. The color came back to her face.

“Wh-what is it?” She blinked. “What’s everyone staring at?” She didn’t seem to notice the seven-foot harpoon sticking out through her chest.

Behind Frank, a medic whispered, “There’s no way. She was dead. She has to be dead.”

Gwen tried to sit up, but couldn’t. “There was a river, and a man asking…for a coin? I turned around and the exit door was open. So I just… I just left. I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

Everyone stared at her in horror. Nobody tried to help.

“Gwen.” Frank knelt next to her. “Don’t try to get up. Just close your eyes for a second, okay?”

“Why? What—”

“Just trust me.”

Gwen did what he asked.

Frank grabbed the shaft of the pilum below its tip, but his hands were shaking. The wood was slick. “Percy, Hazel—help me.”

One of the medics realized what he was planning. “Don’t!” he said. “You might—”

“What?” Hazel snapped. “Make it worse?”

Frank took a deep breath. “Hold her steady. One, two, three!”

He pulled the pilum out from the front. Gwen didn’t even wince. The blood stopped quickly.

Nico peered down at the wound. “It’s closing on its own,” he said.

“How?” Hazel asked her brother.

“I feel fine,” Gwen protested. “What’s everyone worried about?”

With Frank and Percy’s help, she got to her feet. Frank glowered at Octavian, but the centurion’s face was a mask of polite concern.

Later, Frank thought. Deal with him later.

“Gwen,” Hazel said gently, “there’s no easy way to say this. You were dead. Somehow you came back.”

“I… what?” She stumbled against Frank. Her hand pressed against the ragged hole in her armor. “How—how?”

“Good question.” Reyna turned to Nico. “Is this some power of Pluto?”

Nico shook his head. “My father doesn’t let people return from the dead. At least, not that easily.” He glanced at Hazel as if warning her to stay quiet. Frank wondered what that was about, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

A thunderous voice rolled across the field: Death loses its hold. This is only the beginning.

Campers drew weapons. Hannibal trumpeted nervously. Scipio reared, almost throwing Reyna.

“I know that voice,” Percy said. He didn’t sound pleased.

“You would,” Nico muttered so quietly Frank didn’t think he meant for anyone to hear that.

In the midst of the legion, a column of fire blasted into the air. Heat seared Frank’s eyelashes. Campers who had been soaked by the cannons found their clothes instantly steam-dried. Everyone scrambled backward as a huge soldier stepped out of the explosion. Frank didn’t have much hair, but what he did have stood straight up. The soldier was ten feet tall, dressed in Canadian Forces desert camouflage. He radiated confidence and power. His black hair was cut in a flat-topped wedge like Frank’s. His face was angular and brutal, marked with old knife scars. His eyes were covered with infrared goggles that glowed from inside. He wore a utility belt with a sidearm, a knife holster, and several grenades. In his hands was an oversized M16 rifle.

The worst thing was that Frank felt drawn to him. As everyone else stepped back, Frank stepped forward. He realized the soldier was silently willing him to approach. Frank desperately wanted to run away and hide, but he couldn’t. He took three more steps. Then he sank to one knee.

The other campers followed his example and knelt. Even Reyna dismounted.

“That’s good,” the soldier said. “Kneeling is good. It’s been a long time since I’ve visited Camp Jupiter.”

Frank noticed that one person wasn’t kneeling. Percy Jackson, his sword still in hand, was glaring at the giant soldier.

“You’re Ares,” Percy said. “What do you want?”

A collective gasp went up from two hundred campers and an elephant. Frank wanted to say something to excuse Percy and placate the god, but he didn’t know what. He was afraid the war god would blast his new friend with that extra-large M16.

Instead, the god bared his brilliant white teeth.

“You’ve got spunk, demigod,” he said. “Ares is my Greek form. But to these followers, to the children of Rome, I am Mars—patron of the empire, divine father of Romulus and Remus.”

“We’ve met,” Percy said. “We… we had a fight…”

The god scratched his chin, as if trying to recall. “I fight a lot of people. But I assure you—you’ve never fought me as Mars. If you had, you’d be dead. Now, kneel, as befits a child of Rome, before you try my patience.” Around Mars’s feet, the ground boiled in a circle of flame.

“Percy,” Frank said, “please.”

Percy clearly didn’t like it, but he knelt.

Mars scanned the crowd. “Romans, lend me your ears!” He laughed—a good, hearty bellow, so infectious it almost made Frank smile, though he was still shivering with fear. “I’ve always wanted to say that. I come from Olympus with a message. Jupiter doesn’t like us communicating directly with mortals, especially nowadays, but he has allowed this exception, as you Romans have always been my special people. I’m only permitted to speak for a few minutes, so listen up.” He pointed at Gwen. “This one should be dead, yet she’s not. The monsters you fight no longer return to Tartarus when they are slain. Some mortals who died long ago are now walking the earth again.”

Was it Frank’s imagination, or did the god glare at Nico di Angelo?

“Thanatos has been chained,” Mars announced. “The Doors of Death have been forced open, and no one is policing them—at least, not impartially. Gaea allows our enemies to pour forth into the world of mortals. Her sons the giants are mustering armies against you—armies that you will not be able to kill. Unless Death is unleashed to return to his duties, you will be overrun. You must find Thanatos and free him from the giants. Only he can reverse the tide.” Mars looked around, and noticed that everyone was still silently kneeling. “Oh, you can get up now. Any questions?”

Reyna rose uneasily. She approached the god, followed by Octavian, who was bowing and scraping like a champion groveler.

“Lord Mars,” Reyna said, “we are honored.”

“Beyond honored,” said Octavian. “So far beyond honored—”

“Well?” Mars snapped.

“Well,” Reyna said, “Thanatos is the god of death, the lieutenant of Pluto?”

“Right,” the god said.

“And you’re saying that he’s been captured by giants.”

“Right.”

“And therefore people will stop dying?”

“Not all at once,” Mars said. “But the barriers between life and death will continue to weaken. Those who know how to take advantage of this will exploit it. Monsters are already harder to dispatch. Soon they will be completely impossible to kill. Some demigods will also be able to find their way back from the Underworld—like your friend Centurion Shishkebab.”

Gwen winced. “Centurion Shishkebab?”

“If left unchecked,” Mars continued, “even mortals will eventually find it impossible to die. Can you imagine a world in which no one dies—ever?”

Octavian raised his hand. “But, ah, mighty all-powerful Lord Mars, if we can’t die, isn’t that a good thing? If we can stay alive indefinitely—”

“Don’t be foolish, boy!” Mars bellowed. “Endless slaughter with no conclusion? Carnage without any point? Enemies that rise again and again and can never be killed? Is that what you want?”

“You’re the god of war,” Percy spoke up. “Don’t you want endless carnage?”

Mars’s infrared goggles glowed brighter. “Insolent, aren’t you? Perhaps I have fought you before. I can understand why I’d want to kill you. I’m the god of Rome, child. I am the god of military might used for a righteous cause. I protect the legions. I am happy to crush my enemies underfoot, but I don’t fight without reason. I don’t want war without end. You will discover this. You will serve me.”

“Not likely,” Percy said.

Again, Frank waited for the god to strike him down, but Mars just grinned like they were two old buddies talking trash. “I order a quest!” the god announced. “You will go north and find Thanatos in the land beyond the gods. You will free him and thwart the plans of the giants. Beware Gaea! Beware her son, the eldest giant!”

Next to Frank, Hazel made a squeaking sound. “The land beyond the gods?”

Mars stared down at her, his grip tightening on his M16. “That’s right, Hazel Levesque. You know what I mean. Everyone here remembers the land where the legion lost its honor! Perhaps if the quest succeeds, and you return by the Feast of Fortuna… perhaps then your honor will be restored. If you don’t succeed, there won’t be any camp left to return to. Rome will be overrun, its legacy lost forever. So my advice is: Don’t fail.”

Octavian somehow managed to bow even lower. “Um, Lord Mars, just one tiny thing. A quest requires a prophecy, a mystical poem to guide us! We used to get them from the Sibylline books, but now it’s up to the augur to glean the will of gods. So if I could just run and get about seventy stuffed animals and possibly a knife—”

“You’re the augur?” the god interrupted.

“Y-yes, my lord.”

Mars pulled a scroll from his utility belt. “Anyone got a pen?”

The legionnaires stared at him.

Mars sighed. “Two hundred Romans, and no one’s got a pen? Never mind!”

He slung his M16 onto his back and pulled out a hand grenade. There were many screaming Romans. Then the grenade morphed into a ballpoint pen, and Mars began to write.

Frank looked at Percy with wide eyes. He mouthed: Can your sword do grenade form?

Percy mouthed back, No. Shut up.

“There!” Mars finished writing and threw the scroll at Octavian. “A prophecy. You can add it to your books, engrave it on your floor, whatever.”

Octavian read the scroll. “This says, ‘Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by sundown on June twenty-fourth or die.’”

“Yes,” Mars said. “Is that not clear?”

“Well, my lord… usually prophecies are unclear. They’re wrapped in riddles. They rhyme, and…”

Mars casually popped another grenade off his belt. “Yes?”

“The prophecy is clear!” Octavian announced. “A quest!”

“Good answer.” Mars tapped the grenade to his chin. “Now, what else? There was something else… Oh, yes.” He turned to Frank. “C’mere, kid.”

No, Frank thought. The burned stick in his coat pocket felt heavier. His legs turned wobbly. A sense of dread settled over him, worse than the day the military officer had come to the door. He knew what was coming, but he couldn’t stop it. He stepped forward against his will.

Mars grinned. “Nice job taking the wall, kid. Who’s the ref for this game?”

Reyna raised her hand.

“You see that play, ref?” Mars demanded. “That was my kid. First over the wall, won the game for his team. Unless you’re blind, that was an MVP play. You’re not blind, are you?”

Reyna looked like she was trying to swallow a mouse. “No, Lord Mars.”

“Then make sure he gets the Mural Crown,” Mars demanded. “My kid, here!” he yelled at the legion, in case anyone hadn’t heard. Frank wanted to melt into the dirt. “Emily Zhang’s son,” Mars continued. “She was a good soldier. Good woman. This kid Frank proved his stuff tonight. Happy late birthday, kid. Time you stepped up to a real man’s weapon.”

He tossed Frank his M16. For a split second Frank thought he’d be crushed under the weight of the massive assault rifle, but the gun changed in midair, becoming smaller and thinner. When Frank caught it, the weapon was a spear. It had a shaft of Imperial gold and a strange point like a white bone, flickering with ghostly light.

Nico inhaled sharply like he knew what it was and he knew it was bad. That didn’t really make Frank feel better.

“The tip is a dragon’s tooth,” Mars said. “You haven’t learned to use your mom’s talents yet, have you? Well—that spear will give you some breathing room until you do. You get three charges out of it, so use it wisely.”

Frank didn’t understand, but Mars acted like the matter was closed. “Now, my kid Frank Zhang is gonna lead the quest to free Thanatos, unless there are any objections?”

Of course, no one said a word. But many of the campers glared at Frank with envy, jealousy, anger, bitterness.

“You can take two companions,” Mars said. “Those are the rules. One of them needs to be this kid.” He pointed at Percy. “He’s gonna learn some respect for Mars on this trip, or die trying. As for the second, I don’t care. Pick whomever you want. Have one of your senate debates. You all are good at those.”

The god’s image flickered. Lightning crackled across the sky.

“That’s my cue,” Mars said. “Until next time, Romans. Do not disappoint me!”

The god erupted in flames, and then he was gone.

Reyna turned toward Frank. Her expression was part amazement, part nausea, like she’d finally managed to swallow that mouse. She raised her arm in a Roman salute. “Ave, Frank Zhang, son of Mars.”

The whole legion followed her lead, but Frank didn’t want their attention anymore. His perfect night had been ruined.

Mars was his father. The god of war was sending him to Alaska. Frank had been handed more than a spear for his birthday. He’d been handed a death sentence.

Chapter Text

PERCY SLEPT LIKE A MEDUSA VICTIM—which is to say, like a rock. He hadn’t crashed in a safe, comfortable bed since… well, he couldn’t even remember. Despite his insane day and the million thoughts running through his head, his body took over and said: You will sleep now.

He had dreams, of course. He always had dreams, but they passed like blurred images from the window of a train. He saw a curly-haired faun in ragged clothes running to catch up with him.

“I don’t have any spare change,” Percy called.

“What?” the faun said. “No, Percy. It’s me, Grover! Stay put! We’re on our way to find you. Tyson is close—at least we think he’s the closest. We’re trying to get a lock on your position.”

“What?” Percy called, but the faun disappeared in the fog.

Then Annabeth was running along beside him, reaching out her hand. “Thank the gods!” she called. “I wasn’t sure if I would reach you. Magnus and Alex have been missing for months. I thought you should know. You might see them.”

Percy remembered what Juno had said— for months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. The goddess had intentionally kept him hidden, but why? And who were Magnus and Alex?

“Are you real?” he asked Annabeth.

He wanted so much to believe it he felt like Hannibal the elephant was standing on his chest. But her face began to dissolve. She cried, “Tyson will find you! Look out for my cousin, Percy!”

Then she was gone. The images accelerated. He saw a huge ship in a dry dock, workers scrambling to finish the hull, a guy with a blowtorch welding a bronze dragon figurehead to the prow. He saw the war god stalking toward him in the surf, a sword in his hands.

The scene shifted. Percy stood on the Field of Mars, looking up at the Berkeley Hills. Golden grass rippled, and a face appeared in the landscape—a sleeping woman, her features formed from shadows and folds in the terrain. Her eyes remained closed, but her voice spoke in Percy’s mind: So this is the demigod who destroyed my son Kronos. You don’t look like much, Percy Jackson, but you’re valuable to me. Come north. Meet Alcyoneus. Juno can play her little games with Greeks and Romans, but in the end, you will be my pawn. You will be the key to the gods’ defeat.

Percy’s vision turned dark. He stood in a theater-sized version of the camp’s headquarters—a principia with walls of ice and freezing mist hanging in the air. The floor was littered with skeletons in Roman armor and Imperial gold weapons encrusted with frost. In the back of the room sat an enormous shadowy figure. His skin glinted of gold and silver, as if he were an automaton like Reyna’s dogs. Behind him stood a collection of ruined emblems, tattered banners, and a large golden eagle on a staff of iron.

The giant’s voice boomed in the vast chamber. “This will be fun, son of Neptune. It’s been eons since I broke a demigod of your caliber. I await you atop the ice.”

Percy woke, shivering. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then he remembered: Camp Jupiter, the Fifth Cohort barracks. He lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and trying to control his racing heartbeat.

A golden giant was waiting to break him. Wonderful. But what unnerved him more was that sleeping woman’s face in the hills. You will be my pawn. Percy didn’t play chess, but he was pretty sure that being a pawn was bad. They died a lot.

Even the friendlier parts of his dream were disturbing. A faun named Grover was looking for him. Maybe that’s why Don had detected a—what had he called it?—an empathy link. Somebody named Tyson was searching for him, too, and Annabeth had asked Percy to look out for Magnus and Alex. Whoever they were.

He sat up in his bunk. His roommates were rushing around, getting dressed and brushing their teeth. Dakota was wrapping himself in a long piece of red-speckled cloth—a toga. One of the Lares was giving him pointers on where to tuck and fold.

“Breakfast time?” Percy asked hopefully.

Frank’s head popped up from the bunk below. He had bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept well. “A quick breakfast. Then we’ve got the senate meeting.”

Dakota’s head was stuck in his toga. He staggered around like a Kool-Aid-stained ghost.

“Um,” Percy said, “should I wear my bed sheets?”

Frank snorted. “That’s just for the senators. There’re ten of them, elected yearly. You’ve got to be at camp five years to qualify.”

“So how come we’re invited to the meeting?”

“Because… you know, the quest.” Frank sounded worried, like he was afraid Percy would back out. “We have to be in on the discussion. You, me, Hazel. I mean, if you’re willing…”

Frank probably didn’t mean to guilt him, but Percy’s heart felt pulled like taffy. He had sympathy for Frank. Getting claimed by the war god in front of the whole camp—what a nightmare. Plus, how could Percy say no to that big pouty baby face? Frank had been given a huge task that would most likely get him killed. He was scared. He needed Percy’s help. And the three of them had made a good team last night. Hazel and Frank were solid, dependable people. They’d accepted Percy like family. Still, he didn’t like the idea of this quest, especially since it came from Mars, and especially after his dreams.

“I, um… I’d better get ready…” He climbed out of bed and got dressed. The whole time, he thought about Annabeth.

Magnus and Alex… those names sounded familiar. They were missing. Annabeth knew—somehow she knew—that he was leaving Camp Jupiter. She asked him to look for them. Percy would do anything for Annabeth, but how could he look for two people he didn’t even remember? Maybe he would just know if he saw them.

The faun, Grover, wanted him to stay put. Annabeth wanted him to leave.

There wasn’t really a question what he had to do.

At breakfast, Percy was conscious of everyone looking at him. They were whispering about the previous night:

“Two gods in one day…”

“Un-Roman fighting…”

“Water cannon up my nose…”

He was too hungry to care. He filled up on pancakes, eggs, bacon, waffles, apples, and several glasses of orange juice. He probably would have eaten more, but Reyna announced that the senate would now convene in the city, and all the folks in togas got up to leave.

“Here we go.” Hazel fidgeted with a stone that looked like a two-carat ruby.

The ghost Vitellius appeared next to them in a purple shimmer. “Bona fortuna, you three! Ah, senate meetings. I remember the one when Caesar was assassinated. Why, the amount of blood on his toga—”

“Thanks, Vitellius,” Frank interrupted. “We should get going.”

Reyna and Octavian led the procession of senators out of camp, with Reyna’s metal greyhounds dashing back and forth along the road. Hazel, Frank, and Percy trailed behind. Percy noticed Nico di Angelo in the group, wearing a black toga and talking with Gwen, who looked a little pale but surprisingly good considering she’d been dead the night before. Nico waved at Percy, then went back to his conversation, leaving Percy more sure than ever that Hazel’s brother was trying to avoid him.

Dakota stumbled along in his red-speckled robe. A lot of other senators seemed to be having trouble with their togas, too—hiking up their hems, trying to keep the cloth from slipping off their shoulders. Percy was glad he was wearing a regular purple T-shirt and jeans.

“How could Romans move, in those things?” he wondered.

“They were just for formal occasions,” Hazel said. “Like tuxedos. I bet the ancient Romans hated togas as much as we do. By the way, you didn’t bring any weapons, did you?”

Percy’s hand went to his pocket, where his pen always stayed. “Why? Are we not supposed to?”

“No weapons allowed inside the Pomerian Line,” she said.

“The what line?”

“Pomerian,” Frank said. “The city limits. Inside is a sacred ‘safe zone.’ Legions can’t march through. No weapons allowed. That’s so senate meetings don’t get bloody.”

“Like Julius Caesar getting assassinated?” Percy asked.

Frank nodded. “Don’t worry. Nothing like that has happened in months.”

Percy hoped he was kidding.

As they got closer to the city, Percy could appreciate how beautiful it was. The tiled roofs and gold domes gleamed in the sun. Gardens bloomed with honeysuckle and roses. The central plaza was paved in white and gray stone, decorated with statues, fountains, and gilded columns. In the surrounding neighborhoods, cobblestone streets were lined with freshly painted town houses, shops, cafés, and parks. In the distance rose the coliseum and the horse racing arena. Percy didn’t notice they’d reached the city limits until the senators in front of him started slowing down.

On the side of the road stood a white marble statue—a life-size muscular man with curly hair, no arms, and an irritated expression. Maybe he looked mad because he’d been carved only from the waist up. Below that, he was just a big block of marble.

“Single file, please!” the statue said. “Have your IDs ready.”

Percy looked to his left and right. He hadn’t noticed before, but a line of identical statues ringed the city at intervals of about a hundred yards.

The senators passed through easily. The statue checked the tattoos on their forearms and called each senator by name. “Gwendolyn, senator, Fifth Cohort, yes. Nico di Angelo, ambassador of Pluto—very well. Reyna, praetor, of course. Hank, senator, Third Cohort—oh, nice shoes, Hank! Ah, who have we here?”

Hazel, Frank, and Percy were the last ones.

“Terminus,” Hazel said, “this is Percy Jackson. Percy, this is Terminus, the god of boundaries.”

“New, eh?” said the god. “Yes, probatio tablet. Fine. Ah, weapon in your pocket? Take it out! Take it out!”

Percy didn’t know how Terminus could tell, but he took out his pen.

“Quite dangerous,” Terminus said. “Leave it in the tray. Wait, where’s my assistant? Julia!”

A little girl about six years old peeked out from behind the base of the statue. She had pigtails, a pink dress, and an impish grin with two missing teeth.

“Julia?” Terminus glanced behind him, and Julia scurried in the other direction. “Where did that girl go?”

Terminus looked the other way and caught sight of Julia before she could hide. The little girl squealed with delight.

“Oh, there you are,” said the statue. “Front and center. Bring the tray.”

Julia scrambled out and brushed off her dress. She picked up a tray and presented it to Percy. On it were several paring knives, a corkscrew, an oversized container of sun lotion, and a water bottle.

“You can pick up your weapon on the way out,” Terminus said. “Julia will take good care of it. She’s a trained professional.”

The little girl nodded. “Pro-fess-ion-al.” She said each syllable carefully, like she’d been practicing.

Percy glanced at Hazel and Frank, who didn’t seem to find anything odd about this. Still, he wasn’t wild about handing over a deadly weapon to a kid.

“The thing is,” he said, “the pen returns to my pocket automatically, so even if I give it up—”

“Not to worry,” Terminus assured him. “We’ll make sure it doesn’t wander off. Won’t we, Juila?”

“Yes, Mr. Terminus.”

Reluctantly, Percy put his pen on the tray.

“Now, a few rules, since you’re new,” Terminus said. “You are entering the boundaries of the city proper. Keep the peace inside the line. Yield to chariot traffic while walking on public roads. When you get to the Senate House, sit on the left-hand side. And, down there—do you see where I’m pointing?”

“Um,” Percy said, “you don’t have any hands.”

Apparently this was a sore point for Terminus. His marble face turned a dark shade of gray. “A smart aleck, eh? Well, Mr. Rule Flouter, right down there in the forum—Julia, point for me, please—”

Julia dutifully set down the security tray and pointed toward the main plaza.

“The shop with the blue awning,” Terminus continued, “that’s the general store. They sell tape measures. Buy one! I want those pants exactly one inch above the ankles and that hair regulation cut. And tuck your shirt in.”

Hazel said, “Thank you, Terminus. We need to get going.”

“Fine, fine, you may pass,” the god said testily. “But stay on the right side of the road! And that rock right there—No, Hazel, look where I’m pointing. That rock is entirely too close to that tree. Move it two inches to the left.”

Hazel did what she was told, and they continued down the path, Terminus still shouting orders at them while Julia did cartwheels across the grass.

“Is he always like that?” Percy asked.

“No,” Hazel admitted. “Today he was laid back. Usually he’s more obsessive/compulsive.”

“He inhabits every boundary stone around the city,” Frank said. “Kind of our last line of defense if the city’s attacked.”

“Terminus isn’t so bad,” Hazel added. “Just don’t make him angry, or he’ll force you to measure every blade of grass in the valley.”

Percy filed that information. “And the kid? Julia?”

Hazel grinned. “Yeah, she’s a cutie. Her parents live in the city. Come on. We’d better catch up to the senators.”

As they approached the forum, Percy was struck by the sheer number of people. College-age kids were hanging out at the fountain. Several of them waved at the senators as they passed. One guy in his late twenties stood at a bakery counter, flirting with a young woman who was buying coffee. An older couple was watching a little boy in diapers and a miniature Camp Jupiter shirt toddle after seagulls. Merchants were opening their shops for the day, putting out signs in Latin that advertised pottery, jewelry, and half-price tickets for the Hippodrome.

“All these people are demigods?” Percy asked.

“Or descended from demigods,” Hazel said. “Like I told you, it’s a good place to go to college or raise a family without worrying about monster attacks every day. Maybe two, three hundred people live here? The veterans act as, like, advisers and reserve forces as needed, but mostly they’re just citizens living their lives.”

Percy imagined what that would be like: getting an apartment in this tiny replica of Rome, protected by the legion and Terminus the OCD border god. He imagined holding hands with Annabeth at a café. Maybe when they were older, watching their own kid chase seagulls across the forum…

He shook the idea out of his head. He couldn’t afford to indulge in that kind of thinking. Most of his memories were gone, but he knew this place wasn’t his home. He belonged somewhere else, with his other friends.

Besides, Camp Jupiter was in danger. If Juno was right, an attack was coming in less than five days. Percy imagined that sleeping woman’s face—the face of Gaea—forming in the hills above camp. He imagined hordes of monsters descending into this valley.

If you don’t succeed, Mars had warned, there won’t be any camp left to return to. Rome will be overrun, its legacy lost forever.

He thought about the little girl Julia, the families with kids, his new friends in the Fifth Cohort, even those silly fauns. He didn’t want to picture what might happen to them if this place was destroyed.

The senators made their way to a big white-domed building on the west end of the forum. Percy paused at the doorway, trying not to think about Julius Caesar getting slashed to death at a senate meeting. Then he took a deep breath and followed Hazel and Frank inside.

Chapter Text

THE SENATE HOUSE INTERIOR looked like a high school lecture hall. A semicircle of tiered seats faced a dais with a podium and two chairs. The chairs were empty, but one had a small velvet package on the seat.

Percy, Hazel, and Frank sat on the left side of the semicircle. The ten senators and Nico di Angelo occupied the rest of the front row. The upper rows were filled with several dozen ghosts and a few older veterans from the city, all in formal togas. Octavian stood in front with a knife and a Beanie Baby lion, just in case anyone needed to consult the god of cutesy collectibles. Reyna walked to the podium and raised her hand for attention.

“Right, this is an emergency meeting,” she said. “We won’t stand on formalities.”

“I love formalities!” a ghost complained.

Reyna shot him a cross look.

“First of all,” she said, “we’re not here to vote on the quest itself. The quest has been issued by Mars Ultor, patron of Rome. We will obey his wishes. Nor are we here to debate the choice of Frank Zhang’s companions.”

“All three from the Fifth Cohort?” called out Hank from the Third. “That’s not fair.”

“And not smart,” said the boy next to him. “We know the Fifth will mess up. They should take somebody good.”

Dakota got up so fast, he spilled Kool-Aid from his flask. “We were plenty good last night when we whipped your podex, Larry!”

“Enough, Dakota,” Reyna said. “Let’s leave Larry’s podex out of this. As quest leader, Frank has the right to choose his companions. He has chosen Percy Jackson and Hazel Levesque.”

A ghost from the second row yelled, “Absurdus! Frank Zhang isn’t even a full member of the legion! He’s on probatio. A quest must be led by someone of centurion rank or higher. This is completely—”

“Cato,” Reyna snapped. “We must obey the wishes of Mars Ultor. That means certain… adjustments.”

Reyna clapped her hands, and Octavian came forward. He set down his knife and Beanie Baby and took the velvet package from the chair.

“Frank Zhang,” he said, “come forward.”

Frank glanced nervously at Percy. Then he got to his feet and approached the augur.

“It is my… pleasure,” Octavian said, forcing out the last word, “to bestow upon you the Mural Crown for being first over the walls in siege warfare.” Octavian handed him a bronze badge shaped like a laurel wreath. “Also, by order of Praetor Reyna, to promote you to the rank of centurion.” He handed Frank another badge, a bronze crescent, and the senate exploded in protest.

“He’s still a probie!” one yelled.

“Impossible!” said another.

“Water cannon up my nose!” yelled a third.

“Silence!” Octavian’s voice sounded a lot more commanding than it had the previous night on the battlefield. “Ourpraetor recognizes that no one below the rank of centurion may lead a quest. For good or ill, Frank must lead this quest—so our praetor has decreed that Frank Zhang must be made centurion.”

Suddenly Percy understood what an effective speaker Octavian was. He sounded reasonable and supportive, but his expression was pained. He carefully crafted his words to put all the responsibility on Reyna. This was her idea , he seemed to say.

If it went wrong, Reyna was to blame. If only Octavian had been the one in charge, things would have been done more sensibly. But alas, he had no choice but to support Reyna, because Octavian was a loyal Roman soldier. Octavian managed to convey all that without saying it, simultaneously calming the senate and sympathizing with them. For the first time, Percy realized this scrawny, funny-looking scarecrow of a kid might be a dangerous enemy.

Reyna must have recognized this too. A look of irritation flashed across her face.

“There is an opening for centurion,” she said. “One of our officers, also a senator, has decided to step down. After ten years in the legion, she will retire to the city and attend college. Gwen of the Fifth Cohort, we thank you for your service.”

Everyone turned to Gwen, who managed a brave smile. She looked tired from the previous night’s ordeal, but also relieved. Percy couldn’t blame her. Compared to getting skewered with a pilum, college sounded pretty good.

“As praetor,” Reyna continued, “I have the right to replace officers. I admit it’s unusual for a camper on probatio to rise directly to the rank of centurion, but I think we can agree… last night was unusual. Frank Zhang, your ID, please.”

Frank removed the lead tablet from around his neck and handed it to Octavian.

“Your arm,” Octavian said.

Frank held up his forearm. Octavian raised his hands to the heavens. “We accept Frank Zhang, Son of Mars, to the Twelfth Legion Fulminata for his first year of service. Do you pledge your life to the senate and people of Rome?”

Frank muttered something like “Ud-dud.” Then he cleared his throat and managed: “I do.”

The senators shouted, “Senatus Populusque Romanus!”

Fire blazed on Frank’s arm. For a moment his eyes filled with terror, and Percy was afraid his friend might pass out. Then the smoke and flame died, and new marks were seared onto Frank’s skin: SPQR, an image of crossed spears, and a single stripe, representing the first year of service.

“You may sit down.” Octavian glanced at the audience as if to say: This wasn’t my idea, folks.

“Now,” Reyna said, “we must discuss the quest.”

The senators shifted and muttered as Frank returned to his seat.

“Did it hurt?” Percy whispered.

Frank looked at his forearm, which was still steaming. “Yeah. A lot.” He seemed mystified by the badges in his hand—the centurion’s mark and the Mural Crown—like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“Here.” Hazel’s eyes shone with pride. “Let me.” She pinned the medals to Frank’s shirt.

Percy smiled. He’d only known Frank for a day, but he felt proud of him too. “You deserve it, man,” he said. “What you did last night? Natural leadership.”

Frank scowled. “But centurion—”

“Centurion Zhang,” called Octavian. “Did you hear the question?”

Nico cleared his throat. "I think he's just waiting for you to realize your own, ah, moment of forgetfulness," he said.

Octavian's eyes bulged out of his head. "Excuse me—"

"The prophecy quite clearly states where they have to go," Nico said. "So if you were listening to Mars last night, you would know that they have to go to Alaska. Are you saying that you weren't listening to Mars, Octavian?"

Reyna pursed her lips, maybe in an effort not to laugh.

Octavian's face was purple. "No!" he said angrily. "Of course not. I was merely asking out of formality."

"Alaska," Frank spoke up to cut the tension.

The senators squirmed in their togas. Some of the ghosts shimmered and disappeared. Even Reyna’s metal dogs rolled over on their backs and whimpered.

Finally Senator Larry stood. “I know what Mars said, but that’s crazy. Alaska is cursed! They call it the land beyond the gods for a reason. It’s so far north, the Roman gods have no power there. The place is swarming with monsters. No demigod has come back from there alive since—”

“Since you lost your eagle,” Percy said.

Larry was so startled, he fell back on his podex.

“Look,” Percy continued, “I know I’m new here. I know you guys don’t like to mention that massacre in the nineteen-eighties—”

“He mentioned it!” one of the ghosts whimpered.

“—But don’t you get it?” Percy continued. “The Fifth Cohort led that expedition. We failed, and we have to be responsible for making things right. That’s why Mars is sending us. This giant, the son of Gaea—he’s the one who defeated your forces thirty years ago. I’m sure of it. Now he’s sitting up there in Alaska with a chained death god, and all your old equipment. He’s mustering his armies and sending them south to attack this camp.”

“Really?” Octavian said. “You seem to know a lot about our enemy’s plans, Percy Jackson.”

Most insults Percy could shrug off—being called weak or stupid or whatever. But it dawned on him that Octavian was calling him a spy—a traitor. That was such a foreign concept to Percy, so not who he was, he almost couldn’t process the slur. When he did, his shoulders tensed. He was tempted to smack Octavian on the head again, but he realized Octavian was baiting him, trying to make him look unstable.

Percy took a deep breath. “We’re going to confront this son of Gaea,” he said, managing to keep his composure. “We’ll get back your eagle and unchain this god…” He glanced at Hazel. “Thanatos, right?”

She nodded. “Letus, in Roman. But his old Greek name is Thanatos. When it comes to Death… we’re happy to let him stay Greek.”

Octavian sighed in exasperation. “Well, whatever you call him… how do you expect to do all this and get back by the Feast of Fortuna? That’s the evening of the twenty-fourth. It’s the twentieth now. Do you even know where to look? Do you even know who this son of Gaea is?”

“Yes.” Hazel spoke with such certainty that even Percy was surprised. “I don’t know exactly where to look, but I have a pretty good idea. The giant’s name is Alcyoneus.”

That name seemed to lower the temperature in the room by fifty degrees. The senators shivered.

Reyna gripped her podium. “How do you know this, Hazel? Because you’re a child of Pluto?”

Nico di Angelo stood in his black toga. “Praetor, if I may,” he said. “Hazel and I… we learned a little about the giants from our father. Each giant was bred specifically to oppose one of the twelve Olympian gods—to usurp that god’s domain. The king of giants was Porphyrion, the anti-Jupiter. But the eldest giant was Alcyoneus. He was born to oppose Pluto. That’s why we know of him in particular.”

Reyna frowned. “Indeed? You sound quite familiar with him.”

Nico picked at the edge of his toga. “Anyway… the giants were hard to kill. According to prophecy, they could only be defeated by gods and demigods working together.”

Dakota belched. “Sorry, did you say gods and demigods… like fighting side by side? That could never happen!”

“It has happened,” Nico said. “In the first giant war, the gods called on heroes to join them, and they were victorious. Whether it could happen again, I don’t know. But with Alcyoneus… he was different. He was completely immortal, impossible to kill by god or demigod, as long as he remained in his home territory—the place where he was born.” Nico paused to let that sink in. “And if Alcyoneus has been reborn in Alaska—”

“Then he can’t be defeated there,” Hazel finished. “Ever. By any means. Which is why our nineteen-eighties expedition was doomed to fail.”

Another round of arguing and shouting broke out.

“The quest is impossible!” shouted a senator.

“We’re doomed!” cried a ghost.

“More Kool-Aid!” yelled Dakota.

“Silence!” Reyna called. “Senators, we must act like Romans. Mars has given us this quest, and we have to believe it is possible. These three demigods must travel to Alaska. They must free Thanatos and return before the Feast of Fortuna. If they can retrieve the lost eagle in the process, so much the better. All we can do is advise them and make sure they have a plan.” Reyna looked at Percy without much hope. “You do have a plan?”

Percy wanted to step forward bravely and say, No, I don’t!

That was the truth, but looking around at all the nervous faces, Percy knew he couldn’t say it.

“First, I need to understand something.” He turned toward Nico. “I thought Pluto was the god of the dead. Now I hear about this other guy, Thanatos, and the Doors of Death from that prophecy—the Prophecy of Seven. What does all that mean?”

Nico took a deep breath. “Okay. Pluto is the god of the Underworld, but the actual god of death, the one who’s responsible for making sure souls go to the afterlife and stay there—that’s Pluto’s lieutenant, Thanatos. He’s like… well, imagine Life and Death are two different countries. Everybody would like to be in Life, right? So there’s a guarded border to keep people from crossing back over without permission. But it’s a big border, with lots of holes in the fence. Pluto tries to seal up the breaches, but new ones keep popping up all the time. That’s why he depends on Thanatos, who’s like the border patrol, the police.”

“Thanatos catches souls,” Percy said, “and deports them back to the Underworld.”

“Exactly,” Nico said. “But now Thanatos has been captured, chained up.”

Frank raised his hand. “Uh… how do you chain Death?”

“It’s been done before,” Nico said. “In the old days, a guy named Sisyphus tricked Death and tied him up. Another time, Hercules wrestled him to the ground.”

“And now a giant has captured him,” Percy said. “So if we could free Thanatos, then the dead would stay dead?” He glanced at Gwen. “Um… no offense.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Nico said.

Octavian rolled his eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“You mean the Doors of Death,” Reyna said, ignoring Octavian. “They are mentioned in the Prophecy of Seven, which sent the first expedition to Alaska—”

Cato the ghost snorted. “We all know how that turned out! We Lares remember!”

The other ghosts grumbled in agreement.

Nico put his finger to his lips. Suddenly all the Lares went silent. Some looked alarmed, like their mouths had been glued together. Percy wished he had that power over certain living people… like Octavian, for instance.

“Thanatos is only part of the solution,” Nico explained. “There are many ways into the Underworld—the River Styx, the Door of Orpheus—plus smaller escape routes that open up from time to time. With Thanatos imprisoned, all those exits will be easier to use. Sometimes it might work to our advantage and let a friendly soul come back—like Gwen here. More often, it will benefit evil souls and monsters, the sneaky ones who are looking to escape. The Doors of Death—those are the personal doors of Thanatos, his fast lane between Life and Death. Only Thanatos is supposed to know where they are, and the location shifts over the ages. Right now, the Doors have been forced open and Gaea’s minions have control of them.”

“Which means Gaea controls who can come back from the dead,” Percy guessed.

Nico nodded. “She can pick and choose who to let out—the worst monsters, the most evil souls. If we rescue Thanatos, that means at least he can catch souls again and send them below. Monsters will die when we kill them, like they used to, and we’ll get a little breathing room. But unless we’re able to retake the Doors of Death, our enemies won’t stay down for long. They’ll have an easy way back to the world of the living.”

“So we can catch them and deport them,” Percy summed up, “but they’ll just keep coming back across.”

“In a depressing nutshell, yes,” Nico said.

Frank scratched his head. “But Thanatos knows where the doors are, right? If we free him, he can retake them.”

Nico hesitated. “Not exactly. To retake the Doors of Death… that can only be done by the best demigods.”

“Foes bear arms to the Doors of Death,” Reyna said. “That’s the Prophecy of Seven…”

She looked at Percy, and for just a moment he could see how scared she was. She did a good job of hiding it, but Percy wondered if she’d had nightmares about Gaea too—if she’d seen visions of what would happen when the camp was invaded by monsters that couldn’t be killed.

“If this begins the ancient prophecy, we don’t have resources to send an army to these Doors of Death and protect the camp. I can’t imagine even sparing seven demigods—”

“First things first.” Percy tried to sound confident, though he could feel the level of panic rising in the room. “I don’t know who the seven are, or what that old prophecy means, exactly. But first we have to free Thanatos. Mars told us we only needed three people for the quest to Alaska. Let’s concentrate on succeeding with that and getting back before the Feast of Fortuna. Then we can worry about the Doors of Death.”

“Yeah,” Frank said in a small voice. “That’s probably enough for one week.”

“So you do have a plan?” Octavian asked skeptically.

Percy looked at his teammates. “We go to Alaska as fast as possible…”

“And we improvise,” Hazel said.

“A lot,” Frank added.

Reyna studied them. She looked like she was mentally writing her own obituary.

“Very well,” she said. “Nothing remains except for us to vote what support we can give the quest—transportation, money, magic, weapons.”

“Praetor, if I may,” Octavian said.

“Oh, great,” Percy muttered. “Here it comes.”

“The camp is in grave danger,” Octavian said. “Two gods have warned us we will be attacked four days from now. We must not spread our resources too thin, especially by funding projects that have a slim chance of success.”

Octavian looked at the three of them with pity, as if to say, Poor little things. “Mars has clearly chosen the least likely candidates for this quest. Perhaps that is because he considers them the most expendable. Perhaps Mars is playing the long odds. Whatever the case, he wisely didn’t order a massive expedition, nor did he ask us to fund their adventure. I say we keep our resources here and defend the camp. This is where the battle will be lost or won. If these three succeed, wonderful! But they should do so by their own ingenuity.”

An uneasy murmur passed through the crowd. Frank jumped to his feet. Before he could start a fight, Percy said, “Fine! No problem. But at least give us transportation. Gaea is the earth goddess, right? Going overland, across the earth—I’m guessing we should avoid that. Plus, it’ll be too slow.”

Octavian laughed. “Would you like us to charter you an airplane?”

The idea made Percy nauseous. “No. Air travel… I have a feeling that would be bad, too. But a boat. Can you at least give us a boat?”

Hazel made a grunting sound. Percy glanced over. She shook her head and mouthed, Fine. I’m fine.

“A boat!” Octavian turned to the senators. “The son of Neptune wants a boat. Sea travel has never been the Roman way, but he isn’t much of a Roman!”

“Octavian,” Reyna said sternly, “a boat is little enough to ask. And providing no other aid seems very—”

“Traditional!” Octavian exclaimed. “It is very traditional. Let us see if these questers have the strength to survive without help, like true Romans!”

More muttering filled the chamber. The senators’ eyes moved back and forth between Octavian and Reyna, watching the test of wills.

Reyna straightened in her chair. “Very well,” she said tightly. “We’ll put it to a vote. Senators, the motion is as follows: The quest shall go to Alaska. The senate shall provide full access to the Roman navy docked at Alameda. No other aid will be forthcoming. The three adventurers will survive or fail on their own merits. All in favor?”

Every senator’s hand went up.

“The motion is passed.” Reyna turned to Frank. “Centurion, your party is excused. The senate has other matters to discuss. And, Octavian, if I may confer with you for a moment.”

Percy was incredibly glad to see the sunlight. In that dark hall, with all those eyes on him, he’d felt like the world was riding on his shoulders—and he was fairly sure he’d had that experience before.

He filled his lungs with fresh air.

Hazel picked up a large emerald from the path and slipped it in her pocket. “So… we’re pretty much toast?”

Frank nodded miserably. “If either of you wants to back out, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Are you kidding?” Hazel said. “And pull sentry duty for the rest of the week?”

Frank managed a smile. He turned to Percy.

Percy gazed across the forum. He looked up at the hills, and imagined Gaea’s face smiling in the shadows and ridges. You can’t win, little demigod, she seemed to say. Serve me by staying, or serve me by going.

Percy made a silent vow: After the Feast of Fortuna, he would find Annabeth. But for now, he had to act. He couldn’t let Gaea win.

“I’m with you,” he told Frank. “Besides, I want to check out the Roman navy.”

They were only halfway across the forum when some called, “Jackson!” Percy turned and saw Octavian jogging toward them.

“What do you want?” Percy asked.

Octavian smiled. “Already decided I’m your enemy? That’s a rash choice, Percy. I’m a loyal Roman.”

Frank snarled. “You backstabbing, slimy—” Both Percy and Hazel had to restrain him.

“Oh, dear,” Octavian said. “Hardly the right behavior for a new centurion. Jackson, I only followed you because Reyna charged me with a message. She wants you to report to the principia without your—ah—two lackeys, here. Reyna will meet you there after the senate adjourns. She’d like a private word with you before you leave on your quest.”

“What about?” Percy said.

“I’m sure I don’t know.” Octavian smiled wickedly. “The last person she had a private talk with was Jason Grace. And that was the last time I ever saw him. Good luck and goodbye, Percy Jackson.”

Chapter Text

PERCY WAS GLAD RIPTIDE HAD RETURNED to his pocket. Judging from Reyna’s expression, he thought he might need to defend himself.

She stormed into the principia with her purple cloak billowing, and her greyhounds at her feet. Percy was sitting in one of the praetor chairs that he’d pulled to the visitor’s side, which maybe wasn’t the proper thing to do. He started to get up.

“Stay seated,” Reyna growled. “You leave after lunch. We have a lot to discuss.”

She plunked down her dagger so hard, the jelly-bean bowl rattled. Aurum and Argentum took their posts on her left and right and fixed their ruby eyes on Percy.

“What’d I do wrong?” Percy asked. “If it’s about the chair—”

“It’s not you.” Reyna scowled. “I hate senate meetings. When Octavian gets talking…”

Percy nodded. “You’re a warrior. Octavian is a talker. Put him in front of the senate, and suddenly he becomes the powerful one.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“Gee, thanks. I hear Octavian might get elected praetor, assuming the camp survives that long.”

“Which brings us to the subject of doomsday,” Reyna said, “and how you might help prevent it. But before I place the fate of Camp Jupiter in your hands, we need to get a few things straight.”

She sat down and put a ring on the table—a band of silver etched with a sword-and-torch design, like Reyna’s tattoo. “Do you know what this is?”

“The sign of your mom,” Percy said. “The… uh, war goddess.” He tried to remember the name but he didn’t want to get it wrong—something like bologna. Or salami?

“Bellona, yes.” Reyna scrutinized him carefully. “You don’t remember where you saw this ring before? You really don’t remember me or my sister, Hylla?”

Percy shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It would’ve been four years ago.”

“Just before you came to camp.”

Reyna frowned. “How did you—?”

“You’ve got four stripes on your tattoo. Four years.”

Reyna looked at her forearm. “Of course. It seems so long ago. I suppose you wouldn’t recall me even if you had your memory. I was just a little girl—one attendant among so many at the spa. But you spoke with my sister, just before you and that other one, Annabeth, destroyed our home.”

Percy tried to remember. He really did. For some reason, Annabeth and he had visited a spa and decided to destroy it. He couldn’t imagine why. Maybe they hadn’t liked the deep-tissue massage? Maybe they’d gotten bad manicures?

“It’s a blank,” he said. “Since your dogs aren’t attacking me, I hope you’ll believe me. I’m telling the truth.”

Aurum and Argentum snarled. Percy got the feeling they were thinking, Please lie. Please lie.

Reyna tapped the silver ring.

“I believe you’re sincere,” she said. “But not everyone at camp does. Octavian thinks you’re a spy. He thinks you were sent here by Gaea to find our weaknesses and distract us. He believes the old legends about the Greeks.”

“Old legends?”

Reyna’s hand rested halfway between her dagger and the jelly beans. Percy had a feeling that if she made a sudden move, she wouldn’t be grabbing for the candy. “Some believe Greek demigods still exist,” she said, “heroes who follow the older forms of the gods. There are legends of battles between Roman and Greek heroes in relatively modern times—the American Civil War, for instance. I have no proof of this, and if our Lares know anything, they refuse to say. But Octavian believes the Greeks are still around, plotting our downfall, working with the forces of Gaea. He thinks you are one of them.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I believe you came from somewhere,” she said. “You’re important, and dangerous. Two gods have taken a special interest in you since you arrived, so I can’t believe you’d work against Olympus… or Rome.” She shrugged. “Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps the gods sent you here to test my judgment. But I think… I think you were sent here to make up for the loss of Jason.”

Jason… Percy couldn’t go very far in this camp without hearing that name.

“The way you talk about him…” Percy said. “Were you two a couple?”

Reyna’s eyes bored into him—like the eyes of a hungry wolf. Percy had seen enough hungry wolves to know.

“We might have been,” Reyna said, “given time. Praetors work closely together. It’s common for them to become romantically involved. But Jason was only praetor for a few months before he disappeared. Ever since then, Octavian has been pestering me, agitating for new elections. I’ve resisted. I need a partner in power—but I’d prefer someone like Jason. A warrior, not a schemer.”

She waited. Percy realized she was sending him a silent invitation.

His throat went dry. “Oh… you mean… oh.”

“I believe the gods sent you to help me,” Reyna said. “I don’t understand where you come from, any more than I understood it four years ago. But I think your arrival is some sort of repayment. You destroyed my home once. Now you’ve been sent to save my home. I don’t hold a grudge against you for the past, Percy. My sister hates you still, it’s true, but Fate brought me here to Camp Jupiter. I’ve done well. All I ask is that you work with me for the future. I intend to save this camp.”

The metal dogs glared at him, their mouths frozen in snarl mode. Percy found Reyna’s eyes a lot harder to meet.

“Look, I’ll help,” he promised. “But I’m new here. You’ve got a lot of good people who know this camp better than I do. If we succeed on this quest, Hazel and Frank will be heroes. You could ask one of them—”

“Please,” Reyna said. “No one will follow a child of Pluto. There’s something about that girl… rumors about where she came from… No, she won’t do. As for Frank Zhang, he has a good heart, but he’s hopelessly naïve and inexperienced. Besides, if the others found out about his family history at this camp—”

“Family history?”

“The point is, Percy, you are the real power on this quest. You are a seasoned veteran. I’ve seen what you can do. A son of Neptune wouldn’t be my first choice, but if you return successfully from this mission, the legion might be saved. The praetorship will be yours for the taking. Together, you and I could expand the power of Rome. We could raise an army and find the Doors of Death, crush Gaea’s forces once and for all. You would find me a very helpful… friend.”

She said that word like it could have several meanings, and he could pick which one. Percy’s feet started tapping on the floor, anxious to run. “Reyna… I’m honored, and all. Seriously. But I’ve got a girlfriend. And I don’t want power, or a praetorship.”

Percy was afraid he’d make her mad. Instead she just raised her eyebrows.

“A man who turns down power?” she said. “That’s not very Roman of you. Just think about it. In four days, I have to make a choice. If we are to fight off an invasion, we must have two strong praetors. I’d prefer you, but if you fail on your quest, or don’t come back, or refuse my offer… Well, I’ll work with Octavian. I mean to save this camp, Percy Jackson. Things are worse than you realize.”

Percy remembered what Frank said about the monster attacks getting more frequent. “How bad?”

Reyna’s nails dug into the table. “Even the senate doesn’t know the whole truth. I’ve asked Octavian not to share his auguries, or we’d have mass panic. He’s seen a great army marching south, more than we can possibly defeat. They’re led by a giant—”

“Alcyoneus?”

“I don’t think so. If he is truly invulnerable in Alaska, he’d be foolish to come here himself. It must be one of his brothers.”

“Great,” Percy said. “So we’ve got two giants to worry about.”

The praetor nodded. “Lupa and her wolves are trying to slow them down, but this force is too strong even for them. The enemy will be here soon—by the Feast of Fortuna at the very latest.”

Percy shuddered. He’d seen Lupa in action. He knew all about the wolf goddess and her pack. If this enemy was too powerful for Lupa, Camp Jupiter didn’t stand a chance.

Reyna read his expression. “Yes, it’s bad, but not hopeless. If you succeed in bringing back our eagle, if you release Death so we can actually kill our enemies, then we stand a chance. And there’s one more possibility.…”

Reyna slid the silver ring across the table. “I can’t give you much help, but your journey will take you close to Seattle. I’m asking you for a favor, which may also help you. Find my sister Hylla.”

“Your sister… the one who hates me?”

“Oh, yes,” Reyna agreed. “She would love to kill you. But show her that ring as a token from me, and she may help you instead.”

“May?”

“I can’t speak for her. In fact…” Reyna frowned. “In fact I haven’t spoken to her in weeks. She’s gone silent. With these armies passing through—”

“You want me to check on her,” Percy guessed. “Make sure she’s okay.”

“Partially, yes. I can’t imagine she’s been overcome. My sister has a powerful force. Her territory is well defended. But if you can find her, she could offer you valuable help. It could mean the difference between success and failure on your quest. And if you tell her what’s happening here—”

“She might send help?” Percy asked.

Reyna didn’t answer, but Percy could see the desperation in her eyes. She was terrified, grasping for anything that could save her camp. No wonder she wanted Percy’s help. She was the only praetor. The defense of the camp rested on her shoulders alone.

Percy took the ring. “I’ll find her. Where do I look? What kind of force does she have?”

“Don’t worry. Just go to Seattle. They’ll find you.”

That didn’t sound encouraging, but Percy slipped the ring onto his leather necklace with his beads and his probatio tablet. “Wish me luck.”

“Fight well, Percy Jackson,” Reyna said. “And thank you.”

He could tell the audience was over. Reyna was having trouble holding herself together, keeping up the image of the confident commander. She needed some time by herself.

And now he had agreed to find another person. Magnus, Alex, and Hylla… Percy hoped he would manage to find at least Hylla. Once Annabeth came… they could find Magnus and Alex together.

But at the door of the principia, Percy couldn’t resist turning. “How did we destroy your home—that spa where you lived?”

The metal greyhounds growled. Reyna snapped her fingers to silence them.

“You destroyed the power of our mistress,” she said. “You freed some prisoners who took revenge on all of us who lived on the island. My sister and I… well, we survived. It was difficult. But in the long run, I think we are better off away from that place.”

“Still, I’m sorry,” Percy said. “If I hurt you, I’m sorry.”

Reyna gazed at him for a long time, as if trying to translate his words. “An apology? Not very Roman at all, Percy Jackson. You’d make an interesting praetor. I hope you’ll think about my offer.”

Chapter Text

LUNCH FELT LIKE A FUNERAL PARTY. Everybody ate. People talked in hushed tones. Nobody seemed particularly happy. The other campers kept glancing over at Percy like he was the corpse of honor.

Reyna made a brief speech wishing them luck. Octavian ripped open a Beanie Baby and pronounced grave omens and hard times ahead, but predicted the camp would be saved by an unexpected hero (whose initials were probably OCTAVIAN). Then the other campers went off to their afternoon classes—gladiator fighting, Latin lessons, paintball with ghosts, eagle training, and a dozen other activities that sounded better than a suicide quest. Percy followed Hazel and Frank to the barracks to pack.

Percy didn’t have much. He’d cleaned up his backpack from his trip south and had kept most of his Bargain Mart supplies. He had a fresh pair of jeans and an extra purple T-shirt from the camp quartermaster, plus some nectar, ambrosia, snacks, a little mortal money, and camping supplies. At lunch, Reyna had handed him a scroll of introduction from the praetor and camp senate. Supposedly, any retired legionnaires they met on the trip would help them if shown the letter. He also kept his leather necklace with the beads, the silver ring, and the probatio tablet, and of course he had Riptide in his pocket. He folded his tattered orange T-shirt and left it on his bunk with his panda pillow pet.

“I’ll be back,” he said. He felt pretty stupid talking to a T-shirt, but he was really thinking of Annabeth, and his old life. “I’m not leaving for good. But I have to help these guys. They took me in. They deserve to survive.”

The T-shirt didn’t answer, thankfully.

One of their roommates, Bobby, gave them a ride to the border of the valley on Hannibal the elephant. From the hilltops, Percy could see everything below. The Little Tiber snaked across golden pastures where the unicorns were grazing. The temples and forums of New Rome gleamed in the sunlight. On the Field of Mars, engineers were hard at work, pulling down the remains of last night’s fort and setting up barricades for a game of death ball. A normal day for Camp Jupiter—but on the northern horizon, storm clouds were gathering. Shadows moved across the hills, and Percy imagined the face of Gaea getting closer and closer.

Work with me for the future, Reyna had said. I intend to save this camp.

Looking down at the valley, Percy understood why she cared so much. Even though he was new to Camp Jupiter, he felt a fierce desire to protect this place. A safe haven where demigods could build their lives—he wanted that to be part of his future. Maybe not the way Reyna imagined, but if he could share this place with Annabeth…

They got off the elephant. Bobby wished them a safe journey. Hannibal wrapped the three questers with his trunk. Then the elephant taxi service headed back into the valley.

Percy sighed. He turned to Hazel and Frank and tried to think of something upbeat to say.

A familiar voice said, “IDs, please.”

A statue of Terminus appeared at the summit of the hill. The god’s marble face frowned irritably. “Well? Come along!”

“You again?” Percy asked. “I thought you just guarded the city.”

Terminus huffed. “Glad to see you, too, Mr. Rule Flouter. Normally, yes, I guard the city, but for international departures, I like to provide extra security at the camp borders. You really should’ve allowed two hours before your planned departure time, you know. But we’ll have to make do. Now, come over here so I can pat you down.”

“But you don’t have—” Percy stopped himself. “Uh, sure.”

He stood next to the armless statue. Terminus conducted a rigorous mental pat down.

“You seem to be clean,” Terminus decided. “Do you have anything to declare?”

“Yes,” Percy said. “I declare this is stupid.”

“Hmph! Probatio tablet: Percy Jackson, Fifth Cohort, son of Neptune. Fine, go. Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto. Fine. Any foreign currency or, ahem, precious metals to declare?”

“No,” she muttered.

“Are you sure?” Terminus asked. “Because last time—”

“No!”

“Well, this is a grumpy bunch,” said the god. “Quest travelers! Always in a rush. Now, let’s see—Frank Zhang. Ah! Centurion? Well done, Frank. And that haircut is regulation perfect. I approve! Off you go, then, Centurion Zhang. Do you need any directions today?”

“No. No, I guess not.”

“Just down to the BART station,” Terminus said anyway. “Change trains at Twelfth Street in Oakland. You want Fruitvale Station. From there, you can walk or take the bus to Alameda.”

“You guys don’t have a magical BART train or something?” Percy asked.

“Magic trains!” Terminus scoffed. “You’ll be wanting your own security lane and a pass to the executive lounge next. Just travel safely, and watch out for Polybotes. Talk about scofflaws—bah! I wish I could throttle him with my bare hands.”

“Wait—who?” Percy asked.

Terminus made a straining expression, like he was flexing his nonexistent biceps. “Ah, well. Just be careful of him. I imagine he can smell a son of Neptune a mile away. Out you go, now. Good luck!”

An invisible force kicked them across the boundary. When Percy looked back, Terminus was gone. In fact, the entire valley was gone. The Berkeley Hills seemed to be free of any Roman camp.

Percy looked at his friends. “Any idea what Terminus was talking about? Watch out for… Political something or other?”

“Poh-LIB-uh-tease?” Hazel sounded out the name carefully. “Never heard of him.”

“Sounds Greek,” Frank said.

Percy couldn't explain it, but a shiver ran down his spine at the name.

“That narrows it down.” Percy sighed. “Well, we probably just appeared on the smell radar for every monster within five miles. We’d better get moving.”

It took them two hours to reach the docks in Alameda. Compared to Percy’s last few months, the trip was easy. No monsters attacked. Nobody looked at Percy like he was a homeless wild child.

Frank had stored his spear, bow, and quiver in a long bag made for skis. Hazel’s cavalry sword was wrapped in a bedroll slung on her back. Together the three of them looked like normal high schoolers on their way to an overnight trip. They walked to Rockridge Station, bought their tickets with mortal money, and hopped on the BART train.

They got off in Oakland. They had to walk through some rough neighborhoods, but nobody bothered them. Whenever the local gang members came close enough to look in Percy’s eyes, they quickly veered away. He’d perfected his wolf stare over the last few months—a look that said: However bad you think you are, I’m worse. After strangling sea monsters and running over gorgons in a police car, Percy wasn’t scared of gangs. Pretty much nothing in the mortal world scared him anymore.

In the late afternoon, they made it to the Alameda docks. Percy looked out over San Francisco Bay and breathed in the salty sea air. Immediately he felt better. This was his father’s domain. Whatever they faced, he’d have the upper hand as long as they were at sea.

Dozens of boats were moored at the docks—everything from fifty-foot yachts to tenfoot fishing boats. He scanned the slips for some sort of magic vessel—a trireme, maybe, or a dragon-headed warship like he’d seen in his dreams.

“Um… you guys know what we’re looking for?”

Hazel and Frank shook their heads.

“I didn’t even know we had a navy.” Hazel sounded as if she wished there wasn’t one.

“Oh…” Frank pointed. “You don’t think…?”

At the end of the dock was a tiny boat, like a dinghy, covered in a purple tarp.

Embroidered in faded gold along the canvas was S.P.Q.R.

Percy’s confidence wavered. “No way.”

He uncovered the boat, his hands working the knots like he’d been doing it his whole life. Under the tarp was an old steel rowboat with no oars. The boat had been painted dark blue at one point, but the hull was so crusted with tar and salt it looked like one massive nautical bruise.

On the bow, the name Pax was still readable, lettered in gold. Painted eyes drooped sadly at the water level, as if the boat were about to fall asleep. On board were two benches, some steel wool, an old cooler, and a mound of frayed rope with one end tied to the mooring. At the bottom of the boat, aplastic bag and two empty Coke cans floated in several inches of scummy water.

“Behold,” Frank said. “The mighty Roman navy.”

“There’s got to be a mistake,” Hazel said. “This is a piece of junk.”

Percy imagined Octavian laughing at them, but he decided not to let it get him down. The Pax was still a boat. He jumped aboard, and the hull hummed under his feet, responding to his presence. He gathered up the garbage in the cooler and put it on the dock. He willed the scummy water to flow over the sides and out of the boat. Then he pointed at the steel wool and it flew across the floor, scrubbing and polishing so fast, the steel began to smoke. When it was done, the boat was clean. Percy pointed at the rope, and it untied itself from the dock.

No oars, but that didn’t matter. Percy could tell that the boat was ready to move, just awaiting his command.

“This’ll do,” he said. “Hop in.”

Hazel and Frank looked a little stunned, but they climbed aboard. Hazel seemed especially nervous. When they had settled on the seats, Percy concentrated, and the boat slipped away from the dock.

Juno was right, you know. The sleepy voice of Gaea whispered in Percy’s mind, startling him so badly the boat rocked. You could have chosen a new life in the sea. You would have been safe from me there. Now it’s too late. You chose pain and misery. You’re part of my plan, now—my important little pawn.

“Get off my ship,” Percy growled.

“Uh, what?” Frank asked.

Percy waited, but the voice of Gaea was silent.

“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s see what this rowboat can do.”

He turned the boat to the north, and in no time they were speeding along at fifteen knots, heading for the Golden Gate Bridge.

Chapter Text

HAZEL HATED BOATS. She got seasick so easily, it was more like sea plague. She hadn’t mentioned this to Percy. She didn’t want to mess up the quest, but she remembered how horrible her life had been when she and her mother had moved to Alaska—no roads. Everywhere they went, they’d had to take the train or a boat.

She hoped her condition might have improved since she’d come back from the dead. Obviously not. And this little boat, the Pax , looked so much like that other boat they’d had in Alaska. It brought back bad memories.…

As soon as they left the dock, Hazel’s stomach started to churn. By the time they passed the piers along the San Francisco Embarcadero, she felt so woozy she thought she was hallucinating. They sped by a pack of sea lions lounging on the docks, and she swore she saw an old homeless guy sitting among them. From across the water, the old man pointed a bony finger at Percy and mouthed something like Don’t even think about it.

“Did you see that?” Hazel asked.

Percy’s face was red in the sunset. “Yeah. I’ve been here before. I… I don’t know. I think I was looking for my girlfriend.” He frowned. “No. I was here with my girlfriend. We were looking for… we were looking for someone. I don’t remember who.”

“Annabeth,” Frank said. “You mean, on your way to Camp Jupiter?”

Percy frowned. “No. Before that.” He scanned the city like he was still looking for Annabeth until they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and turned north.

Hazel tried to settle her stomach by thinking of pleasant things—the euphoria she’d felt last night when they’d won the war games, riding Hannibal into the enemy keep, Frank’s sudden transformation into a leader. He’d looked like a different person when he’d scaled the walls, calling on the Fifth Cohort to attack. The way he’d swept the defenders off the battlements… Hazel had never seen him like that before. She’d been so proud to pin the centurion’s badge to his shirt.

Then her thoughts turned to Nico. Before they had left, her brother had pulled her aside to wish her luck. Hazel hoped he’d stay at Camp Jupiter to help defend it, but he said he’d be leaving today—heading back to the Underworld.

“Dad needs all the help he can get,” he said. “The Fields of Punishment look like a prison riot. The Furies can barely keep order. Besides…” he hesitated. “I’m going to try to track some of the escaping souls. Then I’m going to figure out what to do about the Doors of Death.”

“Be careful,” Hazel said. “If Gaea is guarding those doors—”

“Don’t worry.” Nico smiled, but his smile seemed strained. “I know how to stay hidden. Just take care of yourself. The closer you get to Alaska… I’m not sure if it’ll make the blackouts better or worse.”

Take care of myself, Hazel thought bitterly. As if there was any way the quest would end well for her.

“If we free Thanatos,” Hazel told Nico, “I may never see you again. Thanatos will send me back to the Underworld…”

Nico took her hand. His fingers were so pale, it was hard to believe Hazel and he shared the same godly father.

“I have to believe that you’ll come back,” Nico said. “The bad souls… they deserve to go back to their punishment. You, Hazel… you deserve this life. I want you to meet Bianca one day. I want her to meet you. You never know, Hazel. You might not be on his list.”

Hazel didn’t know if Nico was just saying that for her benefit, but she felt sad. She wished she had more time with Nico and her friends at Camp. She didn’t want to die a second time.

“Good luck, Hazel,” Nico said. Then he melted into the shadows—just like her father had seventy years before.

The boat shuddered, jolting Hazel back to the present. They entered the Pacific currents and skirted the rocky coastline of Marin County.

Frank held his ski bag across his lap. It passed over Hazel’s knees like the safety bar on an amusement ride, which made her think of the time Sammy had taken her to the carnival during Mardi Gras… She quickly pushed that memory aside. She couldn’t risk a blackout.

“You okay?” Frank asked. “You look queasy.”

“Seasickness,” she confessed. “I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Frank pouted like it was somehow his fault. He started digging in his pack. “I’ve got some nectar. And some crackers. Um, my grandmother says ginger helps… I don’t have any of that, but—”

“It’s okay.” Hazel mustered a smile. “That’s sweet of you, though.”

Frank pulled out a saltine. It snapped in his big fingers. Cracker exploded everywhere.

Hazel laughed. “Gods, Frank… Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.”

“Uh, no problem,” he said sheepishly. “Guess you don’t want that one.”

Percy wasn’t paying much attention. He kept his eyes fixed on the shoreline. As they passed Stinson Beach, he pointed inland, where a single mountain rose above the green hills.

“That looks familiar,” he said.

“Mount Tam,” Frank said. “Kids at camp are always talking about it. Big battle happened on the summit, at the old Titan base.”

Percy frowned. “Were either of you there?”

“No,” Hazel said. “That was back in August, before I—um, before I got to camp. Jason told me about it. The legion destroyed the enemy’s palace and about a million monsters. Jason had to battle Krios—hand-to-hand combat with a Titan, if you can imagine.”

“I can imagine,” Percy muttered.

Hazel wasn’t sure what he meant, but Percy did remind her of Jason, even though they looked nothing alike. They had the same aura of quiet power, plus a kind of sadness, like they’d seen their destiny and knew it was only a matter of time before they met a monster they couldn’t beat.

Hazel understood the feeling. She watched the sun set in the ocean, and she knew she had less than a week to live. Whether or not their quest succeeded, her journey would be over by the Feast of Fortuna.

She thought about her first death, and the months leading up to it—her house in Seward, the six months she’d spent in Alaska, taking that little boat into Resurrection Bay at night, visiting that cursed island.

She realized her mistake too late. Her vision went black, and she slipped back in time.

“Hazel!” Frank shook her arms, sounding panicked. “Come on, please! Wake up!”

She opened her eyes. The night sky blazed with stars. The rocking of the boat was gone. She was lying on solid ground, her bundled sword and pack beside her. She sat up groggily, her head spinning. They were on a cliff overlooking a beach.

About a hundred feet away, the ocean glinted in the moonlight. The surf washed gently against the stern of their beached boat. To her right, hugging the edge of the cliff, was a building like a small church with a search light in the steeple. A lighthouse, Hazel guessed. Behind them, fields of tall grass rustled in the wind.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Frank exhaled. “Thank the gods you’re awake! We’re in Mendocino, about a hundred and fifty miles north of the Golden Gate.”

“A hundred and fifty miles?” Hazel groaned. “I’ve been out that long?”

Percy knelt beside her, the sea wind sweeping his hair. He put his hand on her forehead as if checking for a fever. “We couldn’t wake you. Finally we decided to bring you ashore. We thought maybe the seasickness—”

“It wasn’t seasickness.” She took a deep breath. She couldn’t hide the truth from them anymore. She remembered what Nico had said: If a flashback like that happens when you’re in combat…

“I—I haven’t been honest with you,” she said. “What happened was a blackout. I have them once in a while.”

“A blackout?” Frank took Hazel’s hand, which startled her… though pleasantly so. “Is it medical? Why haven’t I noticed before?”

“I try to hide it,” she admitted. “I’ve been lucky so far, but it’s getting worse. It’s not medical…not really. Nico says it’s a side effect from my past, from where he found me.”

Percy’s intense green eyes were hard to read. She couldn’t tell whether he was concerned or wary.

“Where exactly did Nico find you?” he asked.

Hazel’s tongue felt like cotton. She was afraid if she started talking, she’d slip back into the past, but they deserved to know. If she failed them on this quest, zonked out when they needed her most… she couldn’t bear that idea.

“I’ll explain,” she promised. She clawed through her pack. Stupidly, she’d forgotten to bring a water bottle. “Is… is there anything to drink?”

“Yeah.” Percy muttered a curse in Greek. “That was dumb. I left my supplies down at the boat.”

Hazel felt bad asking them to take care of her, but she’d woken up parched and exhausted, as if she’d lived the last few hours in both the past and the present. She shouldered her pack and sword. “Never mind. I can walk…”

“Don’t even think about it,” Frank said. “Not until you’ve had some food and water. I’ll get the supplies.”

“No, I’ll go.” Percy glanced at Frank’s hand on Hazel’s. Then he scanned the horizon as if he sensed trouble, but there was nothing to see—just the lighthouse and the field of grass stretching inland. “You two stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“You sure?” Hazel said feebly. “I don’t want you to—”

“It’s fine,” said Percy. “Frank, just keep your eyes open. Something about this place… I don’t know.”

“I’ll keep her safe,” Frank promised.

Percy dashed off.

Once they were alone, Frank seemed to realize he was still holding Hazel’s hand. He cleared his throat and let go.

“I, um… I think I understand your blackouts,” he said. “And where you come from.”

Her heartbeat stumbled. “You do?”

“You seem so different from other girls I’ve met.” He blinked, then rushed on. “Not like… bad different. Just the way you talk. The things that surprise you—like songs, or TV shows, or slang people use. You talk about your life like it happened a long time ago. You were born in a different time, weren’t you? You came from the Underworld.”

Hazel wanted to cry—not because she was sad, but because it was such a relief to hear someone say the truth. Frank didn’t act revolted or scared. He didn’t look at her as if she were a ghost or some awful undead zombie.

“Frank, I—”

“We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “You’re alive now. We’re going to keep you that way.”

The grass rustled behind them. Hazel’s eyes stung in the cold wind.

“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” she said. “You don’t know what I am… what I’ve done.”

“Stop that.” Frank scowled. “You’re great! Besides, you’re not the only one with secrets.”

Hazel stared at him. “I’m not?”

Frank started to say something. Then he tensed.

“What?” Hazel asked.

“The wind’s stopped.”

She looked around and noticed he was right. The air had become perfectly still.

“So?” she asked.

Frank swallowed. “So why is the grass still moving?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Hazel saw dark shapes ripple through the field.

“Hazel!” Frank tried to grab her arms, but it was too late.

Something knocked him backward. Then a force like a grassy hurricane wrapped around Hazel and dragged her into the fields.

Chapter Text

HAZEL WAS AN EXPERT ON WEIRD. She’d seen her mother possessed by an earth goddess. She’d created a giant out of gold. She’d destroyed an island, died, and come back from the Underworld.

But getting kidnapped by a field of grass? That was new.

She felt as if she were trapped in a funnel cloud of plants. She’d heard of modern-day singers jumping into crowds of fans and getting passed overhead by thousands of hands. She imagined this was similar—only she was moving a thousand times faster, and the grass blades weren’t adoring fans.

She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t touch the ground. Her sword was still in her bedroll, strapped to her back, but she couldn’t reach it. The plants kept her off balance, tossing her around, slicing her face and arms. She could barely make out the stars through the tumble of green, yellow, and black.

Frank’s shouting faded into the distance.

It was hard to think clearly, but Hazel knew one thing: She was moving fast. Wherever she was being taken, she’d soon be too far away for her friends to find her. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the tumbling and tossing. She sent her thoughts into the earth below her. Gold, silver—she’d settle for anything that might disrupt her kidnappers.

She felt nothing. Riches under the earth—zero.

She was about to despair when she felt a huge cold spot pass beneath her. She locked onto it with all her concentration, dropping a mental anchor. Suddenly the ground rumbled. The swirl of plants released her and she was thrown upward like a catapult projectile.

Momentarily weightless, she opened her eyes. She twisted her body in midair. The ground was about twenty feet below her. Then she was falling. Her combat training kicked in. She’d practiced dropping from giant eagles before. She tucked into a roll, turned the impact into a somersault, and came up standing.

She unslung her bedroll and drew her sword. A few yards to her left, an outcropping of rock the size of a garage jutted from the sea of grass. Hazel realized it was her anchor. She’d caused the rock to appear.

The grass rippled around it. Angry voices hissed in dismay at the massive clump of stone that had broken their progress. Before they could regroup, Hazel ran to the rock and clambered to the top.

The grass swayed and rustled around her like the tentacles of a gigantic undersea anemone. Hazel could sense her kidnappers’ frustration.

“Can’t grow on this, can you?” she yelled. “Go away, you bunch of weeds! Leave me alone!”

“Schist,” said an angry voice from the grass.

Hazel raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Schist! Big pile of schist!”

A nun at St. Agnes Academy had once washed Hazel’s mouth with lye soap for saying something very similar, so she wasn’t sure how to respond. Then, all around her rock island, the kidnappers materialized from the grass. At first glance they looked like Valentine angels—a dozen chubby little Cupid babies. As they stepped closer, Hazel realized they were neither cute nor angelic. They were the size of toddlers, with rolls of baby fat, but their skin had a strange greenish hue, as if chlorophyll ran through their veins. They had dry, brittle wings like corn-husks, and tufts of white hair like corn silk. Their faces were haggard, pitted with kernels of grain. Their eyes were solid green, and their teeth were canine fangs.

The largest creature stepped forward. He wore a yellow loincloth, and his hair was spiky, like the bristles on a stalk of wheat. He hissed at Hazel and waddled back and forth so quickly, she was afraid his loincloth might fall off.

“Hate this schist!” the creature complained. “Wheat cannot grow!”

“Sorghum cannot grow!” another piped up.

“Barley!” yelled a third. “Barley cannot grow. Curse this schist!”

Hazel’s knees wobbled. The little creatures might have been funny if they weren’t surrounding her, staring up at her with those pointed teeth and hungry green eyes. They were like Cupid piranhas.

“Y-you mean the rock?” she managed. “This rock is called schist?”

“Yes, greenstone! Schist!” the first creature yelled. “Nasty rock.”

Hazel began to understand how she’d summoned it. “It’s a precious stone. It’s valuable?”

“Bah!” said the one in the yellow loincloth. “Foolish native people made jewelry from it, yes. Valuable? Maybe. Not as good as wheat.”

“Or sorghum!”

“Or barley!”

The others chimed in, calling out different types of grain. They circled the rock, making no effort to climb it—at least not yet. If they decided to swarm her, there was no way she could fend off all of them.

“You’re Gaea’s servants,” she guessed, just to keep them talking. Maybe Percy and Frank weren’t too far away. Maybe they’d be able to see her, standing so tall above the fields. She wished that her sword glowed like Percy’s.

The yellow-diapered Cupid snarled. “We are the karpoi,spirits of the grain. Children of the Earth Mother, yes! We have been her attendants since forever. Before nasty humans cultivated us, we were wild. We will be again. Wheat will destroy all!”

“No, sorghum will rule!”

“Barley shall dominate!”

The others joined in, each karpos cheering for his own variety.

“Right.” Hazel swallowed her revulsion. “So you’re Wheat, then—you in the yellow, um, britches.”

“Hmmmm,” said Wheat. “Come down from your schist, demigod. We must take you to our mistress’s army. They will reward us. They will kill you slowly!”

“Tempting,” Hazel said, “but no thanks.”

“I will give you wheat!” said Wheat, as if this were a very fine offer in exchange for her life. “So much wheat!”

Hazel tried to think. How far had she been carried? How long would it take her friends to find her? The karpoi were getting bolder, approaching the rock in twos and threes, scratching at the schist to see if it would hurt them.

“Before I get down…” She raised her voice, hoping it would carry over the fields. “Um, explain something to me, would you? If you’re grain spirits, shouldn’t you be on the gods’ side? Isn’t the goddess of agriculture Ceres—”

“Evil name!” Barley wailed.

“Cultivates us!” Sorghum spat. “Makes us grow in disgusting rows. Lets humans harvest us. Pah! When Gaea is mistress of the world again, we will grow wild, yes!”

“Well, naturally,” Hazel said. “So this army of hers, where you’re taking me in exchange for wheat—”

“Or barley,” Barley offered.

“Yeah,” Hazel agreed. “This army is where, now?”

“Just over the ridge!” Sorghum clapped his hands excitedly. “The Earth Mother—oh, yes!—she told us: ‘Look for the daughter of Pluto who lives again. Find her! Bring her alive! I have many tortures planned for her.’ The giant Polybotes will reward us for your life! Then we will march south to destroy the Romans. We can’t be killed, you know. But you can, yes.”

“That’s wonderful.” Hazel tried to sound enthusiastic. It wasn’t easy, knowing Gaea had special revenge planned for her. “So you—you can’t be killed because Alcyoneus has captured Death, is that it?”

“Exactly!” Barley said.

“And he’s keeping him chained in Alaska,” Hazel said, “at…let’s see, what’s the name of that place?”

Sorghum started to answer, but Wheat flew at him and knocked him down. The karpoi began to fight, dissolving into funnel clouds of grain. Hazel considered making a run for it.

Then Wheat reformed, holding Sorghum in a headlock. “Stop!” he yelled at the others. “Multigrain fighting is not allowed!”

The karpoi solidified into chubby Cupid piranhas again.

Wheat pushed Sorghum away.

“Oh, clever demigod,” he said. “Trying to trick us into giving secrets. No, you’ll never find the lair of Alcyoneus.”

“I already know where it is,” she said with false confidence. “He’s on the island in Resurrection Bay.”

“Ha!” Wheat sneered. “That place sank beneath the waves long ago. You should know that! Gaea hates you for it. When you thwarted her plans, she was forced to sleep again. Decades and decades! Alcyoneus—not until the dark times was he able to rise.”

“The nineteen-eighties,” Barley agreed. “Horrible! Horrible!”

“Yes,” Wheat said. “And our mistress still sleeps. Alcyoneus was forced to bide his time in the north, waiting, planning. Only now does Gaea begin to stir. Oh, but she remembers you, and so does her son!”

Sorghum cackled with glee. “You will never find the prison of Thanatos. All of Alaska is the giant’s home. He could be keeping Death anywhere! Years it would take you to find him, and your poor camp has only days. Better you surrender. We will give you grain. So much grain.”

Hazel’s sword felt heavy. She’d dreaded returning to Alaska, but at least she’d had an idea where to start looking for Thanatos. She’d assumed that the island where she had died hadn’t been completely destroyed, or possibly had risen again when Alcyoneus woke. She had hoped that his base would be there. But if the island was really gone, she had no idea how to find the giant. Alaska was huge. They could search for decades and never find him.

“Yes,” Wheat said, sensing her anguish. “Give up.”

Hazel gripped her spatha. “Never!” She raised her voice again, hoping it would somehow reach her friends. “If I have to destroy you all, I will. I am the daughter of Pluto!”

The karpoi advanced. They gripped the rock, hissing as if it were scalding hot, but they began to climb.

“Now you will die,” Wheat promised, gnashing his teeth. “You will feel the wrath of grain!”

Suddenly there was a whistling sound. Wheat’s snarl froze. He looked down at the golden arrow that had just pierced his chest. Then he dissolved into pieces of Chex Mix.

Chapter Text

FOR A HEARTBEAT, HAZEL WAS just as stunned as the karpoi. Then Frank and Percy burst into the open and began to massacre every source of fiber they could find. Frank shot an arrow through Barley, who crumbled into seeds. Percy slashed Riptide through Sorghum and charged toward Millet and Oats. Hazel jumped down and joined the fight.

Within minutes, the karpoi had been reduced to piles of seeds and various breakfast cereals. Wheat started to reform, but Percy pulled a lighter from his pack and sparked a flame.

“Try it,” he warned, “and I’ll set this whole field on fire. Stay dead. Stay away from us, or the grass gets it!”

Frank winced like the flame terrified him. Hazel didn’t understand why, but she shouted at the grain piles anyway: “He’ll do it! He’s crazy!”

The remnants of the karpoi scattered in the wind. Frank climbed the rock and watched them go.

Percy extinguished his lighter and grinned at Hazel. “Thanks for yelling. We wouldn’t have found you otherwise. How’d you hold them off so long?”

She pointed to the rock. “A big pile of schist.”

“Excuse me?”

“Guys,” Frank called from the top of the rock. “You need to see this.”

Percy and Hazel climbed up to join him. As soon as Hazel saw what he was looking at, she inhaled sharply. “Percy, no light! Put up your sword!”

“Schist!” He touched the sword tip, and Riptide shrank back into a pen.

Down below them, an army was on the move.

The field dropped into a shallow ravine, where a country road wound north and south. On the opposite side of the road, grassy hills stretched to the horizon, empty of civilization except for one darkened convenience store at the top of the nearest rise. The whole ravine was full of monsters—column after column marching south, so many and so close, Hazel was amazed they hadn’t heard her shouting. She, Frank, and Percy crouched against the rock. They watched in disbelief as several dozen large, hairy humanoids passed by, dressed in tattered bits of armor and animal fur. The creatures had six arms each, three sprouting on either side, so they looked like cavemen evolved from insects.

“Gegenes,” Hazel whispered. “The Earthborn.”

“You’ve fought them before?” Percy asked.

She shook her head. “Just heard about them in monster class at camp.” She’d never liked monster class—reading Pliny the Elder and those other musty authors who described legendary monsters from the edges of the Roman Empire. Hazel believed in monsters, but some of the descriptions were so wild, she had thought they must be just ridiculous rumors.

Only now, a whole army of those rumors was marching by.

“The Earthborn fought the Argonauts,” she murmured. “And those things behind them—”

“Centaurs,” Percy said. “But…that’s not right. Centaurs are good guys.”

Frank made a choking sound. “That’s not what we were taught at camp. Centaurs are crazy, always getting drunk and killing heroes.”

Hazel watched as the horse-men cantered past. They were human from the waist up, palomino from the waist down. They were dressed in barbarian armor of hide and bronze, armed with spears and slings. At first, Hazel thought they were wearing Viking helmets. Then she realized they had actual horns jutting from their shaggy hair.

“Are they supposed to have bull’s horns?” she asked.

“Maybe they’re a special breed,” Frank said. “Let’s not ask them, okay?”

Percy gazed farther down the road and his face went slack. “My gods… Cyclopes.”

Sure enough, lumbering after the centaurs was a battalion of one-eyed ogres, both male and female, each about ten feet tall, wearing armor cobbled out of junkyard metal. Six of the monsters were yoked like oxen, pulling a two-story-tall siege tower fitted with a giant scorpion ballista.

Percy pressed the sides of his head. “Cyclopes. Centaurs. This is wrong. All wrong.”

The monster army was enough to make anyone despair, but Hazel realized that something else was going on with Percy. He looked pale and sickly in the moonlight, as if his memories were trying to come back, scrambling his mind in the process.

She glanced at Frank. “We need to get him back to the boat. The sea will make him feel better.”

“No argument,” Frank said. “There are too many of them. The camp… we have to warn the camp.”

“They know,” Percy groaned. “Reyna knows.”

A lump formed in Hazel’s throat. There was no way the legion could fight so many. If they were only a few hundred miles north of Camp Jupiter, their quest was already doomed. They could never make it to Alaska and back in time.

“Come on,” she urged. “Let’s…”

Then she saw the giant.

When he appeared over the ridge, Hazel couldn’t quite believe her eyes. He was taller than the siege tower—thirty feet, at least—with scaly reptilian legs like a Komodo dragon from the waist down and green-blue armor from the waist up. His breastplate was shaped like rows of hungry monstrous faces, their mouths open as if demanding food. His face was human, but his hair was wild and green, like a mop of seaweed. As he turned his head from side to side, snakes dropped from his dreadlocks. Viper dandruff—gross. He was armed with a massive trident and a weighted net.

Just the sight of those weapons made Hazel’s stomach clench. She’d faced that type of fighter in gladiator training many times. It was the trickiest, sneakiest, most evil combat style she knew. This giant was a supersize retiarius.

“Who is he?” Frank’s voice quivered. “That’s not—”

“Not Alcyoneus,” Hazel said weakly. “One of his brothers, I think. The one Terminus mentioned. The grain spirit mentioned him, too. That’s Polybotes.”

She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she could feel the giant’s aura of power even from here. She remembered that feeling from the Heart of the Earth as she had raised Alcyoneus—as if she were standing near a powerful magnet, and all the iron in her blood was being drawn toward it. This giant was another child of Gaea—a creature of the earth so malevolent and powerful, he radiated his own gravitational field.

Hazel knew they should leave. Their hiding place on top of the rock would be in plain sight to a creature that tall if he chose to look in their direction. But she sensed something important was about to happen. She and her friends crept a little farther down the schist and kept watching.

As the giant got close, a Cyclops woman broke ranks and ran back to speak with him. She was enormous, fat, and horribly ugly, wearing a chain-mail dress like a muumuu—but next to the giant she looked like a child.

She pointed to the closed-up convenience store on top of the nearest hill and muttered something about food. The giant snapped back an answer, as if he was annoyed. The female Cyclopes barked an order to her kindred, and three of them followed her up the hill.

When they were halfway to the store, a searing light turned night into day. Hazel was blinded. Below her, the enemy army dissolved into chaos, monsters screaming in pain and outrage. Hazel squinted. She felt like she’d just stepped out of a dark theater into a sunny afternoon.

“Too pretty!” the Cyclopes shrieked. “Burns our eye!”

The store on the hill was encased in a rainbow, closer and brighter than any Hazel had ever seen. The light was anchored at the store, shooting up into the heavens, bathing the countryside in a weird kaleidoscopic glow.

The lady Cyclops hefted her club and charged at the store. As she hit the rainbow, her whole body began to steam. She wailed in agony and dropped her club, retreating with multicolored blisters all over her arms and face.

“Horrible goddess!” she bellowed at the store. “Give us snacks!”

The other monsters went crazy, charging the convenience store, then running away as the rainbow light burned them. Some threw rocks, spears, swords, and even pieces of their armor, all of which burned up in flames of pretty colors.

Finally the giant leader seemed to realize that his troops were throwing away perfectly good equipment. “Stop!” he roared.

With some difficulty, he managed to shout and push and pummel his troops into submission. When they’d quieted down, he approached the rainbow-shielded store himself and stalked around the borders of the light. “Goddess!” he shouted. “Come out and surrender!”

No answer from the store. The rainbow continued to shimmer.

The giant raised his trident and net. “I am Polybotes! Kneel before me so I may destroy you quickly.”

Apparently, no one in the store was impressed. A tiny dark object came sailing out the window and landed at the giant’s feet. Polybotes yelled, “Grenade!”

He covered his face. His troops hit the ground.

When the thing did not explode, Polybotes bent down cautiously and picked it up.

He roared in outrage. “A Ding Dong? You dare insult me with a Ding Dong?” He threw the cake back at the shop, and it vaporized in the light.

The monsters got to their feet. Several muttered hungrily, “Ding Dongs? Where Ding Dongs?”

“Let’s attack,” said the lady Cyclops. “I am hungry. My boys want snacks!”

“No!” Polybotes said. “We’re already late. Alcyoneus wants us at the camp in four days’ time. You Cyclopes move inexcusably slowly. We have no time for minor goddesses!” He aimed that last comment at the store, but got no response.

The lady Cyclops growled. “The camp, yes. Vengeance! The orange and purple ones destroyed my home. Now Ma Gasket will destroy theirs! Do you hear me, Leo? Jason? Piper? I come to annihilate you!”

Percy inhaled sharply.

The other Cyclopes bellowed in approval. The rest of the monsters joined in.

Hazel’s whole body tingled. She glanced at her friends. “Jason,” she whispered. “She fought Jason. He might still be alive.”

Frank nodded. “Do those other names mean anything to you?”

Hazel shook her head. She didn’t know any Leo or Piper at camp.

“I know those names,” Percy whispered. He still looked sickly and dazed. “I know them. I know I know them. They’re important somehow.”

Hazel pondered what the Cyclops had said: Orange and purple ones. Purple—obviously the color of Camp Jupiter. But orange… Percy had shown up in a tattered orange shirt. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

Below them, the army began to march south again, but the giant Polybotes stood to one side, frowning and sniffing the air.

“Sea god,” he muttered. To Hazel’s horror, he turned in their direction. “I smell sea god.”

Percy was shaking. Hazel put her hand on his shoulder and tried to press him flat against the rock.

The lady Cyclops Ma Gasket snarled. “Of course you smell sea god! The sea is right over there!”

“More than that,” Polybotes insisted. “I was born to destroy Neptune. I can sense…” He frowned, turning his head and shaking out a few more snakes.

“Do we march or sniff the air?” Ma Gasket scolded. “I don’t get Ding Dongs, you don’t get sea god!”

Polybotes growled. “Very well. March! March!” He took one last look at the rainbow encased store, then raked his fingers through his hair. He brought out three snakes that seemed larger than the rest, with white markings around their necks. “A gift, goddess! My name, Polybotes, means ‘Many-to-Feed!’ Here are some hungry mouths for you. See if your store gets many customers with these sentries outside.” He laughed wickedly and threw the snakes into the tall grass on the hillside.

Then he marched south, his massive Komodo legs shaking the earth. Gradually, the last column of monsters passed over the hills and disappeared into the night.

Once they were gone, the blinding rainbow shut off like a spotlight.

Hazel, Frank, and Percy were left alone in the dark, staring across the road at a closed-up convenience store.

“That was different,” Frank muttered.

Percy shuddered violently. Hazel knew he needed help, or rest, or something. Seeing that army seemed to have triggered some kind of memory, leaving him shell-shocked. They should get him back to the boat.

On the other hand, a huge stretch of grassland lay between them and the beach. Hazel got the feeling the karpoi wouldn’t stay away forever. She didn’t like the idea of the three of them making their way back to the boat in the middle of the night. And she couldn’t shake the dreadful feeling that if she hadn’t summoned that schist, she’d be a captive of the giant right now.

“Let’s go to the store,” she said. “If there’s a goddess inside, maybe she can help us.”

“Except a bunch of snake things are guarding the hill now,” Frank said. “And that burning rainbow might comeback.”

They both looked at Percy, who was shaking like he had hypothermia.

“We’ve got to try,” Hazel said.

Frank nodded grimly. “Well… any goddess who throws a Ding Dong at a giant can’t be all bad. Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

ALEX DIDN’T THINK THAT HER MORTAL FAMILY would be on her list of top five things to be thinking about when your evil mother kidnaps you and your boyfriend as well as your half-sister who said evil mother was the father of, but that just goes to show how things never really went as one thought they would.

Plus, she’d been rotting in this cell for months now and she was kind of running out of things to think about. She'd reached the low end of the totem pole of things to think about.

It was strange because Alex honestly hadn’t really thought about them in five or six years. Not since she had been thrown out of the house.

NORMAL! That’s all I want from you! To be a normal kid! Is that so damn hard?

I am normal, Father.

Yeah. Alex definitely enjoyed thinking about them.

But there really was nothing better to do—sad but true—in this cell. She found herself wondering what had happened when Alex Fierro mysteriously vanished. Alex knew that she’d been declared dead, she’d looked into it far enough to find out that much.

To be honest, she’d almost decided to legally resurrect herself so her family had to return whatever crappy life insurance money they’d gotten. But then they’d both have to deal with the fallout of that mess and everyone was better off without the other.

But a small part of her always wondered what had happened the day he’d never come back home.

Alex woke up in the dark. Unsurprising. Sometimes he woke up during the night. The surprising part was the snow and trees.

“What on earth?” he muttered, sitting up.

Alex shifted into the form of an owl and took flight. He soared above the trees to see the expansive forest.

He picked a direction to head in and was flying for a few minutes when a familiar voice floated towards him.

“-stupid,” the voice grumbled. “Okay, Alex! Haha, very funny. You got me. Can I go home now?”

Alex flew down to land on a tree branch.

Magnus Chase wandered towards the tree. Only he didn’t look quite like he used to.

“Mallory?” he tried. “Halfborn? TJ? Hello? You’ve made… whatever point you’re trying to make. Can I have my sword back?”

This Magnus was a few years younger than the eternal sixteen year old einherji that had professed his undying love on Naglfar .

“Blitzen!” Magnus shouted, sounding more irritated now. “Hearthstone!”

Alex rolled his eyes. Magnus apparently came to the same conclusion because a moment later, he smacked himself in the head. Hearthstone would not be able to hear Magnus no matter how loud he yelled.

Alex the owl hooted in amusement.

Magnus glared up at him. “Alex, Sam, if that’s one of you, I swear.”

Alex hooted again and took off, laughing all the way.

“I will kill them,” he heard Magnus mutter as he flew off.

In your dreams, Maggie .

Alex flew until he came to a tall building made of black stone. Westover Hall, the sign read. Alex flew up to the top of the building and landed on the roof.

Hours later, he finally heard Magnus again. The son of Frey wandered towards the school with a sour look on his face.

“-someone wants to let me out of this whatever this is. Bad dream? Hallucination? Manipulating Magnus’s Dreams to the Death?” he asked loudly.

If owls had lips, the corners of Alex’s would have twitched upward. Still, he did nothing as Magnus trudged forwards towards the castle. Alex had to figure out whatever was going on before doing anything. For all he knew, this was just an elaborate trick.

It wasn’t until more familiar voices drifted up that Alex realized that this might not be a trick after all. Below him, three teenagers stood before the school. Two of them were familiar. One was not. The two that were familiar were Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase.

Alex almost flew down and shifted to human to join them, but from what he understood, there was a school dance going on right now and if the three demigods—he assumed the third one was also a demigod—were trying to be sneaky and go undercover, pink and green might not be very inconspicuous.

So he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It wasn’t until Alex saw the water explosion in the distance that he realized the demigods were no longer inside the school. He immediately took off and flew towards the water.

“Impressive, Percy Jackson,” a monstrous looking creature said. “But there are more than just us.”

Alex let out a battle cry that probably didn’t sound as intimidating as a hoot, and swooped down to the ground.

“Alex!” Magnus shouted.

Alex gave Magnus an amused look and then shifted back to human.

The monster blinked. “Who are—”

“Alex Fierro. He and him,” Alex grinned. He unlooped his garrotte from his waist. “Who are you?”

“I knew that owl was you,” Magnus muttered.

“Hey, Maggie,” Alex waved.

The demigod Alex didn’t know—a girl in punk clothing—looked confused and angry. “What is going on?”

Before she could do anything else or anyone could answer her question, a hunting horn sounded in the woods.

The monster froze. For a moment, no one moved. There was only the swirl of snow and wind and the chopping of the helicopter blades.

“No,” the monster said. “It cannot be—”

His sentence was cut short when something shot past the demigods like a streak of moonlight. A glowing silver arrow sprouted from his shoulder. He staggered backward, wailing in agony.

“Curse you!” the monster cried.

He unleashed his spikes, dozens of them at once, into the woods where the arrow had come from, but just as fast, silvery arrows shot back in reply. The monster pulled the arrow out of his shoulder with a howl of pain. His breathing was heavy.

Then the archers came from the woods. A dozen girls dressed in silver.

“Oh, wonderful,” the punk girl muttered. “The Hunters.”

One of the archers stepped forwards with her bow drawn.

“Permission to kill, my lady?” she asked.

Thorn wailed. “This is not fair! Direct interference! It is against the Ancient Laws.”

“Not so,” a young girl with auburn hair said. “The hunting of all wild beasts is within my sphere. And you, foul creature, are a wild beast.” She looked at the older girl with the circlet. “Zoe, permission granted.”

The monster glared. “If I cannot have these alive, I shall have them dead!” He lunged at Magnus, Grover, and the di Angelos who were currently the only ones weaponless.

Alex’s anger flared. “Oh no you don’t!” he growled, charging the monster with his wire.

“Get back, half-blood!” Zoe called. “Get out of the line of fire!”

“Alex!” Magnus shouted.

Alex leapt onto the monster’s back and pulled the wire tight against the monster’s neck.

“Fire!” Zoe ordered.

“No!” Magnus and Percy screamed.

But the Hunters let their arrows fly. The first caught the manticore in the neck. Another hit his chest.

The monster staggered backward, wailing, “This is not the end, Huntress! You shall pay!”

And before anyone could react, the monster, with Alex still on his back, leaped over the cliff and tumbled into the darkness.

Alex barely had time to think that he should probably transform into something that could fly when everything went dark.

Chapter Text

“SAM?” ALEX ASKED.

A halfhearted hum came from the cell Samirah currently occupied.

“Are people looking for you?”

Sam didn’t answer for a while. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe. It’s just… the captain of the Valkyries, Gunilla, she doesn’t like the children of Loki. I don’t think she’d care one way or another what happens to me. She… she was suspicious before.”

They didn’t really talk much about before. It had taken Alex so long to convince Sam to try it and then it didn’t even work. Not really.

“Did she know?” Alex asked.

“Maybe,” Sam said. “I don’t know. If she did, she didn’t act on it. If she told anyone… well, I doubt they’d send an army to retrieve me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No one trusts a child of Loki. There’s a reason there aren't very many of us in Valhalla.”

Alex fell silent. She let her head fall back against the concrete wall.

“I trust a child of Loki,” Magnus’s voice spoke up. “I trust her—or him—with my life. You’re not all that bad yourself either, Sam.”

“Do you have to be so adorably sappy all the time, Magnus?” Alex asked.

Magnus hummed. “Just for you.”

Alex was very happy the cells allowed a bit of privacy so no one was able to see the fond smile on her face. Honestly, had it been anyone other than Magnus, she probably would have taken their head off.

Not that she could in the cell, but the sentiment was still there.

“You shouldn’t trust me,” Sam said quietly. “I’m the reason you’re both here and I’m the reason you couldn’t escape.”

Despite her efforts to suppress the memories of the day of the disastrous escape attempt, Alex couldn’t help them from bubbling to the surface.

Alex was anxious. She had been anxious a lot lately.

It had taken a few weeks before she could convince Sam to even attempt to go along with her plan. But it was a plan that would get all three of them away from Loki. At least long enough to get help from Valhalla or at least contact Annabeth and let her know what was going on.

Sam clearly hated the plan, but she was desperate enough to get out from under her father’s control. So she agreed, and for the past two weeks, Alex had been secretly whispering tips and tricks of making the shapeshifting power of Loki your own.

It was definitely working. Sam told Alex that she could feel Loki’s hold over her lessen. Alex told Sam that she had to keep up the pretense and comply with Loki’s commands until it was time to execute the plan.

In hindsight, Alex would blame herself for that.

But today was the day. Today was the day they would finally escape their horrible prison. All Alex had to do was wait for Sam to free her and Magnus.

A clanking noise at the cell door alerted Alex to the presence of someone unlocking the door.

“Alex!” Sam hissed. She moved on to Magnus’s cell and unlocked the door.

Alex leapt out of the cell.

“Oh thank God,” Magnus muttered in relief.

Alex gave him a strange look. “I thought you were atheist?”

That prompted a strange look from Sam. “Aren’t you a demigod?”

Magnus let out a long suffering sigh. “Thank the God I don’t believe in then. Happy? Let’s go.”

Sam led them down a series of tunnels. Along the way, she passed Magnus his dagger.

“I found these,” she explained.

“My garrotte?” Alex asked hopefully.

Sam passed it back. “Here. You need to get as far away from here as you can. I’m headed to Valhalla to inform the Valkyries and the Thanes about Loki’s actions. You two should get far away from Boston at least.”

They burst out of the prison and were immediately assaulted by icy winds.

“Nifelheim?” Alex sputtered, teeth chattering.

“Alaska,” Sam shouted over the wind. She wrapped her coat around her tightly. “Magnus, you need to open a portal with your dagger!” she yelled.

“Isn’t that how he found us in the first place?” Magnus asked.

Sam shook her head. “He can’t sense where you’re going, only that the World Tree has been used.” She gave him an imploring look. “I can’t fly you both. It’s the only way to the mainland!”

“Mainland?” Alex repeated.

Sam gestured to the icy ground all around them. “Hubbard Glacier!”

Magnus raised the dagger Annabeth had given him and made a cutting motion like he was trying to slice the air.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, but there was still nothing.

“It won’t work,” Magnus said. “It’s like there’s something actively trying to prevent me from opening a portal.” He frowned. “Did you say Alaska?”

Sam nodded impatiently. She glanced at Alex. “Do you think you could fly yourself across? I can carry Magnus.”

“SAMIRAH!”

Sam’s eyes widened. She drew her axe. “Nevermind. You two, go! I’ll handle my father.”

“No way!” Magnus protested. “What about you?”

“He might be a jerk, but I’m still his daughter,” Sam growled. “Now GO!” She let loose a war cry as she charged in the direction of Loki’s voice.

Alex fixed Magnus with a glare. “You owe me three packs of Tizer for all these rides!”

“Agreed,” Magnus said quickly.

Alex shifted into the increasingly familiar form of a pegasus. Magnus climbed on and then they shot up into the air. Magnus held a tight grip around Alex’s neck, and she had to try hard not to throw him off into the icy waters below for that.

Alex flapped her wings with all her might. She sped towards the rapidly approaching coast. As soon as she landed, she shifted back to human, causing Magnus to flatten her to the ground.

“Get off me, Magnus!” she yelled.

Magnus scrambled to his feet, blushing and apologizing profusely. If the situation wasn’t so dire, she might have made a few teasing comments.

“Come on,” Magnus said, tugging Alex’s arm. His face was still tinged pink as he pulled Alex inside the nearest store.

“What the Hel?” Alex hissed. “Shouldn’t we be getting on the next train outta here? Or trying your little portal trick?”

Magnus shook his head. “Not going to work. I thought about what Sam said. We’re in Alaska.” He pulled Alex to the back of the store, out of sight of the windows and anyone else on the street. Hopefully out of Loki’s sight as well.

“What does Alaska have to do with anything?” Alex demanded.

“Something Annabeth told me once,” Magnus said. “Alaska is the land beyond the gods. The Greek and Roman gods anyway. During the Giant war, Annabeth said Thanatos, the god of Death, was being kept in Alaska. Percy and some of their friends went on a quest to free Death.”

“Well, clearly it’s not beyond Loki,” Alex said, still not understanding what Magnus was trying to get at.

“Yeah, but he’s gotta be here somewhere, right?” Magnus continued. “As well as his captors. I don’t think Alaska is the land beyond the Norse gods, but I don’t think I can use my powers to open a portal with all the Greco-Roman interference.”

Alex frowned. What Magnus said sounded reasonable. But right now, they needed to get far away from Alaska.

“Don’t tell me we’re going to have to free Death then.”

Magnus shook his head. “No. We need to open a portal and get out of here.”

“You just said portals wouldn’t work,” Alex said in exasperation.

“With the dagger, but maybe with Jack,” Magnus said. “And we need to get Jack far away from Loki.”

“Alex?” a familiar voice called. “Magnus? I know you’re in here.”

Alex’s hands tightened around the dowels on either end of her garrotte. She signed—not very well with her hands holding the ends of her garrotte—to Magnus.

J-A-C-K. Leave. Now. I stay.

She hoped Magnus had gotten the message.

Based on the way Magnus reacted, he had. He signed back furiously.

No way. No leave you .

Alex resisted the urge to growl. She pushed Magnus behind another shelf in the store and then with all the effort she could muster, she rammed the shelf they had been hiding behind originally.

“RUN, MAGNUS!” she yelled, looking in the opposite direction of Magnus.

Loki looked startled at the outburst, but his shock was nothing compared to Alex’s shock of seeing Sam standing dutifully at his side. Her eyes were screaming apologies, but it seemed Loki had her under his control again.

“Samirah, dear, place go restrain Magnus,” Loki said, gesturing in the direction Alex had looked.

Alex peeked out of the corner of her eyes. Magnus was gone. Which meant that Jack was gone too. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Sam walked with jerky movements in the false direction Alex had implied Magnus was heading. She wasn’t completely under Loki’s control then, but she wasn’t completely out of his control either.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered to Alex as she passed by.

Loki’s face contorted in rage. “Samirah!” he said sharply. “Grab Alex instead.” His face darkened. “It seems Magnus Chase is long gone by now.”

Chapter Text

LOKI WASN’T ANGRY. At least, he didn’t appear angry.

He had calmly and quietly returned Alex to her cell and then promptly shoved Samirah into the cell across from Alex.

“Where did he go?” he asked Alex.

Alex feigned ignorance. “Who?”

“Magnus. Chase,” Loki said through gritted teeth.

Ah. There’s the anger.

“Where is he?”

Alex crossed her arms. “Gone. Probably to get back up.” She jutted her chin out defiantly.

Loki’s eyes flared. “The sword,” he said. Then his face was the image of calmness. “That’s fine. I’ll wait here for him to deliver the weapon straight to me.”

If Magnus came back with Jack, Alex would probably throttle him. For his sake, she hoped that the Sword of Summer was safely hidden. Preferably somewhere within the Greek world.

Loki strode out of the room of cells and slammed the door behind him.

Yeah, okay, he was definitely angry.

“It’s my fault,” Sam said quietly. “I went back to face him, but… I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t control my actions anymore. I thought I was ready!”

“No,” Alex said, heart sinking in realization. “It’s my fault.”

“How is it your fault?” Sam asked.

Alex stared across the hallway at her sister. “You never tried to fully resist him. You followed his commands anyway. It was so we wouldn’t raise suspicion, but… we should have waited. A few more weeks at least.”

They could have lasted that long. Loki wasn’t trying to kill them. He just wanted to use them to get information on Sumarbrander. A few more weeks wouldn’t have been a problem.

“Don’t give up on trying to resist him,” Alex said. “You’re in a cell because he knows you can resist him. For once, he’s right. You can resist him.”

Sam looked at Alex with sad eyes. “No, I can’t. I was stupid to think I could. I’m not like you, Alex. I can’t just… force his powers to be mine. That’s not the way this works.” She moved to the back of her cell and sat down against the wall.

“Maybe not,” Alex finally said. “But you are strong enough, Sam. You’re going to figure it out one day.”

“How?”

Alex hated how broken Sam’s voice sounded.

“How, Alex? I’m stuck in this cell now, and I’m not going to get out.” She gasped. “My grandparents are probably worried out of their minds right now. And Am-” she cut herself off with an uncertain look at Alex.

And Amir , Sam was probably about to say. Alex had almost forgotten how adorably blushy the betrothed couple were around the other.

“The glamour,” Alex said. “It’ll probably help.”

That wasn’t likely. The glamour hid the mythical world from the non-mythical world. Sam going missing was nothing to threaten the non-mythical world from finding out about the mythical world. If the glamour did anything, it would probably only be enough to reinforce the idea that Sam was just another missing persons case in Boston.

Sam didn’t argue with Alex even though as a Valkyrie, she would know more about the glamour and how it worked.

Maybe two or three days after the failed escape, the door to the cells was flung open and a mop of blond hair was pushed past Alex’s cell.

“Maggie?” she yelped.

Magnus sent Alex an awkward grimace. Sorry , he mouthed.

Alex closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “What happened?”

The door to Magnus’s cell clanged shut and was locked.

Loki grinned briefly at Alex. “Well, you were right about one thing, Alex. He did come back. Just without those reinforcements.” With that, he sauntered off.

Alex waited a few minutes after Loki left to explode.

“Why the Hel did you come back?” Alex shouted.

She could practically hear Magnus wincing.

“Without help too!” she continued. “I mean, what were you thinking, Magnus? You’d arrive back and demand Loki hand Sam and I over and he’d do it? Did you even consider telling your cousin where you’ve been and what’s been going on? Did you look for Blitz or Hearth? Please tell me the thought process you had because I don’t really think there was one!”

Magnus didn’t answer for a while.

“Magnus?” Alex asked, the harshness leaving her voice.

“I… I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted. “I just… I knew where you were and once I did the thing you asked, I came back to get you. I didn’t want to waste any time trying to find someone to help me. I already had to waste enough time getting a plane ticket to get back here.” He snorted. “And I have a hard time thinking straight when it comes to you.”

Alex pursed her lips in an effort not to laugh. “That was terrible,” she informed him.

“But true.”

“That still doesn’t change how corny that was.”

They fell silent.

“Magnus?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you came back.”

“But…?”

“Next time, bring an army with you.”

“Next time?”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Yes, Magnus. Next time. Do you think this is the last mess we’re going to get into?”

“A guy can dream.”

Alex shook herself out of her thoughts. They had reminded her of something Magnus had said.

According to Annabeth, Percy Jackson would be in Alaska at some point. Assuming that hadn’t already happened, there was still a chance that he would find them while he was here.

“We’re going to escape,” Alex said aloud.

Sam sighed. “Alex… please.”

“I’m not joking, Sam,” Alex said firmly. “We’re going to get out of here. All three of us.”

“How?” Magnus asked.

Alex grinned even though no one could see her. “Maggie dear, it’s cute that you think there’s going to be an elaborate plan.”

“You don’t have a plan, do you?” Magnus asked.

“Nope!” Alex said cheerfully. “This is going to be great.”

Chapter Text

AIRPLANES OR CANNIBALS? NO CONTEST. Percy would’ve preferred driving Grandma Zhang’s Cadillac all the way to Alaska with fireball-throwing ogres on his tail rather than sitting in a luxury Gulf stream.

He’d flown this journey before and he hadn’t died the first time, but it would be just like Zeus to laugh and throw a lightning bolt at him for daring to think that he’d be fine. But maybe it was different with Roman gods.

Still, every time the place hit a spot of turbulence, Percy’s heart raced, and he was sure Zeus—Jupiter, whatever—was slapping them around.

He tried to focus as Frank and Hazel talked. Hazel was reassuring Frank that he’d done everything he could for his grandmother. Frank had saved them from the Laistrygonians and gotten them out of Vancouver. He’d been incredibly brave. Frank kept his head down like he was ashamed to have been crying, but Percy didn’t blame him. The poor guy had just lost his grandmother and seen his house go up in flames. As far as Percy was concerned, shedding a few tears about something like that didn’t make you any less of a man, especially when you had just fended off an army of ogres that wanted to eat you for breakfast.

As they flew north, Frank did tell them about his conversation with Mars the night before. He explained the prophecy Juno had issued when he was a baby—about his life being tied to a piece of firewood, and how he had asked Hazel to keep it for him.

Speaking of Frank, there was something Percy had to say.

“Frank,” he said. “I’m proud to be related to you.”

Frank’s ears turned red. With his head lowered, his military haircut made a sharp black arrow pointing down. “Juno has some sort of plan for us, about the Prophecy of Seven.”

“Yeah,” Percy grumbled. “Can’t catch a break, can I? But I’m glad you two will be by my side.”

Hazel blinked in surprise. “You think we’re part of the Seven?”

“I know you are,” Percy said. “Hera—Juno—she brought me to Camp Jupiter for a reason. I met you guys for a reason and we’re on this quest together for a reason.”

Hazel tucked her feet underneath her. She studied Percy with her luminescent golden eyes, and he wondered how she could be so calm. She was the youngest one on the quest, but she was always holding them together and comforting them. Now they were flying to Alaska, where she had died once before. They would try to free Thanatos, who might take her back to the Underworld. Yet she didn’t show any fear. It made Percy feel silly for being scared of airplane turbulence.

“You’re a son of Poseidon, aren’t you?” she asked. “You are a Greek demigod.”

Percy gripped his leather necklace. “I started to remember in Portland, after the gorgon’s blood. It’s been coming back to me slowly since then. There’s another camp—Camp Half-Blood.”

That wasn’t completely true. Everything had come rushing back so quickly. Quicker than it had the first time. Maybe that was just because Hera had his memory return via gorgon’s blood on a timer and Percy now had much more memories than he did the first time.

His memories of the first Titan war had rushed back on the first day. The Giant war had come back that night and into the morning. Then he was back sifting through memories of that fateful day at Westover Hall when everything had changed. Since then, most of his memories had returned, though everything was still foggy.

Hazel and Frank stared at him as though he’d slipped into another language.

“Another camp,” Hazel repeated. “A Greek camp? Gods, if Octavian found out—”

“He’d declare war,” Frank said. “He’s always been sure the Greeks were out there, plotting against us. He thought Percy was a spy.”

Percy grimaced. “Right. Ugh. Look, Hera sent me to Camp Jupiter, and she sent Jason to Camp Half-Blood. I saw him in my dreams. He was working with the Greek demigods on this flying warship. They’re coming to Camp Jupiter.”

Frank tapped nervously on the back of his seat. “Mars said Juno wants to unite the Greeks and Romans to fight Gaea. But, jeez—Greeks and Romans have a long history of bad blood.”

Hazel took a deep breath. “That’s probably why the gods have kept us apart this long. If a Greek warship appeared in the sky above Camp Jupiter, and Reyna didn’t know it was friendly—”

“Yeah,” Percy agreed. “We’ve got to be careful how we explain this when we get back.”

“If we get back,” Frank said.

Percy nodded reluctantly. “I mean, I trust you guys. I hope you trust me. I feel… well, I feel as close to you two as to any of my old friends at Camp Half-Blood. But with the other demigods, at both camps—there’s going to be a lot of suspicion.”

Hazel leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was totally a sisterly kiss. But she smiled with such affection, it warmed Percy right down to his feet.

“Of course we trust you,” she said. “We’re a family now. Aren’t we, Frank?”

“Sure,” he said. “Do I get a kiss?”

Hazel laughed, but there was nervous tension in it. “Anyway, what do we do now?”

Dear gods, was this how Grover felt all those times he and Annabeth were dancing around each other? Percy just wanted to reach over and smash Frank and Hazel’s heads together. He didn’t know what it was with Underworld kids—Big Three kids? Nico and Will danced around each other awkwardly at first too.

Percy took a deep breath. Time was slipping away. They were almost halfway through June 23rd, and tomorrow was the Feast of Fortuna.

“I’ve got to contact a friend—to keep my promise to Ella,” Percy said.

“How?” Frank said. “One of those Iris-messages?”

“Still not working,” Percy said sadly. “I tried it last night at your grandmother’s house. No luck. Maybe it’s because my memories are still jumbled. Or the gods aren’t allowing a connection. I’m hoping I can contact my friend in my dreams.”

Another bump of turbulence made him grab his seat. Below them, snow-capped mountains broke through a blanket of clouds.

“I’m not sure I can sleep,” Percy said. “But I need to try. We can’t leave Ella by herself with those ogres around.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “We’ve still got hours to fly. Take the couch, man.”

Percy nodded. He’d missed Hazel and Frank. In the weird, terrifying, horrible experience of losing his memory and getting ripped out of his old life for a second time—Hazel and Frank were the bright spots.

Truely, he missed all the Seven. Percy didn’t know how he would contain himself when the Argo II arrived with Jason, Piper, and Leo who he hadn’t seen in years. Hugging Annabeth would be fine—she was his girlfriend and he missed her more than anything—but it might seem strange for him to start hugging three random demigods he’d never met.

Then there was the whole thing with Jason. The last time he’d seen Jason was when he left Camp Half-Blood the summer after the Giant war. Then, almost a full year later, he’d arrived in California to get ready for college only to discover that Jason had died months earlier. That there had been a funeral, but due to the communication issues and the suddenness of Apollo and Meg turning up, no one had been able to contact him.

Percy didn’t know how Nico had kept it together for the few weeks he’d been at Camp Jupiter with Jason.

But none of that mattered now. That was the benefit of this experience.

Percy stretched out and closed his eyes. He dreamed he was falling from a mountain of ice toward a cold sea.

The dream shifted. He was back in Vancouver, standing in front of the ruins of the Zhang mansion. The Laistrygonians were gone. The mansion was reduced to a burned-out shell. A crew of firefighters was packing up their equipment, getting ready to move out. The lawn looked like a war zone, with smoking craters and trenches from the blown-out irrigation pipes.

At the edge of the forest, a giant shaggy black dog was bounding around, sniffing the trees. The firefighters completely ignored him.

Beside one of the craters knelt a Cyclops in oversized jeans, boots, and a massive flannel shirt. His messy brown hair was spattered with rain and mud. When he raised his head, his big brown eye was red from crying.

“Close!” he moaned. “So close, but gone!”

It broke Percy’s heart to hear the pain and worry in the big guy’s voice, but he knew they only had a few seconds to talk. The edges of the vision were already dissolving. If Alaska was the land beyond the gods, Percy figured the farther north he went, the harder it would be to communicate with his friends, even in his dreams.

“Tyson!” he called.

The Cyclops looked around frantically. “Percy? Brother?”

“Tyson, I’m okay. I’m here—well, not really.”

Tyson grabbed the air like he was trying to catch butterflies. “Can’t see you! Where is my brother?”

“Tyson, I’m flying to Alaska. I’m okay. I’ll be back. Just find Ella. She’s a harpy with red feathers. She’s hiding in the woods around the house.”

“Find a harpy? A red harpy?”

“Yes! Protect her, okay? She’s my friend. Get her back to California. There’s a demigod camp in the Oakland Hills—Camp Jupiter. Meet me above the Caldecott Tunnel.”

“Oakland Hills… California… Caldecott Tunnel.” He shouted to the dog: “Mrs. O’Leary! We must find a harpy!”

“WOOF!” said the dog.

Tyson’s face started to dissolve. “My brother is okay? My brother is coming back? I miss you!”

“I miss you, too.” Percy tried to keep his voice from cracking. “I’ll see you soon. Just be careful! There’s a giant’s army marching south. Tell Annabeth—”

The dream shifted.

Percy found himself standing in the hills north of Camp Jupiter, looking down at the Field of Mars and New Rome. At the legion’s fort, horns were blowing. Campers scrambled to muster.

The giant’s army was arrayed to Percy’s left and right—centaurs with bull’s horns, the six-armed Earthborn, and evil Cyclopes in scrap-metal armor. The Cyclopes’ siege tower cast a shadow across the feet of the giant Polybotes, who grinned down at the Roman camp. He paced eagerly across the hill, snakes dropping from his green dreadlocks, his dragon legs stomping down small trees. On his green-blue armor, the decorative faces of hungry monsters seemed to blink in the shadows.

“Yes,” he chuckled, planting his trident in the ground. “Blow your little horns, Romans. I’ve come to destroy you! Stheno!”

The gorgon scrambled out of the bushes. Her lime green viper hair and Bargain Mart vest clashed horribly with the giant’s color scheme. “Yes, master!” she said. “Would you like a Puppy-in-a-Blanket?” She held up a tray of free samples.

“Hmm,” Polybotes said. “What sort of puppy?”

“Ah, they’re not actually puppies. They’re tiny hot dogs in crescent rolls, but they’re on sale this week—”

“Bah! Never mind, then! Are our forces ready to attack?”

“Oh—” Stheno stepped back quickly to avoid getting flattened by the giant’s foot. “Almost, great one. Ma Gasket and half her Cyclopes stopped in Napa. Something about a winery tour? They promised to be here by tomorrow evening.”

“What?” The giant looked around, as if just noticing that a big portion of his army was missing. “Gah! That Cyclops woman will give me an ulcer. Winery tour?”

“I think there was cheese and crackers, too,” Stheno said helpfully. “Though Bargain Mart has a much better deal.”

Polybotes ripped an oak tree out of the ground and threw it into the valley. “Cyclopes! I tell you, Stheno, when I destroy Neptune and take over the oceans, we will renegotiate the Cyclopes’ labor contract. Ma Gasket will learn her place!Now, what news from the north?”

“The demigods have left for Alaska,” Stheno said. “They fly straight to their death. Ah, small ‘d’ death, I mean. Not our prisoner Death. Although, I suppose they’re flying to him too.”

Polybotes growled. “Alcyoneus had better spare the son of Neptune as he promised. I want that one chained at my feet, so I can kill him when the time is ripe. His blood shall water the stones of Mount Olympus and wake the Earth Mother! What word from the Amazons?”

“Only silence,” Stheno said. “We do not yet know the winner of last night’s duel, but it is only a matter of time before Otrera prevails and comes to our aid.”

“Hmm.” Polybotes absently scratched some vipers out of his hair. “Perhaps it’s just as well we wait, then. Tomorrow at sundown is Fortuna’s Feast. By then, we must invade—Amazons or no. In the meantime, dig in! We set up camp here, on high ground.”

“Yes, great one!” Stheno announced to the troops: “Puppies-in-Blankets for everyone!”

The monsters cheered.

Percy decided that Stheno was his favorite gorgon. If she didn’t want to kill demigods, she might have been an interesting friend.

Polybotes spread his hands in front of him, taking in the valley like a panoramic picture. “Yes, blow your little horns, demigods. Soon, the legacy of Rome will be destroyed for the last time!”

The dream faded.

Percy woke with a jolt as the plane started its descent.

Hazel laid her hand on his shoulder. “Sleep okay?”

Percy sat up groggily. “How long was I out?”

Frank stood in the aisle, wrapping his spear and new bow in his ski bag. “A few hours,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

Percy looked out the window. A glittering inlet of the sea snaked between snowy mountains. In the distance, a city was carved out of the wilderness, surrounded by lush green forests on one side and icy black beaches on the other.

“Welcome to Alaska,” Hazel said. “We’re beyond the help of the gods.”

Chapter Text

THE PILOT SAID THE PLANE COULDN’T WAIT for them, but that was okay with Percy. They wouldn’t be taking the plane back to Camp. For one, it would be too slow, and for another, he really shouldn’t risk another plane ride.

Percy felt strangely invigorated. His dream of Tyson had lifted his spirits. He remembered Tyson, his brother. They’d fought together, celebrated victories, shared good times at Camp Half-Blood. He remembered his home, and that gave him a new determination to succeed. He was fighting for two camps now—two families.

Juno had stolen his memory and sent him to Camp Jupiter for a reason. He understood that even if he was still ticked off that he had to go through this twice now. He definitely still wanted to punch her in her godly face.

As they took a taxi into downtown Anchorage, Percy told Frank and Hazel about his dreams. They looked anxious but not surprised when he told them about the giant’s army closing in on camp.

Frank choked when he heard about Tyson. “You have a half-brother who’s a Cyclops?”

“Sure,” Percy said. “Which makes him your great-great-great—”

“Please.” Frank covered his ears. “Enough.”

“As long as he can get Ella to camp,” Hazel said. “I’m worried about her.”

Percy nodded. He was still thinking about the lines of prophecy the harpy had recited—about the son of Neptune drowning. He wasn’t concerned about the Mark of Athena burning through Rome. That part he knew. But the drowning line… that hit too close to home.

Drowning hadn’t been an issue before. He remembered back to his first quest when he was at the bottom of the Mississippi and freaked out about breathing underwater. Eventually, it became second nature to him.

Then the muskeg happened.

Until then, drowning wasn’t anything to worry about. But after that, he was terrified of it. He’d freaked when Phorcys trapped him in an aquarium. He’d freaked in the nymphadeum. Even coming back to before all that happened, Percy was still a little nervous about drowning.

Now here he was about to head into Alaska to face the muskeg again. He wasn’t exactly eager for that.

The taxi turned on Highway One, which looked more like a small street to Percy, and took them north toward downtown. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high in the sky.

“I can’t believe how much this place has grown,” Hazel muttered.

The taxi driver grinned in the rearview mirror. “Been a long time since you visited, miss?”

“About seventy years,” Hazel said.

The driver slid the glass partition closed and drove on in silence.

According to Hazel, almost none of the buildings were the same. Percy didn’t really pay attention. He’d been here once before and Hazel had given her spiel to him then.

He was much more concerned with what Annabeth had told him days ago in a dream before he left Camp Jupiter.

Magnus and Alex have been missing for months. I thought you should know. You might see them , she had said. Look out for my cousin, Percy!

The Norse demigods were apparently missing. Last Percy had heard, they were out searching for Bianca di Angelo. Which meant that if they were missing, whatever happened to them could have happened to Bianca.

Percy wished Nico would have given him a sign about how the Bianca search was going, but all Nico had said was that he had a sister who had joined Artemis’s hunters and he hadn’t seen her in a while.

“Um…” Frank said, pointing at a blue giant.

“Hyperboreans,” Percy said. “Northern giants. I fought some when Kronos invaded Manhattan.”

“Wait,” Frank said. “When who did what?”

“Long story. But I think they’re usually peaceful.”

Hazel nodded. “They are. I remember them. They’re everywhere in Alaska, like bears.”

“Bears?” Frank said nervously.

“The giants are invisible to mortals,” Hazel said. “They never bothered me, though one almost stepped on me by accident once.”

The taxi kept driving. None of the giants paid them any attention. One stood right at the intersection of Northern Lights Road, straddling the highway, and they drove between his legs. The Hyperborean was cradling a Native American totem pole wrapped in furs, humming to it like a baby. If the guy hadn’t been the size of a building, he would’ve been almost cute.

The taxi drove through downtown, past a bunch of tourists’ shops advertising furs, Native American art, and gold. It probably wasn’t Cherokee, but it made Percy think about Piper and that in turn made him think about how much he missed his friend.

As the driver turned and headed toward the seashore, Hazel knocked on the glass partition. “Here is good. Can you let us out?”

They paid the driver and stepped onto Fourth Street. Compared to Vancouver, downtown Anchorage was tiny—more like a college campus than a city, but Hazel looked amazed.

“It’s huge,” she said. “That—that’s where the Gitchell Hotel used to be. My mom and I stayed there our first week in Alaska. And they’ve moved City Hall. It used to be there.”

She led them in a daze for a few blocks. They didn’t really have a plan beyond finding the fastest way to the Hubbard Glacier, but Percy smelled something cooking nearby—sausage, maybe? He realized he hadn’t eaten since that morning at Grandma Zhang’s.

“Food,” he said. “Come on.”

They found a café right by the beach. It was bustling with people, but they scored a table at the window and perused the menus.

Frank whooped with delight. “Twenty-four-hour breakfast!”

“It’s, like, dinnertime,” Percy said, though he couldn’t tell from looking outside. The sun was so high, it could’ve been noon.

“I love breakfast,” Frank said. “I’d eat breakfast, breakfast, and breakfast if I could. Though, um, I’m sure the food here isn’t as good as Hazel’s.”

Hazel elbowed him, but her smile was playful.

Seeing them like that made Percy happy. Those two definitely needed to get together. And they would eventually. But it also made him sad. He really missed Annabeth. On that note, he really hoped she had figured out what to do about the Doors of Death. Percy wasn’t really interested in a prolonged trip to hell.

Think positive, he told himself.

Okay, he thought. I’m positive I do not want to go to hell for a long time .

“You know,” he said, “breakfast sounds great.”

They all ordered massive plates of eggs, pancakes, and reindeer sausage, though Frank looked a little worried about the reindeer. “You think it’s okay that we’re eating Rudolph?”

“Dude,” Percy said, “I could eat Prancer and Blitz… Blitzen, too. I’m hungry.”

He faltered at Blitzen. That reminded him of the dwarf he’d only met very briefly. And that reminded him that Magnus and Alex were currently missing. Not exactly something that was good since he would be embarking on a months long journey in a few days. He and Annabeth would be worried about those two the whole trip if they didn’t turn up soon.

“So this is what I’m thinking,” Hazel said, interrupting Percy’s musings. She drew a squiggly curve and an X on her napkin. “We’re here,” she said tapping the X. “Anchorage.”

“It looks like a seagull’s face,” Percy blurted. “And we’re the eye.”

Hazel glared at him. “It’s a map, Percy. Anchorage is at the top of this sliver of ocean, Cook Inlet. There’s a big peninsula of land below us, and my old home town, Seward, is at the bottom of the peninsula, here.” She drew another X at the base of the seagull’s throat. “That’s the closest town to the Hubbard Glacier. We could go around by sea, I guess, but it would take forever. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Frank polished off the last of his Rudolph. “But land is dangerous,” he said. “Land means Gaea.”

Percy shivered though he didn’t think Frank or Hazel noticed.

Hazel nodded. “I don’t see that we’ve got much choice, though. We could have asked our pilot to fly us down, but I don’t know… his plane might be too big for the little Seward airport. And if we chartered another plane—”

“No more planes,” Percy said. “Please.”

Hazel held up her hand in a placating gesture. “It’s okay. There’s a train that goes from here to Seward. We might be able to catch one tonight. It only takes a couple of hours.” She drew a dotted line between the two X’s.

“You just cut off the seagull’s head,” Percy noted.

Hazel sighed. “It’s the train line. Look, from Seward, the Hubbard Glacier is down here somewhere.” She tapped the lower right corner of her napkin. “That’s where Alcyoneus is.”

“But you’re not sure how far?” Frank asked.

Hazel frowned and shook her head. “I’m pretty sure it’s only accessible by boat or plane.”

“Boat,” Percy said immediately.

“Fine,” Hazel said. “It shouldn’t be too far from Seward. If we can get to Seward safely.”

Percy gazed out the window. All this planning would be for nothing, though he could exactly tell his friends that. How would he be able to explain that he knew exactly what was going to happen. Although, maybe with the butterfly effect and everything, the gryphons wouldn’t attack.

As soon as he thought that, he knew he’d jinxed them.

“Good breakfast,” Frank said. “Who’s ready for a train ride?”

The station wasn’t far. They were just in time to buy tickets for the last train south. As his friends climbed on board, Percy said, “Be with you in a sec,” and ran back into the station. He got change from the gift shop and stood in front of the pay phone.

He wasn’t sure who to call. He’d called his mom the first time to let her know he was alive, but that had also worried her. He could call Annabeth to ask about the Magnus and Alex situation, but there was no guarantee that she’d pick up the phone.

Percy picked up the receiver and punched in a New York number—his mom’s apartment. Voice mail. Percy should have figured. It would be, like, midnight in New York. They wouldn’t recognize this number. Hearing Paul’s voice on the recording hit Percy in the gut so hard, he could barely speak at the tone.

“Mom,” he said. “Hey, I’m alive. Hera put me to sleep for a while, and then she took my memory, and…” His voice faltered. How he could possibly explain all this? “Anyway, I’m okay. I’m sorry. I’m with some new friends. In Alaska. I’ll make it home. I promise. Love you.”

He put down the receiver. He stared at the phone, hoping it would ring back. The train whistle sounded. The conductor shouted, “All aboard.”

Percy ran. He made it just as they were pulling up the steps, then climbed to the top of the double-decker car and slid into his seat.

Hazel frowned. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Just… made a call.”

She and Frank seemed to get that. They didn’t ask for details.

Soon they were heading south along the coast, watching the landscape go by. Despite his ADHD, Percy managed to keep thinking about the quest and his mission. Cool things were happening outside, but he paid them no mind. Everything was so different, yet so the same.

Meanwhile, Frank studied a map of Alaska that he’d found in the seat pocket. He located Hubbard Glacier, which looked discouragingly far away from Seward. He kept running his finger along the coastline, frowning with concentration.

“What are you thinking?” Percy asked.

“Just… possibilities,” Frank said.

Percy didn’t know what that meant, but he let it go.

After about an hour, Percy tensed. The gryphons should be attacking any—

“Eagle!” one tourist yelled.

“Eagle?” said another.

“Huge eagle!” said a third.

“That’s no eagle,” Frank said.

Percy looked up just in time to see the creature make a second pass. It was definitely larger than an eagle, with a sleek black body the size of a Labrador retriever. Its wingspan was at least ten feet across.

“There’s another one!” Frank pointed. “Strike that. Three, four. Okay, we’re in trouble.”

The creatures circled the train like vultures, delighting the tourists. Percy wasn’t delighted. The monsters had glowing red eyes, sharp beaks, and vicious talons.

Percy felt for his pen in his pocket. “Gryphons.”

Then several things happened at once. The emergency brake screeched, pitching them forward. Tourists screamed and tumbled through the aisles. The monsters swooped down, shattering the glass roof of the car, and the entire train toppled off the rails.

Chapter Text

PERCY WENT WEIGHTLESS. His vision blurred. Claws grabbed his arms and lifted him into the air. Below, train wheels squealed and metal crashed. Glass shattered. Passengers screamed. When his eyesight cleared, he saw the beast that was carrying him aloft. It had the body of a panther—sleek, black, and feline—with the wings and head of an eagle. Its eyes glowed blood-red.

Percy squirmed. The monster’s front talons were wrapped around his arms like steel bands. He couldn’t free himself or reach his sword. He rose higher and higher in the cold wind. Percy had no idea where the monster was taking him, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like it when he got there.

He yelled—mostly out of frustration. Then something whistled by his ear. An arrow sprouted from the monster’s neck. The creature shrieked and let go. Percy fell, crashing through tree branches until he slammed into a snowbank. He groaned, looking up at a massive pine tree he’d just shredded.

He managed to stand. Nothing seemed broken thanks to the Achilles Curse. He'd have to thank Nico for getting Juno to let him keep it. Frank stood to his left, shooting down the creatures as fast as he could. Hazel was at his back, swinging her sword at any monster that came close, but there were too many swarming around them—at least a dozen.

Percy drew Riptide. He sliced the wing off one monster and sent it spiraling into a tree, then sliced through another that burst into dust. But the defeated ones began to reform immediately.

“We have to get them away from the train!” Hazel yelled.

Percy saw what she meant. The train cars had fallen over, and their roofs had shattered. Tourists were stumbling around in shock. Percy didn’t see anybody seriously injured, but the gryphons were swooping toward anything that moved. The only thing keeping them away from the mortals was a glowing gray warrior in camouflage—Frank’s pet spartus.

Percy glanced over and noticed Frank’s spear was gone. “Used your last charge?”

“Yeah.” Frank shot another gryphon out of the sky. “I had to help the mortals. The spear just dissolved.”

Percy nodded. “Let’s move the fight!” he said. “Away from the tracks!”

They stumbled through the snow, smacking and slicing gryphons that reformed from dust every time they were killed.

Percy only had the previous timeline’s experience with gryphons. He looked around desperately for a Hyperborean, but it seemed like they had all vanished from sight.

About fifty yards from the tracks, the trees gave way to an open marsh. The ground was so spongy and icy, Percy felt like he was racing across Bubble Wrap. Frank was running out of arrows. Hazel was breathing hard. Percy’s own sword swings were getting slower. He realized they were alive only because the gryphons weren’t trying to kill them. The gryphons wanted to pick them up and carry them off somewhere.

To Alcyoneus, Percy thought.

Then he tripped over something in the tall grass—a circle of scrap metal about the size of a tractor tire. It was a massive bird’s nest—a gryphon’s nest—the bottom littered with old pieces of jewelry, an Imperial gold dagger, a dented centurion’s badge, and two pumpkin-sized eggs that looked like real gold.

Percy jumped into the nest. He pressed his sword tip against one of the eggs. “Back off, or I break it!”

The gryphons squawked angrily. They buzzed around the nest and snapped their beaks, but they didn’t attack. Hazel and Frank stood back to back with Percy, their weapons ready.

“Gryphons collect gold,” Hazel said. “They’re crazy for it. Look—more nests over there.”

Frank nocked his last arrow. “So if these are their nests, where were they trying to take Percy? That thing was flying away with him.”

“Alcyoneus,” Percy said. “I bet they’re working for him. Are these things smart enough to take orders?”

“I don’t know,” Hazel said. “I never fought them when I lived here. I just read about them at camp.”

“Weaknesses?” Frank asked. “Please tell me they have weaknesses.”

Hazel scowled. “Horses. They hate horses—natural enemies, or something. I wish Arion was here!”

Percy agreed. He could do with some of the horse’s colorful vocabulary right now.

The gryphons shrieked. They swirled around the nest with their red eyes glowing.

“Guys,” Frank said nervously, “I see legion relics in this nest.”

“I know,” Percy said.

“That means other demigods died here, or—”

“Frank, it’ll be okay,” Percy promised.

One of the gryphons dived in. Percy raised his sword, ready to stab the egg. The monster veered off, but the other gryphons were losing their patience. Percy couldn’t keep this standoff going much longer.

He glanced around the fields, desperately trying to formulate a plan. About a quarter mile away, a Hyperborean giant was sitting in the bog, peacefully picking mud from between his toes with a broken tree trunk. Finally .

“I’ve got an idea,” Percy said. “Hazel—all the gold in these nests. Do you think you can use it to cause a distraction?”

“I—I guess.”

“Just give us enough time for a head start. When I say go, run for that giant.”

Frank gaped at him. “You want us to run toward a giant?”

“Trust me,” Percy said. “Ready? Go!”

Hazel thrust her hand upward. From a dozen nests across the marsh, golden objects shot into the air—jewelry, weapons, coins, gold nuggets, and most importantly, gryphon eggs. The monsters shrieked and flew after their eggs, frantic to save them.

Percy and his friends ran. Their feet splashed and crunched through the frozen marsh. Percy poured on speed, but he could hear the gryphons closing behind them, and now the monsters were really angry.

The giant hadn’t noticed the commotion yet. He was inspecting his toes for mud, his face sleepy and peaceful, his white whiskers glistening with ice crystals. Around his neck was a necklace of found objects—garbage cans, car doors, moose antlers, camping equipment, even a toilet. Apparently he’d been cleaning up the wilderness.

Percy hated to disturb him, especially since it meant taking shelter under the giant’s thighs, but they didn’t have much choice.

“Under!” he told his friends. “Crawl under!”

They scrambled between the massive blue legs and flattened themselves in the mud, crawling as close as they could to his loincloth. Percy tried to breathe through his mouth, but it wasn’t the most pleasant hiding spot.

“What’s the plan?” Frank hissed. “Get flattened by a blue rump?”

“Lay low,” Percy said. “Only move if you have to.”

The gryphons arrived in a wave of angry beaks, talons, and wings, swarming around the giant, trying to get under his legs. The giant rumbled in surprise. He shifted. Percy had to roll to avoid getting crushed by his large hairy rear. The Hyperborean grunted, a little more irritated. He swatted at the gryphons, but they squawked in outrage and began pecking at his legs and hands.

“Ruh?” the giant bellowed. “Ruh!”

He took a deep breath and blew out a wave of cold air. Even under the protection of the giant’s legs, Percy could feel the temperature drop. The gryphons’ shrieking stopped abruptly, replaced by the thunk, thunk, thunk of heavy objects hitting the mud.

“Come on,” Percy told his friends. “Carefully.”

They squirmed out from under the giant. All around the marsh, trees were glazed with frost. A huge swath of the bog was covered in fresh snow. Frozen gryphons stuck out of the ground like feathery Popsicle sticks, their wings still spread, beaks open, eyes wide with surprise.

Percy and his friends scrambled away, trying to keep out of the giant’s vision, but the big guy was too busy to notice them. He was trying to figure out how to string a frozen gryphon onto his necklace.

“Percy…” Hazel wiped the ice and mud from her face. “How did you know the giant could do that?”

He hesitated. “I’ve seen them do it before,” he said. “We better move. The gryphons won’t stay frozen forever.”

Chapter Text

THEY WALKED OVERLAND FOR ABOUT an hour, keeping the train tracks in sight but staying in the cover of the trees as much as possible. Once they heard a helicopter flying in the direction of the train wreck. Twice they heard the screech of gryphons, but they sounded a long way off.

As near as Percy could figure, it was about midnight when the sun finally set. It got cold in the woods. The stars were so thick, Percy was tempted to stop and gawk at them.

Then the northern lights cranked up. They reminded Percy of his mom’s gas stovetop back home, when she had the flame on low—waves of ghostly blue flames rippling back and forth.

“That’s amazing,” Frank said.

“Bears,” Hazel pointed. Sure enough, a couple of brown bears were lumbering in the meadow a few hundred feet away, their coats gleaming in the starlight. “They won’t bother us,” Hazel promised. “Just give them a wide berth.”

Percy and Frank didn’t argue.

As they trudged on, Percy thought about what was going to happen now. Hopefully, Nico was back at Camp Jupiter waiting for them and not off on a suicidal mission to the Doors of Death. He wasn’t really sure what Annabeth, Nico, and Will had planned in his absence, but he sincerely hoped it didn’t involve Nico getting captured.

His thoughts shifted to the Norse demigods. Annabeth thought that he would be able to find them. Otherwise, why would she tell him to look for them?

He laid out all the facts in his head. Magnus and Alex have been missing for a while. Annabeth probably went to Boston to look for them. She was probably busy with the Argo II construction and couldn’t actually go out and look for them herself. She knew Percy would be on a quest in June, so she asked him to keep an eye out for them. So far, Percy hadn’t seen either of them.

Percy was suddenly worried that maybe Gaea instructed one of her giants to kidnap them because of their involvement with the Titan war and their closeness to two of the Seven. If that was the case, he vowed that he wouldn’t rest until Gaea paid dearly.

After another couple of hours, they stumbled across a tiny village between the railroad tracks and a two-lane road. The city limit sign said: MOOSE PASS. Standing next to the sign was an actual moose. For a second, Percy thought it might be some sort of statue for advertising. Then the animal bounded into the woods.

They passed a couple of houses, a post office, and some trailers. Everything was dark and closed up. On the other end of town was a store with a picnic table and an old rusted petrol pump in front.

The store had a hand-painted sign that read: MOOSE PASS GAS.

“That’s just wrong,” Frank said.

By silent agreement they collapsed around the picnic table.

Percy’s feet felt like blocks of ice—very sore blocks of ice. Hazel put her head in her hands and passed out, snoring. Frank took out his last sodas and some granola bars from the train ride and shared them with Percy.

They ate in silence, watching the stars, until Frank said, “Did you mean what you said earlier?”

Percy looked across the table. “About what?”

In the starlight, Frank’s face might have been alabaster, like an old Roman statue. “About… being proud that we’re related.”

Percy tapped his granola bar on the table. “Well, let’s see. You single-handedly took out three basilisks while I was sipping green tea and wheat germ. You held off an army of Laistrygonians so that our plane could take off in Vancouver. You saved my life by shooting down that gryphon. And you gave up the last charge on your magic spear to help some defenseless mortals. You are, hands down, the nicest child of the war god I’ve ever met… maybe the only nice one. So what do you think?”

Frank stared up at the northern lights, still cooking across the stars on low heat. “It’s just… I was supposed to be in charge of this quest, the centurion, and all. I feel like you guys have had to carry me.”

“Not true,” Percy said.

“I’m supposed to have these powers I haven’t figured out how to use,” Frank said bitterly. “Now I don’t have a spear, and I’m almost out of arrows. And… I’m scared.”

“I’d be worried if you weren’t scared,” Percy said. “We’re all scared.”

“But the Feast of Fortuna is…” Frank thought about it. “It’s after midnight, isn’t it? That means it’s June twenty-fourth now. The feast starts tonight at sundown. We have to find our way to Hubbard Glacier, defeat a giant who is undefeatable in his home territory, and get back to Camp Jupiter before they’re overrun—all in less than eighteen hours.”

“We can do it,” Percy said. “Believe me, we can.”

“Thanatos could claim Hazel’s life,” Frank said.

Percy swallowed the lump in his throat. “That’s not going to happen, Frank. Hazel’s not going to die.”

Frank gazed at Hazel, still snoring lightly. Her face was buried under a mass of curly brown hair. “She’s my best friend,” Frank said. “I lost my mom, my grandmother… I can’t lose her, too.”

Percy thought about his old life—his old old life. His mom, Paul, Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter, the Seven, Estelle . He’d lost all that permanently. This timeline wasn’t the same as the one he’d left and neither were the people.

The Frank and Hazel he was with now was never going to be exactly the same as the two he’d left behind. When he would meet Jason, Piper, and Leo, they weren’t going to be the same trio he remembered. Hopefully he could prevent their lives from shattering though.

He remembered thinking this time last timeline about how he’d never been so far away from home and so alone before. Percy couldn’t help but mourn for that life back. He wanted his old friends back. He wanted his sister back.

“You won’t lose her,” Percy said, trying to keep his voice level. “I’m not going to lose either of you. I won’t let that happen. And, Frank, you are a leader.” He smiled, thinking about how proud he’d been when Jason announced he made Frank praetor. “Hazel would say the same thing. We need you.”

Frank lowered his head. He seemed lost in thought. Finally he leaned forward until his head bumped the picnic table. He started to snore in harmony with Hazel.

Percy sighed. “Another inspiring speech from Jackson,” he said to himself. “Rest up, Frank. Big day ahead.”

Rest. That was the downside of the Curse. Lots and lots of rest was needed.

At dawn, the store opened up. The owner was a little surprised to find three teenagers crashed out on his picnic table, but when Percy explained that they had stumbled away from last night’s train wreck, the guy felt sorry for them and treated them to breakfast. He called a friend of his, an Inuit native who had a cabin close to Seward. Soon they were rumbling along the road in a beat-up Ford pickup that had been new about the time Hazel was born.

Hazel and Frank sat in the back. Percy rode up front with the leathery old man, who smelled like smoked salmon. He told Percy stories about Bear and Raven, the Inuit gods.

“You think they’re out there?” Percy asked.

The man gave him an odd look. “Maybe. I believe something’s out there.”

“Maybe I’ll meet them in a few years,” Percy said. “I’ve got the Roman gods chalked up for most of this year. I’m thinking I’ll throw in the Egyptian gods at the very end. Next year’s definitely going to be Norse gods though. If you meet Bear or Raven, put in a good word for me?”

The man didn’t respond. Percy was pretty sure he was wondering if he could drop the crazy kid in his passenger seat off at a mental institution.

The truck broke down a few miles outside Seward. The driver didn’t seem surprised, as though this happened to him several times a day. He said they could wait for him to fix the engine, but since Seward was only a few miles away, they decided to walk it. And Percy was certain the man really didn’t want them around much longer than they had to be.

By midmorning, they climbed over a rise in the road and saw a small bay ringed with mountains. The town was a thin crescent on the right-hand shore, with wharves extending into the water and a cruise ship in the harbor.

Percy shuddered. He’d had bad experiences with cruise ships.

“Seward,” Hazel said. She didn’t sound happy to see her old home.

They’d already lost a lot of time, and Percy didn’t like how fast the sun was rising.

The road curved around the hillside, but it looked like they could get to town faster going straight across the meadows.

Percy stepped off the road. “Come on.”

The ground squished under his feet and he froze. Too late, he remembered the muskeg and that it was exactly this moment he needed to watch out for.

The earth sucked him in like Gaea was waiting for him to drop his guard.

“Percy!” Hazel shouted.

Percy sank like a stone until the earth closed over his head—and the earth swallowed him.

Chapter Text

“YOUR BOW!” HAZEL SHOUTED.

Frank didn’t ask questions. He dropped his pack and slipped the bow off his shoulder. Hazel’s heart raced. She hadn’t thought about this boggy soil—muskeg—since before she had died. Now, too late, she remembered the dire warnings the locals had given her.

Marshy silt and decomposed plants made a surface that looked completely solid, but it was even worse than quicksand. It could be twenty feet deep or more, and impossible to escape. She tried not to think what would happen if it were deeper than the length of the bow.

“Hold one end,” she told Frank. “Don’t let go.”

She grabbed the other end, took a deep breath, and jumped into the bog. The earth closed over her head.

Instantly, she was frozen in a memory.

Not now! she wanted to scream. Ella said I was done with blackouts!

Oh, but my dear, said the voice of Gaea, this is not one of your blackouts. This is a gift from me.

Hazel was back in New Orleans. She and her mother sat in the park near their apartment, having a picnic breakfast. She remembered this day. She was seven years old. Her mother had just sold Hazel’s first precious stone: a small diamond. Neither of them had yet realized Hazel’s curse.

Queen Marie was in an excellent mood. She had bought orange juice for Hazel and champagne for herself, and beignets sprinkled with chocolate and powdered sugar. She’d even bought Hazel a new box of crayons and a pad of paper. They sat together, Queen Marie humming cheerfully while Hazel drew pictures.

The French Quarter woke up around them, ready for Mardi Gras. Jazz bands practiced. Floats were being decorated with fresh-cut flowers. Children laughed and chased each other, decked in so many colored necklaces they could barely walk. The sunrise turned the sky to red gold, and the warm steamy air smelled of magnolias and roses.

It had been the happiest morning of Hazel’s life.

“You could stay here.” Her mother smiled, but her eyes were blank white. The voice was Gaea’s.

“This is fake,” Hazel said.

She tried to get up, but the soft bed of grass made her lazy and sleepy. The smell of baked bread and melting chocolate was intoxicating. It was the morning of Mardi Gras, and the world seemed full of possibilities. Hazel could almost believe she had a bright future.

“What is real?” asked Gaea, speaking through her mother’s face. “Is your second life real, Hazel? You’re supposed to be dead. Is it real that you’re sinking into a bog, suffocating?”

“Let me help my friend!” Hazel tried to force herself back to reality. She could imagine her hand clenched on the end of the bow, but even that was starting to feel fuzzy. Her grip was loosening. The smell of magnolias and roses was overpowering. Her mother offered her a beignet.

No, Hazel thought. This isn’t my mother. This is Gaea tricking me.

“You want your old life back,” Gaea said. “I can give you that. This moment can last for years. You can grow up in New Orleans, and your mother will adore you. You’ll never have to deal with the burden of your curse. You can be with Sammy—”

“It’s an illusion!” Hazel said, choking on the sweet scent of flowers.

“You are an illusion, Hazel Levesque. You were only brought back to life because the gods have a task for you. I may have used you, but Nico used you and lied about it. You should be glad I captured him.”

“Captured?” A feeling of panic rose in Hazel’s chest. “What do you mean?”

Gaea smiled, sipping her champagne. “The boy should have known better than to search for the Doors. But no matter—it’s not really your concern. Once you release Thanatos, you’ll be thrown back into the Underworld to rot forever. Frank and Percy won’t stop that from happening. Would real friends ask you to give up your life? Tell me who is lying, and who tells you the truth.”

Hazel started to cry. Bitterness welled up inside her. She’d lost her life once. She didn’t want to die again.

“That’s right,” Gaea purred. “You were destined to marry Sammy. Do you know what happened to him after you died in Alaska? He grew up and moved to Texas. He married and had a family. But he never forgot you. He always wondered why you disappeared. He’s dead now—a heart attack in the nineteen-sixties. The life you could’ve had together always haunted him.”

“Stop it!” Hazel screamed. “You took that from me!”

“And you can have it again,” Gaea said. “I have you in my embrace, Hazel. You’ll die anyway. If you give up, at least I can make it pleasant for you. Forget saving Percy Jackson. He belongs to me. I’ll keep him safe in the earth until I’m ready to use him. You can have an entire life in your final moments—you can grow up, marry Sammy. All you have to do is let go.”

Hazel tightened her grip on the bow. Below her, something grabbed her ankles, but she didn’t panic. She knew it was Percy, suffocating, desperately grasping for a chance at life.

Hazel glared at the goddess. “I’ll never cooperate with you! LET—US—GO!”

Her mother’s face dissolved. The New Orleans morning melted into darkness. Hazel was drowning in mud, one hand on the bow, Percy’s hands around her ankles, deep in the darkness. Hazel wiggled the end of the bow frantically. Frank pulled her up with such force it nearly popped her arm out of the socket.

When she opened her eyes, she was lying in the grass, covered in muck. Percy sprawled at her feet, coughing and spitting mud.

Frank hovered over them, yelling, “Oh, gods! Oh, gods! Oh, gods!”

He yanked some extra clothes from his bag and started toweling off Hazel’s face, but it didn’t do much good. He dragged Percy farther from the muskeg.

“You were down there so long!” Frank cried. “I didn’t think—oh, gods, don’t ever do something like that again!” He wrapped Hazel in a bear hug.

“Can’t—breathe,” she choked out.

“Sorry!” Frank went back to toweling and fussing over them. Finally he got them to the side of the road, where they sat and shivered and spit up mud clods.

Hazel couldn’t feel her hands. She wasn’t sure if she was cold or in shock, but she managed to explain about the muskeg, and the vision she’d seen while she was under. Not the part about Sammy—that was still too painful to say out loud—but she told them about Gaea’s offer of a fake life, and the goddess’ claim that she’d captured her brother Nico. Hazel didn’t want to keep that to herself. She was afraid the despair would overwhelm her.

Percy had listened to her story, shivering and cold, but at the mention of Nico, he jolted.

“What about Nico?” he asked

Hazel was alarmed. Percy seemed so serious all of a sudden. “Gaea said she captured him,” she stuttered. “I—I don’t know where he is.”

“Did Nico tell you where he was going?” Percy asked.

“I—I don’t know,” Hazel stammered. “He said he was leaving the same day we left for the quest.”

“What exactly did he say?” Percy said, green eyes boring into her soul.

“He said he was going to help our father and try to figure out what to do about the Doors of Death,” Hazel answered. Where was Percy going with this?

Percy staggered back. He looked confused and—worried?

“What’s going on?” Frank asked cautiously.

“I don’t know,” Hazel said. She looked at Percy carefully. “You remember Nico, right? From before you lost your memories. I know he knows you.”

“I brought him to Camp Half-Blood a few years ago,” Percy said distantly. “We’re cousins, I guess. Friends. He… he wasn’t supposed to look for the Doors.”

That didn’t make sense to Hazel. How could Percy know what Nico was supposed to do? But something hit her like a sucker punch.

I brought him to Camp Half-Blood a few years ago .

Percy was a Greek demigod. He’d admitted that on the plane ride to Alaska. If Percy, a Greek, had brought Nico to the Greek camp, that meant that Nico was a Greek demigod too. Why hadn’t he told Hazel? They both had kept the secret about him bringing her back to life, couldn’t she be trusted to keep the secret that he was Greek?

Percy rubbed his shoulders, shaking himself out of it. “You saved me, Hazel. We’ll figure out what happened to Nico, I promise.”

Hazel got the feeling Percy knew more than he was letting on, but for now they had a deadline to worry about. She squinted at the sun, which was now high in the sky. The warmth felt good, but it didn’t stop her trembling.

“Does it seem like Gaea let us go too easily?”

Percy plucked a mud clod from his hair. “Maybe she still wants us as pawns. Maybe she was just saying things to mess with your mind.”

“She knew what to say,” Hazel agreed. “She knew how to get to me.”

Frank put his jacket around her shoulders. “This is a real life. You know that, right? We’re not going to let you die again.” He sounded so determined. Hazel didn’t want to argue, but she didn’t see how Frank could stop Death.

She pressed her coat pocket, where Frank’s half-burned firewood was still securely wrapped. She wondered what would’ve happened to him if she’d sunk in the mud forever. Maybe that would have saved him. Fire couldn’t have gotten to the wood down there. She would have made any sacrifice to keep Frank safe. Perhaps she hadn’t always felt that strongly, but Frank had trusted her with his life. He believed in her. She couldn’t bear the thought of any harm coming to him.

She glanced at the rising sun… Time was running out. She thought about Hylla, the Amazon Queen back in Seattle. Hylla would have dueled Otrera two nights in a row by now, assuming she had survived. She was counting on Hazel to release Death.

She managed to stand. The wind coming off Resurrection Bay was just as cold as she remembered. “We should get going. We’re losing time.”

Percy gazed down the road. His lips were returning to their normal color. “Any hotels or something where we could clean off? I mean… hotels that accept mud people?”

“I’m not sure,” Hazel admitted.

She looked at the town below and couldn’t believe how much it had grown since 1942. The main harbor had moved east as the town had expanded. Most of the buildings were new to her, but the grid of downtown streets seemed familiar. She thought she recognized some warehouses along the shore. “I might know a place we can freshen up.”

Chapter Text

WHEN THEY GOT INTO TOWN, Hazel followed the same route she’d used seventy years ago—the last night of her life, when she’d come home from the hills and found her mother missing.

She led her friends along Third Avenue. The railroad station was still there. The big white two-story Seward Hotel was still in business, though it had expanded to twice its old size. They thought about stopping there, but Hazel didn’t think it would be a good idea to traipse into the lobby covered in mud, nor was she sure the hotel would give a room to three minors.

Instead, they turned toward the shoreline. Hazel couldn’t believe it, but her old home was still there, leaning over the water on barnacle-encrusted piers. The roof sagged. The walls were perforated with holes like buckshot. The door was boarded-up, and a hand-painted sign read: ROOMS—STORAGE—AVAILABLE.

“Come on,” she said.

“Uh, you sure it’s safe?” Frank asked.

Hazel found an open window and climbed inside. Her friends followed. The room hadn’t been used in a long time. Their feet kicked up dust that swirled in the buckshot beams of sunlight. Mouldering cardboard boxes were stacked along the walls. Their faded labels read: Greeting Cards, Assorted Seasonal. Why several hundred boxes of season’s greetings had wound up crumbling to dust in a warehouse in Alaska, Hazel had no idea, but it felt like a cruel joke: as if the cards were for all the holidays she’d never gotten to celebrate—decades of Christmases, Easters, birthdays, Valentine’s Days.

“It’s warmer in here, at least,” Frank said. “Guess no running water? Maybe I can go shopping. I’m not as muddy as you guys. I could find us some clothes.”

Hazel only half heard him.

She climbed over a stack of boxes in the corner that used to be her sleeping area. An old sign was propped against the wall: GOLD PROSPECTING SUPPLIES. She thought she’d find a bare wall behind it, but when she moved the sign, most of her photos and drawings were still pinned there. The sign must have protected them from sunlight and the elements. They seemed not to have aged. Her crayon drawings of New Orleans looked so childish.

Had she really made them? Her mother stared out at her from one photograph, smiling in front of her business sign: QUEEN MARIE’S GRIS-GRIS—CHARMS SOLD, FORTUNES TOLD. Next to that was a photo of Sammy at the carnival. He was frozen in time with his crazy grin, his curly black hair, and those beautiful eyes. If Gaea was telling the truth, Sammy had been dead for over forty years. Had he really remembered Hazel all that time? Or had he forgotten the peculiar girl he used to go riding with—the girl who shared one kiss and a birthday cupcake with him before disappearing forever?

Frank’s fingers hovered over the photo. “Who…?” He saw that she was crying and clamped back his question. “Sorry, Hazel. This must be really hard. Do you want some time—”

“No,” she croaked. “No, it’s fine.”

“Is that your mother?” Percy pointed to the photo of Queen Marie. “She looks like you. She’s beautiful.” Then Percy studied the picture of Sammy. His face grew distant and a sad look entered his eyes. “Who’s that?” he asked, not really seeming to pay attention, as if he already knew the answer.

Hazel didn’t understand why he looked at the picture like that. “That’s… that’s Sammy. He was my—uh—friend from New Orleans.” She forced herself not to look at Frank.

Percy didn’t do more than nod in response. His eyes never left the picture as he did so.

Frank cleared his throat. “Look, we passed a store on the last block. We’ve got a little money left. Maybe I should go get you guys some food and clothes and—I don’t know—a hundred boxes of wet wipes or something?”

Hazel put the gold prospecting sign back over her mementos. She felt guilty even looking at that old picture of Sammy, with Frank trying to be so sweet and supportive. It didn’t do her any good to think about her old life.

“That would be great,” she said. “You’re the best, Frank.”

The floorboards creaked under his feet. “Well… I’m the only one not completely covered in mud, anyway. Be back soon.”

Once he was gone, Percy and Hazel made temporary camp. They took off their jackets and tried to scrape off the mud. They found some old blankets in a crate and used them to clean up. They discovered that boxes of greeting cards made pretty good places to rest if you arranged them like mattresses.

Percy set his sword on the floor where it glowed with a faint bronze light. Then he stretched out on a bed of Merry Christmas 1982.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said. “I should’ve told you that earlier.”

Hazel shrugged. “You would have done the same for me.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But when I was down in the mud…” he hesitated. “I remembered that line from Ella’s prophecy—about the son of Neptune drowning. I thought. ‘This is what it means. I’m drowning in the earth.’ I was sure I was dead.” His voice quavered like it had his first day at Camp Jupiter, when Hazel had shown him the shrine of Neptune.

Back then she had wondered if Percy was the answer to her problems—the descendant of Neptune that Pluto had promised would take away her curse someday. Percy had seemed so intimidating and powerful, like a real hero.

Only now, she knew that Frank was a descendant of Neptune, too. Frank wasn’t the most impressive-looking hero in the world, but he’d trusted her with his life. He tried so hard to protect her. Even his clumsiness was endearing. She’d never felt more confused—and since she had spent her whole life confused, that was saying a lot.

“Percy,” she said, “that prophecy might not have been complete. Frank thought Ella was remembering a burned page. Maybe you’ll drown someone else.”

Percy shrugged. “Might not even be me. It’s just that every time I go near the water I wonder if this will be the time my powers fail me. Is this the time I find out that I can’t breathe underwater anymore? You have no idea how much this has haunted me, Hazel.”

Hazel felt strange reassuring him. He was so much older, and more in command. But she nodded confidently. “You’re going to make it back home. You’re going to see your girlfriend Annabeth.”

“You’ll make it back, too, Hazel,” he insisted. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you. You’re too valuable to me, to the camp, and especially to Frank.”

Hazel picked up an old valentine. The lacy white paper fell apart in her hands. “I don’t belong in this century. Nico only brought me back so I could correct my mistakes, maybe get into Elysium.”

“There’s more to your destiny than that,” he said. “We’re supposed to fight Gaea together. I’m going to need you at my side way longer than just today. And Frank—you can see the guy is crazy about you. This life is worth fighting for, Hazel.”

She closed her eyes. “Please, don’t get my hopes up. I can’t—”

The window creaked open. Frank climbed in, triumphantly holding some shopping bags. “Success!”

He showed off his prizes. From a hunting store, he’d gotten a new quiver of arrows for himself, some rations, and a coil of rope.

“For the next time we run across muskeg,” he said.

From a local tourist shop, he had bought three sets of fresh clothes, some towels, some soap, some bottled water, and, yes, a huge box of wet wipes. It wasn’t exactly a hot shower, but Hazel ducked behind a wall of greeting card boxes to clean up and change. Soon she was feeling much better.

This is your last day, she reminded herself. Don’t get too comfortable.

The Feast of Fortuna—all the luck that happened today, good or bad, was supposed to be an omen of the entire year to come. One way or another, their quest would end this evening.

She slipped the piece of driftwood into her new coat pocket. Somehow, she’d have to make sure it stayed safe, no matter what happened to her. She could bear her own death as long as her friends survived.

“So,” she said. “Now we find a boat to Hubbard Glacier.”

She tried to sound confident, but it wasn’t easy. She wished Arion were still with her. She’d much rather ride into battle on that beautiful horse. Ever since they’d left Vancouver, she’d been calling to him in her thoughts, hoping he would hear her and come find her, but that was just wishful thinking.

Frank patted his stomach. “If we’re going to battle to the death, I want lunch first. I found the perfect place.”

“Battle to the death is more of my friends’ thing,” Percy said with the ghost of a smile. “They do everything to the death. Usually.” He shook his head fondly.

Frank led them to a shopping plaza near the wharf, where an old railway car had been converted to a diner. Hazel had no memory of the place from the 1940s, but the food smelled amazing. While Frank and Percy ordered, Hazel wandered down to the docks and asked some questions. When she came back, she needed cheering up. Even the cheeseburger and fries didn’t do the trick.

“We’re in trouble,” she said. “I tried to get a boat. But… I miscalculated.”

“No boats?” Frank asked.

“Oh, I can get a boat,” Hazel said. “But the glacier is farther than I thought. Even at top speed, we couldn’t get there until tomorrow morning.”

“Maybe I could make the boat go faster?” Percy suggested, munching on his cheeseburger, oblivious to the somber mood.

“Even if you could,” Hazel said, “from what the captains tell me, it’s treacherous—icebergs, mazes of channels to navigate. You’d have to know where you were going.”

“A plane?” Frank asked.

Hazel shook her head. “I asked the boat captains about that. They said we could try, but it’s a tiny airfield. You have to charter a plane two, three weeks in advance.”

They ate in silence after that. Hazel’s cheeseburger was excellent, but she couldn’t concentrate on it. She’d eaten about three bites when a raven settled on the telephone pole above and began to croak at them.

Hazel shivered. She was afraid it would speak to her like the other raven, so many years ago: The last night. Tonight.

She wondered if ravens always appeared to children of Pluto when they were about to die. She hoped Nico was still alive, and Gaea had just been lying to make her unsettled. Hazel had a bad feeling that the goddess was telling the truth.

Nico had told her that he’d try to figure out what to do about the Doors of Death. She didn’t know what that meant, but if he’d been captured by Gaea’s forces, Hazel might’ve lost the only family she had.

She stared at her cheeseburger.

Suddenly, the raven’s cawing changed to a strangled yelp.

Frank got up so fast that he almost toppled the picnic table. Percy drew his sword. Hazel followed their eyes. Perched on top of the pole where the raven had been, a fat ugly gryphon glared down at them. It burped, and raven feathers fluttered from its beak. Hazel stood and unsheathed her spatha.

Frank nocked an arrow. He took aim, but the gryphon shrieked so loudly the sound echoed off the mountains. Frank flinched, and his shot went wide.

“I think that’s a call for help,” Percy warned. “We have to get out of here.”

With no clear plan, they ran for the docks. The gryphon dove after them. Percy slashed at it with his sword, but the gryphon veered out of reach.

They took the steps to the nearest pier and raced to the end. The gryphon swooped after them, its front claws extended for the kill. Hazel raised her sword, but an icy wall of water slammed sideways into the gryphon and washed it into the bay. The gryphon squawked and flapped its wings. It managed to scramble onto the pier, where it shook its black fur like a wet dog.

Frank grunted. “Nice one, Percy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “One down. But bad news—look over there.”

About a mile away, over the mountains, a black cloud was swirling—a whole flock of gryphons, dozens at least. There was no way they could fight that many, and no boat could take them away fast enough.

Frank nocked another arrow. “Not going down without a fight.”

Percy raised Riptide. “I’m with you.”

Then Hazel heard a sound in the distance—like the whinnying of a horse. She must’ve been imagining it, but she cried out desperately, “Arion! Over here!”

A tan blur came ripping down the street and onto the pier. The stallion materialized right behind the gryphon, brought down his front hooves, and smashed the monster to dust.

Hazel had never been so happy in her life. “Good horse! Really good horse!”

Frank backed up and almost fell off the pier. “How—?”

“He followed me!” Hazel beamed. “Because he’s the best—horse—EVER! Now, get on!”

Frank gave the horse a dubious look. Arion whinnied indignantly.

Percy grinned. “I love your horse’s mouth, Hazel!” he winced. “Ah, that sounded wrong. I meant the guy has a great vocabulary. Really explicit stuff. Anyway, let’s go!”

They climbed on, Hazel in front, Frank and Percy balancing precariously behind her. Frank wrapped his arms around her waist, and Hazel thought that if this was going to be her last day on earth—it wasn’t a bad way to go out.

“Run, Arion!” she cried. “To Hubbard Glacier!”

The horse shot across the water, his hooves turning the top of the sea to steam.

Chapter Text

RIDING ARION, HAZEL FELT POWERFUL, unstoppable, absolutely in control—a perfect combination of horse and human. She wondered if this was what it was like to be a centaur.

The boat captains in Seward had warned her it was three hundred nautical miles to the Hubbard Glacier, a hard, dangerous journey, but Arion had no trouble. He raced over the water at the speed of sound, heating the air around them so that Hazel didn’t even feel the cold. On foot, she never would have felt so brave. On horseback, she couldn’t wait to charge into battle.

Frank and Percy didn’t look so happy. When Hazel glanced back, their teeth were clenched and their eyeballs were bouncing around in their heads. Frank’s cheeks jiggled from the g-force. Percy sat in the back, hanging on tight, desperately trying not to slip off the horse’s rear. Hazel hoped that didn’t happen. The way Arion was moving, she might not notice he was gone for fifty or sixty miles.

They raced through icy straits, past blue fjords and cliffs with waterfalls spilling into the sea. Arion jumped over a breaching humpback whale and kept galloping, startling a pack of seals off an iceberg.

It seemed like only minutes before they zipped into a narrow bay. The water turned the consistency of shaved ice in blue sticky syrup. Arion came to a halt on a frozen turquoise slab.

A half a mile away stood Hubbard Glacier. Even Hazel, who’d seen glaciers before, couldn’t quite process what she was looking at. Purple snow-capped mountains marched off in either direction, with clouds floating around their middles like fluffy belts. In a massive valley between two of the largest peaks, a ragged wall of ice rose out of the sea, filling the entire gorge. The glacier was blue and white with streaks of black, so that it looked like a hedge of dirty snow left behind on a sidewalk after a snowplow had gone by, only four million times as large.

As soon as Arion stopped, Hazel felt the temperature drop. All that ice was sending off waves of cold, turning the bay into the world’s largest refrigerator. The eeriest thing was a sound like thunder that rolled across the water.

“What is that?” Frank gazed at the clouds above the glacier. “A storm?”

“No,” Hazel said. “Ice cracking and shifting. Millions of tons of ice.”

“You mean that thing is breaking up?” Frank asked.

As if on cue, a sheet of ice silently calved off the side of the glacier and crashed into the sea, spraying water and frozen shrapnel several stories high. A millisecond later the sound hit them—a BOOM almost as jarring as Arion hitting the sound barrier.

“We can’t get close to that thing!” Frank said.

“We have to,” Percy said. “The giant is at the top.”

Arion nickered.

Percy snorted. “Dude, if I said half of that, my mom would wash my mouth out.” He grinned. “I do say half of that, so don’t tell her.”

Hazel tried not to laugh. “What did he say?”

“With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top.”

Frank looked incredulous. “I thought the horse couldn’t fly!”

This time Arion whinnied so angrily, even Hazel could guess he was cursing.

“I’m going to start writing these down,” Percy mumbled. Louder, he said, “Hazel, he promises you’ll see what he can do as soon as you give the word.”

“Um, hold on, then, you guys,” Hazel said nervously. “Arion, giddyup!”

Arion shot toward the glacier like a runaway rocket, barreling straight across the slush like he wanted to play chicken with the mountain of ice.

The air grew colder. The crackling of the ice grew louder. As Arion closed the distance, the glacier loomed so large, Hazel got vertigo just trying to take it all in. The side was riddled with crevices and caves, spiked with jagged ridges like ax blades. Pieces were constantly crumbling off—some no larger than snowballs, some the size of houses. When they were about fifty yards from the base, a thunderclap rattled Hazel’s bones, and a curtain of ice that would have covered Camp Jupiter calved away and fell toward them.

“Look out!” Frank shouted, which seemed a little unnecessary to Hazel.

Arion was way ahead of him. In a burst of speed, he zigzagged through the debris, leaping over chunks of ice and clambering up the face of the glacier.

Percy and Frank both cussed like horses—some of that, Percy might have even learned from Arion—and held on desperately while Hazel wrapped her arms around Arion’s neck. Somehow, they managed not to fall off as Arion scaled the cliffs, jumping from foothold to foothold with impossible speed and agility. It was like falling down a mountain in reverse.

Then it was over. Arion stood proudly at the top of a ridge of ice that loomed over the void. The sea was now three hundred feet below them.

Arion whinnied a challenge that echoed off the mountains. Percy didn’t translate, but Hazel was pretty sure Arion was calling out to any other horses that might be in the bay: Beat that, ya punks!

Then he turned and ran inland across the top of the glacier, leaping a chasm fifty feet across.

“There!” Percy pointed.

The horse stopped. Ahead of them stood a frozen Roman camp like a giant-sized ghastly replica of Camp Jupiter. The trenches bristled with ice spikes. The snow-brick ramparts glared blinding white. Hanging from the guard towers, banners of frozen blue cloth shimmered in the arctic sun.

There was no sign of life. The gates stood wide open. No sentries walked the walls. Still, Hazel had an uneasy feeling in her gut. She remembered the cave in Resurrection Bay where she’d worked to raise Alcyoneus—the oppressive sense of malice and the constant boom, boom, boom, like Gaea’s heartbeat. This place felt similar, as if the earth were trying to wake up and consume everything—as if the mountains on either side wanted to crush them and the entire glacier to pieces.

Arion trotted skittishly.

“Frank,” Percy said, “how about we go on foot from here?”

Frank sighed with relief. “Thought you’d never ask.”

They dismounted and took some tentative steps. The ice seemed stable, covered with a fine carpet of snow so that it wasn’t too slippery.

Hazel urged Arion forward. Percy and Frank walked on either side, sword and bow ready. They approached the gates without being challenged. Hazel was trained to spot pits, snares, trip lines, and all sorts of other traps Roman legions had faced for eons in enemy territory, but she saw nothing—just the yawning icy gates and the frozen banners crackling in the wind. She could see straight down the Via Praetoria. At the crossroads, in front of the snowbrick principia, a tall, dark- robed figure stood, bound in icy chains.

“Thanatos,” Hazel murmured.

She felt as if her soul were being pulled forward, drawn toward Death like dust toward a vacuum. Her vision went dark. She almost fell off Arion, but Frank caught her and propped her up.

“We’ve got you,” he promised. “Nobody’s taking you away.”

Hazel gripped his hand. She didn’t want to let go. He was so solid, so reassuring, but Frank couldn’t protect her from Death. His own life was as fragile as a half-burned piece of wood.

“I’m all right,” she lied.

Percy looked around uneasily. “Something’s off,” he said.

“Obviously,” Frank said. “It’s definitely a trap, but it’s not like we have a choice.”

“No,” Percy said, shaking his head. “I meant—nevermind.”

Before Hazel could change her mind, she urged Arion through the gates. The layout was so familiar—cohort barracks, baths, armory. It was an exact replica of Camp Jupiter, except three times as big. Even on horseback, Hazel felt tiny and insignificant, as if they were moving through a model city constructed by the gods.

They stopped ten feet from the robed figure.

Now that she was here, Hazel felt a reckless urge to finish the quest. She knew she was in more danger than when she’d been fighting the Amazons, or fending off the gryphons, or climbing the glacier on Arion’s back. Instinctively she knew that Thanatos could simply touch her, and she would die.

But she also had a feeling that if she didn’t see the quest through, if she didn’t face her fate bravely, she would still die—in cowardice and failure. The judges of the dead wouldn’t be lenient to her a second time.

Arion cantered back and forth, sensing her disquiet.

“Hello?” Hazel forced out the word. “Mr. Death?”

The hooded figure raised his head.

Instantly, the whole camp stirred to life. Figures in Roman armor emerged from the barracks, the principia, the armory, and the canteen, but they weren’t human. They were shades—the chattering ghosts Hazel had lived with for decades in the Fields of Asphodel. Their bodies weren’t much more than wisps of black vapor, but they managed to hold together sets of scale armor, greaves, and helmets. Frost-covered swords were strapped to their waists. Pila and dented shields floated in their smoky hands. The plumes on the centurions’ helmets were frozen and ragged. Most of the shades were on foot, but two soldiers burst out of the stables in a golden chariot pulled by ghostly black steeds.

When Arion saw the horses, he stamped the ground in outrage.

Frank gripped his bow. “Yep, here’s the trap.”

Chapter Text

THE GHOSTS FORMED RANKS AND ENCIRCLED the crossroads. There were about a hundred in all—not an entire legion, but more than a cohort. Some carried the tattered lightning bolt banners of the Twelfth Legion, Fifth Cohort—Michael Varus’s doomed expedition from the 1980s. Others carried standards and insignia Hazel didn’t recognize, as if they’d died at different times, on different quests—maybe not even from Camp Jupiter.

Most were armed with Imperial gold weapons—more Imperial gold than the entire Twelfth Legion possessed. Hazel could feel the combined power of all that gold humming around her, even scarier than the crackling of the glacier. She wondered if she could use her power to control the weapons, maybe disarm the ghosts, but she was afraid to try.

Imperial gold wasn’t just a precious metal. It was deadly to demigods and monsters. Trying to control that much at once would be like trying to control plutonium in a reactor. If she failed, she might wipe Hubbard Glacier off the map and kill her friends.

“Thanatos!” Hazel turned to the robed figure. “We’re here to rescue you. If you control these shades, tell them—” Her voice faltered.

The god’s hood fell away and his robes dropped off as he spread his wings, leaving him in only a sleeveless black tunic belted at the waist. He was the most beautiful man Hazel had ever seen. His skin was the color of teakwood, dark and glistening like Queen Marie’s old séance table. His eyes were as honey gold as Hazel’s. He was lean and muscular, with a regal face and black hair flowing down his shoulders. His wings glimmered in shades of blue, black, and purple.

Hazel reminded herself to breathe.

Beautiful was the right word for Thanatos—not handsome, or hot, or anything like that. He was beautiful the way an angel is beautiful—timeless, perfect, remote.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

The god’s wrists were shackled in icy manacles, with chains that ran straight into the glacier floor. His feet were bare, shackled around the ankles and also chained.

“It’s Cupid,” Frank said.

Percy scowled. “I hate Cupid.”

“You compliment me, Frank Zhang,” Thanatos said. His voice was as gorgeous as he was—deep and melodious. “I am frequently mistaken for the god of love. Death has more in common with Love than you might imagine.” His eyes landed on Percy. “Perhaps you understand. But I am Death. I assure you.”

Hazel didn’t doubt it. She felt as if she were made of ashes. Any second, she might crumble and be sucked into the vacuum. She doubted Thanatos even needed to touch her to kill her. He could simply tell her to die. She would keel over on the spot, her soul obeying that beautiful voice and those kind eyes.

“We’re—we’re here to save you,” she managed. “Where’s Alcyoneus?”

“Save me…?” Thanatos narrowed his eyes. “Do you understand what you are saying, Hazel Levesque? Do you understand what that will mean?”

Percy stepped forward. “We’re wasting time.”

He swung his sword at the god’s chains. Celestial bronze rang against the ice, but Riptide stuck to the chain like glue. Frost began creeping up the blade. Percy pulled frantically. Frank ran to help. Together, they just managed to yank Riptide free before the frost reached their hands.

“That won’t work,” Thanatos said simply.

"Yeah, I know, but it was worth a shot," Percy grumbled.

“As for the giant, he is close," Thanatos continued. "These shades are not mine. They are his.”

Thanatos’s eyes scanned the ghost soldiers. They shifted uncomfortably, as if an arctic wind were rattling through their ranks.

“So how do we get you out?” Hazel demanded.

Thanatos turned his attention back to her. “Daughter of Pluto, child of my master, you of all people should not wish me released.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Hazel’s eyes stung, but she was done being afraid.

She’d been a scared little girl seventy years ago. She’d lost her mother because she acted too late. Now she was a soldier of Rome. She wasn’t going to fail again. She wasn’t going to let down her friends.

“Listen, Death.” She drew her cavalry sword, and Arion reared in defiance. “I didn’t come back from the Underworld and travel thousands of miles to be told that I’m stupid for setting you free. If I die, I die. I’ll fight this whole army if I have to. Just tell us how to break your chains.”

Thanatos studied her for a heartbeat. “Interesting. You do understand that these shades were once demigods like you. They fought for Rome. They died without completing their heroic quests. Like you, they were sent to Asphodel. Now Gaea has promised them a second life if they fight for her today. Of course, if you release me and defeat them, they will have to return to the Underworld where they belong. For treason against the gods, they will face eternal punishment. They are not so different from you, Hazel Levesque. Are you sure you want to release me and damn these souls forever?”

Frank clenched his fists. “That’s not fair! Do you want to be freed or not?”

“Fair…” Death mused. “You’d be amazed how often I hear that word, Frank Zhang, and how meaningless it is. Is it fair that your life will burn so short and bright? Was it fair when I guided your mother to the Underworld?”

Frank staggered like he’d been punched.

“No,” Death said sadly. “Not fair. And yet it was her time. There is no fairness in Death. If you free me, I will do my duty. But of course these shades will try to stop you.”

“So if we let you go,” Percy summed up, “we get mobbed by a bunch of black vapor dudes with gold swords. Fine. How do we break those chains?”

Thanatos smiled. “Only the fire of life can melt the chains of death.”

“Without the riddles, please?” Percy asked.

Frank drew a shaky breath. “It isn’t a riddle.”

“Frank, no,” Hazel said weakly. “There’s got to be another way.”

Laughter boomed across the glacier. A rumbling voice said: “My friends. I’ve waited so long!”

Standing at the gates of the camp was Alcyoneus. He was even larger than the giant Polybotes they’d seen in California. He had metallic golden skin, armor made from platinum links, and an iron staff the size of a totem pole. His rust-red dragon legs pounded against the ice as he entered the camp. Precious stones glinted in his red braided hair.

Hazel had never seen him fully formed, but she knew him better than she knew her own parents. She had made him. For months, she had raised gold and gems from the earth to create this monster. She knew the diamonds he used for a heart. She knew the oil that ran in his veins instead of blood. More than anything, she wanted to destroy him.

The giant approached, grinning at her with his solid silver teeth.

“Ah, Hazel Levesque,” he said, “you cost me dearly! If not for you, I would have risen decades ago, and this world would already be Gaea’s. But no matter!” He spread his hands, showing off the ranks of ghostly soldiers. “Welcome, Percy Jackson! Welcome, Frank Zhang! I am Alcyoneus, the bane of Pluto, the new master of Death. And this is your new legion.”

Chapter Text

NO FAIRNESS IN DEATH. Those words kept ringing in Frank’s head.

The golden giant didn’t scare him. The army of shades didn’t scare him. But the thought of freeing Thanatos made Frank want to curl into the fetal position. This god had taken his mother. Frank understood what he had to do to break those chains. Mars had warned him. He’d explained why he loved Emily Zhang so much: She always put her duty first, ahead of everything. Even her life.

Now it was Frank’s turn.

His mother’s sacrifice medal felt warm in his pocket. He finally understood his mother’s choice, saving her comrades at the cost of her own life. He got what Mars had been trying to tell him— Duty. Sacrifice. They mean something.

In Frank’s chest, a hard knot of anger and resentment—a lump of grief he’d been carrying since the funeral—finally began to dissolve. He understood why his mother never came home. Some things were worth dying for.

“Hazel.” He tried to keep his voice steady. “That package you’re keeping for me? I need it.”

Hazel glanced at him in dismay. Sitting on Arion, she looked like a queen, powerful and beautiful, her brown hair swept over her shoulders and a wreath of icy mist around her head.

“Frank, no. There has to be another way.”

“Please. I—I know what I’m doing.”

Thanatos smiled and lifted his manacled wrists. “You’re right, Frank Zhang. Sacrifices must be made.”

Great. If Death approved of his plan, Frank was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like the results.

The giant Alcyoneus stepped forward, his reptilian feet shaking the ground. “What package do you speak of, Frank Zhang? Have you brought me a present?”

“Nothing for you, Golden Boy,” Frank said. “Except a whole lot of pain.”

The giant roared with laughter. “Spoken like a child of Mars! Too bad I have to kill you. And this one… my, my, I’ve been waiting to meet the famous Percy Jackson.” The giant grinned. His silver teeth made his mouth look like a car grille. “I’ve followed your progress, son of Neptune,” said Alcyoneus. “Your fight with Kronos? Well done. Gaea hates you above all others… except perhaps for that upstart Jason Grace. I’m sorry I can’t kill you right away, but my brother Polybotes wishes to keep you as a pet. He thinks it will be amusing when he destroys Neptune to have the god’s favorite son on a leash. After that, of course, Gaea has plans for you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Percy sighed. “I’m going to have to start carrying some of those travel-sized tissue packs.” He raised Riptide. “But actually I’m the son of Poseidon. I’m from Camp Half-Blood.”

The ghosts stirred. Some drew swords and lifted shields. Alcyoneus raised his hand, gesturing for them to wait.

“Greek, Roman, it doesn’t matter,” the giant said easily. “We will crush both camps underfoot. You see, the Titans didn’t think big enough. They planned to destroy the gods in their new home of America. We giants know better! To kill a weed, you must pull up its roots. Even now, while my forces destroy your little Roman camp, my brother Porphyrion is preparing for the real battle in the ancient lands! We will destroy the gods at their source.”

The ghosts pounded their swords against their shields. The sound echoed across the mountains.

“The source?” Frank asked. “You mean Greece?”

Alcyoneus chuckled. “No need to worry about that, son of Mars. You won’t live long enough to see our ultimate victory. I will replace Pluto as lord of the Underworld. I already have Death in my custody. With Hazel Levesque in my service, I will have all the riches under the earth as well!”

Hazel gripped her spatha. “I don’t do service.”

“Oh, but you gave me life!” Alcyoneus said. “True, we hoped to awaken Gaea during World War II. That would’ve been glorious. But really, the world is in almost as bad a shape now. Soon, your civilization will be wiped out. The Doors of Death will stand open. Those who serve us will never perish. Alive or dead, you three will join my army.”

Percy shook his head. “Fat chance, Golden Boy. You’re going down.”

“Wait.” Hazel spurred her horse toward the giant. “I raised this monster from the earth. I’m the daughter of Pluto. It’s my place to kill him.”

“Ah, little Hazel.” Alcyoneus planted his staff on the ice. His hair glittered with millions of dollars’ worth of gems. “Are you sure you will not join us of your own free will? You could be quite… precious to us. Why die again?”

Hazel’s eyes flashed with anger. She looked down at Frank and pulled the wrapped-up piece of firewood from her coat. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he said.

She pursed her lips. “You’re my best friend, too, Frank. I should have told you that.” She tossed him the stick. “Do what you have to. And Percy… can you protect him?”

Percy gazed at the ranks of ghostly Romans. “Against a small army? Sure, no problem.”

“Then I’ve got Golden Boy,” Hazel said.

She charged the giant.

Chapter Text

FRANK UNWRAPPED THE FIREWOOD and knelt at the feet of Thanatos. He was aware of Percy standing over him, swinging his sword and yelling in defiance as the ghosts closed in. He heard the giant bellow and Arion whinny angrily, but he didn’t dare look.

His hands trembling, he held his piece of tinder next to the chains on Death’s right leg. He thought about flames, and instantly the wood blazed.

Horrible warmth spread through Frank’s body. The icy metal began to melt, the flame so bright it was more blinding than the ice.

“Good,” Thanatos said. “Very good, Frank Zhang.”

Frank had heard about people’s lives flashing before their eyes, but now he experienced it literally. He saw his mother the day she left for Afghanistan. She smiled and hugged him. He tried to breath in her jasmine scent so he’d never forget it.

I will always be proud of you, Frank, she said. Someday, you’ll travel even farther than I. You’ll bring our family full circle. Years from now, our descendants will be telling stories about the hero Frank Zhang, their great-, great-, great- She poked him in the belly for old times sake. It would be the last time Frank smiled for months.

He saw himself at the picnic bench in Moose Pass, watching the stars and the northern lights as Hazel snored softly beside him, Percy saying, Frank, you are a leader. We need you.

He saw Percy disappearing into the muskeg, then Hazel diving after him. Frank remembered how alone he had felt holding on to the bow, how utterly powerless. He had pleaded with the Olympian gods—even Mars—to help his friends, but he knew they were beyond the gods’ reach.

With a clank, the first chain broke. Quickly, Frank stabbed the firewood at the chain on Death’s other leg.

He risked a glance over his shoulder.

Percy was fighting like a whirlwind. In fact… he was a whirlwind. A miniature hurricane of water and ice vapor churned around him as he waded through the enemy, knocking Roman ghosts away, deflecting arrows and spears. Since when did he have that power?

He moved through the enemy lines, and even though he seemed to be leaving Frank undefended, the enemy was completely focused on Percy. Frank wasn’t sure why—then he saw Percy’s goal. One of the black vapory ghosts was wearing the lion’s-skin cape of a standard bearer and holding a pole with a golden eagle, icicles frozen to its wings. The legion’s standard.

Frank watched as Percy plowed through a line of legionnaires, scattering their shields with his personal cyclone. He knocked down the standard bearer and grabbed the eagle.

“You want it back?” he shouted at the ghosts. “Come and get it!”

He drew them away, and Frank couldn’t help being awed by his bold strategy. As much as those shades wanted to keep Thanatos chained, they were Roman spirits. Their minds were fuzzy at best, like the ghosts Frank had seen in Asphodel, but they remembered one thing clearly: they were supposed to protect their eagle.

Still, Percy couldn’t fight off that many enemies forever. Maintaining a storm like that had to be difficult. Despite the cold, his face was already beaded with sweat.

Frank looked for Hazel. He couldn’t see her or the giant.

“Watch your fire, boy,” Death warned. “You don’t have any to waste.”

Frank cursed. He’d gotten so distracted, he hadn’t noticed the second chain had melted. He moved his fire to the shackles on the god’s right hand. The piece of tinder was almost half gone now. Frank started to shiver. More images flashed through his mind. He saw Mars sitting at his grandmother’s bedside, looking at Frank with those nuclear explosion eyes: You’re Juno’s secret weapon. Have you figured out your gift yet?

He heard his mother say: You can be anything.

Then he saw Grandmother’s stern face, her skin as thin as rice paper, her white hair spread across her pillow. Yes, Fai Zhang. Your mother was not simply boosting your self-esteem. She was telling you the literal truth.

He thought of the grizzly bear his mother had intercepted at the edge of the woods. He thought of the large black bird circling over the flames of their family mansion.

The third chain snapped. Frank thrust the tinder at the last shackle. His body was racked with pain. Yellow splotches danced in his eyes.

He saw Percy at the end of the Via Principalis, holding off the army of ghosts. He’d overturned the chariot and destroyed several buildings, but every time he threw off a wave of attackers in his hurricane, the ghosts simply got up and charged again. Every time Percy slashed one of them down with his sword, the ghost reformed immediately. Percy had backed up almost as far as he could go. Behind him was the side gate of the camp, and about twenty feet beyond that, the edge of the glacier.

As for Hazel, she and Alcyoneus had managed to destroy most of the barracks in their battle. Now they were fighting in the wreckage at the main gate. Arion was playing a dangerous game of tag, charging around the giant while Alcyoneus swiped at them with his staff, knocking over walls and cleaving massive chasms in the ice. Only Arion’s speed kept them alive.

Finally, Death’s last chain snapped. With a desperate yelp, Frank jabbed his firewood into a pile of snow and extinguished the flame. His pain faded. He was still alive. But when he took out the piece of tinder, it was no more than a stub, smaller than a candy bar.

Thanatos raised his arms. “Free,” he said with satisfaction.

“Great.” Frank blinked the spots from his eyes. “Then do something!”

Thanatos gave him a calm smile. “Do something? Of course. I will watch. Those who die in this battle will stay dead.”

“Thanks,” Frank muttered, slipping his firewood into his coat. “Very helpful.”

“You’re most welcome,” Thanatos said agreeably.

“Percy!” Frank yelled. “They can die now!”

Percy nodded understanding, but he looked worn out. His hurricane was slowing down. His strikes were getting slower. The entire ghostly army had him surrounded, gradually forcing him toward the edge of the glacier.

Frank drew his bow to help. Then he dropped it. Normal arrows from a hunting store in Seward wouldn’t do any good. Frank would have to use his gift.

He thought he understood his powers at last. Something about watching the firewood burn, smelling the acrid smoke of his own life, had made him feel strangely confident.

Is it fair your life burns so short and bright? Death had asked.

“No such thing as fair,” Frank told himself. “If I’m going to burn, it might as well be bright.”

He took one step toward Percy. Then, from across the camp, Hazel yelled in pain. Arion screamed as the giant got a lucky shot. His staff sent horse and rider tumbling over the ice, crashing into the ramparts.

“Hazel!” Frank glanced back at Percy, wishing he had his spear. If he could just summon Gray… but he couldn’t be in two places at once.

“Go help her!” Percy yelled, holding the golden eagle aloft. “I’ve got these guys!”

Percy didn’t have them. Frank knew that. The son of Poseidon was about to be overwhelmed, but Frank ran to Hazel’s aid. She was half-buried in a collapsed pile of snow-bricks. Arion stood over her, trying to protect her, rearing and swatting at the giant with his front hooves.

The giant laughed. “Hello, little pony. You want to play?” Alcyoneus raised his icy staff.

Frank was too far away to help… but he imagined himself rushing forward, his feet leaving the ground.

Be anything.

He remembered the bald eagles they’d seen on the train ride. His body became smaller and lighter. His arms stretched into wings, and his sight became a thousand times sharper. He soared upward, then dove at the giant with his talons extended, his razor-sharp claws raking across the giant’s eyes.

Alcyoneus bellowed in pain. He staggered backward as Frank landed in front of Hazel and returned to his normal form.

“Frank…” She stared at him in amazement, a cap of snow dripping off her head. “What just…how did—?”

“Fool!” Alcyoneus shouted. His face was slashed, black oil dripping into his eyes instead of blood, but the wounds were already closing. “I am immortal in my homeland, Frank Zhang! And thanks to your friend Hazel, my new homeland is Alaska. You cannot kill me here!”

“We’ll see,” Frank said. Power coursed through his arms and legs. “Hazel, get back on your horse.”

The giant charged, and Frank charged to meet him. He remembered the bear he’d met face to face when he was a child. As he ran, his body became heavier, thicker, rippling with muscles. He crashed into the giant as a full-grown grizzly, a thousand pounds of pure force. He was still small compared to Alcyoneus, but he slammed into the giant with such momentum, Alcyoneus toppled into an icy watchtower that collapsed on top of him.

Frank sprang at the giant’s head. A swipe of his claw was like a heavyweight fighter swinging a chain saw. Frank bashed the giant’s face back and forth until his metallic features began to dent.

“Urgg,” the giant mumbled in a stupor.

Frank changed to his regular form. His backpack was still with him. He grabbed the rope he’d bought in Seward, quickly made a noose, and fastened it around the giant’s scaly dragon foot.

“Hazel, here!” He tossed her the other end of the rope. “I’ve got an idea, but we’ll have to—”

“Kill—uh—you—uh…” Alcyoneus muttered.

Frank ran to the giant’s head, picked up the nearest heavy object he could find—a legion shield—and slammed it into the giant’s nose.

The giant said, “Urgg.”

Frank looked back at Hazel. “How far can Arion pull this guy?”

Hazel just stared at him. “You—you were a bird. Then a bear. And—”

“I’ll explain later,” Frank said. “We need to drag this guy inland, as fast and far as we can.”

“But Percy!” Hazel said.

Frank cursed. How could he have forgotten?

Through the ruins of the camp, he saw Percy with his back to the edge of the cliff. His hurricane was gone. He held Riptide in one hand and the legion’s golden eagle in the other. The entire army of shades edged forward, their weapons bristling.

“Percy!” Frank yelled.

Percy glanced over. He saw the fallen giant and seemed to understand what was happening. He yelled something that was lost in the wind, probably: Go!

Then he slammed Riptide into the ice at his feet. The entire glacier shuddered. Ghosts fell to their knees. Behind Percy, a wave surged up from the bay—a wall of gray water even taller than the glacier. Water shot from the chasms and crevices in the ice. As the wave hit, the back half of the camp crumbled. The entire edge of the glacier peeled away, cascading into the void—carrying buildings, ghosts, and Percy Jackson over the edge.

Chapter Text

FRANK WAS SO STUNNED THAT Hazel had to yell his name a dozen times before he realized Alcyoneus was getting up again. He slammed his shield into the giant’s nose until Alcyoneus began to snore.

Meanwhile the glacier kept crumbling, the edge getting closer and closer.

Thanatos glided toward them on his black wings, his expression serene.

“Ah, yes,” he said with satisfaction. “There go some souls. Drowning, drowning. You’d best hurry, my friends, or you’ll drown, too.”

“But Percy…” Frank could barely speak his friend’s name. “Is he—?”

“Too soon to tell. As for this one…” Thanatos looked down at Alcyoneus with distaste. “You’ll never kill him here. You know what to do?”

Frank nodded numbly. “I think so.”

“Then our business is complete.”

Frank and Hazel exchanged nervous looks.

“Um…” Hazel faltered. “You mean you won’t… you’re not going to—”

“Claim your life?” Thanatos asked. “Well, let’s see…” He pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death tapped the screen a few times, and all Frank could think was: Please don’t let there be an app for reaping souls.

“I don’t see you on the list,” Thanatos said. “Pluto gives me specific orders for escaped souls, you see. For some reason, he has not issued a warrant for yours. Perhaps he feels your life is not finished, or it could be an oversight. If you’d like me to call and ask—”

“No!” Hazel yelped. “That’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Death asked helpfully. “I have video conferencing enabled. I have his Skype address here somewhere…”

“Really, no.” Hazel looked as if several thousand pounds of worry had just been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you.”

“Urgg,” Alcyoneus mumbled.

Frank hit him over the head again.

Death looked up from his iPad. “As for you, Frank Zhang, it isn’t your time, either. You’ve got a little fuel left to burn. But don’t think I’m doing either of you a favor. We will meet again under less pleasant circumstances.”

The cliff was still crumbling, the edge only twenty feet away now. Arion whinnied impatiently. Frank knew they had to leave, but there was one more question he had to ask.

“What about the Doors of Death?” he said. “Where are they? How do we close them?”

“Ah, yes.” A look of irritation flickered across Thanatos’s face. “The Doors of Me. Closing them would be good, but I fear it is beyond my power. How you would do it, I haven’t the faintest idea. I can’t tell you exactly where they are. The location isn’t… well, it’s not entirely a physical place. They must be located through questing. I can tell you to start your search in Rome. The original Rome. You will need a special guide. Only one sort of demigod can read the signs that will ultimately lead you to the Doors of Me.”

Cracks appeared in the ice under their feet. Hazel patted Arion’s neck to keep him from bolting.

“What about my brother?” she asked. “Is Nico alive?”

Thanatos gave her a strange look—possibly pity, though that didn’t seem like an emotion Death would understand. “You will find the answer in Rome. And now I must fly south to your Camp Jupiter. I have a feeling there will be many souls to reap, very soon. Farewell, demigods, until we meet again.”

Thanatos dissipated into black smoke.

The cracks widened in the ice under Frank’s feet.

“Hurry!” he told Hazel. “We’ve got to take Alcyoneus about ten miles due north!”

He climbed onto the giant’s chest and Arion took off, racing across the ice, dragging Alcyoneus like the world’s ugliest sled.

It was a short trip.

Arion rode the glacier like a highway, zipping across the ice, leaping crevices, and skidding down slopes that would’ve made a snowboarder’s eyes light up.

Frank didn’t have to knock out Alcyoneus too many times, because the giant’s head kept bouncing and hitting the ice. As they raced along, the half-conscious Golden Boy mumbled a tune that sounded like “Jingle Bells.”

Frank felt pretty stunned himself. He’d just turned into an eagle and a bear. He could still feel fluid energy rippling through his body, like he was halfway between a solid and liquid state. Not only that: Hazel and he had released Death, and both of them had survived. And Percy… Frank swallowed down his fear. Percy had gone over the side of the glacier to save them.

The son of Neptune shall drown.

No. Frank refused to believe Percy was dead. They hadn’t come all this way just to lose their friend. Frank would find him—but first they had to deal with Alcyoneus. He visualized the map he had been studying on the train from Anchorage. He knew roughly where they were going, but there were no signs or markers on top of the glacier. He’d just have to take his best guess.

Finally Arion zoomed between two mountains into a valley of ice and rocks, like a massive bowl of frozen milk with bits of Cocoa Puffs. The giant’s golden skin paled as if it were turning to brass. Frank felt a subtle vibration in his own body, like a tuning fork pressed against his sternum. He knew he’d crossed into friendly territory—home territory.

“Here!” Frank shouted.

Arion veered to one side. Hazel cut the rope, and Alcyoneus went skidding past. Frank leaped off just before the giant slammed into a boulder.

Immediately Alcyoneus jumped to his feet. “What? Where? Who?”

His nose was bent in an odd direction. His wounds had healed, though his golden skin had lost some of its luster. He looked around for his iron staff, which was still back at Hubbard Glacier. Then he gave up and pounded the nearest boulder to pieces with his fist.

“You dare take me for a sleigh ride?” He tensed and sniffed the air. “That smell… like snuffed-out souls. Thanatos is free, eh? Bah! It doesn’t matter. Gaea still controls the Doors of Death. Now, why have you brought me here, son of Mars?”

“To kill you,” Frank said. “Next question?”

The giant’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve never known a child of Mars who can change his form, but that doesn’t mean you can defeat me. Do you think your stupid soldier of a father gave you the strength to face me in one-on-one combat?”

Hazel drew her sword. “How about two on one?”

The giant growled and charged at Hazel, but Arion nimbly darted out of the way. Hazel slashed her sword across the back of the giant’s calf. Black oil spouted from the wound.

Alcyoneus stumbled. “You can’t kill me, Thanatos or no!”

Hazel made a grabbing gesture with her free hand. An invisible force yanked the giant’s jewel-encrusted hair backward. Hazel rushed in, slashed his other leg, and raced away before he could regain his balance.

“Stop that!” Alcyoneus shouted. “This is Alaska. I am immortal in my homeland!”

“Actually,” Frank said, “I have some bad news about that. See, I got more from my dad than strength.”

The giant snarled. “What are you talking about, war brat?”

“Tactics,” Frank said. “That’s my gift from Mars. A battle can be won before it’s ever fought by choosing the right ground.” He pointed over his shoulder. “We crossed the border a few hundred yards back. You’re not in Alaska anymore. Can’t you feel it, Al? You want to get to Alaska, you have to go through me.”

Slowly, understanding dawned in the giant’s eyes. He looked down incredulously at his wounded legs. Oil still poured from his calves, turning the ice black.

“Impossible!” the giant bellowed. “I’ll—I’ll—Gah!”

He charged at Frank, determined to reach the international boundary. For a split second, Frank doubted his plan. If he couldn’t use his gift again, if he froze, he was dead.

Then he remembered his grandmother’s instructions:

It helps if you know the creature well. Check.

It also helps if you are in a life-and-death situation, such as combat. Double check.

The giant kept coming. Twenty yards. Ten yards.

“Frank?” Hazel called nervously.

Frank stood his ground. “I got this.”

Just before Alcyoneus smashed into him, Frank changed. He’d always felt too big and clumsy. Now he used that feeling. His body swelled to massive size. His skin thickened. His arms changed to stout front legs. His mouth grew tusks and his nose elongated. He became the animal he knew best—the one he’d cared for, fed, bathed, and even given indigestion to at Camp Jupiter.

Alcyoneus slammed into a full-grown ten-ton elephant.

The giant staggered sideways. He screamed in frustration and slammed into Frank again, but Alcyoneus was completely out of his weight division. Frank head-butted him so hard Alcyoneus flew backward and landed spread-eagled on the ice.

“You—can’t—kill me,” Alcyoneus growled. “You can’t—”

Frank turned back to his normal form. He walked up to the giant, whose oily wounds were steaming. The gems fell out of his hair and sizzled in the snow. His golden skin began to corrode, breaking into chunks.

Hazel dismounted and stood next to Frank, her sword ready. “May I?”

Frank nodded. He looked into the giant’s seething eyes. “Here’s a tip, Alcyoneus. Next time you choose the biggest state for your home, don’t set up base in the part that’s only ten miles wide. Welcome to Canada, idiot.”

Hazel’s sword came down on the giant’s neck. Alcyoneus dissolved into a pile of very expensive rocks.

For a while Hazel and Frank stood together, watching the remains of the giant melt into the ice. Frank picked up his rope.

“An elephant?” Hazel asked.

Frank scratched his neck. “Yeah. It seemed like a good idea.”

He couldn’t read her expression. He was afraid he’d finally done something so weird that she’d never want to be around him again. Frank Zhang: lumbering klutz, child of Mars, part-time pachyderm.

Then she kissed him—a real kiss on the lips, much better than the kind of kiss she’d given Percy on the airplane.

“You are amazing,” she said. “And you make a very handsome elephant.”

Frank felt so flustered that he thought his boots might melt through the ice. Before he could say anything, a voice echoed across the valley: You haven’t won.

Frank looked up. Shadows were shifting across the nearest mountain, forming the face of a sleeping woman.

You will never reach home in time, taunted the voice of Gaea. Even now, Thanatos is attending the death of Camp Jupiter, the final destruction of your Roman friends.

The mountain rumbled as if the whole earth were laughing. The shadows disappeared. Hazel and Frank looked at each other. Neither said a word. They climbed onto Arion and sped back toward Glacier Bay.

Chapter Text

AFTER ALEX DIVERTED LOKI’S ATTENTION, Magnus almost jumped up and dragged her out of the store. Granted, he couldn’t exactly do that without revealing his position to Loki. The position that Alex had just tried to conceal in the first place.

J-A-C-K. Leave. Now. I stay, Alex had signed to him.

No way. No leave you, he’d signed back.

Didn’t matter what he thought about that because seconds later, Alex jumped up and shouted in the other direction for him to run.

Magnus hated that he had to leave Alex, but they could both agree on something. Loki couldn’t get Jack. Magnus had to get Jack far away from here. That was the most important thing right now.

“I’ll be back for you,” he whispered, even though he was sure Alex couldn’t hear him.

He ducked behind shelves until he was out the back door. Then he took out his dagger and tried to open a portal again. Nothing. He scowled and pulled Jack out.

“Señor!” Jack said as soon as he burst out of pendant form.

“Shhh!” Magnus shushed Jack. “Loki’s back there. We gotta get you out of here.”

He slashed the air and there was a tear into the World Tree. Magnus hopped in, closing the opening behind him.

“I swear, Alex,” he said quietly. “I swear I’ll be back for you.”

He didn’t return Jack to his pendant the whole time he wandered along the World Tree branches. He didn’t really have a destination in mind. He figured he’d take the closest Midgard exit when he heard the squirrel.

By the Norns, the squirrel hadn’t bothered him yet, so Magnus kept walking. He chatted with Jack occasionally, but it was hard to be so cheerful with Alex stuck with Loki again.

“Take me back with you,” Jack said. “We could bust in and out of there in no time.”

Magnus shook his head. “I can’t let Loki know I have you, Jack. He wants to use you to start Ragnarok. No,” he corrected. “Not completely. He doesn’t want Ragnarok to start yet, but once he’s ready, he’s going to use you to start it. He’ll hand you over to Surt and you’ll free Fenris Wolf. I won’t let that happen anytime soon.”

Jack’s glow dimmed. “Señor?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you hate me for what I am destined to do?”

Magnus recoiled. “What? No! How could you think that, Jack?”

“Frey gave me up for a girl, you know.”

The reality of the situation dawned on Magnus. Here he was, on his way to take Jack somewhere to leave him while he went back to rescue Alex. In the previous timeline, Jack had always teased Frey about leaving him (“Blades before babes!”) , but Magnus knew his sword was still hurt about being left like that.

“I’m not giving you up,” Magnus said firmly. “Never in a million years. You’re more than my sword, Jack, you’re a friend. And I know what you’re destined to do. Maybe things will turn out different. After all, destiny is nothing more than the sum of our own choices. I choose to keep you by my side until the end. Surt can go to Helheim.”

Jack buzzed in his hand.

“Have we passed a New York exit?” Magnus asked.

Jack glowed red. “Not yet. There’s one coming up… right… here.”

Magnus stared at the portal. “That has got to be the tiniest portal opening I’ve ever seen. If I miss that, it’s straight to Ginnungagap.”

“I’ll guide you, señor!” Jack said brightly. “Might make you feel a little tired after. You’ll still stay awake though.”

“Do it,” Magnus said. He focused on the tiny portal.

Was it just his imagination or was it further away and smaller now? He didn’t have time to change his mind because his feet felt the branch and then Jack was gently guiding him to make sure he didn’t overshoot or undershoot his jump.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Magnus screamed as he fell into the portal.

The portal spat him out at the base of Half-Blood Hill. Magnus blinked in surprise. He remembered how he had theorized to Alex that he hadn’t been able to open a portal with his dagger because of all the Greek and Roman interference. Clearly Jack didn’t have that problem. Although, that would explain why the portal was so small.

It was dark and judging by the sounds coming from the direction of the amphitheater, it was campfire. That was actually perfect because Magnus planned to get in and out quick without anyone seeing him.

Naturally, that was the first thing that went wrong.

He’d barely made it to the cabins when someone stepped out of the shadows.

“Magnus?”

He jumped a foot into the air, hand over his chest. Nico di Angelo stood there with his arms crossed, a scowl on his face, and a confused look. A very odd combination, but Magnus had seen stranger.

“Hi, Nico,” Magnus greeted.

Nico stepped closer. “Annabeth’s worried about you and Alex. She said you haven’t been getting her IMs. Where have you been?”

“Alex and I are dealing with some issues on our end,” Magnus admitted. “Don’t tell Annabeth. She’s got enough going on right now. I just came to drop something off and then I’ll be leaving.”

“I need a good reason if you expect me not to go running to Annabeth right now,” Nico said.

Magnus sighed. Of all the people to catch him, Nico would not have been his ideal pick.

“Because it’s a,” he lowered his voice, “Norse problem and she can’t get involved in this one. And I have to get back to Alex soon or she’ll get worried.” He winced internally at the voice crack and hoped Nico didn’t read too far into that. “Annabeth will want me to stay for a while if she knows I’m here.”

Nico seemed to accept this, but he followed Magnus all the way to the Athena cabin. He raised his eyebrow as Magnus returned Jack to pendant form and then took the necklace off.

Magnus almost backed out. He didn’t like the missing weight around his neck. It was like a part of him was missing. He gathered his courage and stepped inside.

Finding Annabeth’s bed was easy. It was neatly made with a blue pillow and blue comforter—the only bed in the Athena cabin that had an ounce of blue. The color was unfortunate in Magnus’s opinion, but it probably reminded Annabeth of Percy.

Magnus gently set Jack’s pendant necklace on Annabeth’s bed. He scrawled a quick note and tucked the paper under the pendant: Had something to do. Look after Jack for me. Love, your favorite cousin.

He left the cabin before he could change his mind.

“Why’d you leave Annabeth your sword?” Nico asked.

Magnus didn’t answer for a while. “I had to. Just in case. I’ll be back for him though. I won’t abandon him.” He headed towards the border when he paused. “How is she? Annabeth, I mean.”

Nico shrugged. “Pretty good. She knows Percy’s fine. She’s just stressed about the Argo II, worried about you and Alex, trying to figure out a way in and out of Tartarus. So the usual.”

“And Bianca?”

“Also good. She’s hit it off with the Nakamura’s,” Nico said. “Which is nice because I did not know how to feel about her hanging out with Will, Lou Ellen, Cecil, and I.”

Magnus grinned. “Oh? How’s Will then?”

Nico’s face didn’t appear to change in the darkness, but if Magnus strained to see, he could tell that the son of Hades had pink cheeks.

“None of your business,” Nico said, arms crossed. “Actually, no, it is your business. We were walking to campfire together when I felt something strange. I thought, ‘No. It can’t be him. Why would he be here?’ But I went to check it out anyway. It was, in fact, you. So thanks for ruining my night, Magnus.” He scowled. “Aren’t you trying to get in and out quick?”

“Right!” Magnus said. “Alex. I have to go. Um, good seeing you. I’ll just be going now.” He ran up Half-Blood Hill and only looked back when he reached the top.

Nico was staring up at him with an unreadable expression. He gave Magnus one last look before stepping into the shadows and disappearing.

Chapter Text

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, Magnus had done more traveling than he’d ever thought he’d do. He’d been to Valhalla, Folkvanger, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Nidavellir, Jotunheim, Niflheim, New York, Maine, Washington D.C., New Mexico, Hoover Dam, San Francisco, Colorado, and Alaska.

Yet, in all of that, he’d never actually taken a normal mode of transportation. Sure, he had traveled by train once, but technically, they had snuck on and caught a ride in the rich people's cars the train was transporting. Other than that, the only way he’d traveled was the World Tree, a magical boat, and flying horse. Oh, yes. There had also been those flying statues with toes prettier than Njord’s.

Now though, Magnus was at LaGuardia Airport.

“I need a ticket to Alaska,” Magnus announced to the lady at the ticket counter.

The lady gave him a strange look. “Excuse me? Young man, where are your parents?”

“Not here,” Magnus said. “I’m supposed to be flying out to meet my, uh, girlfriend in Alaska. Seward, Alaska.”

The lady slowly looked back to her computer and typed in the city. “Well, we have a flight to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport tomorrow. You can’t fly to Seward. Anchorage is about as close as you can get. You’ll have to take a bus or train from there.”

“Perfect,” Magnus said in relief. He handed her the credit card Annabeth had given him. “Here.”

“Business or economy?” the lady asked.

Magnus paused. “Uh… what?”

The lady sighed. “Do you wan’t business class or economy class? First class is sold out.”

“Which one is nicer?”

“Business.”

“I will take that one then,” Magnus said brightly.

“That will be $500,” the lady said. “Are you sure you don’t want to call your parents.”

Magnus sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m literally flying out by myself to meet my girlfriend and her mom and half-sister as well as a few friends of ours. Just let me buy the ticket, please!”

The lady muttered something under her breath about teenagers, then handed Magnus the credit card back as well as his plane ticket.

“Your flight begins boarding at eleven o’clock,” the lady told him.

“Thank you,” Magnus muttered.

He spent the night at the terminal. Probably wasn’t supposed to, but he really, really could not miss this flight and it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. Besides, sleeping on the streets in Boston where he knew Alex, Blitz, and Hearth was completely different than sleeping on the streets of New York where he had no homeless acquaintances.

So the airport terminal it was.

It was early morning when he woke up. The terminal wasn’t quite full yet, but there were a few people dozing in chairs or reading a book. Most of them were attempting to pretend no one else existed. Magnus among them.

He tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the clock to turn to eleven.

9:41… 9:41… 9:41… 9:42…

It was slow going.

He finally caved and bought a few muffins from a cafe, though he was disappointed the falafel place didn’t open until closer to noon.

As if granting the airport more of his money, by the time Magnus returned to the terminal, there was only five minutes until he could board the plane. Which made perfect sense because now he only had a few minutes to scarf down his food.

Magnus almost prefered traveling via the World Tree.

When the airline attendants called for business class to board, Magnus got in line with the rest of the men and women with very businessy looks and briefcases. He got worried as he neared the front of the line because all he had was the ticket he bought, but the Mist of glamour or whatever must have been working in his favor.

The attendant waved him aboard with a smile and a “Have a nice day, sir.”

When Magnus got to his seat, he was surprised to see there was a young girl sitting in the window seat. She didn’t look older than eleven.

Magnus checked the seat to make sure he was in the right spot. He sat down next to her hesitantly.

“What? Do you think I’m going to bite?” the girl asked.

“I was just… I thought I might be in the wrong seat,” Magnus sputtered. “You aren’t sitting with your parents.”

The girl nodded her head at the partition between business and first class. “My step-father’s up there. Where are your parents?”

“Dead,” Magnus said automatically.

“Sorry,” the girl muttered. She stuck her hand out. “I’m Meg.”

“Magnus.” He shook her hand. “And it’s fine. You didn’t know.”

“Why Alaska?” Meg asked. “I mean, I’m going because my step-father has this work thing, but…”

Magnus hesitated. “Visiting my girlfriend. Your step-father makes you ride alone?”

Meg scowled. “He doesn’t make me do anything.” She crossed her arms. “Besides, I wasn’t even supposed to be going on this trip. It was last minute and the best we could get was business class.”

The girl turned back around to face the front and buried her face in a large magazine.

Magnus sighed. It was going to be a long ride.

When the plane arrived in Alaska, Meg shoved past Magnus to join who Magnus assumed was her step-father as he exited the plane. The man wore a purple business suit and it looked like his mouth was fixed into a permanent sneer. Something about the man screamed danger at Magnus. He hadn’t felt anything like that since he’d first arrived at Camp Half-Blood.

He almost went after them, but they were quickly lost into the crowd.

Magnus made his way to the train station from the airport so he could take it to Seward.

“When does the next train to Seward leave?” Magnus asked.

The man glanced at the schedule. “This evening. 7 PM. A little over four hours from now.” He gave Magnus a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid you just missed the one at 2:30.”

“Of course I did,” Magnus sighed. “Not like I’m in a hurry or anything. Not like the fate of the world is in the balance.”

The man was eyeing him strangely like he was one phone call away from alerting the police.

Magnus gave the man a sarcastic grin. “Kidding. My girlfriend’s there. I was supposed to meet her.”

The man let out a laugh and nodded. “My wife gets mad when I’m late from work. If looks could kill…” he shook his head, though Magnus could see a small smile.

“Yeah, she took my head off once,” Magnus remembered. “Another time, he laughed while my cousin’s boyfriend tried to kill me. Good times.” He sauntered out of the station before the train guy had time to process what he’d said.

Magnus seriously considered walking to Seward. It was probably a long walk, but the survival of Alex—and Sam—depended on his swift return. The rational part of his brain pointed out that it would take longer to walk than it would to wait for the train when a voice interrupted him.

“Hello, Magnus.”

Chapter Text

“HELLO, MAGNUS,” A VOICE SAID from behind.

Magnus turned around, glare on his face. “You,” he said, drawing his dagger. He didn’t really care what the mortals around him might think.

Loki looked at ease for someone with a dagger pointed in their direction. Although, he was a god, so perhaps he thought himself invulnerable to demigod attacks. Or it might have been because Magnus was not Heimdall, and Heimdall was the one destined to kill Loki. Maybe a combination of both.

“Let’s take this somewhere more private, shall we?” Loki suggested, glancing at the mortals eyeing them warily.

“No, thanks. I’m seeing someone,” Magnus said without thinking.

Loki gave Magnus a wide smile. “Charming as ever, Magnus Chase.”

He snapped his fingers. Immediately, the mortals got a glazed look in their eyes. A whirl of snow surrounded Magnus and Loki. When it cleared, they were standing on what Magnus assumed to be Hubbard Glacier.

Magnus gave the ice an appraising look. “Well, you saved me a few hundred bucks to buy a train ticket and charter a boat out here. Thanks.”

“It was foolish for you to return alone,” Loki said. “What exactly did you think this would accomplish.”

“I couldn’t leave Alex and Sam here,” Magnus shrugged. “Besides, it would be kinda hard for you to stop us from leaving when you’re only a few inches tall.”

Loki looked bewildered. “Sorry?”

“I’m challenging you to a flyting,” Magnus said boldly. He mentally started a list of all his friends.

Loki stared at him for a moment before bursting out into laughter.

“I’m serious,” Magnus frowned.

“Oh no, I believe that,” Loki assured him. He gestured to Magnus. “Very brazen, very determined. Yes, I think you are totally sincere in your challenge. If you had the talent to beat me, it might have even been a halfway decent plan. The flaw though is that I cannot accept your challenge. You may have heard of Balder? That little incident is the reason I was chained up in a cave, poison dripping in my eyes.”

“Do you want me to feel bad that you were punished for killing someone?” Magnus deadpanned.

Loki rolled his eyes. “It may have escaped your notice, but I am still there, Magnus Chase. I have not been freed from my prison. I am still there. This form,” he spread his hands, “is nothing more than my projected consciousness. You cannot challenge me whilst I remain in this form, nor whilst I remain captive. So you see, it was very foolish of you to come without a different plan.”

Magnus mentally berated himself for not considering that while Loki was stuck in his cave, the form Loki projected could not be challenged. But it wasn’t like this whole hero thing came with an instruction book.

“Foolish of you to think I came without a backup plan,” Magnus said, hoping he sounded more confident than he was.

“Oh?” Loki raised an eyebrow. “You have a backup plan? Do tell.”

Magnus grinned weakly. “Uh… a duel?” he waved his dagger.

Loki let out a long suffering sigh. “Unfortunately, you are worth much more to me alive, Magnus Chase.” He disappeared, his image blowing away in the wind.

Magnus blinked.

“In addition to being the god of lies,” Loki’s voice said from behind him. “I am also the god of magic.” He removed Magnus’s dagger. “Come. I’m sure Alex has missed your presence.”

Loki pushed Magnus past Alex’s cell and back towards the cell he had been in only days ago.

“Maggie!” Alex yelped.

Magnus sent Alex an awkward grimace. Sorry , he mouthed. He was roughly pushed into the cell.

“What happened?” Alex asked.

The door to Magnus’s cell clanged shut and was locked. Loki moved down towards Alex’s cell.

“Well, you were right about one thing, Alex,” Loki said. “He did come back. Just without those reinforcements.” With that, he sauntered off.

Alex didn’t say anything for a while, and Magnus winced, waiting for her to start yelling. She waited a few minutes after Loki left to explode.

“Why the Hel did you come back?” Alex shouted. “Without help too!” she continued. “I mean, what were you thinking, Magnus? You’d arrive back and demand Loki hand Sam and I over and he’d do it? Did you even consider telling your cousin where you’ve been and what’s been going on? Did you look for Blitz or Hearth? Please tell me the thought process you had because I don’t really think there was one!”

Magnus didn’t answer for a while. There really hadn’t been one.

“Magnus?” Alex asked, the harshness leaving her voice.

“I… I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted. “I just… I knew where you were and once I did the thing you asked, I came back to get you. I didn’t want to waste any time trying to find someone to help me. I already had to waste enough time getting a plane ticket to get back here.” He opened his mouth to say more, but he snorted. “And I have a hard time thinking straight when it comes to you,” he said with a grin.

Alex was silent. “That was terrible,” she finally said, amusement present in her voice.

“But true,” Magnus said.

“That still doesn’t change how corny that was.”

They fell silent.

“Magnus?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you came back.”

“But…?”

“Next time, bring an army with you.”

“Next time?”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Yes, Magnus. Next time. Do you think this is the last mess we’re going to get into?”

“A guy can dream.”

“Really,” Alex said after a moment. “What happened?”

Magnus sighed. “Well, my plan was to come back here and challenge Loki to a flyting, but, uh, I didn’t really account for the fact that Loki isn’t actually here. He’s really just hanging out in his cave, so… I can’t actually challenge him. Who knew?”

“Unbelievable,” Alex muttered. “Un-freaking-believable.”

“Did I hear you right?” Sam asked. “You planned to challenge Loki— Loki —to a flyting? Do you even know what that means? How were you planning to defeat him?”

“Well, it’s a flyting, so I guess I was going to defeat Loki by talking. As you do in a flyting.”

Sam let out a breath. “There’s a reason they say Loki has a silver tongue, Magnus! You shouldn’t have challenged him to a flyting, and you certainly shouldn’t have come back alone.”

“Thank you, Samirah, for the vote of confidence,” Magnus muttered.

A loud explosion jarred Magnus from his memories of the failed escape attempt.

“What was that?” Alex asked unsurely.

“Ice falling,” Magnus said.

Alex grumbled. “Didn’t sound like ice falling to me.”

They waited in silence as what sounded like a fierce storm waged war on the glacier. Finally, all the noises stopped. The only thing Magnus could hear was the sounds of Alex, Sam, and himself breathing.

The door to the cell block creaked open. A face appeared, looking through the bars of Magnus’s cell.

“Rescue party’s here,” Percy Jackson announced.

Chapter Text

WHEN PERCY CLIMBED BACK UP to the top of the glacier, Frank and Hazel were nowhere to be seen. He propped the legion’s standard up in a snowbank and resigned himself to wait patiently for his friends to return.

He should have known he wouldn’t be that lucky.

In the edges of his vision, something was shimmering like a mirage. Everytime he tried to look directly at it, it disappeared. It was very frustrating.

“Oh come on!” he yelled. “Let me look at you for the love of—” He cut himself off.

There was something very familiar about the mirage. It wasn’t like in the desert when you see a pool of water. More like a kaleidoscope of colors.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Percy muttered. He averted his eyes, and moved sideways towards the colors.

As he got closer to where he thought the source was, Percy stuck out his hand and grasped a handle. He pulled it open and turned to face the colors. This time, the image didn’t disappear. He was staring at the doorway entrance to a small building. Inside, it was dark, but Percy could make out barred doors. It looked like a prison.

He cautiously entered the building and walked down between the cells, peering into each cell he passed. Two cells contained two very familiar people.

Percy paused outside the second cell. “Rescue party’s here,” he announced.

Magnus jumped to his feet and hurried to the bars just as Percy used Riptide to slash the locks and open the door.

“I have never been so happy to see you before,” Magnus said.

“I missed you, too,” Percy said sarcastically. He moved to the first cell and opened the door. “Hey, Alex. Long time.”

Alex gave Percy an unimpressed look. “Took your time, Jackson. How’d you find us?”

Percy scowled. “Neck butt.”

“Neck what?” Alex asked, looking startled. “Was that supposed to be an insult?”

“Not you,” Percy said. “I mean, it’s because of Neck butt. It’s a long story. Come on, I’m getting you two out of here.”

“Wait!” Alex blurted. “Sam’s here too. My, uh, my half-sister.”

Percy turned around to see the cell across from Alex was occupied by a girl. She eyed Percy uncertainly. Percy nodded and broke the locks on her cell.

“You too, then,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

When they left the prison, Frank and Hazel were already waiting for them by where Percy had left the legion’s standard.

“Percy!” Hazel shrieked, running up to give him a hug.

“Hey,” Percy said, hugging Hazel back.

“You’re alive!” Frank marveled. “We thought you were dead!”

Percy frowned. “The fall? That was nothing. I fell twice that far from the St. Louis Arch.”

“You did what?” Hazel asked.

“Never mind. The important thing was I didn’t drown.”

“So the prophecy was incomplete!” Hazel grinned. “It probably said something like: The son of Neptune will drown a whole bunch of ghosts.”

Alex kicked at a tattered blue banner lying over a pile of snow-bricks. “Son of Neptune, huh? I thought you were the son of Poseidon.”

“I am,” Percy said. He gave Frank and Hazel a sheepish look. “Oh, uh, these are some friends I found. Magnus Chase, he’s my girlfriend’s cousin, and Alex Fierro, sh—uh…” he trailed off with a look at Alex.

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Yes? Go on.”

“What can I say?” Percy said. “One of a kind.”

Alex placed a hand on heart. “That was so sweet, Percy. Almost on par with Maggie’s love confessions. Anyway, I’m a girl right now, so she and her, thank you. This is my half-sister Sam,” she added, gesturing to the girl from the other cell.

Hazel tilted her head. “You’re a girl right now?”

“Alex is genderfluid,” Percy explained. “Sometimes girl, sometimes boy.” He looked at Alex. “Hazel’s kind of like Nico and Bianca.”

Alex shrugged. “You don’t have to understand it, but just give me respect and we’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Hazel nodded. Her face quickly turned worried. “We should go now though. Camp Jupiter is under attack. They could use that gold eagle,” she said, pointing to the standard.

Percy nodded. “One thing first, though. Hazel, there’s about a ton of Imperial gold weapons and armor at the bottom of the bay now, plus a really nice chariot. I’m betting that stuff could come in handy…”

It took them a long time—too long—but they all knew those weapons could make the difference between victory and defeat if they got them back to camp in time.

Hazel used her abilities to levitate some items from the bottom of the sea. Percy swam down and brought up more. Even Frank helped by turning into a seal, which was kind of cool, though Percy thought Frank's breath smelled like fish.

It took all three of them to raise the chariot, but finally they’d managed to haul everything ashore to a black sand beach near the base of the glacier. They couldn’t fit everything in the chariot, but they used Frank’s rope to strap down most of the gold weapons and the best pieces of armor.

Meanwhile, Magnus and Alex were talking to Sam in hushed tones. Percy could understand that. Sam looked pretty freaked out by the whole thing.

“It looks like Santa’s sleigh,” Frank said. “Can Arion even pull that much?”

Arion huffed.

Percy smiled ruefully. “Don’t go teaching Hazel any of those words,” he said sternly. Turning to Hazel, he said, “Yes, he can pull it, but he needs food.”

Hazel picked up an old Roman dagger, a pugio. It was bent and dull, so it wouldn’t be much good in a fight, but it looked like solid Imperial gold.

“Here you go, Arion,” she said. “High-performance fuel.”

The horse took the dagger in his teeth and chewed it like an apple.

“I’m not doubting Arion’s strength,” Frank said carefully, “but will the chariot hold up? The last one—”

“This one has Imperial gold wheels and axle,” Percy said. “It should hold.”

“If not,” Hazel said, “this is going to be a short trip. But we’re out of time. Come on!”

Percy glanced at the Norse demigods. “Will you come with us?”

Magnus glanced at Alex and Sam. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sam… all this. Greek and Roman gods… it's not that she can’t take it, but it’s a lot to process.”

“Perhaps I can assist you,” a voice said.

Percy turned to look at the source. If he didn’t know better, he might have assumed it was Aphrodite.

The man very much so resembled the goddess of love’s appearance—at least to Percy. His hair was blonde, and his eyes were a startling gray. Golden wings sprouted from his back.

“Cupid?” Percy guessed. His mood quickly soured. If this was Cupid…

The winged man yawned. Percy yawned. Hazel yawned. Then Frank, Magnus, Alex, and Sam yawned.

“Hypnos,” Percy said. He blinked slowly, eyes threatening to close. A nice nap sounded really good right about—he shook himself awake.

The god nodded his head. “Hello, Percy Jackson.” He yawned again, and Percy resisted the urge to follow suit.

“You can help?” he asked. “How?”

“She does not belong in this world,” Hypnos said, looking at Sam. “Neither do they,” he added, gesturing to Magnus and Alex. “I can return things to the way they should be. Samirah al-Abbas will not remember these past months. It will be as if she never left.”

“You can do that?” Magnus asked warily.

“It will not be as good as Mnemosyne,” Hypnos admitted. “She would be able to make it permanent. In time, she will remember what happened. But you must choose this,” he told Sam. “It will not be effective without your consent.”

Alex turned to her sister. “What do you want to do?”

Sam swallowed. “I… I don’t know.”

“You would get your job back,” Alex said. “No one would know what happened.”

“And when I remember?”

“We’ll be there,” Magnus said. “To explain and answer every question.”

Sam frowned. “How will you find me? How will I find you?”

Percy saw Magnus and Alex exchange a look.

“Don’t worry about that,” they said together.

Sam took a deep breath. “Okay.” She looked at Hypnos. “I’ll do it.”

Hypnos reached out a hand which Sam took. In a rush of wings, the god and Sam disappeared.

“Guess that means you’re our ride off this glacier,” Alex said. “Got room for two more?”

“The more the merrier,” Percy said.

Frank and Percy climbed into the chariot with Magnus and Alex. Hazel swung up onto Arion’s back.

“Giddyup!” she yelled.

The horse’s sonic boom echoed across the bay. They sped south, avalanches tumbling down the mountains as they passed.

As they rode back, Frank explained how they defeated Alcyoneus and how he discovered his gift. Alex was pretty interested in that. She informed Frank that she was a shapeshifter as well.

Meanwhile, Percy tried to sort out what had happened and what had to happen. Somehow, he and Annabeth had to find a way to close the Doors of Death—hopefully Annabeth had a plan for that—and save Nico, then they had to stop the giants from destroying the gods in Greece. And Magnus and Alex had to have something to do with all of this. Percy couldn’t believe it was just a coincidence that they had been imprisoned in Alaska the same time he, Frank, and Hazel were there.

The coastline began to look familiar. They raced past the Mendocino lighthouse. Shortly afterward, Mount Tam and the Marin headlands loomed out of the fog. Arion shot straight under the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay.

They tore through Berkeley and into the Oakland Hills. When they reached the hilltop above the Caldecott Tunnel, Arion shuddered like a broken car and came to a stop, his chest heaving.

Hazel patted his sides lovingly. “You did great, Arion.”

The horse was too tired even to cuss: Of course I did great. What did you expect?

Magnus, Alex, Percy, and Frank jumped off the chariot. Percy wished there’d been comfortable seats or an in-flight meal. His legs were wobbly. His joints were so stiff, he could barely walk. If he went into battle like this, the enemy would call him Old Man Jackson.

Frank didn’t look much better. He hobbled to the top of the hill and peered down at the camp. “Guys… you need to see this.”

When Percy and the others joined him, Percy’s heart sank. The battle had begun, and it wasn’t going well. The Twelfth Legion was arrayed on the Field of Mars, trying to protect the city. Scorpions fired into the ranks of the Earthborn. Hannibal the elephant plowed down monsters right and left, but the defenders were badly outnumbered.

On her pegasus Scipio, Reyna flew around the giant Polybotes, trying to keep him occupied. The Lares had formed shimmering purple lines against a mob of black, vaporous shades in ancient armor. Veteran demigods from the city had joined the battle, and were pushing their shield wall against an onslaught of wild centaurs. Giant eagles circled the battlefield, doing aerial combat with two snake-haired ladies in green Bargain Mart vests—Stheno and Euryale.

The legion itself was taking the brunt of the attack, but their formation was breaking. Each cohort was an island in a sea of enemies. The Cyclopes’ siege tower shot glowing green cannonballs into the city, blasting craters in the forum, reducing houses to ruins. As Percy watched, a cannonball hit the Senate House and the dome partially collapsed.

“Why does all the crazy stuff happen around you?” Alex muttered.

“We’re too late,” Hazel said.

“No,” Percy said. “They’re still fighting. We can do this.”

“Where’s Lupa?” Frank asked, desperation creeping into his voice. “She and the wolves… they should be here.”

Percy shook his head. “She did what she could,” he said. “She slowed down the army on its way south. Now it’s up to us. We've got to get the gold eagle and these weapons to the legion.”

“But Arion is out of steam!” Hazel said. “We can’t haul this stuff ourselves.”

“Yeah, and I’m not pulling that,” Alex said. “Rides are one thing, but pulling a chariot? No thank you.”

Percy grinned. “I’ve got that covered, don’t worry.” He whistled as loud as he could—a good New York cab whistle that would’ve been heard all the way from Times Square to Central Park.

Shadows rippled in the trees. A huge black shape bounded out of nowhere—a mastiff the size of an SUV, with a Cyclops and a harpy on her back.

“Hellhound!” Frank scrambled backward.

“It’s okay!” Percy grinned. “These are friends.”

“Brother!” Tyson climbed off and ran toward Percy. Percy tried to brace himself, but it was no good. Tyson slammed into him and smothered him in a hug. For a few seconds, Percy could only see black spots and lots of flannel. Then Tyson let go and laughed with delight, looking Percy over with that massive baby brown eye.

“You are not dead!” he said. “I like it when you are not dead!”

Ella fluttered to the ground and began preening her feathers. “Ella found a dog,” she announced. “A large dog. And a Cyclops.”

Mrs. O’Leary pounced on him, knocking Percy to the ground and barking so loudly that even Arion backed up.

“Hey, Mrs. O’Leary,” Percy said. “Yeah, I love you too, girl. Good dog.”

Hazel made a squeaking sound. “You have a hellhound named Mrs. O’Leary?”

“Long story.” Percy managed to get to his feet and wipe off the dog slobber. “You can ask your brother…” His voice wavered when he saw Hazel’s expression. He’d almost forgotten that Nico was missing. Unless Gaea was lying. He hoped that was the case.

“Sorry,” he said. “But yeah, this is my dog, Mrs. O’Leary. Tyson—these are my friends, Frank and Hazel. And you remember Alex and Magnus, right?”

“Hello,” Tyson waved.

“Hey, Tyson,” Magnus said. “Good to see you again.”

“Annabeth is worried,” Tyson said. “She says you are missing.”

“Not anymore,” Alex said. “Percy found us.”

Percy turned to Ella, who was counting all the barbs in one of her feathers.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “We were worried about you.”

“Ella is not strong,” she said. “Cyclopes are strong. Tyson found Ella. Tyson took care of Ella.”

Percy raised his eyebrows. Ella was blushing. “Tyson,” he said, “you big charmer, you.”

Tyson turned the same color as Ella’s plumage. “Um…No.” He leaned down and whispered nervously, loud enough for all the others to hear: “She is pretty.”

Frank tapped his head like he was afraid his brain had short-circuited. “Anyway, there’s this battle happening.”

“Right,” Percy agreed. “Okay, here’s the plan.”

As quickly as possible, he pointed out which were the good guys and the bad guys on the battlefield. Tyson was alarmed to learn that bad Cyclopes and bad centaurs were in the giant’s army. “I have to hit pony-men?”

“Just scare them away,” Percy promised.

“Um, Percy?” Frank looked at Tyson with trepidation. “I just… don’t want our friend here getting hurt. Is Tyson a fighter?”

Percy smiled. “Is he a fighter? Frank, you’re looking at General Tyson of the Cyclops army. And by the way, Tyson, Frank is a descendant of Poseidon.”

“Brother!” Tyson crushed Frank in a hug.

Percy stifled a laugh. “Yeah, he’s your brother.”

“Thanks,” Frank mumbled through a mouthful of flannel. “But if the legion mistakes Tyson for an enemy—”

“I’ve got it!” Hazel ran to the chariot and dug out the biggest Roman helmet she could find, plus an old Roman banner embroidered with SPQR. She handed them to Tyson. “Put those on, big guy. Then our friends will know you’re on our team.”

“Yay!” Tyson said. “I’m on your team!”

The helmet was ridiculously small, and he put the cape on backward, like a SPQR baby bib.

“It’ll do,” Percy said. “Ella, just stay here. Stay safe.”

“Safe,” Ella repeated. “Ella likes being safe. Safety in numbers. Safety deposit boxes. Ella will go with Tyson.”

“What?” Percy said. “Oh… fine. Whatever. Just don’t get hurt. And Mrs. O’Leary—”

“ROOOF!”

“How do you feel about pulling a chariot?”

Chapter Text

THEY WERE, WITHOUT A DOUBT, the strangest reinforcements in Roman military history.

Hazel rode Arion, who had recovered enough to carry one person at normal horse speed, though he cursed about his aching hooves all the way downhill. Frank transformed into a bald eagle and soared above them. Tyson ran down the hill, waving his club and yelling, “Bad pony-men! BOO!” while Ella fluttered around him, reciting facts from the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

As for Percy, he rode Mrs. O’Leary into battle with a chariot full of Imperial gold equipment clanking and clicking behind, the golden eagle standard of the Twelfth Legion raised high above him. Magnus and Alex rode in the chariot behind him. Magnus had grabbed an Imperial gold sword since apparently Loki—yes, the two Norse demigods had been kidnapped by Loki—had taken the dagger Annabeth gave him in December. Alex looked especially dangerous surrounded by weapons with only her garrotte in hand.

They skirted the perimeter of the camp and took the northernmost bridge over the Little Tiber, charging onto the Field of Mars at the western edge of the battle. A horde of Cyclopes was hammering away at the campers of the Fifth Cohort, who were trying to keep their shields locked just to stay alive.

Percy shouted, “Fifth Cohort!” and slammed into the nearest Cyclops. The last things the poor monster saw were Mrs. O’Leary’s teeth.

After the Cyclops disintegrated—and stayed disintegrated, thanks to Death—Percy leaped off his hellhound and slashed wildly through the other monsters. Alex let out a whoop and lashed out with her garrotte. Tyson charged at the Cyclops leader, Ma Gasket, her chain-mail dress spattered with mud and decorated with broken spears.

She gawked at Tyson and started to say, “Who—?”

Tyson hit her in the head so hard, she spun in a circle and landed on her rump.

“Bad Cyclops Lady!” he bellowed. “General Tyson says GO AWAY!”

He hit her again, and Ma Gasket broke into dust.

Meanwhile Hazel charged around on Arion, slicing her spatha through one Cyclops after another, while Frank blinded the enemies with his talons.

Once every Cyclops within fifty yards had been reduced to ashes, Frank landed in front of his troops and transformed into a human. His centurion’s badge and Mural Crown gleamed on his winter jacket.

“Fifth Cohort!” he bellowed. “Get your Imperial gold weapons right here!”

The campers recovered from their shock and mobbed the chariot. Percy and Magnus did their best to hand out equipment quickly.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Dakota urged, grinning like a madman as he swigged red KoolAid from his flask. “Our comrades need help!”

Soon the Fifth Cohort was equipped with new weapons and shields and helmets. They weren’t exactly consistent. In fact they looked like they’d been shopping at a King Midas clearance sale. But they were suddenly the most powerful cohort in the legion.

“Follow the eagle!” Frank ordered. “To battle!”

The campers cheered. As Percy and Mrs. O’Leary charged onward, the entire cohort followed—forty extremely shiny gold-plated warriors screaming for blood. They slammed into a herd of wild centaurs that were attacking the Third Cohort. When the campers of the Third saw the eagle standard, they shouted insanely and fought with renewed effort.

The centaurs didn’t stand a chance. The two cohorts crushed them like a vise. Soon there was nothing left but piles of dust and assorted hooves and horns. Percy hoped Chiron would forgive him, but these centaurs weren’t like the Party Ponies he’d met before. They were some other breed. They had to be defeated.

“Form ranks!” the centurions shouted. The two cohorts came together, their military training kicking in. Shields locked, they marched into battle against the Earthborn.

Frank shouted, “Pila!”

A hundred spears bristled. When Frank yelled, “Fire!” they sailed through the air—a wave of death cutting through the six-armed monsters. The campers drew swords and advanced toward the center of the battle.

“What the Hel is going on?” Magnus screamed.

“I don’t know, just follow them!” Alex yelled back.

At the base of the aqueduct, the First and Second Cohorts were trying to encircle Polybotes, but they were taking a pounding. The remaining Earthborn threw barrage after barrage of stone and mud. Karpoi grain spirits—those horrible little piranha Cupids—were rushing through the tall grass abducting campers at random, pulling them away from the line. The giant himself kept shaking basilisks out of his hair. Every time one landed, the Romans panicked and ran. Judging from their corroded shields and the smoking plumes on their helmets, they’d already learned about the basilisks’ poison and fire.

Reyna soared above the giant, diving in with her javelin whenever he turned his attention to the ground troops. Her purple cloak snapped in the wind. Her golden armor gleamed. Polybotes jabbed his trident and swung his weighted net, but Scipio was almost as nimble as Arion.

Then Reyna noticed the Fifth Cohort marching to their aid with the eagle. She was so stunned, the giant almost swatted her out of the air, but Scipio dodged. Reyna locked eyes with Percy and gave him a huge smile.

“Romans!” Her voice boomed across the fields. “Rally to the eagle!”

Demigods and monsters alike turned and gawked as Percy bounded forward on his hellhound.

“What is this?” Polybotes demanded. “What is this?”

Percy felt a rush of power coursing through the standard’s staff. He raised the eagle and shouted, “Twelfth Legion Fulminata!”

Thunder shook the valley. The eagle let loose a blinding flash, and a thousand tendrils of lightning exploded from its golden wings—arcing in front of Percy like the branches of an enormous deadly tree, connecting with the nearest monsters, leaping from one to another, completely ignoring the Roman forces.

When the lightning stopped, the First and Second Cohorts were facing one surprised-looking giant and several hundred smoking piles of ash. The enemy’s center line had been charred to oblivion.

The look on Octavian’s face was priceless. The centurion stared at Percy with shock, then outrage. Then, when his own troops started to cheer, he had no choice except to join the shouting: “Rome! Rome!”

The giant Polybotes backed up uncertainly, but Percy knew the battle wasn’t over. The Fourth Cohort was still surrounded by Cyclopes. Even Hannibal the elephant was having a hard time wading through so many monsters. His black Kevlar armor was ripped so that his label just said ant .

The veterans and Lares on the eastern flank were being pushed toward the city. The monsters’ siege tower was still hurling explosive green fireballs into the streets. The gorgons had disabled the giant eagles and now flew unchallenged over the giant’s remaining centaurs and the Earthborn, trying to rally them.

“Stand your ground!” Stheno yelled. “I’ve got free samples!”

Percy was really in the mood for some Crispy Cheese ‘n’ Wieners. He made a mental note to ask the rest of the Argo II crew if they could make a pit stop at Bargain Mart to get some later.

Polybotes bellowed. A dozen fresh basilisks fell out of his hair, turning the grass to poison yellow. “You think this changes anything, Percy Jackson? I cannot be destroyed! Come forward, son of Neptune. I will break you!”

Percy dismounted. He handed Dakota the standard. “You are the cohort’s senior centurion. Take care of this.”

Dakota blinked, then he straightened with pride. He dropped his Kool-Aid flask and took the eagle. “I will carry it with honor.”

“Frank, Hazel, Tyson,” Percy said, “help the Fourth Cohort. Magnus, Alex—”

“Please don’t tell me you think we know what you mean by cohort,” Alex interrupted.

Percy grinned. “Nah. I was going to say—”

Horns blew in the northern hills. Another army appeared on the ridge—hundreds of warriors in black-and-gray camouflage, armed with spears and shields. Interspersed among their ranks were a dozen battle forklifts, their sharpened tines gleaming in the sunset and flaming bolts nocked in their crossbows.

“Amazons,” Frank said. “Great.”

“Amazon?” Magnus asked. “Like the shipping company?”

Polybotes laughed. “You, see? Our reinforcements have arrived! Rome will fall today!”

The Amazons lowered their spears and charged down the hill. Their forklifts barreled into battle. The giant’s army cheered—until the Amazons changed course and headed straight for the monsters’ intact eastern flank.

“Amazons, forward!” On the largest forklift stood a girl who looked like an older version of Reyna, in black combat armor with a glittering gold belt around her waist.

“Queen Hylla!” said Hazel. “She survived!”

The Amazon queen shouted: “To my sister’s aid! Destroy the monsters!”

“Destroy!” Her troops’ cry echoed through the valley.

Reyna wheeled her pegasus toward Percy. Her eyes gleamed. Her expression said: I could hug you right now. She shouted, “Romans! Advance!”

The battlefield descended into absolute chaos. Amazon and Roman lines swung toward the enemy.

But Percy had only one goal. He pointed at the giant. “You. Me. To the finish.”

“Hey, what about what you wanted us to do?” Magnus protested as Percy charged away.

Percy and Polybotes met by the aqueduct, which had somehow survived the battle so far. Polybotes fixed that. He swiped his trident and smashed the nearest brick arch, unleashing a waterfall.

“Go on, then, son of Neptune!” Polybotes taunted. “Let me see your power! Does water do your bidding? Does it heal you? But I am born to oppose Neptune.”

The giant thrust his hand under the water. As the torrent passed through his fingers it turned dark green. He flung some at Percy, who instinctively deflected it with his will. The liquid splattered the ground in front of him. With a nasty hiss, the grass withered and smoked.

“My touch turns water to poison,” Polybotes said.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Percy muttered.

“Let’s see what it does to your blood!”

Polybotes threw his net at Percy, but Percy rolled out of the way. He diverted the waterfall straight into the giant’s face. While Polybotes was blinded, Percy charged. He plunged Riptide into the giant’s belly then withdrew it and vaulted away, leaving the giant roaring in pain.

The strike would have dissolved any lesser monster, but Polybotes just staggered and looked down at the golden ichor—the blood of immortals—spilling from his wound. The cut was already closing.

“Good try, demigod,” he snarled. “But I will break you still.”

“Gotta catch me first,” Percy said. He turned and bolted toward the city.

“What?” the giant yelled incredulously. “You run, coward? Stand still and die!”

Percy had no intention of doing that. He just needed to get Polybotes to cross the border.

He passed Mrs. O’Leary, who looked up curiously with a gorgon wriggling in her mouth.

“I’m fine!” Percy yelled as he ran by, followed by a giant screaming bloody murder.

He jumped over a burning scorpion and ducked as Hannibal threw a Cyclops across his path. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tyson pounding the Earthborn into the ground like a game of whack-a-mole.

Ella was fluttering above him, dodging missiles and calling out advice: “The groin. The Earthborn’s groin is sensitive.”

SMASH!

“Good. Yes. Tyson found its groin.”

“Percy needs help?” Tyson called.

“I’m good!”

“Die!” Polybotes yelled, closing fast. Percy kept running.

In the distance, he saw Hazel and Arion galloping across the battlefield, cutting down centaurs and karpoi. One grain spirit yelled, “Wheat! I’ll give you wheat!” but Arion stomped him into a pile of breakfast cereal. Queen Hylla and Reyna joined forces, forklift and pegasus riding together, scattering the dark shades of fallen warriors. Frank turned himself into an elephant and stomped through some Cyclopes, and Dakota held the golden eagle high, blasting lightning at any monsters that dared to challenge the Fifth Cohort.

Percy glanced back and saw the giant almost within arm’s reach. To buy some time, he ducked behind one of the aqueduct’s columns. The giant swung his trident. When the column crumbled, Percy used the unleashed water to guide the collapse—bringing down several tons of bricks on the giant’s head.

Percy bolted for the city limits.

“Terminus!” he yelled.

The nearest statue of the god was about sixty feet ahead. His stone eyes snapped open as Percy ran toward him.

“Completely unacceptable!” he complained. “Buildings on fire! Invaders! Get them out of here, Percy Jackson!”

“I’m trying,” he said. “But there’s this giant, Polybotes.”

“Yes, I know! Wait—Excuse me a moment.” Terminus closed his eyes in concentration. A flaming green cannonball sailed overhead and suddenly vaporized. “I can’t stop all the missiles,” Terminus complained. “Why can’t they be civilized and attack more slowly? I’m only one god.”

“Help me kill the giant,” Percy said, “and this will all be over. A god and demigod working together—that’s the only way to kill him.”

Terminus sniffed. “I guard borders. I don’t kill giants. It’s not in my job description.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Percy muttered. “Terminus, come on!” he yelled and took another step forward, and the god shrieked indignantly.

“Stop right there, young man! No weapons inside the Pomerian Line!”

“But we’re under attack.”

“I don’t care! Rules are rules. When people don’t follow the rules, I get very, very angry.”

Percy was in the mood to smash Terminus’s face at this point. “Hold that thought.” He sprinted back toward the giant. “Hey, ugly!”

“Rarrr!” Polybotes burst from the ruins of the aqueduct. The water was still pouring over him, turning to poison and creating a steaming marsh around his feet.

“You… you will die slowly,” the giant promised. He picked up his trident, now dripping with green venom.

All around them, the battle was winding down. As the last monsters were mopped up, Percy’s friends started gathering, forming a ring around the giant.

“I will take you prisoner, Percy Jackson,” Polybotes snarled. “I will torture you under the sea. Every day the water will heal you, and every day I will bring you closer to death.”

“Great offer,” Percy said. “But I think I’ll just kill you instead.”

Polybotes bellowed in rage. He shook his head, and more basilisks flew from his hair.

“Get back!” Frank warned.

Fresh chaos spread through the ranks. Hazel spurred Arion and put herself between the basilisks and the campers. Frank changed form—shrinking into something lean and furry… a weasel? Percy thought Frank had lost his mind, but when Frank charged the basilisks, they absolutely freaked out. They slithered away with Frank chasing after them in hot weasely pursuit. Alex ran after them, shrinking smaller and smaller as she ran until she too was a weasel.

Polybotes pointed his trident and ran toward Percy. As the giant reached the Pomerian Line, Percy jumped aside like a bullfighter. Polybotes barreled across the city limits.

“THAT’S IT!” Terminus cried. “That’s AGAINST THE RULES!”

Polybotes frowned, obviously confused that he was being told off by a statue. “What are you?” he growled. “Shut up!” He pushed the statue over and turned back to Percy.

“Now I’m MAD!” Terminus shrieked. “I’m strangling you. Feel that? Those are my hands around your neck, you big bully. Get over here! I’m going to head-butt you so hard—”

“Enough!” The giant stepped on the statue and broke Terminus in three pieces—pedestal, body, and head.

“You DIDN’T!” shouted Terminus. “Percy Jackson, you’ve got yourself a deal! Let’s kill this upstart.”

The giant laughed so hard that he didn’t realize Percy was charging until it was too late. Percy jumped up, vaulting off the giant’s knee, and drove Riptide straight through one of the metal mouths on Polybotes’s breastplate, sinking the Celestial bronze hilt-deep in his chest. The giant stumbled backward, tripping over Terminus’s pedestal and crashing to the ground.

While he was trying to get up, clawing at the sword in his chest, Percy hefted the head of the statue.

“You’ll never win!” the giant groaned. “You cannot defeat me alone.”

“I’m not alone.” Percy raised the stone head above the giant’s face. “I’d like you to meet my friend Terminus. He’s a god!”

Too late, awareness and fear dawned in the giant’s face. Percy took great pleasure in smashing the god’s head as hard as he could into the Polybotes’s nose, and the giant dissolved, crumbling into a steaming heap of seaweed, reptile skin, and poisonous muck.

Percy staggered away, completely exhausted.

“Ha!” said the head of Terminus. “That will teach him to obey the rules of Rome.”

For a moment, the battlefield was silent except for a few fires burning, and a few retreating monsters screaming in panic.

A ragged circle of Romans and Amazons stood around Percy. Tyson, Ella, and Mrs. O’Leary were there. Frank and Hazel were grinning at him with pride. Arion was nibbling contentedly on a golden shield.

The Romans began to chant, “Percy! Percy!”

They mobbed him. Before he knew it, they were raising him on a shield. The cry changed to, “Praetor! Praetor!”

Among the chanters was Reyna herself, who held up her hand and grasped Percy’s in congratulation. Then the mob of cheering Romans carried him around the Pomerian Line, carefully avoiding Terminus’s borders, and escorted him back home to Camp Jupiter.

Chapter Text

FOR THE FEAST OF FORTUNA, campers, Amazons and Lares crowded the mess hall for a lavish dinner. Even the fauns were invited, since they’d helped out by bandaging the wounded after the battle. Wind nymphs zipped around the room, delivering orders of pizza, burgers, steaks, salads, Chinese food, and burritos, all flying at terminal velocity.

Despite the exhausting battle, everyone was in good spirits. Casualties had been light, and the few campers who’d previously died and come back to life, like Gwen, hadn’t been taken to the Underworld. Maybe Thanatos had turned a blind eye. Or maybe Pluto had given those folks a pass, like he had for Hazel. Percy had to admit, he never knew the answer to that the first time.

Still, whatever the case, nobody complained.

Colorful Amazon and Roman banners hung side-by-side from the rafters. The restored golden eagle stood proudly behind the praetor’s table, and the walls were decorated with cornucopias—magical horns of plenty that spilled out recycling waterfalls of fruit, chocolate, and fresh-baked cookies.

The cohorts mingled freely with the Amazons, jumping from couch to couch as they pleased, and for once the soldiers of the Fifth were welcome everywhere. Percy changed seats so many times, he lost track of his dinner.

There was a lot of flirting and arm-wrestling—which seemed to be the same thing for the Amazons. At one point Percy was cornered by Kinzie, the Amazon who’d disarmed him in Seattle. He had to explain that he already had a girlfriend. Fortunately Kinzie took it well. She told him what had happened after they’d left Seattle—how Hylla had defeated her challenger Otrera in two consecutive duels to the death, so that the Amazons were now calling their queen Hylla Twice-Kill.

“Otrera stayed dead the second time,” Kinzie said, batting her eyes. “We have you to thank for that. If you ever need a new girlfriend… well, I think you’d look great in an iron collar and an orange jumpsuit.”

Percy couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. He politely thanked her and changed seats.

“Guessing we shouldn’t mention that to Annabeth?” Magnus asked.

Percy gave him a dark look. “Oh gods, don’t give her any ideas.”

Magnus frowned in confusion while Alex choked on her—was that fruit punch or Dakota’s KoolAid?—drink. Then his face turned red. “Wait! No! I didn’t mean…” he trailed off. “Whatever.”

Once everyone had eaten and the plates stopped flying, Reyna made a short speech. She formally welcomed the Amazons, thanking them for their help. Then she hugged her sister and everybody applauded.

Reyna raised her hands for quiet. “My sister and I haven’t always seen eye to eye—”

Hylla laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

“She joined the Amazons,” Reyna continued. “I joined Camp Jupiter. But looking around this room, I think we both made good choices. Strangely, our destinies were made possible by the hero you all just raised to praetor on the battlefield—Percy Jackson.”

More cheering. The sisters raised their glasses to Percy and beckoned him forward.

Everybody asked for a speech, but Percy didn’t know what to say. He protested that he really wasn’t the best person for praetor, but the campers drowned him out with applause.

Reyna took away his probatio neck plate. Octavian shot him a dirty look, then turned to the crowd and smiled like this was all his idea. He ripped open a teddy bear and pronounced good omens for the coming year—Fortuna would bless them!

He passed his hand over Percy’s arm and shouted: “Percy Jackson, son of Neptune, first year of service!”

The Roman symbols burned onto Percy’s arm: a trident, SPQR, and a single stripe. It felt like someone was pressing a hot iron into his skin, but Percy managed not to scream. For one, he’d been through worse, and two, he didn’t want to give Octavian any satisfaction.

Octavian embraced him and whispered, “I hope it hurt.”

“Not as much as you will in Punishment,” Percy whispered back much to Octavian’s surprise. He gave the augur a pat on the back as he turned to face Reyna.

Reyna gave Percy an eagle medal and purple cloak, symbols of the praetor. “You earned these, Percy.”

Queen Hylla pounded him on the back. “And I’ve decided not to kill you.”

“Um, thanks,” Percy said.

He made his way around the mess hall one more time, because all the campers wanted him at their table. Vitellius the Lar followed, stumbling over his shimmering purple toga and readjusting his sword, telling everyone how he’d predicted Percy’s rise to greatness.

“I demanded he join the Fifth Cohort!” the ghost said proudly. “Spotted his talent right away!”

Don the faun popped up in a nurse’s hat, a stack of cookies in each hand. “Man, congrats and stuff! Awesome! Hey, do you have any spare change?”

All the attention embarrassed Percy, but he was happy to see how well Hazel and Frank were being treated. Everyone called them the saviors of Rome, and they deserved it. There was even talk about reinstating Frank’s great-grandfather, Shen Lun, to the legion’s roll of honor. Apparently he hadn’t caused the 1906 earthquake after all.

Percy sat for a while with Tyson and Ella, who were honored guests at Dakota’s table. Tyson kept calling for peanut-butter sandwiches, eating them as fast as the nymphs could deliver. Ella perched at his shoulder on top of the couch and nibbled furiously on cinnamon rolls.

“Cinnamon rolls are good for harpies,” she said. “June twenty-fourth is a good day. Roy Disney’s birthday, and Fortuna’s Feast, and Independence Day for Zanzibar. And Tyson.” She glanced at Tyson, then blushed and looked away.

Reyna had given Magnus and Alex questionable looks, but apparently decided that since they had helped in the victory over Polybotes and his army, she would refrain from interrogating them for the night. That was okay. They would be leaving the next day anyway.

After dinner, the entire legion got the night off. Percy and his friends drifted down to the city, which wasn’t quite recovered from the battle, but the fires were out, most of the debris had been swept up, and the citizens were determined to celebrate.

At the Pomerian Line, the statue of Terminus wore a paper party hat.

“Welcome, praetor!” he said. “You need any giants’ faces smashed while you’re in town, just let me know.”

“Thanks, Terminus,” Percy said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yes, good. Your praetor’s cape is an inch too low on the left. There—that’s better. Where is my assistant? Julia!”

The little girl ran out from behind the pedestal. She was wearing a green dress tonight, and her hair was still in pigtails. When she smiled, Percy saw that her front teeth were starting to come in. She held up a box full of party hats.

Percy smiled fondly. “I’ll take the blue crown.”

Julia offered Hazel a gold pirate hat. “I’m gonna be Percy Jackson when I grow up,” she told Hazel solemnly.

Hazel smiled and ruffled her hair. “That’s a good thing to be, Julia.”

“Although,” Frank said, picking out a hat shaped like a polar bear’s head, “Frank Zhang would be good too.”

“Frank!” Hazel said.

Alex swiped a pink top hat and a green tiara from Julia’s box of party hats. “Great dress, by the way,” she said. “Have you considered pairing it with something pink?”

Magnus rolled his eyes. “God, don’t go spreading your fashion sense. Blitz will have a heart attack.”

“Ah!” Alex said, grabbing a hat from the box and plopping it on Magnus’s head. “Your favorite, Maggie.”

Percy snickered at the dismayed look on Magnus’s face when he took the hat off to see what it was which was a blue dragon.

“I hate dragons,” Magnus muttered. “I hate Thursdays. I hate dragons. I hate blue.” But he kept the hat on.

They continued to the forum, which was lit up with multi-colored lanterns. The fountains glowed purple. The coffee shops were doing a brisk business, and street musicians filled the air with the sounds of guitar, lyre, panpipes, and armpit noises. (Percy didn’t get that last one. Maybe it was an old Roman musical tradition.)

The goddess Iris must’ve been in a party mood too. As Percy and his friends strolled past the damaged Senate House, a dazzling rainbow appeared in the night sky. Unfortunately the goddess sent another blessing, too—a gentle rain of gluten-free R.O.F.L. cupcake simulations, which Percy figured would either make cleaning up harder, or rebuilding easier. The cupcakes would make great bricks.

Finally, Percy stopped. He gave Frank and Hazel a look. “You two go ahead. I want to catch up with Magnus and Alex before I crash.”

“Of course,” Hazel said. She offered the two Norse demigods a smile. “It was nice to meet you both.”

“You too,” Magnus said.

The new couple—finally—walked away, occasionally brushing shoulders and being cute.

“Catch up?” Alex asked. “What do you want to know? Mummy dearest kept us holed up in Alaska for… well, months. And on that note, how did you find us?”

"Well, I wanted to give Frank and Hazel some space to talk. But..." Percy glanced around to make sure no one was within earshot. “Before Annabeth went to Boston the first time, but after the end of this war, we met these two magicians. They follow the Egyptian gods.”

“Of course those are real too,” Magnus muttered.

“During the last encounter, I was briefly possessed by one of the gods,” Percy explained. “As a, I think they call it godling, I could see into what they called the duat. The Mist, glamour for you two, is part of the duat. I’m not sure if you were hidden in a layer of the duat or Mist or glamour, but somehow, I could sense it.”

“So maybe you weren’t supposed to be able to find us,” Magnus mused. “The Mist hides the Greeks and the Romans. The glamour hides the Norse. The duat hides the Egyptians. It’s all one in the same, but different layers work to hide things from different people. Obviously the glamour was working to hide us from you, but you already know about us, so it wasn’t as effective as it might have been on Frank or Hazel. Add into that, you already have experience with this duat thing.”

Percy stared at Magnus. “Yeah, you are definitely Annabeth’s cousin. But that makes sense. I couldn’t see the door unless I wasn’t looking at the door.”

“I have a question,” Alex announced. “Since we’re dragging each other into, you know, each other’s messes, does that mean we get to meet these magicians too?”

“God, I hope not,” Magnus said. “What would we have to do? Fight a mummy? A curse?”

Percy grinned. “More like preventing the fusion of Greek and Egyptian mythology. Anyway, about that… are you two coming with us? Or are you headed back to Boston?”

“Quite honestly, I’d like to avoid Boston for a while,” Magnus said.

Alex nodded. “But we aren’t exactly part of the prophecy of Seven. We might just head back to Camp. Help prepare for the battle there.”

“There’s a chance tomorrow doesn’t go great,” Percy hedged. “If something goes wrong, you’ll need to get out of here. We won’t be able to stop and drop you off at Camp.”

“So you’re saying we could be stuck with you for a month on a ship,” Alex said. She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not the end of the world. Worst case…” she trailed off with a scowl.

Magnus laughed. “Worst case Alex has to fly me to Camp.”

“I never had to do any of this before I met you,” she said, giving Percy a threatening look.

Percy offered her a sheepish look.

He hadn’t even tried to see the second praetor’s house. He already knew it would be full of Jason’s things. It would be too weird to move into Jason’s house, and it would be full of reminders of one of his best friends.

Instead, Percy headed back to the Fifth Cohort barracks and climbed into his bunk. He gave Magnus and Alex some of the empty beds and then he passed out.

He dreamed he was carrying Juno across the Little Tiber.

She was disguised as a crazy old bag lady, smiling and singing an Ancient Greek lullaby as her leathery hands gripped Percy’s neck.

“Do you still want to slap me, dear?” she asked.

Percy stopped midstream. He let go and dumped the goddess in the river.

The moment she hit the water, she vanished and reappeared on the shore. “Oh, my,” she cackled, “that wasn’t very heroic, even in a dream!”

“Eight months,” Percy said. “You stole eight months of my life for a quest that took a week. Why?”

Juno tutted disapprovingly. “You mortals and your short lives. Eight months is nothing, my dear. I lost eight centuries once, missed most of the Byzantine Empire.”

Percy summoned the power of the river. It swirled around him, spinning into a froth of whitewater.

“Now, now,” Juno said. “Don’t get testy. If we are to defeat Gaea, our plans must be timed perfectly. First, I needed Jason and his friends to free me from my prison—”

“Poor them.”

Juno gave him a look. “I’m a sweet old woman. At any rate, you weren’t needed at Camp Jupiter until now, to save the Romans at their moment of greatest crisis. The eight months between… well, I do have other plans brewing, my boy. Opposing Gaea, working behind Jupiter’s back, protecting your friends—it’s a full-time job! If I had to guard you from Gaea’s monsters and schemes as well, and keep you hidden from your friends back east all that time—no, much better you take a safe nap. You would have been a distraction—a loose cannon.”

“A distraction.” Percy felt the water rising with his anger, spinning faster around him. “A loose cannon.”

“Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”

Percy sent a wave crashing down on the old woman, but Juno simply disappeared and materialized farther down the shore.

“My,” she said, “you are in a bad mood. But you know I’m right. Your timing here was perfect. They trust you now. You are a hero of Rome. And while you slept, Jason Grace has learned to trust the Greeks. They’ve had time to build the Argo II. Together, you and Jason will unite the camps.”

“And you couldn’t have done this some other way?” Percy demanded. “Surely there were any number of ways to do this!”

Juno scowled. “Well, the others almost ruined my plans.”

“The others? Magnus and Alex, you mean.”

“Yes, them,” Juno said impatiently. “They turned up to help Jason and his friends, and then you were distracted by rescuing them. Do you realize how much could have been lost? How much still could be lost? The Romans do not trust the Greeks completely and you have brought two variables into their Camp that I did not account for.”

“Maybe you should have,” Percy said coldly.

Juno laced her crooked fingers. “The Heroes of Olympus must unite! After your victory over Kronos in Manhattan… well, I fear that wounded Jupiter’s self-esteem.”

“Because I was right,” Percy said. “And he was wrong.”

The old lady shrugged. “He should be used to that, after so many eons married to me, but alas! My proud and obstinate husband refuses to ask mere demigods for help again. He believes the giants can be fought without you, and Gaea can be forced back to her slumbers. I know better. But you must prove yourself. Only by sailing to the ancient lands and closing the Doors of Death will you convince Jupiter that you are worthy of fighting side-by-side with the gods. It will be the greatest quest since Aeneas sailed from Troy!”

“Oh, yeah. Super.”

“I will tell you this, Percy Jackson,” Juno said. “The one who will cause you the most trouble is the one closest to you—the one who hates me most.”

“I don’t think so,” Percy said quietly. “She could never cause me trouble.”

The goddess smiled dryly. “We will see, young hero. She has a hard task ahead of her when you arrive in Rome. Whether she is up to it… I do not know.”

Percy summoned a fist of water and smashed it down at the old lady. When the wave receded, she was gone.

“Heed my warning, Percy Jackson,” Juno’s voice called. “Do not let the others get any further involved. I fear what will become of our world.”

The river swirled out of Percy’s control. He sank into the darkness of the whirlpool.

Chapter Text

THE NEXT MORNING, PERCY AND HIS FRIENDS ate breakfast early, then headed into the city before the senate was due to convene. As Percy was a praetor now, he could go pretty much wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

On the way, they passed the stables, where Tyson and Mrs. O’Leary were sleeping in. Tyson snored on a bed of hay next to the unicorns, a blissful look on his face like he was dreaming of ponies. Mrs. O’Leary had rolled on her back and covered her ears with her paws. On the stable roof, Ella roosted in a pile of old Roman scrolls, her head tucked under her wings.

When they got to the forum, they sat by the fountains and watched the sun come up. The citizens were already busy sweeping up cupcake simulations, confetti, and party hats from last night’s celebration. The engineer corps was working on a new arch that would commemorate the victory over Polybotes.

Hazel said she’d even heard talk of a formal triumph for the three of them—a parade around the city followed by a week of games and celebrations—but Percy knew they’d never get the chance. They didn’t have time.

Percy told them about his dream of Juno. He glanced at Magnus and Alex. “She doesn’t want you two anywhere near us.”

“Tough,” Alex said, crossing her arms. “We’re involved now.”

“Maybe she’s right,” Magnus said. “I mean… if we’re responsible for anything happening—”

“The only reason she doesn’t want you around is because Hera—Juno—likes to control all the chess pieces,” Percy said. “Alex is right. You are involved now and if you want to stay involved, I won’t stop you.”

“I can hardly let my cousin do anything dangerous if I’m not going to be by her side,” Magnus grinned. “Guess we ignore the goddess.”

“Something you seem to be doing a lot,” Hazel noted, looking at Percy. “At least that’s what it sounded like in Mars’s note.”

“Mars?” Percy repeated.

Hazel frowned. “The gods were busy last night. Show him, Frank.”

Frank reached into his coat pocket. He produced a thin paperback book and a note on red stationery.

“These were on my pillow this morning.” He passed them to Percy. “Like the Tooth Fairy visited.”

The book was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Percy had never heard of it, but he could guess who sent it. The letter read: Good job, kid. A real man’s best weapon is his mind. This was your mom’s favorite book. Give it a read. P.S.—I hope your friend Percy has learned some respect for me.

“Wow.” Percy handed back the book. “Maybe Mars is different than Ares. I don’t think Ares can read.”

Frank flipped through the pages. “There’s a lot in here about sacrifice, knowing the cost of war. Back in Vancouver, Mars told me I’d have to put my duty ahead of my life or the entire war would go sideways. I thought he meant freeing Thanatos, but now… I don’t know. I’m still alive, so maybe the worst is yet to come.”

He glanced nervously at Percy, and Percy got the feeling Frank wasn’t telling him everything. He wondered if Mars had said something about him, but Percy wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Besides, Frank had already given enough. He had watched his family home burn down. He’d lost his mother and his grandmother.

“You risked your life,” Percy said. “You were willing to burn up to save the quest. Mars can’t expect more than that. Maybe he means some other form of sacrifice.”