![]() Piper clawed at the walls, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go. Ghostly shapes moved through the water as it rose rapidly. Then came the worst vision: she saw herself with Jason and Percy, standing waist-deep in water at the bottom of a dark circular chamber, like a giant well. There was a rapid series of images she’d seen before, but she still didn’t understand them: Jason riding into battle on horseback, his eyes gold instead of blue a woman in an old-fashioned Southern belle dress, standing in an oceanside park with palm trees a bull with the face of a bearded man, rising out of a river and two giants in matching yellow togas, hoisting a rope on a pulley system, lifting a large bronze vase out of a pit. And according to her dagger, that crazy teddy-bear-strangling kid, Octavian, was whipping the Romans into a war frenzy. Maybe unconsciously she hadn’t put her best effort into the charmspeak. She was too worried about losing Jason to his old life. Piper had never wanted to make friends with the Romans. Her secret fear? Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Piper’s power of persuasion had, for once, done absolutely no good. Maybe Reyna wasn’t so bad, but it didn’t matter now. Jason hadn’t ever been Reyna’s boyfriend, not really. She’d almost made Piper feel guilty about being Jason’s girlfriend, though that was silly. She’d given the Greeks a fair chance…right up until the Argo II had started destroying her city. She’d put her camp’s needs ahead of her emotions. Yet Reyna had stayed polite and in control. As a daughter of Aphrodite, Piper could tell stuff like that. Reyna had sized up Piper and Jason’s relationship right away. ![]() During the feast in the forum, Piper had admired the way Reyna kept her feelings in check. She’d been prepared to hate Reyna, but she couldn’t. Reyna, the praetor, stood to one side, her face tight with suppressed emotion. Piper couldn’t hear him, but the gist was obvious: We need to kill those Greeks! The blond scarecrow-looking kid, Octavian, was speaking to the mob, shaking his fist. She saw a crowd of Roman demigods gathered in the forum. It didn’t look very special, just a triangular blade with an unadorned hilt, but it had once been owned by Helen of Troy. It would only make her feel worse.įinally the temptation was too great. But he could still tell when she was upset, and she was pretty sure her dad had encouraged Coach to look out for her. Besides, her dad had taken a potion that had erased all of Piper’s demigod secrets from his memory. Piper couldn’t share the visions she’d seen. Maybe something in her voice had tipped them off. The last few weeks, whenever Piper called home, her dad and Mellie had asked her what was wrong. A few weeks ago, Hedge had asked his girlfriend, Mellie, to take charge of the McLean household so he could come along to help with this quest.Ĭoach Hedge had tried to make it sound like returning to Camp Half-Blood had been all his idea, but Piper suspected there was more to it. He had helped her dad, movie actor Tristan McLean, get back on his feet after being kidnapped by giants the past winter. ![]() He wasn’t a bad chaperone, but he was definitely the most warlike old goat Piper had ever met. She heard Gleeson Hedge in his room next door, humming a military song-“Stars and Stripes Forever,” maybe? Since the satellite TV was out, the satyr was probably sitting on his bunk reading back issues of Guns & Ammo magazine. That would be the cruelest trick the gods had played on her yet, and they’d played some pretty cruel tricks. What if he’d lost his memories again-but this time, his memories of her? She remembered the awful sound of that brick hitting his forehead-an injury that had happened only because he’d tried to shield her from the Romans.Įven with the nectar and ambrosia they’d managed to force-feed him, Piper couldn’t be sure he would be okay when he woke up. Jason’s face was so pale, he might’ve been dead. But sitting in Jason’s cabin, waiting for him to wake up, she felt alone and helpless.
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