BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

80.

Percy smiled at her. "Reyna, you're too modest. Flying halfway across the world by yourself to answer Annabeth's plea, because you knew it was our best chance for peace? That's pretty freaking heroic."

Reyna shrugged. "Says the demigod who fell into Tartarus and found his way back."

"He had help," Annabeth said.

"Oh, obviously," Reyna said. "Without you, I doubt Percy could find his way out of a paper bag."

"True," Annabeth agreed.

"Hey!" Percy complained.

The others started laughing, but Eden put her head on her knees and stared out into the horizon. Her vision got brighter as she stared at the sun, but it didn't hurt. She felt a squeeze on her hand, pulling her back to reality as she looked over at her girlfriend, raising an eyebrow. Flickers of worry were in her kaleidoscope eyes, and Eden gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile, before looking over at Leo to accept a chocolate-covered strawberry.

"So, the twenty-million-peso question," he said, and he had his own strawberry now. Besties. "We got this slightly used forty-foot-tall statue of Athena. What do we do with it?"

Reyna squinted at the Athena Parthenos. "As fine as it looks on this hill, I didn't come all this way to admire it. According to Annabeth, it must be returned to Camp Half-Blood by a Roman leader. Do I understand correctly?"

Annabeth nodded. "I had a dream down in . . . you know, Tartarus. I was on Half-Blood Hill, and Athena's voice said, I must stand here. The Roman must bring me."

"It makes sense," Nico said.

He was eating nothing but half a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld. Eden wondered if that was his idea of a joke.

"The statue is a powerful symbol," Nico said. "A Roman returning it to the Greeks . . . that could heal the historic rift, maybe even heal the gods of their split personalities."

Coach Hedge swallowed his strawberry along with half the screwdriver Leo had probably given him. "Now, hold on. I like peace as much as the next satyr—"

"You hate peace," Eden said. "You've talked about that with me multiple times."

"The point is, Fairchild, we're only — what, a few days from Athens? We got an army of giants waiting for us there. We went to all the trouble of saving this statue—"

"I went to most of the trouble," Annabeth reminded him.

"—because that prophecy called it the giants' bane," the coach continued. "So why aren't we taking it to Athens with us? It's obviously our secret weapon." He eyed the Athena Parthenos. "It looks like a ballistic missile to me. Maybe if Valdez strapped some engines to it—"

Piper cleared her throat. "Uh, great idea, Coach, but a lot of us have had dreams and visions of Gaea rising at Camp Half-Blood . . ."

She unsheathed her dagger Katoptris and set it on her plate, putting the rest of her food on Eden's plate. At the moment, the blade showed nothing except sky, but looking at it still made Eden uncomfortable.

"Since we got back to the ship," Piper said, "I've been seeing some bad stuff in the knife. The Roman legion is almost within striking distance of Camp Half-Blood. They're gathering reinforcements: spirits, eagles, wolves."

"Octavian," Reyna growled. "I told him to wait."

"When we take over command," Frank suggested, "our first order of business should be to load Octavian into the nearest catapult and fire him as far away as possible."