The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(141)

She shook her head. “I’m not Caesar. After finding Jason’s note in Diocletian’s Palace, tracking you down was easy. I only did what I thought was necessary.”

Percy couldn’t help smiling. “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 Percy didn’t mind. It felt good to see them smile. Heck, just being in the mortal world felt good, breathing un-poisonous air, enjoying actual sunshine on his back.

Suddenly he thought of Bob. Tell the sun and stars hello for me.

Percy’s smile melted. Bob and Damasen had sacrificed their lives so that Percy and Annabeth could sit here now, enjoying the sunlight and laughing with their friends.

It wasn’t fair.

Leo pulled a tiny screwdriver from his tool belt. He stabbed a chocolate-covered strawberry and passed it to Coach Hedge. Then he pulled out another screwdriver and speared a second strawberry for himself.

“So, the twenty-million-peso question,” Leo said. “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.”

Percy studied the statue uneasily. He’d never had the best relationship with Annabeth’s mom. He kept expecting Big Mama Statue to come alive and chew him out for getting her daughter into so much trouble—or maybe just step on him without a word.

“It makes sense,” Nico said.

Percy flinched. It almost sounded like Nico had read his mind and was agreeing that Athena should step on him.

The son of Hades sat at the other end of the circle, eating nothing but half a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld. Percy wondered if that was Nico’s 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. “Now, hold on. I like peace as much as the next satyr—”

“You hate peace,” Leo said.

“The point is, Valdez, 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. At the moment, the blade showed nothing except sky, but looking at it still made Percy 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.”

“Agreed,” Reyna said. “But for now—”

“He’s intent on war,” Annabeth put in. “He’ll have it, unless we stop him.”

Piper turned the blade of her knife. “Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it. I saw images of a possible future—the camp in flames, Roman and Greek demigods lying dead. And Gaea…” Her voice failed her.

Percy remembered the god Tartarus in physical form, looming over him. He’d never felt such helplessness and terror. He still burned with shame, remembering how his sword had slipped out of his hand.

You might as well try to kill the earth, Tartarus had said.

If Gaea was that powerful, and she had an army of giants at her side, Percy didn’t see how seven demigods could stop her, especially when most of the gods were incapacitated. They had to stop the giants before Gaea woke, or it was game over.

If the Athena Parthenos was a secret weapon, taking it to Athens was pretty tempting. Heck, Percy kind of liked the coach’s idea of using it as a missile and sending Gaea up in a godly nuclear mushroom cloud.

Unfortunately, his gut told him that Annabeth was right. The statue belonged back on Long Island, where it might be able to stop the war between the two camps.