BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

xviii
Piper
PIPER DIDN’T WANT TO get yelled at by a three-legged table.
When Jason visited her cabin that evening, she made sure to keep the door open, because Buford
the Wonder Table took his duties as acting chaperone very seriously. If he had the slightest suspicion
a girl and a boy were in the same cabin without supervision, he would steam and clatter down the
hall, his holographic projection of Coach Hedge yelling, ‘CUT THAT OUT! GIVE ME TWENTY
PUSH-UPS! PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’
Jason sat at the foot of her bunk. ‘I was about to go on duty. Just wanted to check on you first.’
Piper nudged his leg with her foot. ‘The guy who got run through with a sword wants to check on
me? How are you feeling?’
He gave her a lopsided smile. His face was so tanned from their time on the coast of Africa that the
scar on his lip looked like a chalk mark. His blue eyes were even more startling. His hair had grown
out corn-silk white, though he still had a groove along his scalp where he’d been grazed by a bullet
from the bandit Sciron’s flintlock. If such a minor scrape from Celestial bronze took so long to heal,
Piper wondered how he’d ever get over the Imperial gold wound in his gut.
‘I’ve been worse,’ Jason assured her. ‘Once, in Oregon, this dracaena cut off my arms.’
Piper blinked. Then she slapped his arm gently. ‘Shut up.’
‘I had you for a second.’
They held hands in comfortable silence. For a moment, Piper could almost imagine they were
normal teenagers, enjoying each other’s company and learning to be together as a couple. Sure, Jason
and she had had a few months at Camp Half-Blood, but the war with Gaia had always been looming.
Piper wondered what it would be like if they didn’t have to worry about dying a dozen times every
day.
‘I never thanked you.’ Jason’s expression turned serious. ‘Back on Ithaca, after I saw my mom’s …
remnant, her mania … When I was wounded, you kept me from slipping away, Pipes. Part of me …’
His voice faltered. ‘Part of me wanted to close my eyes and stop fighting.’
Piper’s heart did a slow twist. She felt her own pulse in her fingers. ‘Jason … you’re a fighter.
You’d never give up. When you faced your mother’s spirit – that was you being strong. Not me.’
‘Maybe.’ His voice was dry. ‘I didn’t mean to lay something so heavy on you, Pipes. It’s just … I
have my mom’s DNA. The human part of me is all her. What if I make the wrong choices? What if I
make a mistake I can’t take back when we’re fighting Gaia? I don’t want to end up like my mom –
reduced to a mania, chewing on my regrets forever.’
Piper cupped her hands around his. She felt like she was back on the deck of the Argo II, holding