BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

‘I hope I’ll see you again?’
‘Oh, you will,’ Nico promised. ‘I’m going to be the flower boy at your wedding, right?’
‘Um …’ Frank got flustered, cleared his throat and shuffled off, running into the doorjamb on the
way out.
Hazel crossed her arms. ‘You just had to tease him about that.’
She sat on Nico’s bunk. For a while they just stayed there in comfortable silence … siblings,
children from the past, children of the Underworld.
‘I’m going to miss you,’ Nico said.
Hazel leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You too, big brother. You will visit.’
He tapped the new officer’s badge that gleamed on her shirt. ‘Centurion of the Fifth Cohort now.
Congratulations. Are there rules against centurions dating praetors?’
‘Shhh,’ Hazel said. ‘It’ll be a lot of work getting the legion back in shape, repairing the damage
Octavian did. Dating regulations will be the least of my worries.’
‘You’ve come so far. You’re not the same girl I brought to Camp Jupiter. Your power with the
Mist, your confidence –’
‘It’s all thanks to you.’
‘No,’ Nico said. ‘Getting a second life is one thing. Making it a better life, that’s the trick.’
As soon as he said it, Nico realized he could’ve been talking about himself. He decided not to
bring that up.
Hazel sighed. ‘A second life. I just wish …’
She didn’t need to finish her thought. For the past two days, Leo’s disappearance had hovered like
a cloud over the whole camp. Hazel and Nico had been reluctant to join the speculation about what
had happened to him.
‘You felt his death, didn’t you?’ Hazel’s eyes were watery. Her voice was small.
‘Yeah,’ Nico admitted. ‘But I don’t know, Hazel. Something about it was … different.’
‘He couldn’t have taken the physician’s cure. Nothing could have survived that explosion. I thought
… I thought I was helping Leo. I messed up.’
‘No. It is not your fault.’ But Nico wasn’t quite so ready to forgive himself. He’d spent the last
forty-eight hours replaying the scene with Octavian at the catapult, wondering if he’d done wrong
thing. Perhaps the explosive power of that projectile had helped destroy Gaia. Or perhaps it had
unnecessarily cost Leo Valdez his life.
‘I just wish he hadn’t died alone,’ Hazel murmured. ‘There was no one with him, no one to give
him that cure. There’s not even a body to bury …’
Her voice broke. Nico put his arm around her.
He held her as she wept. Eventually she fell asleep from exhaustion. Nico tucked her into his own
bed and kissed her forehead. Then he went to the shrine of Hades in the corner – a little table
decorated with bones and jewels.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘there’s a first time for everything.’
He knelt and prayed silently for his father’s guidance.