BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

get that.’
‘Imperial gold,’ Annabeth said, her voice quavering. ‘It’s deadly to demigods. It’s only a matter of
time before –’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Piper insisted. ‘We’ve got to get him back to the ship.’
‘I don’t feel that bad,’ Jason said. And it was true. The ambrosia had cleared his head. Warmth
was seeping back into his limbs. ‘Maybe I could fly …’
Jason sat up. His vision turned a pale shade of green. ‘Or maybe not …’
Piper caught his shoulders as he keeled sideways. ‘Whoa, Sparky. We need to contact the Argo II,
get help.’
‘You haven’t called me Sparky in a long time.’
Piper kissed his forehead. ‘Stick with me and I’ll insult you all you want.’
Annabeth scanned the ruins. The magic veneer had faded, leaving only broken walls and
excavation pits. ‘We could use the emergency flares, but –’
‘No,’ Jason said. ‘Leo would blast the top of the hill with Greek fire. Maybe, if you guys helped
me, I could walk –’
‘Absolutely not,’ Piper objected. ‘That would take too long.’ She rummaged in her belt pouch and
pulled out a compact mirror. ‘Annabeth, you know Morse code?’
‘Of course.’
‘So does Leo.’ Piper handed her the mirror. ‘He’ll be watching from the ship. Go to the ridge –’
‘And flash him!’ Annabeth’s face reddened. ‘That came out wrong. But, yeah, good idea.’
She ran to the edge of the ruins.
Piper pulled out a flask of nectar and gave Jason a sip. ‘Hang in there. You are not dying from a
stupid body piercing.’
Jason managed a weak smile. ‘At least it wasn’t a head injury this time. I stayed conscious the
entire fight.’
‘You defeated, like, two hundred enemies,’ Piper said. ‘You were scary amazing.’
‘You guys helped.’
‘Maybe, but … Hey, stay with me.’
Jason’s head started to droop. The cracks in the stones came into sharper focus.
‘Little dizzy,’ he muttered.
‘More nectar,’ Piper ordered. ‘There. Taste okay?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, fine.’
In fact the nectar tasted like liquid sawdust, but Jason kept that to himself. Ever since the House of
Hades when he’d resigned his praetorship, ambrosia and nectar didn’t taste like his favourite foods
from Camp Jupiter. It was as if the memory of his old home no longer had the power to heal him.
Born a Roman, die a Roman, Michael Varus had said.
He looked at the smoke curling from his bandages. He had worse things to worry about than blood
loss. Annabeth was right about Imperial gold. The stuff was deadly to demigods as well as monsters.
The wound from Varus’s blade would do its best to eat away at Jason’s life force.
He’d seen a demigod die like that once before. It hadn’t been fast or pretty.