An hour later, they were seeing Ancient Sparta.

The three of them stood on a hill overlooking the ruins after scouting the modern city, which consisted of a bunch of low, boxy, whitewashed buildings sprawled across a plain at the foot of some purplish mountains.

Annabeth had insisted on checking the archaeology museum, then the giant metal statue of the Spartan warrior in the public square, then the National Museum of Olives and Olive Oil. They met no giants and found no statues of chained gods. Annabeth was reluctant to check the ruins, but when they ran out of other places to look, they figured it was the only course of action.

There wasn't much to see. According to Annabeth, the hill they stood on had once been Sparta's acropolis– its highest point and main fortress– but it was nothing like the massive Athenian acropolis that the giants lingered in. The weathered slope was covered with dead grass, rocks and stunted olive trees. Below, ruins stretched out for maybe a quarter of a mile: limestone blocks, a few broken walls and some tiled holes in the ground like wells.

Piper wiped the sweat from her forehead, all tired from hiking around. "You'd think if there was a thirty-foot-tall giant around we'd see him."

Annabeth stared at the distant shape of the Argo II floating above downtown Sparta. She fingered the red coral pendant on her necklace– a gift from Percy when they started dating. "It'll be alright," said Emilia as soothingly as she could. "We'll make it back to the ship."

(The first night Emilia had gone to speak with Percy and Annabeth after their return from Tartarus, Annabeth had waited for Percy to enter the shower before revealing something that had happened with Akhlys, while Emilia had been following a different path to the Mansion of Night. Percy had controlled a tide of poison to suffocate the goddess Akhlys and break her hold on them, after which they'd gone unconscious and only woken up after they crossed the River Acheron. Emilia still remembered how much Annabeth's voice had wavered when she told her, how afraid she'd been.)

"The way he worries," murmured Annabeth. "The way he held you back, made you promise to protect me... he did the same with Jason before, I know it. I don't know why it's hitting me so hard all of a sudden. I can't quite get that memory out of my head ... how Percy looked when he was standing at the edge of Chaos."

"Give him time." Piper sat next to Annabeth. "The guy is crazy about you. You've been through so much together."

"I know..." Annabeth's grey eyes reflected the green of the olive trees. "It's just... Bob warned me there would be more sacrifices ahead. I want to believe we can have a normal life someday... but I allowed myself to hope for that last summer, after the Titan War. Then Percy disappeared for months. Then we fell into that pit..." A tear traced its way down her cheek. "Piper, if you'd seen the face of the god Tartarus, all swirling darkness, devouring monsters and vaporizing them– I've never felt so helpless. I try not to think about it..."

Piper and Emilia each took one of Annabeth's hands. Emilia realized without needing to ask that Annabeth had been having nightmares of Tartarus, of their experience there, of the god's face when he'd been looking down at them, ready to kill.

Emilia had stopped having nightmares. She'd never even dreamt of Tartarus's face again. Was it her family protecting her, preventing his consciousness from seeping into her dreams? Or was it something else?

"Hey," said Piper gently as Annabeth tried not to cry. "Don't try to shut out the feelings. You won't be able to. Just let them wash over you and drain out again. You're scared"'

"Gods, yes, I'm scared."

"You're angry."

"At Percy for frightening me, at my mom for sending me on that horrible quest in Rome, at ... well, pretty much everybody. Gaea. The giants. The gods for being jerks."

"At me?" asked Piper, mostly teasing.

Annabeth managed a shaky laugh. "Yes, for being so annoyingly calm. At Emilia for..." She wiped her eyes. "For being so strong during everything. I used to envy your ability to be so composed, never showing how things bothered you. And now I'm angry that I can't be like you."

"Oh, Annabeth," sighed Emilia, shaking her head. "I couldn't regulate my emotions before, even when I tried to. I think we all have qualities that others wish we had while we simultaneously yearn for something else for ourselves. I, for example, wish I had always been as wise as you. I could have avoided a lot of trouble. I wish I was as kind in the face of difficulties the way Hazel is, instead of being as I am and lashing out in anger. I wish I was level-headed and charming like Piper instead of being instantly unlikable in the face of dangers. Me running my mouth has gotten us into trouble before."

Annabeth managed a smile. "I guess you're right. Gods, I'm stupid, sitting here talking about my feelings when we have a quest to finish."

"The chained god's heartbeat can wait," said Piper.

"We're always going to have each other," said Emilia, hoping that if she said it, she could convince herself that it would be true. "We're going to remain friends. We're going to remain family."

Annabeth started to say something. Suddenly a roaring sound came from the ruins. One of the stone-lined pits spewed out a three-storey geyser of flames and shut off just as quickly. Annabeth heaved a sigh, "I have a feeling that's something we should check out."

Three pits lay side by side like finger holes on a recorder. Each one was perfectly round, two feet in diameter, tiled around the rim with limestone; each one plunged straight into darkness. Every few seconds, seemingly at random, one of the three pits shot a column of fire into the sky. Each time, the color and intensity of the flames were different.

"They weren't doing this before." Annabeth walked a wide arc around the pits. She still looked shaky and pale, but her mind was now obviously engaged in the problem at hand. "There doesn't seem to be any pattern. The timing, the color, the height of the fire... I don't get it... there must be some kind of mechanism... a pressure plate, a proximity alarm."

Flames shot from the middle pit. Annabeth counted silently. The next time, a geyser erupted on the left. She frowned. "That's not right. It's inconsistent. It has to follow some kind of logic."

"It's calling to us," said Emilia, feeling a sensation of pressure in her stomach. "It reminds me of that... whisper, that tug, each time I start to manipulate people's emotions."

"It's not rational," realized Piper. "It's emotional."

Annabeth frowned. "How can fire pits be emotional?"

Piper held her hand over the pit on the right. Instantly, flames leaped up. Piper barely had time to withdraw her fingers. Her nails steamed.

"Piper!" shrieked Annabeth. "What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," she admitted. "I was feeling. What we want is down there. These pits are the way in. I'll have to jump."

Emilia peered down. "Um... so we either potentially break our ankles or get roasted alive. Great. That does little to help me keep my promise of getting us all back to the Argo II in one piece. I should go first, I can try to make myself a shield of shadows."

"No," said Piper. "It has to be me." She unbuckled her sword and tossed it into the pit on the right. "I'll let you know if it's safe. Wait for my word."

"If?" said Emilia incredulously as Annabeth warned, "Don't you dare–"

Piper jumped before either of them could stop her. Emilia covered her mouth to mask a loud gasp of disbelief, looking down into the pit and seeing nothing. There came a thump, then a roar of flames, followed by three shrill slashes of metal.

"Piper?" yelled Annabeth.

"Yeah?" shouted Piper.

"Thank the gods! You okay?"

"Yeah. Hold on a sec." A pause. "Annabeth! Emilia! It's a long drop, but it's safe to come down. Maybe... uh... you have a rope you could fasten so we can get back up?"

"On it!" Annabeth reached into her backpack, somehow always prepared for every situation.

"You just carry a rope around all the time?" asked Emilia, tilting her head.

Annabeth made a face. "Emilia, you said the same thing when you realized I carry an extension cord everywhere I go."

She held her hands up in surrender. "Genius, just random." She helped Annabeth attach it, then went down first, Annabeth following.

They entered a chamber, where three bronze dragons (decapitated by Piper, apparently) stood in a row, aligned with the holes in the roof. They were each three feet tall, snouts pointed upward and steaming mouths open. They must have been the source of the flames. The only light within came from Piper's glowing blade and the openings above. Emilia could see fine, but Piper was straining to tilt Katoptris in a way that illuminated the cavern as much as possible.

The ceiling was about thirty feet high, but somehow, Piper hadn't broken either of her legs. The chamber itself was round, about the size of a helicopter pad. The walls were made of rough-hewn stone blocks chiseled with Greek inscriptions– thousands and thousands of them, like graffiti.

At the far end of the room, on a stone dais, stood the human-sized bronze statue of a warrior– the god Ares– with heavy bronze chains wrapped around his body, anchoring him to the floor. On either side of the statue loomed two dark doorways, ten feet high, with a gruesome stone face carved over each archway. The faces reminded Emilia of gorgons, except they had lions' manes instead of snakes for hair.

"Piper McLean," grumbled Annabeth as she wiggled off the rope behind Emilia, "that was without a doubt the dumbest risk I've ever seen anyone take, and I date a dumb risk-taker."

Piper looked proud. "Thank you." She nudged the nearest decapitated dragon-head with her foot. "I'm guessing these are the dragons of Ares. That's one of his sacred animals, right?"

"Drakons, I think," said Emilia. "Those doorways–"

Piper held up her hand. "Do you hear that?" The sound was like a drumbeat but with a metallic echo. "It's coming from inside the statue. The heartbeat of the chained god."

Annabeth unsheathed her drakon-bone sword. In the dim light, her face was ghostly pale, her eyes colorless. "I-I don't like this. We need to leave."

"That sensation," muttered Emilia. "That's what I feel when I look at the statue. Emotions churning."

Piper nodded. "The shrine is ramping up our emotions. It's like being around my mom, except this place radiates fear, not love.That's why you started feeling overwhelmed on the hill, Annabeth. Down here, it's a thousand times stronger."

Annabeth scanned the walls. "Emilia, do you think you can shadow-travel that statue out?"

"If Nico's doing it with a much bigger one, I think yes," said Emilia, though it looked bolted down. "As long as we break it off the foundation–"

"Wait." Piper glanced at the snarling stone faces above the doorways. "A shrine that radiates fear. Ares had two divine sons, didn't he?"

"Ph-Phobos and Deimos." Annabeth shivered. "Panic and Fear. Percy met them once in Staten Island."

"That's them, isn't it?" said Emilia, gesturing to the faces. "But why are they in a shrine of Ares?"

"Because it isn't a shrine," realized Piper. "It's a temple. A temple of fear."

Deep laughter echoed through the chamber. On Piper's right, a giant appeared. He didn't come through either doorway. He simply emerged from the darkness as if he'd been camouflaged against the wall.

He was small for a giant– perhaps twenty-five feet tall, which would give him enough room to swing the massive sledgehammer in his hands. His armor, his skin and his dragon-scale legs were all the color of charcoal. Copper wires and smashed circuit boards glittered in the braids of his oil-black hair.

"Very good, child of Aphrodite." The giant smiled. "This is indeed the Temple of Fear. And I am here to make you believers."

Emilia was the only one who didn't immediately shrink back. She could feel the discord radiating off of Piper and Annabeth, a fight ensuing within themselves as they fought the urge to turn and run. The giant was overwhelming them with terror, trying to break their spirit.

Piper and Annabeth's faces had paled, their hands shook, eyes scanned nothing as if they were seeing something that wasn't there– perhaps memories or visions of the things that scared them the most.

She was the only one fully alert when the giant raised his sledgehammer to smash them flat. She used the shadows in the cavern to toss Annabeth and Piper aside, the hammer cracking into the floor. "Not very good with that hammer, are you?" taunted Emilia, summoning her spear into her hand. "But what did we expect, really, from the runt of the giant litter?"

"I am no runt!" snarled the giant. Beside him, the girls were moving sluggishly, eyes wide and unfocused. Piper was more conscious than Annabeth, grabbing her own face as if to snap herself out of the trance.

Of course. Annabeth was probably thinking of Tartarus, of every bit of terror she experienced down there, of the horrors she'd witnessed every day of her life since realizing she could see monsters. Piper stood a chance at regulating her emotions well enough to stay firm but Annabeth had just been saying how difficult it was for her to pretend all was fine when it wasn't. She was letting herself be locked in a prison within her mind.

"Annabeth!" Piper was trying to keep her upright. "We will get out of this, listen to my voice!"

The giant laughed. "A child of Aphrodite leading a child of Athena! Now I've seen everything."

"Soon, you won't be able to see," said Emilia, shadows churning around her. "Piper, Annabeth, go. I'll find you later."

The giant lunged toward the tunnel nearest Piper and Annabeth, but Emilia sent the shadows out in the form of a hand, swatting him aside like he were nothing but a gnat. She waited for Piper and Annabeth to disappear down the tunnel before creating a veil over it, concealing them from view.

"Fools!" sneered the giant as he stood. "You've let them go the wrong way!"

"Doesn't really matter, does it?" asked Emilia sweetly. "Mimas, right? In the first Giant War, it took two gods to kill you."

"And yet you think you can face me alone," he said, lifting the hammer. "Let us see how well you dodge when you're the only one whose fears are being brought to the surface."

He swung the hammer and she stood her ground, glaring up at him and flicking her fingers at the last second, catching the hammer and coiling the darkness around it like a fist, ripping the hammer toward herself as another flurry of shadows pushed him further away, a third cluster rushing to his hands like razor-sharp blades prying his hands away from it. He gave a roar of anger as he tried to keep hold of the hammer, until at last she let him go altogether, allowing his own momentum to toss him into the wall as he lurched back.

"See, there's a problem there," said Emilia, drinking in the darkness and remembering how easy it had been to heal Jason. The shadows would not resist her here. "Your big brother, Kronos, taught me how to make a veil over my emotions... I didn't know what fear was for a very long time. And when I did, well, I faced it. With difficulty, yes, but I think I'm one of the only demigods who has faced all her fears, conquered them, and still has enough energy to sow fear in others. Or have you forgotten who my mother is?"

Mimas struggled back to his feet. "I faced your father," continued Emilia, tapping the spear on the ground and letting the shadows pulsate out of it, forming sound waves that she filled with darkness, pumping out jets of dark energy that repeatedly crashed into him, forcing him back down or cutting his skin. "Which no god has done, to my knowledge. I walked through the Mansion of Night unscathed and gazed upon its horrors. I was untouchable within Tartarus and I... have always had such dysregulated emotions to the point where I've never felt fear in the same way other demigods do."

"Perhaps not," sneered Mimas. "But you are afraid of things, as all demigods are. Your wretched grandmother's blessing may be helping you now, she may be preventing me from finding your fears, but all mortals yield, eventually."

"No, not really," said Emilia, scrunching up her nose. "I'm built a little differently than the mortals you've encountered. In fact, the only reason you're here right now is because I exist."

She attacked first this time, dodging as he swung the hammer again and ducking between his legs to slice open his thigh, popping out on the other side to stab the back of his knee. She used the shadows to carry her around, leaping in what appeared to be thin air, remembering how easily she'd shadow-traveled in Tartarus to make herself seem like she was making impossible leaps or simply teleporting. When she landed after slicing Mimas up in every limb, she saw Piper and Annabeth were back, and making a beeline toward the statue.

"You've returned to die?" snarled Mimas, perhaps still believing he could defeat them.

"This temple belongs to my brothers, Deimos and Phobos!" said Piper, shielding Annabeth as they stood in front of the statue. "The Spartans would come here to prepare for battle, to face their fears. Ares was chained to remind them that war has consequences. His power– the spirits of battle, the makhai– should never be unleashed unless you understand how terrible they are, unless you've felt fear."

Mimas laughed, hand clamped over one of the oozing wounds Emilia had left on his side. "A child of the love goddess lectures me about war. What do you know of the makhai?"

"We'll see. Emilia, start breaking the walls."

Emilia whipped her head toward her. "What?"

"Trust me!" Piper ran toward the rope, leaping as high as she could and slicing it. "Come on!"

"Piper!" shrieked Annabeth wearily. "Have you lost your mind?!"

"Emilia," insisted Piper. "The walls."

Though hesitant, Emilia forced the shadows away from Mimas, slamming them as hard as she could into the walls. Immediately, one of the cracks made from his body hitting it earlier opened in a jagged fissure, snaking up the stones.

"Idiot girls!" Mimas looked around at the dust raining from the ceiling. "You realize you cannot kill me without the help of a god and Ares is not here! The next time I face that blustering idiot, I will smash him to bits. I wouldn't have had to fight him in the first place if that cowardly fool Damasen had done his job–"

Annabeth let loose a guttural cry. "Do not insult Damasen!" She ran at Mimas, who barely managed to parry her drakon-blade with the handle of his hammer. He was too weak to grab her, and helpless as she cut off his ear, along with a pile of his dreadlocks.

"Follow me!" called Piper, motioning for them to run through the second doorway. Emilia shoved the shadows behind her as she ran, shielding them from Mimas's pursuit. "Annabeth, don't try to control the fear– that's what the temple is about. Accept it, adapt to it, ride it like the rapids on a river. Feel it. That's why Emilia isn't affected at all, that's why I'm less affected than you– we know how emotions work. Emilia lets everything in, she's never shied away from her suffering, she's learned to accept all the darkness. And me..." She smiled. "I've learned a new lesson today."

"But you cut the rope!" cried Annabeth. "We're going to die down here."

"Fear can't be reasoned with. Neither can hate. They're like love. They're almost identical emotions. That's why Ares and Aphrodite like each other. Their twin sons– Fear and Panic– were spawned from both war and love."

"But I don't... this doesn't make sense."

"No," agreed Piper. "Stop thinking about it! Just feel."

"I hate that."

"I know. You can't plan for feelings. Like with Percy, and your future– you can't control every contingency. You have to accept that. Let it scare you. Trust that it'll be okay anyway."

Annabeth shook her head. "I don't know if I can."

"Yes, you can!" encouraged Emilia. She tried to focus on her own fears, even if Mimas was right and her family was somehow concealing her weaknesses from the enemies. She imagined herself being drowned by the worries of what would happen when the prophecy came to pass and in her head, she surrendered herself to fate. What was the point in fighting it? "Piper, what's the plan?"

"I have no idea."

"You know, you scare me sometimes."

"Great, focus on that!"

They ran in no particular direction and found themselves back in the shrine room, right behind the giant Mimas. "Keep him occupied!" said Piper.

Easy. Emilia and Annabeth together kept Mimas from getting anywhere near the statue. In front of it, Piper was saying, "My brothers, sons of Aphrodite... I give you a sacrifice." At the feet of Ares, she set her cornucopia. Then, she swung her blade and took off the bronze statue's head.

"NO!" yelled Mimas.

Flames roared up from the statue's severed neck. They swirled around Piper, filling the room with a firestorm of emotions. Emilia felt them this time, a surge of hatred, bloodlust, fear, and love. Piper held out her arms and the makhai made her the center of their whirlwind. The flames vanished along with the cornucopia, and the chained statue of Ares crumbled into dust.

"Foolish girl!" Mimas charged her, Annabeth and Emilia at his heels. "The makhai have abandoned you!"

"Or maybe they've abandoned you," said Piper. She stepped forwardly calmly and stabbed him in the gut. Mimas crashed face-first into the nearest doorway. He turned over just as the stone face of Panic cracked off the wall above him and toppled down onto his face. The giant's cry was cut short. His body went still. Then he disintegrated into a twenty-foot pile of ash.

"That is my definition of terrifying," said Emilia. "How did you know the makhai were in there? And how does that help with the physician's cure?"

"A feeling," said Piper, face growing into a smile. "As for how it helps... I don't know. They said I could summon them when the time comes. Maybe Artemis and Apollo can explain–"

A section of the wall calved like a glacier. "No time to chat," said Emilia. "Link hands, I'll shadow-travel us out."

"Wait," said Piper. She reached for the ear that Annabeth had cut off of Mimas, turning to the second doorway that still had the face of Fear above it. "Thank you, brothers, for helping to kill the giant. I offer you this, uh, lovely ear as a sacrifice."

She set it on the ground at the foot of the statue, then wiped her hand on her jacket to grab onto Emilia, who summoned the shadows to take them back to the Argo II.