The girls were glad to do so.

"Why, thank you!" said Piper enthusiastically.

Emilia let Jason join Nico, following Reyna into the battlefield. She dared to look up, stomach dropping anew when she saw the Argo II streaking across the sky in a ball of fire, shedding burning chunks of mast, hull, and armament. She reallyhoped that Leo's plan would work. Normally she made a point to never doubt him, but if he hadn't timed it perfectly...

The girls ran into the main mass, pushing against the monsters that tried to force their way up the hill. The Greeks and Romans slowly pushed back the enemies together. Wild centaurs toppled. Wolf-headed men howled as they were cut to ashes. More monsters kept appearing– karpoi grain spirits swirling out of the grass, gryphons diving from the sky, lumpy clay humanoids.

Reyna yelled, "Eiaculare flammas!" and a wave of flaming arrows arced over the legion's shield wall, destroying a platoon of ogres. The Roman ranks moved forward, impaling centaurs and trampling wounded ogres under their bronze-tipped boots.

Somewhere downhill, Frank yelled, "Repellere equites!" A massive herd of centaurs parted in a panic as the legion's other three cohorts plowed through in perfect formation, their spears bright with monster blood. Frank marched before them. On the left flank, riding Arion, Hazel beamed with pride.

"Ave, Praetor Zhang!" called Reyna.

"Ave, Praetor Ramírez-Arellano!" said Frank. "Let's do this. Legion, CLOSE RANKS!"

A cheer went up among the Romans as the five cohorts melded into one massive killing machine. Frank pointed his sword forward and, from the golden eagle standard, tendrils of lightning swept across the enemy, turning several hundred monsters to toast.

"Legion, cuneum formate!" yelled Reyna. "Advance!"

Emilia and Piper reached Percy and Annabeth, right at the head of the Camp Half-Blood forces. Pollux ran up with Krista, the two of them already caked in slime. "Wish we had some fancy lingo like that," said Pollux, patting Emilia's head. "Percy, if you'd do the honors–?"

He made a face. "Greeks! Let's, um, fight stuff!"

They yelled like banshees and charged.

"Emilia!"

She cut down an ogre, splattering mud over her face. She turned and grinned when she saw Hylla had found her. "Looking good, Queen Hylla," she said, wishing she could put the entire battle on pause just to kiss her.

Hylla gestured to the ogre mud. "You look good even with that on you. Duck!"

Emilia dropped as Hylla leapt up, stabbing her sword into the head of a gryphon that'd been swooping down on Emilia. They nearly landed in a heap, if not for Emilia rolling out of the way.

"If you wanted to be on top of me, there were so many other ways to ask!" teased Emilia, standing back-to-back with her as a group of karpoi tried to surround them.

Hylla somehow managed to blush. "I was not under the impression I'd be the one on top."

They began their attack, protecting one another while still cutting down the karpoi and aiding the demigods in their immediate vicinity. At one point, Emilia dropped her spear, lifting her arms and slamming every monster within reach to the ground, calling on the same dark chains to half-bury them in the dirt to give the other demigods a chance to strike.

"Keep doing whatever the hell you're doing!" cheered Pollux, joining her in ripping vines out of the earth to hold down the monsters. "This is like rigging a game of Whac-A-Mole!"

"You'd know!" said Emilia, winking.

Then, as if induced, the earth rippled over Half-Blood Hill. Demigods fell. Ogres slipped. Centaurs charged face-first into the grass.

AWAKE, a voice boomed all around them. A hundred yards away, at the crest of the next hill, the grass and soil swirled upward like the point of a massive drill. The column of earth thickened into the twenty-foot-tall figure of a woman– her dress woven from blades of grass, her skin as white as quartz, her hair brown and tangled like tree roots.

"Little fools." Gaea the Earth Mother opened her pure green eyes. "The paltry magic of your statue cannot contain me."

Fear as palpable as a cold front washed over the demigod army. "Stand fast!" Piper shouted, her charmspeak clear and loud. "Greeks and Romans, we can fight her together!"

"Yeah!" agreed Emilia, even if she couldn't charmspeak. "Nyx was twice this size, Gaea is the runt of the litter and a bitter little bitch we can squash like a bug!"

Gaea laughed. She spread her arms and the earth bent towards her– trees tilting, bedrock groaning, soil rippling in waves. Krista yanked Hylla up as the ground started trying to swallow the monsters and demigods alike, guiding her back to Emilia and Pollux. One of Octavian's onagers capsized and disappeared into the side of the hill.

"The whole earth is my body," Gaea boomed. "How would you fight the goddess of–"

In a flash of bronze, Gaea was swept off the hillside, snarled in the claws of a fifty-ton metal dragon. Festus, reborn, rose into the sky on gleaming wings, spewing fire from his maw triumphantly. As he ascended, the rider on his back got smaller and more difficult to discern, but Leo's grin was unmistakable.

"You fucking genius," whispered Emilia, even if he couldn't hear her. "Hylla, Pollux, I'll be right back." Her heart did a leap when she realized what was about to happen. She had to be there with Leo, until the end.

"Pipes, Jason, Emilia!" shouted Leo. "You coming? The fight is up here!"

As soon as Gaea achieved liftoff, the ground solidified. Demigods stopped sinking, though many were still buried up to their waists. Sadly, the monsters seemed to be digging themselves out more quickly. They charged the Greek and Roman ranks, taking advantage of the demigods' disorganization.

Jason grabbed onto Piper and Emilia. They were about to take off when Percy yelled, "wait! Frank can fly the rest of us up there! We cal all–"

"No," said Emilia, knowing this wasn't the plan.

"Agreed," said Jason. "You're needed down here. There's still an army to defeat. Besides, the prophecy–"

"He's right." Frank gripped Percy's arm. "You have to let them do this, Percy. It's like Annabeth's quest in Rome. Or Hazel at the Doors of Death. Emilia turning Eris to our side. This part can only be them."

And me for moral support, thought Emilia sadly.

Percy obviously didn't like it, but at that moment a flood of monsters swept over the Greek forces. Annabeth called to him, "Hey! Problem over here!" Percy ran to join her. Frank and Hazel turned to Jason. They raised their arms in the Roman salute, then ran off to regroup the legion.

The rest of them spiraled upward on the wind. "I've got the cure," Piper murmured like a chant. "It'll be fine. I've got the cure."

"No worries," said Emilia, trying to encourage her. "To storm or fire. You and I will help wherever we can. Last winter, your charmspeak and my power over darkness slowed Gaea down. You freed Hera from her cage. This will be a piece of cake.

(She was trying to convince herself of that.)

As they ascended, Jason gathered the wind and clouds around him. The sky responded with frightening speed. Soon they were in the eye of a maelstrom. Directly above them, Festus grappled with the earth goddess. Gaea kept disintegrating, trying to trickle back to the ground, but the winds kept her aloft.

Festus sprayed her with flames, which seemed to force her into solid form. Meanwhile, from Festus's back, Leo blasted the goddess with flames of his own and hurled insults. "Potty Sludge! Dirt Face! THIS IS FOR MY MOTHER, ESPERANZA VALDEZ!" His whole body was wreathed in fire. Rain hung in the stormy air, but it only sizzled and steamed around him.

Jason zoomed towards them. Gaea turned into loose white sand, but Jason summoned a squadron of venti who churned around her, constraining her in a cocoon of wind. Emilia pulled the darkness from the sky to reinforce it, forming a basket that served as a barrier between the earth and the sky. Gaea could not return without passing through a void much like the dark matter in the Mansion of Night.

Unfortunately, Gaea was fighting back. When she wasn't disintegrating, she lashed out with shrapnel blasts of stone and soil that Jason barely deflected as he flew them up. Stoking the storm, containing Gaea, keeping himself, Piper, and Emilia aloft... she could imagine Jason was about to collapse.

Together they rose. Festus creaked and groaned with the effort, but he continued to gain altitude. Jason flew high enough to drop Emilia onto the back of Festus, joining Leo and using it to lasso herself to the dragon, extending the basket with ropes that lightened the dragon's load. Emilia's forehead had begun to be beaded with sweat, an effort in holding Gaea up, but she would deal with it as long as she needed to if it would help Festus and Leo.

"YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!" Gaea crumbled to sand, only to get blasted by more flames. Her body melted into a lump of glass, shattered, then re-formed again as human. "I AM ETERNAL!"

"Eternally annoying!" Leo yelled, and he urged Festus higher. Jason and Piper rose with them.

"Get me closer!" urged Piper. "I need to be next to her."

Jason protested, "Piper, the flames and the shrapnel–"

Emilia managed to extend a finger in her direction, trying to form a bubble over Piper to keep her safe. She could feel her strength diminishing– was she going to be able to shadow-travel them out of the way in time?

Jason moved in until they were right next to Gaea. Her eyes were solid green, like all nature had been condensed into a few spoonfuls of organic matter. "FOOLISH CHILDREN!" Her face contorted with miniature earthquakes and mudslides.

"You are so weary," Piper told the goddess, her voice radiating kindness and sympathy. "Aeons of pain and disappointment weigh on you."

"SILENCE!"

The force of Gaea's anger was so great that Jason momentarily lost control of the wind. He would've dropped into free fall, but Festus caught him and Piper in his other huge claw.

Amazingly, Piper kept her focus. "Millennia of sorrow," she told Gaea. "Your husband Ouranos was abusive. Your grandchildren the gods overthrew your beloved children the Titans. Your other children, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones, were thrown into Tartarus. You are so tired of heartache."

"LIES!" Gaea crumbled into a tornado of soil and grass, but her essence seemed to churn more sluggishly.

"Keep her here, we won't be able to breathe if we go further!" said Emilia, voice strained. She concentrated on turning the shadows into chains, just as her mother had shown her. "Piper, keep it going!"

"What you want," continued Piper, "more than victory, more than revenge... you want rest. You are so weary, so incomprehensibly tired of the ungrateful mortals and immortals. You wish to return to the darkness, forever. You wish to be chained down so you may rest."

"I– YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME– YOU CANNOT–"

"You want one thing," said Piper soothingly. "One word. You want permission to close your eyes and forget your troubles. You– want– SLEEP."

Gaea solidified into human form. Her head lolled, her eyes closed, and she went limp in Festus's claw. "Keep Jason awake!" shrieked Emilia, watching his eyelids drooping. "Leo–?"

"Go!" he yelled as Piper shook him firmly. Leo looked like he was made of fire. Flames rippled beneath his skin, illuminating his skull. Festus steamed and glowed, his claws burning through Jason's shirt. "I can't contain the fire much longer. I'll vaporize her. Don't worry. Go, now!"

"No!" said Jason. "We have to stay with you. Piper's got the cure. Leo, you can't–"

Emilia reached out for Jason, making him grab hold of her. "Hey." Leo grinned. "I told you I had a plan. When are you going to trust me? And by the way– I love you guys. Emilia, take them."

Jason and Piper couldn't protest. She ripped the shadows away from Gaea, taking them back to the earth. They landed unceremoniously on the ground, Jason immediately crumpling down unconscious. Hylla sprinted in their direction just as Piper fainted in Emilia's arms.

Emilia tilted her head up, eyes wide as Festus became an indistinct ball of fire in the sky– a second sun– growing smaller and hotter. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blazing comet streaking upward from the ground with a high-pitched, almost human scream. The comet intercepted the ball of fire above them, and the explosion turned the entire sky gold.

Though she knew it would happen, she had no idea what it would actually look like. Hylla reached them as Emilia let out a blood-curdling scream, dropping Piper into Hylla's arms to cover her own mouth, eyes sparkling with tears as the bright ball of energy burned into her field of vision and made her realize that it was done– Gaea was gone and so was Leo.

When the sky cleared, she saw nothing. "Leo," she said, rushing to the edge of the nearest cliff, where water glistened and bobbed with wreckage. He had to be there, waiting on Festus's head, already resurrected with the physician's cure. "Leo!"

Hylla had followed after her once she left Jason and Piper in the care of Will Solace and the Apollo cabin. "Emilia!" She followed. "I don't understand."

"He had the physician's cure!" She skidded to a halt before she could plummet into the sea. She could make out bits and pieces of the Argo II's broken hull, but no scraps that resembled Festus. Where was he? Where was Leo? "He's coming back, any moment now!"

Hylla put her arms around her as Emilia started looking around frantically, trying to make out a Leo-sized shape anywhere in the distance. "Right?" She doubted it, holding Hylla's hand. "Right, he said it would work. He said he would defeat Gaea, that the four of us would manage it. I'd shadow-travel us away, he'd have the cure, everything... would be fine."

"Oh, gods." She heard Hylla's voice break. "Emilia, Emilia I don't see anything."

"But he's out there," she insisted, faltering. "He's about to pop back up. He'll be right back. Leo's plans always work. I've doubted them and he's always proved us wrong. So... he'll be walking up soon. Maybe he's not in the ocean, maybe–" She wriggled in Hylla's embrace, looking all around them. "Maybe he's walking up from somewhere else."

Percy, Annabeth, Frank, and Hazel had approached. They were quiet. Other campers and even the Romans were starting to look around on her behalf, but nobody pointed out that Leo was walking up, nobody said that they saw a trace of Festus.

"Where is he?" Emilia's voice wavered. "Where is Leo? Where is my brother?"

Pollux approached carefully, offering his hand. She knew then that it was futile. The plan had failed in the end. Pollux's mournful look resembled the day he told her about Castor, the day she thought they'd never be friends because her work helped to kill his brother.

"No," begged Emilia. "No, it's not true."

"Emilia." His eyes watered. "Emilia, he's gone."

She sank down, supported by Hylla, bawling into her shoulder and asking over and over, only for no one to have an answer.

-

Even the next day, there was nothing to say. The wreckage was searched and not a single trace was found of Leo or Festus.

Overnight, the satyrs and nymphs disappeared into the woods for a convocation of the Cloven Elders. In the morning, Grover Underwood reappeared to announce that they could not sense the Earth Mother's presence. Nature was more or less back to normal. Apparently, Jason, Piper and Leo's plan had worked. Gaea had been separated from her source of power, charmed to sleep and then atomized in the combined explosion of Leo's fire and Octavian's man-made comet.

An immortal could never die, but now Gaea would be like her husband, Ouranos. The earth would continue to function as normal, just as the sky did, but Gaea was now so dispersed and powerless that she could never again form a consciousness.

Octavian would be remembered for saving Rome by hurling himself into the sky in a fiery ball of death. But it was Leo Valdez who had made the real sacrifice. The victory celebration at camp was muted, due to grief– not just for Leo but also for the many others who had died in battle. Shrouded demigods, both Greek and Roman, were burned at the campfire, and Chiron asked Nico to oversee the burial rites. Nico agreed immediately, which was a surprise to Emilia.

The hardest part was afterwards, when Nico and the six demigods from the Argo II met on the porch of the Big House.

Jason hung his head, even his glasses lost in shadow. Emilia had tried to tell them everything through sobs, supported by Frank and Hazel who filled in the gaps as she sobbed, repeatedly covering her face and shaking her head.

Through her tears, Hazel explained how she had switched the physician's cure for an illusion– a trick of the Mist– so that Leo could keep the real vial. Frank told them about Leo's plan to destroy a weakened Gaea with one massive fiery explosion. After talking with Nike and Apollo, Leo had been certain that such an explosion would kill any mortal within a quarter of a mile, so he knew he would have to get far away from everyone.

"He wanted to do it alone," said Frank. "He thought there would be a slim chance that he, a son of Hephaestus, could survive the fire, but if anyone was with him... He said that Hazel and I, being Roman, would understand about sacrifice. Emilia would understand it being his choice because she loved him more than anyone. But he knew the rest of you would never allow it."

At first the others looked angry, like they wanted to scream and throw things. But, as Frank, Hazel, and Emilia talked, the group's rage seemed to dissipate. It was hard to be mad at them when they were crying.

Finally Piper let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "If he were here right now, I would kill him. How was he planning to take the cure? He was alone!"

"Maybe he found a way," said Percy. "This is Leo we're talking about. He might come back any minute. Then we can take turns strangling him."

The next day, the second since the battle, Romans and Greeks worked side by side to clean up the warzone and tend the wounded. Blackjack the pegasus was recovering nicely from his arrow wound. Guido had decided to adopt Reyna as his human. Reluctantly, Lou Ellen had agreed to turn her new pet piglets back into Romans.

The Romans bivouacked next to the strawberry fields, where they insisted on building their standard field camp. The Greeks pitched in to help them raise the earthen walls and dig the trenches. Dakota shared Kool-Aid with Pollux.

The children of Hermes and Mercury laughed and told stories and brazenly stole things from just about everyone– Krista was apparently the most successful in evading law enforcement, which Pollux didn't find surprising, but was a fact that had the Stoll brothers questioning their own efficiency.

Reyna, Annabeth and Piper were inseparable, roaming the camp as a trio to check on the progress of the repairs. Chiron, escorted by Frank and Hazel, inspected the Roman troops and praised them for their bravery.

Emilia would have joined them, had she not felt empty. No one could leave her alone. If Hylla wasn't with her, Pollux was there. If both were busy, Krista was talking to fill the void. Whenever Krista had to go and stop an Amazon-Hunter argument, Will would ask if Emilia wanted to sit down and chat. She kept avoiding it. Two full days had passed with no word from Leo. She refused to give up hope. Talking about it would make it too real.

By evening, the general mood had improved somewhat, at least where Emilia wasn't concerned. The dining hall pavilion had never been so crowded. The Romans were welcomed like old friends. Coach Hedge roamed among the demigods, beaming and holding his baby boy and saying, "Hey, you want to meet Chuck? This is my boy, Chuck!"

The Aphrodite and Athena girls alike cooed over the feisty little satyr baby, who waved his pudgy fists, kicked his tiny hooves and bleated. Clarisse, who had been named the baby's godmother, trailed behind the coach like a bodyguard and occasionally muttered, "All right, all right. Give the kid some space."

At announcement time, Chiron stepped forward and raised his goblet. "Out of every tragedy," he said, "comes new strength. Today, we thank the gods for this victory. To the gods!"

The demigods all joined the toast, but their enthusiasm seemed muted. Emilia didn't want to thank the majority of the gods. In her head, she thanked Eris, she thanked Kymopoleia, she thanked Hera, Artemis, and Apollo, she even thanked Hephaestus for creating the beautifully clever boy that was Leo Valdez.

Then Chiron said, "And to new friends!"

"TO NEW FRIENDS!" Hundreds of demigod voices echoed across the hills.

At the campfire, everyone kept looking at the stars, as if they expected Leo to come back in some dramatic, last-minute surprise. Maybe he'd swoop in, jump off Festus's back and launch into corny jokes. It didn't happen.

After a few songs, Reyna and Frank were called to the front. They got a thunderous round of applause from both the Greeks and Romans. Up on Half-Blood Hill, the Athena Parthenos glowed more brightly in moonlight. "Tomorrow," said Reyna, "we Romans must return home. We appreciate your hospitality, especially since we almost killed you–"

"You almost got killed," Annabeth corrected.

"Whatever, Chase."

The crowd 'oohed' as one. Then everybody started laughing and pushing each other around. "Anyway," Frank took over, "Reyna and I agree this marks a new era of friendship between the camps."

Reyna clapped him on the back. "That's right. For hundreds of years, the gods tried to separate us to keep us from fighting. But there's a better kind of peace– cooperation."

Piper stood up from the audience. "Are you sure your mom is a war goddess?"

"Yes, McLean," said Reyna. "I still intend to fight a lot of battles. But from now on we fight together!" That got a big cheer.

Frank raised his hand for quiet. "You'll all be welcome at Camp Jupiter. We've come to an agreement with Chiron: a free exchange between the camps– weekend visits, training programmes and, of course, emergency aid in times of need–"

"And parties?" asked Dakota, which Pollux held a thumbs-up to.

"Hear, hear!" said Connor Stoll.

Reyna spread her arms. "That goes without saying. We Romans invented parties. So thank you. All of you. We could've chosen hatred and war. Instead we found acceptance and friendship."

Then she did something unexpected. She walked up to Nico, who was standing to one side in the shadows, as usual. She grabbed his hand and pulled him gently into the firelight. "We had one home. Now we have two."

Beside Emilia, Hylla clapped in approval as Reyna gave Nico a big hug. It brought an intense pressure to Emilia's chest, imagining the things Leo would comment on the situation if he were here. He'd tease that now Nico would be an uncle on Hylla's side of the family, while he'd be an uncle on Emilia's side of the family.

She had to be led back to her cabin by Hylla and Pollux, who kept her from dragging her feet miserably. They remained at her side until she fell asleep. She had the vague recognition that Hylla remaining in the bed beside her, but she couldn't move to face her– it was as if her body refused to work. Every mechanism within her had failed, shut down by grief.

If she was broken, like a machine that needed fixing, Leo would have to come and repair her, wouldn't he?