KITTY DIDN'T REMEMBER putting on sparkly nail polish that morning. It stood out against the shiny white poker cards in her hands. Blue and gold sparkles, Silena had gifted it to her at the end of the first week after the girl had found her crying in the bathroom.

A strand of her long, light brown hair fell into her eyes. Kitty frowned. Brown? She looked up from the cards to the scene in front of her. Thalia's tree towered skyward on Half-Blood Hill. A cool, autumn breeze carried the scent of strawberries to her scuffed wooden rocking chair on the porch of the Big House.

She looked back at her poker hand. A king, a pair of queens, a jack, and a 10. Her heart rate skyrocketed. Unable to stop herself, she started smiling. Kitty swung her legs, unable to reach the ground from her position in the big rocking chair.

The best kind of game. Chance. Risk sacrificing a queen for an ace? She had a pair as it stood. A pair of queens wasn't great but it was better than the nothing she might end up with. But if her luck held, if she got that ace… Straight, ace high.

"Have you seen Luke?"

The wind carried Annabeth's voice from the volleyball courts. Kitty looked past Mr. D, trying to see who she was talking to. Might've been Silena… except Silena had gone home for school this year. Clarisse? Maybe.

"Kitty Ellis!"

Kitty jumped, nearly dropping her poker hand. Mr. D glared at her from across the card table, elbows propped up and three Diet Coke cans to his left. Framed by the chipping, blue, wood siding of the Big House, his contorted, furious face seemed even redder than usual as he stared down at her. His leopard print Hawaiian shirt ruffled a bit in the breeze.

When had he gotten so tall?

"Sup?" Kitty said.

Mr. D's glare deepend, bloodshot eyes narrowing. "Oh, I don't know. I was enjoying myself at a party and then I was rudely dragged into your depressing brain." He gestured to Camp Half-Blood. "Even when I'm off fighting a war, I still find myself back in this terrible place."

War. Why was Mr. D fighting…

Her stomach dropped. Kitty glanced around. Everyone but Mr. D had disappeared. No nymphs tending strawberries, no Clarisse chasing after the Stoll brothers for drawing a mustache on her nose. No satyrs eating Diet Coke cans. She couldn't see Annabeth. But she'd gone off looking for—

Oh no. Kitty glanced back at Mr. D. "This is a dream."

"Aren't you a genius? Sure you aren't one of Athena's spawn?" Mr. D finished his drink and crunched up the can. He threw it over his shoulder, hitting the side of the Big House. "Only you would choose to torment me in your dreams. Kitty Ellis. Gods, I hate Tyche kids."

Kitty smirked. "Even here, you have to use my real name?"

If it was possible for Mr. D to look even angrier, she'd succeeded. Kitty laughed. A year into her stay at Camp Half-Blood, she'd gambled her name with Mr. D. If she could win three poker hands in a row, he could never use one of his dumb "wrong" names for the rest of her life. If she lost, she would have to answer to anything he chose.

"So, why am I like, twelve in my dream?"

"I don't have answers. Do I look like the god of prophecy?"

Kitty snorted. No. He was the exact opposite of Apollo. But she preferred Mr. D. Easier to play. He was like her dad. Loved gambling. Loved drinks. Easy to manipulate by dangling a bet in front of his nose. And he, like her dad, couldn't handle losing to a child.

She went to tell Mr. D to deal himself in, but paused when she noticed the top card in the deck glowing with a grey aura. Cards didn't usually glow on their own. Kitty frowned.

"Do you see that?" she said.

Mr. D grunted, leaning forward until they both hovered over the deck. His scraggly black hair fell in front of his face. "This a Tyche-thing?"

"Not spontaneously." Kitty sat back in the chair, letting it rock for a moment. Weird.

She looked at her cards again. King, pair of queens, jack, ten. With a grimace, she looked at the glowing card on top of the deck. What did that luck aura mean? Sacrifice the queen, get the ace? Stay with the pair?

Kitty took the Queen of Clubs from her hand. Fortune favors the bold? Kitty placed it in the discard pile. As soon as her fingers grabbed the glowing card, the scene faded. She stood in a fog of white with only Mr. D as company. At least she looked like an eighteen year old again, though, blue hair and all.

"Gods, I hate Half-Bloods," Mr. D said.

Kitty's eyes shot open as the sound of a hundred horns echoed through the lobby of the Empire State Building. Pain washed over her body. Her limbs didn't want to untangle. A groan escaped her before she could stop it.

Sitting up, Kitty looked around. The sounds of battle faded outside, replaced by thousands of hoofbeats and shouts of glee. All around the lobby lay wounded and dying campers, satyrs, and hunters. Anyone from the Apollo cabin who could stand rushed to and fro with bandages and Nectar.

A commotion at the door grabbed Kitty's attention. Suspended between Alex and Connor, Ophelia's feet dragged across the ground. Kitty scrambled up. Her muscles still ached but at the sight of the tears in Alex's narrowed eyes, she couldn't sit still.

"Put her here!" Will said. The boy rushed over to open floor space beside the elevators.

Alex and Connor didn't speak. They maneuvered Ophelia, still unconscious, towards the medic. Kitty followed.

She looked terrible, which was a feat. Blood trickled across her pale white face from both her nose and mouth. As Will and Alex stripped off her fraying leather armor, Kitty couldn't stop staring at the bruises forming over Ophelia's abdomen. Will grimaced.

"Will?" Alex said. His voice broke, a hand over his mouth as he stared down at his girlfriend. "She's—"

But Will cut him off by beginning his hymn to Apollo. Kitty stepped around Connor, a few cuts covered his face but other than that apparently unharmed, and stood beside Alex. He didn't turn from Ophelia either.

Kitty's fingers itched to grab her coin. What did Ophelia's aura look like now? Darker than its usual pale grey? As dark as charcoal? Kitty looked at Ophelia's bruised ribs. Or fading all together?

No.

No she wouldn't think like that. Kitty turned away. She left Alex with Ophelia, grabbing Connor's sleeve and tugging him back. He followed her without a word. They moved to an alcove of the lobby with a couple of bronze trash cans.

"What happened?" Kitty said.

Connor shook his head. His dark hair flopped into his eyes and he pushed it back. "I don't know. Grover pulled her away from a Laistrygonian. But she was doing her blink thing."

Blink thing. Her rapid shadow travel. Kitty frowned. Enemies usually couldn't touch her when she got like that. How had the Laistrygonian gotten the jump on her?

"How bad is it?" Bad enough that Connor had lost all his humor, apparently, but Kitty didn't add that.

"Not good." He lowered his voice. "I think there's a little over a dozen of us left."

Gut punched. That's all she could describe the pain as when she heard Connor explain the battle. When he got to the Party Ponies, she cracked a smile. But the reality was that Party Ponies were about as predictable as rolling dice. Sixteen campers and Hunters left? How could they hope to defend Olympus?

"Kitty?"

Will. Kitty patted Connor on the arm once before moving back to Will, Ophelia, and Alex. The daughter of Hecate looked a little better. Alex had wiped the blood off her face and the bruises had paled just slightly. Exhaustion practically radiated from Will but still, he kept going.

"We're moving the wounded up to Mount Olympus," Will said. "Can you help?"

Alex stood up, tears in his eyes. Blonde hair looked brown from dirt, ash, and blood. Kitty frowned. His knuckles turned white as he grabbed his sword.

He wanted to stay with Ophelia, no doubt. But they needed him. Few rivaled his sword skills. She could twist fate but when surrounded by hundreds of dracaenae, hellhounds, and enemy demigods, celestial bronze meant more than the ability to play with luck. Especially with so few fighters left.

"We've got her," Kitty said. She directed it at Alex. "Go do your thing."

A few heartbeats later, he gave a curt nod. The tears in his ice blue eyes still hadn't fallen. He trapped them behind his anger. Alex had always been good at that. Even more so since he came back the year before.

Kitty turned back to Will. Already, some of his half-siblings gathered wounded for transport up to the 600th floor. Will stayed kneeling by Ophelia's side. Kitty couldn't tell if he was too tired to move or if he was still concentrating on his patient.

"Ready?" she said.

Between the two of them, they were able to drag Ophelia into the elevator. Kitty had been to Olympus only a couple of time, both on field trips with Chiron. Even so, it took her breath away.

Will's youngest half-sibling, ten year old Hannah, had established a field station for the wounded in one of the large parks. Even without nymphs, minor gods, and any manner of other Olympian-aligned creatures running around, the greens, pinks, and blues in the park were more vibrant than the mortal world.

The cries and groans of dozens of wounded demigods and hunters shattered the otherwise peaceful beauty. Kitty's upper body started to hurt as they pulled Ophelia the rest of the way towards an open space in the grass under a tree. They laid her down next to Leah Kim. The other daughter of Hecate hadn't woken up, still covered in slow-fading burns.

As much as Kitty wanted to stay with Ophelia, to make sure she woke up, there was work to be done. After double checking Ophelia's wounds, he led the way to Hannah. The girl wasn't a healer. But as a child of Apollo, even piano prodigies had to put aside everything to help Will with the wounded.

Kitty looked all around them. White columns lined dark, closed doorways in the buildings of Olympus. Usually nymphs of all kinds would be dancing in the streets, listening to one of the latest Apollo-curated playlists or perhaps watching Hephaestus TV as they picnicked with visiting satyrs.

But Kitty could only see demigods. The dead had been left in the lobby covered by bedsheets brought from the Plaza hotel. But as Kitty glanced over the wounded, she found two daughters of Aphrodite covering up a body. A warm hand on her arm made Kitty turn.

"Usually I don't like stealing," Will said. "But we're out of Ambrosia and almost out of Nectar. I don't have any drachma… Could you…"

Kitty nodded. "I've got it covered."

No more needed to be said. Will got back to his medic duties, leaving Kitty to figure out where to start. Connor and Travis would've gotten a kick out of this. Stealing from Olympus!

She started her search by heading deeper into the city. The last time she'd walked these streets had been almost five years ago. She still remembered that trip. No one had a care in the world.

As with every other field trip, Cabin 11 had brought up the back. While Chiron droned on from the front about architecture, thoroughly engrossing the Athena kids like Annabeth, or the technology and inner workings of Olympus, which the Hephaestus cabin loved, the Reject Cabin kept their eyes open for ways to have fun.

Even in the winter, Cabin 11 had more members than all the other cabins combined. This was partially due to the fact that Hermes' children were prone to trouble making when left to their own devices and thus frequently stayed year round. But it was also because of all the unclaimed kids.

Kitty was neither unclaimed nor a daughter of Hermes. Tyche had sent a sign the first day she'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood. As Kitty continued to move through the ominously silent streets of Olympus, she wondered if Tyche had a shrine anywhere up here.

On the corner of the main street climbing towards the palace, Kitty saw the golden columns of Apollo's pharmacy chain, Intensive Flare. The guy didn't know the meaning of the word subtle. As she walked over to it, the gold tinted sliding doors whisked open, revealing the godly version of a CVS. 

It wasn't hard to find Ambrosia. Kitty loaded up a woven shopping basket with as much as it would fit, before doing the same with all the two-packs of Nectar. As she threw a few rolls of bandages, adhesive tape, and Neosporin in the mix, her gaze fell on the greeting cards.

If it was possible for a greeting card to read more like a Hallmark card than an actual Hallmark card, somehow Intensive Flare had succeeded. She found a cream colored card with a sketch of Hermes's winged shoes on the front. Inside it said "Let me sweep you off your feet."

Truly appalling.

Kitty didn't bother bagging her items. She just made for the doors, wicker shopping baskets in hand. But a shrill voice stopped her.

"Hey! You have to pay for that!"

Spinning around, she found herself face to face with a shirt, pudgy satyr. He wore a golden tee shirt emblazoned with "Intensive Flare" across the front.

Kitty shook her head. "Are you kidding me?"

"Nah." The satyr patted his white marble cashier counter. "Gotta pay."

"How about we pay for these medical supplies by saving this dumb city," she said.

Without another word, she flipped him off and started back down the hill. Idiots. Ungrateful idiots. Did they even deserve the protection of the Half-Blood heroes dying far below? No. They did not. Luke had been right about that. She held no love for the Major gods. But Kitty had a job to do.