TO CLEAR UP ANY MISUNDERSTANDING:
When Reyna kissed Leo, in chapter 7, she was being manipulated by Meda. Reyna had a broken collarbone at the time, so she distracted Leo by kissing him, then tried to stab him while he wasn't paying attention. She, as Piper and Leo saw it, toyed with his emotions and preyed on his weaknesses. Although Meda did order Reyna to kill Leo, she did not specifically order her to kill him by distracting him with a kiss. There were several misunderstandings here, so I hope this clears things up.
Luckily, the chore of rescuing everyone in the mansion wasn't a hard one. It took Reyna but 30 minutes, since the river wasn't far from the house. At last, everyone was huddled in the living room of the gold mansion, sipping warm hot chocolate. Courtesy of the King's daughter, of course.
Piper had been rather surprised to find that Reyna had saved them, and Leo grudgingly thanked her by "forgetting" about the recent kissing incident. He didn't say it out loud, but his hostile attitude had been put aside, and the barrier between them had broken. Of course, there was a slight possibility that Leo had actually forgotten it, but that was rather unlikely.
Piper was doing the worst. Reyna made her sit close to the newly made fire, and the king's daughter had helpfully provided an armload of soft, gold, and apparently magic blankets, and a bowl of steaming oatmeal. Coach Hedge had done a bit of nature magic on her, so her breath smelled like Gatorade.
Thankfully, their hostess had recovered easily, claiming that she was used to being turned to gold, and insisting to help by making hot chocolate and giving everyone blankets, which she apparently kept for emergencies, since Lityerses always liked the air conditioning on high. She was very talkative. Reyna didn't remember her name, it was hard to pronounce, and Reyna wasn't especially good with names. Not that she would ever admit it, of course.
Coach Hedge was eyeing the king grumpily, muttering under his breath about stupid cheaters not fighting fairly, and sipping his hot chocolate. He had insisted that the secret to cooking hot chocolate was to flavor it with parsley, so Jane Doe, or whatever the princess's name was, had very kindly sprinkled a few leaves into his cup. She also mentioned that she had taken care of old grumpy satyrs before, and told Reyna that adding a few snips of parsley to his cup wasn't a bother at all. In fact, there wasn't much that "Jane" hadn't told Reyna.
Leo was flirting with the princess, but stopped when the barber reminded him that "her majesty" was at least 2000 years older than him. Then, he started fiddling with his toolbelt, obviously frustrated that the non-magical borders prevented him from playing with screws and bolts.
"When will we be heading out?" Leo asked. Reyna exchanged glances with Coach Hedge.
"Ah, good question, Leo. I believe we can head out as soon as our friend Piper here is feeling herself again." Coach Hedge decided, taking another sip of his parsley-flavored hot chocolate.
"Oh, d-don't worry about me, I'm ready to go anytime you are." Piper said, gritting her teeth.
Reyna was worried about Piper, but they really couldn't afford to waste a lot of time. According to one of the swordsmen, Aeolus's favorite place to dock his palace was right up the mountain; which wasn't as hopeless as Reyna had at first expected.
"Piper, I need to know if you can't make a hike up the mountain," Reyna said with earnesty. "If you can't make it, we're just going to have to lose a few hours on the quest. I'm not taking you up there if there's any chance that you might collapse half way through."
Piper shook her head quickly. "Really, I'm fine. We can leave any time."
Reyna nodded. "OK then, let's go."
Piper carefully stood up and threw off her blankets. Her teeth began chattering immediately, but she set her teeth together and locked her jaw, so Reyna couldn't see how cold she was. Reyna did see, of course, but she made no mention of it. If Piper was going to kill herself trudging through the melting snow, there wasn't much Reyna could do to stop her. Jane, as Reyna now called her, bid them farewell, and helped them jam a gold blanket into one of the pockets in Leo's toolbelt.
Leo led the way, since he notified Reyna that there were active land mines securing the perimiters. They were hiking up the mountain path, through the freezing sludge, when suddenly, it began to snow. First, only a few flakes fell. They stuck to Reyna's hair, Coach Hedge's baseball cap, and Piper's eyelashes, somehow melting before they hit Leo.
Some snowstorms begin with a light flurry and don't stick to the ground, no matter how hard it snows. Still others begin with only a few big fat flakes falling at a time, and then BOOM, the entire place is inches deep with snow. Then there are the snows. That happens when the big fat flakes don't just fall down slowly, but they come pouring down as if someone in the sky dumped a bucket of snowflakes onto earth, and within minutes, everything is covered. I assume you can guess what the sky decided to do as soon as Reyna began walking up the mountain.
Yes, the sky decided to "dump buckets of snowflakes" onto the tired group, as I have so articulately phrased it. Demigods usually have rotten luck, but Reyna managed to find a sort of cave carved into the side of the mountain.
"Leo," Reyna said, "Have your fire-producing skills recovered?"
Leo smirked, and lit his fingertips on fire. "I believe they have, your highness."
"Shut up. Can you make us a fire?"
"I believe I can, your-"
"L-l-leo, sh-she s-said-d t-to st-top-p." Piper's teeth were clicking together madly, but she still managed to scold Leo.
Soon, the group was huddled around a blazing fire. Leo was toasting marshmellows, much to Reyna's amusement. Piper was looking a bit better, thanks to the warm blanket Leo had kept in his belt, but a new guilt lingered in her eyes. Eventually, Piper broke the silence.
"Guys, I need to tell you something," she said. Reyna turned. So did Leo. Piper bit her lip. Clearly, this was a confession, rather than a good-news announcement.
"Three nights before the Grand Canyon trip," she said, "I had a dream vision- the giant Enceladus, telling me my father had been taken hostage. He told me I had to cooperate, or my dad would be killed."
Coach Hedge whistled. "Big giant, Breathes fire. Not somebody I'd want barbecuing my daddy goat."
The flames crackled. Reyna didn't change her expression. "Go on," she said.
Piper looked at Reyna nervously. "Ah, right. So, to get my dad back, I had to sabotage this quest. I didn't realize it would be the three of us. Then after we started the quest, Enceladus sent me another warning: He told me he wanted you two dead. He wants me to lead you to a mountain. I don't know exactly which one, but it's in the Bay Area- I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the summit. I have to be there by noon on the solstice, tomorrow. An exchange."
Piper started to cry. Reyna smiled a little and scooted closer to Piper. "Hey, cheer up, Piper," she said comfortingly. "I'm not kicking you out of the quest just because some giant is blackmailing you. I think we have time, we might be able to go and rescue your dad, depending on the circumstances."
"You-you don't understand." Piper blubbered, "I've probably just killed my dad by telling you this."
Coach Hedge sniffed. "I doubt it. Giant hasn't gotten what he wants yet, so he still needs your dad for leverage. He'll wait until the deadline passes, see if you show up. He wants to divert the quest to this mountain, right?"
Piper nodded uncertainly. Reyna waited for the Coach to continue. She had thought this through, yes of course, but she wanted to hear other opinions.
"So that means Hera is being kept somewhere else," Hedge reasoned. "And she has to be saved by the same day. So you have to choose: rescue your dad, or rescue Hera. If you go after Hera, THEN Enceladus takes care of your dad. Besides, Enceladus would never let you go even if you cooperated. You're obviously one of the seven in the great prophecy."
"So we have no choice," Piper said miserably. "We have to save Hera, or the giant king gets unleashed. That's our quest. The world depends on it. And Enceladus seems to have ways of watching me. He isn't stupid. He'll know if we change course and go the wrong way. He'll kill my dad."
"He's not going to kill your dad," Leo said. "We'll save him."
"We don't have time!" Piper cried. "Besides, it's a trap."
"We're your friends, Beauty Queen," Leo said. "We're not going to let your dad die. We just gotta figure out a plan." Reyna nodded, already reasoning out how long the snow would delay them, and adding it to the time spent at Aeouls's palace, then wondering how long it would take to get to California.
"Would help if we knew where the mountain was," Coach Hedge pointed out. "Maybe Aeolus can tell you that. The Bay Area has a pretty bad reputation for demigods. Old home of the Titans, Mount Othrys, sits over Mount Tam, where Alas holds up the sky. I hope that's not the mountain you saw."
Suddenly Reyna's mind blocked up, and her strategies she had been calculating vanished in the blink of an eye. Mount Othrys? Atlas? Titans? Visions flashed before her eyes. blood, lightning, screaming, monsters, and the face of a boy. He had gold hair and piercing blue eyes, and everything about him was familiar. She could barely hear Piper, saying something about the mountain being farther inland.
"Coach, what happened to Mount Othrys?" Reyna asked, suddenly.
"Well, Kronos built a new palace there last summer. Big nasty place, it was going to be the headquarters for his new kingdom and all. Weren't any battles there though. Kronos marched on Manhattan, trying to take Olympus. If I remember right, he left some other titans in charge of his palace, but after Kronos got defeated in Manhattan, the whole palace just crumbled on its own."
More memories came flooding in. More faces. Swords and spears. Someone shouting in Roman, and she understood him.
"No," Reyna said, "That's not what happened. I-"
Suddenly, the flood of memories vanished as a howl pierced the night air. Reyna tensed, her hand on her leather bag.
"Did you hear that?" Piper glanced around the cave. "What?" Then another howl pierced the night air.
Wolves.
Author's Notes: I'm back, and I'm on schedule this time. Yay for me! To the Leyna lovers: I can promise a hint of Leyna next chapter, but I've decided that this story isn't going to involve a lot of it. If I decide to write a sequel, that will definitely have Leyna, but for this book, I'll just keep it neutral. In this book, Reyna is still crushing on Jason.
To all the people who noticed the absence of tofu: Good eye. I decided to leave that out, since they had hot chocolate and probably a few snacks at "Jane Doe's" house.
REVIEW! PLEASE! This time, I have a few specific questions.
1. What did you think of the added scene with the princess?
2. Do you ship Jason/Reyna and Piper/Leo, or Jason/Piper and Reyna/Leo? Or something completely different?
3. What is your favorite chapter so far?
4. Did you like this mini-quiz? I think I'll have one next chapter.