A/N: I'm in Tennessee for this next week, what what. Super excited. I should be able to keep up my updates. And I still have angel hair; I was admiring the shine of it just earlier. (xheartxfeltx, I'm looking at you.)

Also, I started Act 11 before I'd even finished this one, so it should be up soon enough.

Reyna was the first to admit her memory could get a little spotty when she went long periods without sleep. She didn't expect to forget most of the early hours of the morning, though that was precisely what happened. She "woke" back up around eight, with a cup of coffeed-up hot chocolate in her hands (the taste was in her mouth, yuck) and the sound of rain battering the windows of her villa. Leo was up scrounging for food in the kitchen.

"Morning," he yawned as he stretched to reach a loaf of bread from the top cabinet. "It's raining."

"You don't say." Her shirt had fallen over her shoulder; she tugged it up (maybe he hadn't seen her bright blue bra strap) and pushed herself to her feet. "Have we had breakfast?"

"Not yet," he said as the loaf fell onto his face. He caught it as it bounced off. "You like toast?"

She shrugged, running her hand through her hair, and slumped onto a bar stool. It had been, what, five days of little-to-no sleep? Way too long. She watched him tinker with the toaster but couldn't muster the energy to say anything.

Not five minutes later, he handed her a stack of toast on a paper towel—a less formal morning meal than she usually had. But if she didn't have to make it, she wasn't going to complain. He sat down next to her, and they dug in.

Reyna had a bite and a half's worth of toast in her mouth when someone knocked on the door. She motioned for Leo to go get it—then she thought better of it. "Hi," she garbled through the toast, meaning hide, and he obediently ducked behind the couch. Flailing off the stool, she struggled to chew and swallow before she made it to the door. She swiped her fingers across her lips, just in case there were any toast crumbs still on her face.

Her hand was on the doorknob, but it opened on its own. Dripping on the doorstep in the rain stood Percy and Annabeth, looking unhappy to be awake.

"What is this nonsense?" Percy asked, pointing to the sky.

"Weather," Reyna said.

"You couldn't reschedule the monster rainstorm until after the celebration?"

"Why does everyone assume I can control the weather?" she sighed. "No. The rain will leave eventually. We can work around it in the meantime."

Annabeth cocked her head thoughtfully. "The war games might be more interesting in the rain," she offered.

Percy gave her a sour look. Apparently mister son of the sea god didn't care for normal precipitation. Not very Roman of him to show it.

It occurred to her, looking at the two of them standing at her door, that Percy was a Greek praetor. And Jason, who was now maybe half-Roman at best, was dating Piper. She wondered if Octavian had failed to notice—or, more likely, he was saving them as evidence when he argued for her execution.

Percy was saying something, and she'd missed it completely. "Sorry?"

"People are a little restless, and the Greeks aren't sure whether everything will still go all right today," he repeated. "So you might want to come address the situation."

"You might want to get dressed first," Annabeth said, suppressing a smile.

Reyna had forgotten she was in her pajamas. "I'll be there in ten minutes," she promised, then all but shut the door in their faces.

Getting ready actually turned out to take twenty minutes, but that was Leo's fault. She kept trying to dress and tidy up, and he kept trying to kiss her.

Finally Reyna arrived in the mess hall, where most of the campers had gathered to get out of the rain. (They had also noticed it was breakfast time, so food was flying everywhere.) Heads turned toward her as she strode through the door, looking fabulous in her armor despite her exhaustion. She didn't let it show. Still, dealing with hundreds of tired, confused, and very damp demigods was not how she'd hoped to start the day.

"Good morning," she said, and immediately the mess hall went silent. Even the auras stopped delivering food. In the middle of the distraction, Leo sneaked in through the side door and went around the back. He made a face at her from by the wall. She blinked a few times instead of smiling. "I understand there is some confusion as to the storm."

Murmuring rippled through the crowd. Someone called out, "Well, make it go away."

"Yes, I realize it must be nice to live at Camp Half-Blood where the sun always shines," Reyna said, her tone stiff, "but here at Camp Jupiter we like to think that bad weather builds character. We will postpone the picnic until tomorrow, but the war games will go on as planned."

The volume of conversation skyrocketed. She waited. Eventually they realized she had something else to say, and it quieted to a loud whisper.

"I had planned for Siege today and Deathball tomorrow, and we will keep to that schedule. Praetors Jason and Percy are in charge of assigning cohorts and cabins to teams. Once they do that, the defending team may begin to prepare their fortress. The game will start on the Field of Mars at 3:00 sharp."

"Be there or be square," Percy joked.

She glared at him. Then the noise levels went back up, but she was done addressing the situation, so she sat down to pretend she hadn't already eaten breakfast.

When three o'clock rolled around, the weather had cleared up a little: the rain had lessened from a constant torrential downpour to being more like unreliably broken faucets that sprayed high-pressure water all over creation every so often. The waterlogged clouds covered the sky in blues so dark they seemed almost black, but the lightning had for the most part ceased, so Reyna figured they were safe to be out with the weaponry.

Of course, safety wasn't the main issue in the rest of the camp. Her real task was getting the last few stragglers to either join the game or at least contribute support as spectators. One of those stragglers, at least, would be easy to convince; she knew he had a soft spot for her.

"I'm gonna go work," Leo said, jerking a thumb toward his ship.

Reyna gave him a firmly negative look. "Don't even think about it. I have to referee this thing, the least you can do is participate."

"You're the one who set it up."

"In the spirit of inter-camp cooperation. Which we won't be getting if all the Greek head counselors don't play."

He pretended to grumble. "Oh, sure, bring that up."

She looked over the team divisions. On Team I she could see Jason and Piper, and on Team II Octavian was sending dirty looks toward the rest of the Seven. Best to separate the two young men as much as possible. "Go join Team I," she instructed Leo. "You'll be fine." She wasn't above taking him aside and swapping spit to get him to do it, but she hoped to avoid that, as it would probably end up taking longer than she meant for it to, which would throw her whole schedule off.

He hung around. Eventually she cracked a small smile, and she took and pressed his hand in a lingering, intimate handshake. "I'll see you after the game," she promised. "Go on."

Grinning in return, he went. She watched his back, a faint smile still tugging at the corners of her lips, until he'd disappeared into the crowd.

The game went long, probably because there were so many people playing. But it seemed to be a clean, fair, enjoyable game, even with the off-and-on rain, and Reyna thought that was a good sign.

"Team I wins!" As the announcement echoed across the field, the two mud-streaked teams streamed into the open area by the Via Principia, shouting, trash-talking each other with grins, slapping hands and backs. Reyna was glad to see that even if the game had been a little less orthodox than usual, it seemed to have successfully built up camaraderie.

Taking a quick group-head count, she noticed there was still a fair amount of people in the woods. She considered using the megaphone but the stragglers were still coming out, in ones and threes mostly, though she saw a few groups of two that looked suspiciously flushed and rumpled.

Another group of two looked less like a couple and more like bickering neighbors—a tall, sickly pale guy in purple and a shorter, swarthy guy in orange. Octavian and Leo. Glancing around to make sure no one needed her, she headed for them. As far she knew, Leo didn't know about Octavian, but Octavian sure as hell seemed to know about Leo, and she didn't plan on letting it escalate into a fight.

Reyna's shoes stuck in the mud, and in the moment she looked down to yank herself free, she looked back up and Octavian had his knife out, his teddy-bear-murdering knife, and to a stranger it might look like he was just showcasing it but she knew that look on his face—sly as a fox but wicked as a hellhound—and she sped up, sliding in the mud. Neither male had noticed her yet.

Though visibly upset, Leo chose this of all times to stand his ground, his palms up to say what in Hades do you think you're doing? Octavian said something covered by a crack of thunder, his head bobbing sarcastically as he waved the point of the blade at the repair boy.

The first thing she was near enough to hear was the end of Leo's response: "none of your business," in as brash and sassy a voice as she'd ever heard him use. Oh, gods. Don't rile him up, she prayed as she slipped again, unable to catch herself before she caked one knee in mud. She got back up and ran for them. For him.

Octavian stepped forward again, his grip tighter around his knife. He scowled as he spoke, the words screwing up his face. "It's my business who's dirtying Rome, some graecus polluting the name of—"

"Octavian, stop!" Reyna put every ounce of her praetorship into the command, even as she felt mud spattering unimposingly up the back of her legs. She managed to skid to a stop without falling over, a feat of impressive grace at the moment.

"Speaking of polluted," the augur sneered, his knife still at the ready.

"Go back to the others," she ordered coldly. "Don't ever let me catch you bad-mouthing our allies again."

He gestured innocently behind her. "The others are here." And so they were: the two camps' worth of demigods were slowly following her across the field, coming to see what was happening. Close enough to see, maybe, yet too far to know.

Leo's hair caught fire as he looked at Reyna, but she refused to look at him. One glance away from Octavian . . .

"Oh, sure. I'm the danger." The augur could read her better than she liked. "I'm not the praetor throwing my home and honor down the aqueduct for, what? A roll in the hay with a graecus?"

"There was no hay involved," Leo sassed, and she could have kicked him.

Octavian's expression darkened, and the knuckles clenching the blade turned white. "You dishonor yourself," he said to her. "You dishonor the legion, you dishonor Rome. You even manage to dishonor Greece, which takes skill given its already remarkable disgrace."

Reyna's head was pounding, and rain began to spew from the sky again, pelting the side of her face. This scarecrow had cheated her of sleep and repose and happiness, and she was done cowtowing to him. She opened her mouth, but the insubordinate wretch talked over her.

"In the midst of all this dishonorable talk of allies, I wonder if you've forgotten that allies are meant to be temporary. You liaise, you win, you separate." His blade gleamed, raindrops collecting on its cold, smooth surface. Octavian stepped toward Leo, his knife out, heels digging into the dirt. "And if a former ally puts you or your people in danger, then you fight back, and you kill them."

Reyna watched in slow motion, feeling the dread well up in her gut but unable to move to stop him. Lightning cracked against the blue-black clouds, the flash illuminating the augur's practiced hand as he slashed forward and up, tearing into Leo's stomach with what seemed to Reyna like a burst, an eruption, an ugly horrendous explosion of scarlet.

Swearing in Spanish, Leo stumbled backward. Clutching his hands to the wound, looking down in shock at the blood seeping between his fingers and staining his clothes.

Reyna watched him keel slowly to the ground, and she didn't realize she'd followed him until the mud soaked through her jeans and socks. He fell backward. There was mud in his curls. She couldn't make anything work—her mouth, her hands, her roiling insides—oh gods. Oh gods.

"Need a healer," she managed, an order that was no louder than a gasp, and when she repeated it louder someone moved toward them but she didn't look back to see who. No one else mattered.

Barely able to lift his head, Leo poked weakly at his torn abdomen and immediately paled.

"Don't touch it, don't touch it," she whispered, tugging his fingers away from the wound, nauseated by the warm red staining both their hands. "You need a healer."

He looked up at her, dark eyes wide and glazed. "There's a lot of—"

"I know, I know." Reyna was repeating herself. She didn't know what to say. She touched her hand to his cheek, wiping some of the mud away. Was there a healer? Was someone coming? Gods, if they had to leave someone to die, let it be her. Not the poor, sweet, honest boy who could dance salsa and kept a photograph of his dead mother on his workshop wall.

Someone crouched next to her. Not Octavian, she could see that much out of the corner of her eye. Reyna was only looking at Leo, her hair soaked with rain and half unbraided and falling onto his chest, she was leaning so close over him. Her neighbor's hand touched her back, and she hit it away, her eyes burning with rain. It had to be rain; only rain could sting so much and run so thick down her cheeks.

"We need to take him," said her neighbor, but she couldn't process it. Take him where?

"Really cold, reina," Leo sighed, his words trembling. "And tired."

"No, stay awake," she ordered. His breathing seemed too shallow. "Don't—please—" His eyes drifted from her, lids closing. In a last-ditch effort, she dropped and kissed him, hard, on his bloody muddy rainy mouth. She pressed her lips against his, waiting for a burst of hair fire that never came.

Nothing.

Oh gods.