A/N: Enjoy and leave a review!

Chapter 7

When she comes to, a gentle voice instructs her to take it easy. All of a sudden, she is awake.

"Woah, careful there! You're safe," the voice says. "I'd appreciate it if you don't scratch my eyes out. I'd like to keep them where they belong, thanks. Hey, Will, she's awake." The male voice calls out.

She struggles to open her eyes, and the first thing she sees is the dark green-brown fabric stretched above her. Then the owner of the voice comes into view. Blue eyes. No. They are the wrong color. This one has green eyes, green like the forest.

"Where-where am I?" Had she gone to heaven? Why was she in a tent on a soft bed?

"You're safe," the boy merely says. He seems like he is around the age that she is. Fourteen? Fifteen? "I'm Percy. We found you near our camp. Looks like there was a slave rebellion going on, but it's over now."

"A rebellion?"

"Yes, but looks like there was a truce. A lot of the slaves escaped here."

Piper is made to swallow some foul-tasting soup as the healer named Will mutters something strange. Her pain feels lessened and the fog in her mind instantly clears. "What-magic?"

Percy laughs and affirms her answer. "I guess you don't know who we are, much less even know who-and what-you are."

Then Will, a lithe teenager with tousled golden hair, and Percy explain about demigods, the children of mortals and the Greek gods. That she is one.

"I-I've never met my mother," Piper says, bewildered. The information was all too much. Gods? Her mother, a goddess? This couldn't be happening, could it?

"We don't always get to meet our godly parents," Will says.

Then Piper remembers her savior as the two boys leave , holding her in his arms like she was precious cargo. Was he here too?

Percy's eyebrows furrow in thought. "There wasn't anybody around you when you were found. We heard a large noise at the edges of our camp, went to investigate and found you. There was one other escaped slave but I'm not sure if he knows you. His name's Leo. Black hair, probably son of Hephaestus?"

Piper shakes her head. But it was probably best that her Roman savior was not at this Greek camp. Being Greek herself, she was welcome. She would not see him again until they met each other on the battlefield.

The Greco-Roman army started marching west towards the Epirus mountains the next day. Large Roman eagles circled ahead, scouting for trouble in preparation for ambushes like the one they had before. They were to go around the base of the most southern most mountain before following the coastline to head to the borders of the Greek and Roman nations. Both armies would spend the winter at one of the Roman villas at the border before moving on.

Piper looked up at the high cliffs of the Epirus mountains to her right, grateful that the armies did not have to cross the dangerous paths where Earth giants lay in waiting. Still, the thought of returning to the place where she was once enslaved was not welcoming. Even Leo was somewhat subdued, his hands nervously tinkering on some mechanical doodad as he rode his bronze dragon. Piper had slid off the dragon a few minutes earlier when Leo accidentally unleashed a few spurts of fire.

"Sorry," Leo muttered as Piper brushed a few pieces of ash off of her singed cloak. He scratched at his shoulder where Piper knew had a long scar back gained back when he was a slave. It was an action he always did when he was embarrassed.

"No worries," Piper said, comfortingly patting his arm. It wasn't like she could fully control her own powers either.

Despite the chill of walking, as Festus the bronze dragon offered quite a cozy warm seat, it was nice to walk for a bit and stretch her legs. Rachel and Annabeth both offered to ride with them, but Piper declined. Riding on something made her feel seen. Piper quickly slipped among the Greek ranks, where she couldn't be seen by the Romans. Throughout the whole march, she thought she could feel Jason's gaze on the back of her head.

"You're staring at her again," Reyna commented as their steeds trotted alongside each other.

"Was I?" Jason wondered. "She caught on fire. I think everyone was staring at her for a bit." Damn, if Reyna noticed that why he was really observing Piper, that could mean bad news. He had to be more careful than that. "Also, is he on fire again?"

"Hmm." Reyna pursed her lips at the thin man riding on the dragon whose hair was now full of flames. "A fire-summoner as a child of Vulcan. That's often a cue for big disasters."

"Legends also say a fire-summoner saved the land from the goddess Khione when she threatened to freeze the whole nation," Jason countered.

Octavian heard his remark and sneered. "Careful, praetor. You don't want to come off as a Graecus-scum sympathizer."

Jason turned a cold gaze on the augur. "Careful, centurion. We forged a treaty with the Greeks, which even your powers of prophecy declared would be beneficial. Or did you forget?"

The blond centurion merely scowled. His horse slowed down its trot until Octavian retreated to his cohort, where his friends and supporters lay the strongest. Jason could feel the augur's glare penetrating through the back of his head.

"Octavian has gotten braver," Reyna commented. Her dislike of Octavian showed in the tight frown lines she gave. "He's acting more and more for his own power than for duty to his nation."

"He needs to be taken down a peg or two," Jason scowled.

Reyna eyed him. "He is partially right in perceiving that you do seem to be getting friendly with the Greeks quite quickly."

Jason snorted. "I don't think there's anything wrong with making friends. It'll help establish trust and bond between both our nations. Both our sides have been decimated."

"Then what do you think of the one named Piper?"

Jason kept his expression neutral. "The daughter of Aphrodite?" Of which the female in question had since disappeared from sight. "She's..." Mysterious. Intriguing. Possibly dangerous. "Nice," he managed.

Reyna looked slightly disappointed with his answer but thankfully she doesn't push it. He looked forward again, missing Reyna's wistful look at his back.

"It feels like barely anything's changed," Leo murmured as Piper nodded in agreement, sitting on the dragon behind him. He had finally gotten his fire under control.

The villa and its lands was situated between the narrow strip of hilly land between the mountains and the ocean. The villa building itself was built on the tallest hill, so its occupants could overlook the much lower land below them and look out for any sign of disturbances. That was how the Roman general kept control of his land and his slaves.

The grain crops were already planted last month in October, where they were to be harvested in April or May. Groves of olive and fig trees were in the northernmost plots of land while the grape fields as the grapes were already picked. Far off in the distance to the east, small fishing boats bobbed up and down in the coast. The Roman general had been a wealthy man, even having the luxury of a grassfield for a small herd of cattle, sheep, and pigs to graze on.

Piper scanned the surroundings. "Or perhaps it has."

On the surface, it seemed like nothing had changed, the place where she lived for nearly two years. But Piper eyed that the people tending to the fields were less skinny and happier in some ways. When she had been forced to work the fields, her fellow companions were lean and skinny from hard work and poor nutrition. How she hated gruel, but it was the only thing she was given to eat, alongside stale bread and the occasional close to rotting fruit.

But now the people tending the fields, though some in threadbare clothing, wore decent clothes and not the rags she was accustomed to ten years ago. Instead of watching the armies pass by with fear or suspicion, the farmers tending the fields only looked on with curiosity. A few even waved hello.

"They're not enslaved," Piper observed. Throughout her years with the Greek demigod army, they had helped many enslaved people escape.

"No," Annabeth said as she shook her head. "I heard these people just rent the land from the owner, but they're not slaves tied down to the landowner. They're free citizens."

It wasn't long before they marched on to the villa front doors. Piper slid off the dragon, hesitant to enter the actual villa buildings.

Annabeth gave her a sympathetic look, knowing Piper's history with the Roman villa. "We'll just set up camp on the courtyard outside the main villa walls. You don't have to go inside the villa." The daughter of Athena squeezed Piper's hand in support.

Piper cracked a warm smile. "Thanks Annabeth." She let out a large sigh, remembering the stark white walls surrounding the villa.

The main building itself was certainly the largest in the area, dwarfing the even the slaves' quarters that housed over sixty slaves. Red tile baked from clay composed the roof and high windows on the wall let the general oversee the land. Often the windows were used for soldiers to catch sight of any slave rebellions or trouble.

Annabeth made a disgruntled noise. "The architecture is simply horrible. So many windows? Did the architect not realize how unstable the walls would be? Where's the columns?"

"They should have hired you as the architect," Percy said fondly. He ruffled her hair, and she batted his hand away but not before flushing slightly.

Leo and Piper exchanged glances. Time to step out before the not-old-married couple become more lovey-dovey.

"I'm not going back in there," Leo muttered, glaring at the building as though it was the portal to Tartarus.

"You don't have to." Piper wasn't so keen on entering as well. As the building and the lands around it were owned by the Romans, the Roman army had no qualms about entering and setting up camps inside. "I'm going to go look around for a while." Even the fields that she worked in before were much more preferable than this.

She started walking away in some random direction, just anywhere away from where she had been imprisoned. Her master had always discomfited her, observing with his beady dark eyes. He kept a sharp eye and harsh whip for all his slaves, but the Roman general was particularly fond of inspecting her work. Perhaps, even back then, he had suspected something of her heritage. Piper had managed to keep her powers under wrap even then, covering herself in dirty rags and messy hair so she could damp down her beauty.

Before long, Piper found herself walking down a battered path that led to a grove of fig trees, the figs all harvested. A small meadow lay in the middle of it. But she wasn't alone. She instantly ducked behind the closest tree.

The man's back faced her, his figure looking forlornly at two oblong shaped grey stones poking out of the ground. Graves, Piper realized.

He laid a handful of flowers on the smaller one. The smaller one looked well-kept, with a ring of crocus around it. The larger one looked neglected, with a large rocky chunk missing. The man ignored that grave.

The wind picked up, ruffling her hair.

"I know you're there," Jason said.