It was her. Every one of the new recruits straightened, heads bobbing nervously as her keen grey eye swept over them. A red scrap of cloth covered the socket that had once held the eye she'd lost to the Giants, but no one was stupid enough to believe that meant they could get anything past her. If anything, it had made her gaze more vigilant, more piercing. They said she could spot a spy from ten paces and a mist manipulation from fifteen. They said she could read a battle field like her siblings read books. They said she had taken on ten Earthborn and won with nothing more than a knife.
They also said that she was dating Percy Jackson and that he'd kill you if you so much as breathed on her. They'd all seen what had happened to the enemy demigods who'd tried to assassinate her. They believed it.
They also said that beneath the grime and scars everyone accumulated, she'd once been beautiful.
They weren't sure they believed that, but they were sure that they'd seen what Percy had done to the kid who'd suggested otherwise and the kid who, desperate to avoid the same fate, had hastily said he was sure she'd once been worthy of Aphrodite.
Percy had disagreed with him about the once.