MIA HADN'T BEEN sleeping much since Tartarus, but she'd been rudely interrupted from doing her makeup by her door slamming open. She'd flinched, her lipstick going way off her lips.

"Do you not know how to knock or something?" Mia asked Piper, wiping off the lipstick gingerly. "Hazel's on the other side, and she's sleeping."

"Sorry," Piper winced. "I have to tell you and Annabeth something. It's — uh, important."

"Not more important than coffee," Mia said, standing up and walking out of the room. "Let me get it first, then we'll talk."

When Piper recounted her dream for Mia and Percy, the ship's toilets exploded. And that definitely wasn't a power that Mia had.

"No way are you three going down there alone," Percy said.

Leo ran down the hall waving a wrench. "Man, did you have to destroy the plumbing?"

Percy ignored him. Water ran down the gangway. The hull rumbled as more pipes burst and sinks overflowed. Mia rolled her eyes. Dramatic little shit.

"We'll be all right," Annabeth told him. "Piper foresaw the three of us going down there, so that's what needs to happen."

Percy glared at Piper. "And this Mimas dude? I'm guessing he's a giant?"

"Probably," she said. "Porphyrion called him our brother."

"And a bronze statue surrounded by fire," Percy said. "And those . . . other things you mentioned. Mackies?"

"Makhai," Piper corrected. "I think the word means battles in Greek, but I don't know how that applies, exactly."

"That's my point!" Percy said. "We don't know what's down there. I'm going with you."

"No." Mia held him back with the back of her hand pressed lightly against his chest. "If the giants want our blood, the last thing we need is a boy and a girl going down there together. Remember? They want one of each for their big sacrifice."

"Then I'll get Leo and Jason," Percy said. "And the three of us —"

"Delphinus, are you implying that three boys can handle this better than three girls?"

"No." He stopped at the nickname. "I mean . . . no. But —"

"We'll be back before you know it," Mia told him. "Besides, me and Nico have done worse. Go-karting in Tokyo resulted in accidental arson. Don't ask me how. Bye!"

She turned and left before the whole lower deck could flood with toilet water, causing her outfit to become dirty.

An hour later, the three of them stood on a hill overlooking the ruins of Ancient Sparta. They'd already scouted the modern city, which, strangely, reminded Mia of Albuquerque — a bunch of low, boxy, whitewashed buildings sprawled across a plain at the foot of some purplish mountains. Annabeth had insisted on checking the archaeology museum, then the giant metal statue of the Spartan warrior in the public square, then the National Museum of Olives and Olive Oil ( yes, that was a real thing ). Mia had learned more about olive oil than she ever wanted to know, but no giants attacked them. They found no statues of chained gods.

Annabeth seemed reluctant to check the ruins on the edge of town, but finally they ran out of other places to look.

There wasn't much to see. According to Annabeth, the hill they stood on had once been Sparta's acropolis — its highest point and main fortress.

The weathered slope was covered with dead grass, rocks and stunted olive trees. Below, ruins stretched out for maybe a quarter of a mile: limestone blocks, a few broken walls and some tiled holes in the ground like wells. She found it depressing that their legacy had been reduced to a field of rubble and a small modern town with an olive-oil museum.

Piper wiped the sweat from her forehead. "You'd think if there was a thirty-foot-tall giant around we'd see him."

Annabeth stared at the distant shape of the Argo II floating above downtown Sparta.

"You're thinking about Percy," Mia guessed. It didn't take many braincells to get to that conclusion.

Annabeth nodded.

"He seems to be adjusting," Piper said. "He's smiling more often. You know he cares about you more than ever."

She glanced over at Mia for a second, and she knew that they'd talked about Tartarus together. Mia hadn't talked to Annabeth other than surface-level shit. She's spent most of her time either with Hazel or alone. She didn't blame Annabeth, though; she talked about Tartarus a little bit to Hazel, though not the whole story. She'd done that with Nico, so she was good with trauma dumping.

Annabeth sat, her face suddenly pale. "I don't know why it's hitting me so hard all of a sudden. I can't quite get that memory out of my head . . . how Percy looked when he was standing at the edge of Chaos."

Maybe Mia was just picking up on Annabeth's uneasiness, but she started to feel agitated as well.

Admittedly, she's made herself unable to feel anything since coming back; just happy around Hazel, and ambitious for her goals. Because she needs to survive. Not for herself, but for the people who were depending on her. But right now, she felt fear creeping in her bones, no matter how much she wanted to expel it from her.

"Give him time." Piper sat next to Annabeth. "You've been through so much together. It's possible he needs a little space to process."

"I know . . ." Annabeth's grey eyes reflected the green of the olive trees. "It's just . . . Bob the Titan, he warned us there would be more sacrifices ahead. I want to believe we can have a normal life someday . . . But I allowed myself to hope for that last summer, after the Titan War. Then you disappeared," she said to Mia, "then Percy disappeared. Then we all fell into that pit . . ." A tear traced its way down her cheek. "Piper, if you'd seen the face of the god Tartarus, all swirling darkness, devouring monsters and vaporizing them — I've never felt so helpless. I try not to think about it . . ."

Yeah, no. Mia got out of that conversation, walking off into the distance toward the stone-lined pits.

She sighed as she thought about her own emotions; scared of the future and failing herself and her siblings and everyone else in the world, angry at everything and everyone except for Hazel and Nico, because she could never be angry at them. Sad that she'd lost her will to live just as she'd finally found it again. You know, the usual.

Ridiculous. Life is ridiculous.

As if agreeing with her, one of the stone-lined pits she was standing next to spewed out a three-story geyser of flames and shut off just as quickly.

Mia felt a smile grow on her face, suddenly feeling more alive. She examined the pits in front of her. There were three, and each one was perfectly round, two feet in diameter, tiled around the rim with limestone; each one plunged straight into darkness thirty feet down. Every few seconds, seemingly at random, one of the three pits shot a column of fire into the sky. Each time, the color and intensity of the flames were different.

"Mia!" Piper called, and she turned to see her and Annabeth running to her.

"I'm not hurt," Mia confirmed.

"They weren't doing this before." Annabeth walked a wide arc around the pits. She still looked shaky and pale, but her mind was now obviously engaged in the problem at hand. "There doesn't seem to be any pattern. The timing, the color, the height of the fire . . . I don't get it."

"Did we activate them somehow?" Piper wondered. "Maybe that surge of fear you felt on the hill . . . Uh, I mean we all felt."

Mia glanced at her and let out a snort. "Uh huh," she said. Imagine acting like you couldn't feel fear. Couldn't be her.

Annabeth didn't seem to hear Piper or Mia. "There must be some kind of mechanism . . . a pressure plate, a proximity alarm."

Flames shot from the middle pit. Annabeth counted silently. The next time, a geyser erupted on the left. She frowned. "That's not right. It's inconsistent. It has to follow some kind of logic."

Mia's vision started to turn more red, more brighter. Something about these pits . . .

Each time one ignited, a horrible thrill went through her — fear, panic, but also a strong desire to get closer to the flames.

"It isn't rational," Mia said. "It's emotional."

"How can fire pits be emotional?"

Mia held her hand over the pit on the right. Instantly, flames leaped up. She barely had time to withdraw her fingers. Her nails steamed. At least she hasn't had the chance to get them done.

"Holy shit," Piper grinned at her. "You're badass."

"Don't encourage her, Piper!" Annabeth ran over. "What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't. I was feeling. What we want is down there. These pits are the way in. I'll have to jump."

"Are you crazy? Even if you don't get stuck in the tube, you have no idea how deep it is."

"It's thirty feet, Annabeth, I'll be fine."

"What do you mean 'you'll be fine', Mia? You'll fall to your death! And if that doesn't happen, you'll be burned alive!"

"Possibly." Mia smirked. "I'll let you both know if it's safe. Wait for my word."

"Don't you dare," Annabeth warned.

Mia jumped.

For a moment she was weightless in the dark, the sides of the hot stone pit burning her arms. Then the space opened up around her. Instinctively she tucked and rolled, absorbing most of the impact as she hit the stone floor.

Flames shot up in front of her, singeing her eyebrows, but Mia tugged at her necklace, Sirius appearing in her hands and swinging before she'd even stopped rolling. A bronze dragonhead, neatly decapitated, wobbled across the floor.

Mia stood, trying to get her bearings. Three bronze dragon statues stood in a row, aligned with the holes in the roof. She had decapitated the middle one. The two intact dragons were each three feet tall, their snouts pointed upward and their steaming mouths open. They were clearly the source of the flames, but they didn't seem to be automatons. They didn't move or try to attack her. Mia calmly sliced off the heads of the other two.

She waited. No more flames shot upward.

"Mia?" Piper's voice echoed from far above like she was yelling down a chimney.

"Yeah?" Mia shouted.

"Thank the gods!" Annabeth called. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Hold on a sec."

She scanned the chamber, which she should've been doing before, but oh well. The only light came from the openings above. The ceiling was about thirty feet high. By all rights, Mia should've broken both legs in the fall, but she wasn't going to complain.

The chamber itself was round, about the size of a helicopter pad. The walls were made of rough-hewn stone blocks chiselled with Greek inscriptions — thousands and thousands of them, like graffiti.

At the far end of the room, on a stone dais, stood the human-sized bronze statue of a familiar warrior — the god Ares — with heavy bronze chains wrapped around his body, anchoring him to the floor.

On either side of the statue loomed two dark doorways, ten feet high, with a gruesome stone face carved over each archway. The faces reminded Mia of gorgons, except they had lions' manes instead of snakes for hair. Ugh, she didn't want to think about gorgons.

"Annabeth! Piper!" she called. "It's a long drop, but it's safe to come down. Maybe . . . uh, you have a rope you could fasten to get down?"

"On it!"

A few minutes later a rope dropped from the center pit. Annabeth shimmied down, Piper following right after.

"I forgot how much of an impulsive, stupid risk-taker you could be," Annabeth grumbled, smacking Mia's arm hard.

"Yeah, well, don't forget next time," she stuck out her tongue at Annabeth.

Piper nudged the nearest decapitated dragon-head with her foot. "I'm guessing these are the dragons of Ares. That's one of his sacred animals, right?"

"And there's the chained god himself," Annabeth agreed. "Where do you think those doorways—"

Piper held up her hand. "Do you hear that?"

Mia could hear it. The sound was like a drumbeat . . . with a metallic echo.

"It's coming from inside the statue," Piper decided. "The heartbeat of the chained god."

Piper drew her bronze sword. Annabeth unsheathed her drakon-bone sword. In the dim light, her face was ghostly pale, her eyes colourless. "I — I don't like this, guys. We need to leave."

Mia agreed with that. Her skin crawled. Her legs ached to run. But it's not like they could.

"The shrine is ramping up our emotions," Piper said. "It's like being around my mom, except this place radiates fear, not love. That's why you started feeling overwhelmed on the hill. Down here, it's a thousand times stronger."

Annabeth scanned the walls. "Okay . . . we need a plan to get the statue out. Maybe haul it up with the rope, but —"

"Wait." Piper stared at the snarling stone faces above the doorways. "A shrine that radiates fear. Ares had two divine sons, didn't he?"

"Ph-phobos and Deimos." Annabeth shivered. "Panic and Fear. Percy met them once in Staten Island."

Mia actually remembered Percy telling her about that event. What a surprise.

"I think those are their faces above the doors," Piper realized. "This place isn't just a shrine to Ares. It's a temple of fear."

Deep laughter echoed through the chamber.

On Mia's left, a giant appeared. He didn't come through either doorway. He simply emerged from the darkness as if he'd been camouflaged against the wall.

He was small for a giant — perhaps twenty-five feet tall, which would give him enough room to swing the massive sledgehammer in his hands. His armor, his skin and his dragon-scale legs were all the color of charcoal. Copper wires and smashed circuit boards glittered in the braids of his oil-black hair.

"Very good, child of Aphrodite." The giant smiled. "This is indeed the Temple of Fear. And I am here to make you believers."