THE ENEMY WAS beautiful. Khione smiled, her dark eyes glittering, as a dagger of ice grew in her hand.

"What've you done?" Jason demanded.

"Oh, so many things," the snow goddess purred. "Your sister's not dead, if that's what you mean. She and her Hunters will make fine toys for our wolves. I thought we'd defrost them one at a time and hunt them down for amusement. Let them be the prey for once."

The wolves snarled appreciatively.

"Yes, my dears." Khione kept her eyes on Jason. "Your sister almost killed their king, you know. Lycaon's off in a cave somewhere, no doubt licking his wounds, but his minions have joined us to take revenge for their master. And soon Porphyrion will arise, and we shall rule the world."

"Traitor!" Hera shouted. "You meddlesome, D-list goddess! You aren't worthy to pour my wine, much less rule the world."

Khione sighed. "Tiresome as ever, Queen Hera. I've been wanting to shut you up for millennia."

Khione waved her hand, and ice encased the prison, sealing in the spaces between the earthen tendrils.

"That's better," the snow goddess said. "Now, demigods, about your death—"

"You're the one who tricked Hera into coming here," Jason said. "You gave Zeus the idea of closing Olympus."

The wolves snarled, and the storm spirits whinnied, ready to attack, but Khione held up her hand. "Patience, my loves. If he wants to talk, what matter? The sun is setting, and time is on our side. Of course, Jason Grace. Like snow, my voice is quiet and gentle, and very cold. It's easy for me to whisper to the other gods, especially when I am only confirming their own deepest fears. I also whispered in Aeolus's ear that he should issue an order to kill demigods. It is a small service for Gaea, but I'm sure I will be well rewarded when her sons the giants come to power."

"You could've killed us in Quebec," Jason said. "Why let us live?"

Khione wrinkled her nose. "Messy business, killing you in my father's house, especially when he insists on meeting all visitors. I did try, you remember. It would've been lovely if he'd agreed to turn you to ice. But once he'd given you guarantee of safe passage, I couldn't openly disobey him. My father is an old fool. He lives in fear of Zeus and Aeolus, but he's still powerful. Soon enough, when my new masters have awakened, I will depose Boreas and take the throne of the North Wind, but not just yet. Besides, my father did have a point. Your quest was suicidal. I fully expected you to fail."

"And to help us with that," Leo said, "you knocked our dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Those frozen wires in his head — that was your fault. You're gonna pay for that."

"You're also the one who kept Enceladus informed about us," Briar added. "We've been plagued by snowstorms the whole trip."

"Yes, I feel so close to all of you now!" Khione said. "Once you made it past Omaha, I decided to ask Lycaon to track you down so Jason could die here, at the Wolf House." Khione smiled at him. "You see, Jason, your blood as well as the daughter of Venus's spilled on this sacred ground will taint it for generations. Your demigod brethren will be outraged, especially when they find the body of Leo Valdez from Camp Half-Blood. They'll believe the Greeks have conspired with giants. It will be . . . delicious."

Leo didn't seem to understand what she was saying. But Briar knew. Her memories were returning enough for her to realize how dangerously effective Khione's plan could be. Or maybe it was just a gut feeling in her. Jason also looked like he knew what the goddess was talking about.

"You'll set demigods against demigods," he said.

"It's so easy!" said Khione. "As I told you, I only encourage what you would do anyway."

"But why?" Briar spread her hands. "Khione, you'll tear the world apart. The giants will destroy everything. You don't want that. Call off your monsters."

Khione hesitated, then laughed. "Your persuasive powers are improving, girl. But I am a goddess. You can't charmspeak me. We wind gods are creatures of chaos! I'll overthrow Aeolus and let the storms run free. If we destroy the mortal world, all the better! They never honored me, even in Greek times. Humans and their talk of global warming. Pah! I'll cool them down quickly enough. When we retake the ancient places, I will cover the Acropolis in snow."

"Improving?" Briar muttered. "They've always been this good, you bitch."

"The ancient places." Leo's eyes widened. "That's what Enceladus meant about destroy the roots of the gods. He meant Greece."

"You could join me, son of Hephaestus," Khione said. "I know you find me beautiful. It would be enough for my plan if these other two were to die. Reject that ridiculous destiny the Fates have given you. Live and be my champion, instead. Your skills would be quite useful."

Leo looked stunned. He glanced behind him, like Khione might be talking to somebody else.

Then he laughed so hard, he doubled over. "Yeah, join you. Right. Until you get bored of me and turn me into a Leosicle? Lady, nobody messes with my dragon and gets away with it. I can't believe I thought you were hot. And, besides, I have Jason, and no one can beat him. Including a goddess, so unlucky for you."

Khione's face turned red. "Hot? You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez. Very, very cold."

She shot a blast of wintry sleet at the demigods, but Leo held up his hand. A wall of fire roared to life in front of them, and the snow dissolved in a steamy cloud.

Leo grinned. "See, lady, that's what happens to snow in Texas. It — freaking — melts."

Khione hissed. "Enough of this. Hera is failing. Porphyrion is rising. Kill the demigods. Let them be our king's first meal!"

Briar raised her knives as the monsters charged.

* * *

"Ugh, not again," Briar muttered as she faced a bunch of Earthborn.

"Bri!" she heard Jason call. "Your knife!"

"Which one?" she asked, flipping her hair out of her updo. "Please get away from me, monsters!"

"Mars's!"

Briar stared down at the silver knife in her hand. This feeling was familiar. She threw the knife in Jason's direction and hoped that it got to him. She then focused on the Earthborn around her. They stared at her in awe, forgetting that they were supposed to kill her. They lowered their clubs and watch dumbfounded as she smiled and charged them. They'd smile back — until she sliced them apart with her dagger, and they melted into mounds of mud.

She caught glimpses of her other friends. Jason had ditched the wood plank, thank the gods, and was brandishing her knife as he tamed a . . . storm spirit horse? It was a strange sight to see the horse ride through monsters as Jason sliced them apart, but he made it work.

Leo had taken on Khione herself. While fighting a goddess should've been suicide, Leo was the right man for the job. She kept summoning ice daggers to throw at him, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it. His whole body flickered with red tongues of flame like he'd been doused with gasoline. He advanced on the goddess, using two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers to smash any monsters that got in his way.

Briar realized that Leo was the only reason they were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione's winter magic. Without him, they would've been frozen like the Hunters long ago. Wherever Leo went, ice melted off the stones. Even Thalia started to defrost a little when Leo stepped near her.

Khione slowly backed away. Her expression went from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer.

Briar was running out of enemies. Wolves lay in dazed heaps, and some were whimpering as they left the cabin. She stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. Jason rode his horse through the last ventus, breaking it into vapor, before going to kill the remaining wolves. Briar wheeled around and saw Leo bearing down on the goddess of snow.

"You're too late," Khione snarled. "He's awake! And don't think you've won anything here, demigods. Hera's plan will never work. You'll be at each other's throats before you can ever stop us."

Leo set his hammers ablaze and threw them at the goddess, but she turned into snow — a white powdery image of herself. Leo's hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush.

Briar smirked up at Jason. "Nice horse. Now give me my knife back."

The horse reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. Jason gave her the knife back, and it turned from silver to gold.

Then Briar heard a cracking sound behind her. The melting ice on Hera's cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, "Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"

The three demigods jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.

Leo frowned. "Uh, Tía Callida, are you getting shorter?"

"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"

What Briar saw inside the cage alarmed her. Not only was Hera sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins. "The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!"

"On it," Leo said. "Briar, I need your help. Talk to the cage."

"What?" she said.

"Talk to it. Use everything you've got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I—"

"Right." Briar cleared her throat and said, "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Looks real dark outside. Boy, I'm tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"

The more she talked, the more idiotic she sounded. Leo was never going to let her live this down. It seemed to have some effect on the cage. The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little — becoming more like tree root than rock. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, Briar had no idea. Then Leo looked at the cord and grunted in frustration. "I don't have anywhere to plug it in!"

Jason's spirit horse jumped into the pit and whinnied.

"Really?" Jason asked.

The horse dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. Leo looked dubious, but he held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse's flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the prongs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.

"Sweet!" Leo grinned. "Your horse comes with AC outlets!"

Their good mood didn't last long. On the other side of the pool, the giant's spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth.

Briar hadn't thought anything could be scarier than Enceladus.

She was wrong.

Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped. He didn't radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him — a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field.

Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon's legs; but his skin was the color of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons — daggers, axes, and full-size swords, some of them bent and bloody — maybe trophies taken from demigods eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.

"Alive!" he bellowed. "Praise to Gaea!"

"Leo," Jason said.

"Huh?" Leo's mouth was wide open. Briar stared up at the giant, fear clawing up her throat.

"You guys keep working," Jason said. "Get Hera free!"

"What are you going to do?" Briar asked. "You aren't seriously—"

"Entertain a giant?" Jason said. "I've got no choice."

"Excellent!" the giant roared as Jason approached. "An appetizer! Who are you — Hermes? Ares?"

"I'm Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."

Leo's circular saw whirred, and Briar talked to the cage in soothing tones, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. She sounded fucking idiotic, but that sounded better than being scared.

Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. "Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you."

"If you knew who I was," Jason yelled up at the giant, "you'd be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because I'm going to send you right back to Tartarus."

The giant's eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent. "So . . . we'll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demigod. I am Porphryion, king of the giants, son of Gaea. In olden times, I rose from Tatarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the gods. To start the war, I stole Zeus's queen." He grinned at the goddess's cage. "Hello, Hera."

"My husband destroyed you once, monster!" Hera said. "He'll do it again!"

"But he didn't, my dear! Zeus wasn't powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demigod to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaea is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth — and we will destroy you at the roots."

"You wouldn't dare," Hera said, but she was weakening. Briar could hear it in her voice. She kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, but the earth was still rising inside Hera's prison, covering her up to her waist.

"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees — your eldest roots torn out and burned."

The giant frowned at Briar and Leo, as if he'd just noticed them working at the cage. Jason stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion's attention.

"You said a demigod killed you," he shouted. "How, if we're so puny?"

"Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus's replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife — or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!"

He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty-foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon's feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather — storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king's call.

"Great," Leo muttered. "We needed more enemies."

"Hurry," Hera said.

"I know!" Leo snapped.

"Go to sleep, cage," Briar said. "Nice, sleepy cage. Fuck you, Leo, I look absolutely ridiculous doing this."

Porphyrion raked his spear across the top of the ruins, destroying a chimney and spraying wood and stone across the courtyard. "So, child of Zeus! I have finished my boasting. Now it's your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?"

"I'm the son of Jupiter!" Jason shouted, and for the dramatics, he rose a few feet off the ground. "I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion." Jason held out his arms, showing the tattoo of the eagle and SPQR, and to Briar's surprise, the giant seemed to recognize it.

For a moment, Porphyrion actually looked uneasy.

"I slew the Trojan sea monster," Jason continued. "I toppled the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."

"Wow, dude," Leo muttered. "You been eating red meat?"

"No," Briar said. "He's done these things. Anyway! Uh, please stop growing, plants. Good plants. Sure."

Jason launched himself at the giant. Half flying, half leaping, he landed on the giant's scaly reptilian knee and climbed up the giant's arm before Porphyrion even realized what had happened.

"You dare?" the giant bellowed.

Jason reached his shoulders and ripped a sword out of the giant's weapon-filled braids. He yelled, "For Rome!" and drove the sword into the giant's massive ear.

Lightning streaked out of the sky and blasted the sword, throwing Jason free. He rolled when he hit the ground. The giant staggered. His hair was on fire, and the side of his face was blackened from lightning. The sword had splintered in his ear. Golden ichor ran down his jaw. The other weapons were sparking and smoldering in his braids.

Porphyrion almost fell. The circle of monsters let out a collective growl and moved forward — wolves and ogres fixing their eyes on Jason.

"No!" Porphyrion yelled. He regained his balance and glared at the demigod. "I will kill him myself."

The giant raised his spear and it began to glow. "You want to play with lightning, boy? You forget. I am the bane of Zeus. I was created to destroy your father, which means I know exactly what will kill you."

Something in Porphyrion's voice told Briar he wasn't bluffing.

"Got it!" Leo yelled.

"Sleep!" Briar yelled, so forcefully, the nearest wolves fell to the ground and began snoring.

The stone and wood cage crumbled. Leo had sawed through the base of the thickest tendril and apparently cut off the cage's connection to Gaea. The tendrils turned to dust. The mud around Hera disintegrated. The goddess grew in size, glowing with power.

"Yes!" the goddess said. She threw off her black robes to reveal a white gown, her arms bedecked with golden jewelry. Her face was both terrible and beautiful, and a golden crown glowed in her long black hair. "Now I shall have my revenge!"

The giant Porphyrion backed away. He said nothing, but he gave Jason one last look of hatred. His message was clear: Another time. Then he slammed his spear against the earth, and the giant disappeared into the ground like he'd dropped down a chute.

Around the courtyard, monsters began to panic and retreat, but there was no escape for them.

Hera glowed brighter. She shouted, "Cover your eyes, my heroes!"

Briar shut her eyes and prayed to the gods that everything would be sort of alright.