The House of Hades (The Heros of Olympus, Book 4)

SHE PUSHED BETWEEN THE BOREADS, which was like walking through a meat freezer. The air around them was so cold, it burned her face. She felt like she was breathing pure snow.

Piper tried not to look down at Jason’s frozen body as she passed. She tried not to think about her friends below, or Leo shot into the sky to a place of no return. She definitely tried not to think about the Boreads and the snow goddess who were following her.

She fixed her eyes on the figurehead.

The ship rocked under her feet. A single gust of summer air made it through the chill, and Piper breathed it in, taking it as a good omen. It was still summer out there. Khione and her brothers did not belong here.

Piper knew she couldn’t win a straight fight against Khione and two winged guys with swords. She wasn’t as clever as Annabeth, or as good at problem solving as Leo. But she did have power. And she intended to use it.

Last night, during her talk with Hazel, Piper had realized that the secret of charmspeak was a lot like using the Mist. In the past, Piper had had a lot of trouble making her charms work, because she always ordered her enemies to do what she wanted. She would yell Don’t kill us when the monster’s fondest wish was to kill them. She would put all her power into her voice and hope it was enough to overwhelm her enemy’s will.

Sometimes it worked, but it was exhausting and unreliable. Aphrodite wasn’t about head-on confrontation. Aphrodite was about subtlety and guile and charm. Piper decided she shouldn’t focus on making people do what she wanted. She needed to push them to do the things they wanted.

A great theory, if she could make it work.…

She stopped at the foremast and faced Khione. “Wow, I just realized why you hate us so much,” she said, filling her voice with pity. “We humiliated you pretty badly in Sonoma.”

Khione’s eyes glinted like iced espresso. She shot an uneasy look at her brothers.

Piper laughed. “Oh, you didn’t tell them!” she guessed. “I don’t blame you. You had a giant king on your side, plus an army of wolves and Earthborn, and you still couldn’t beat us.”

“Silence!” the goddess hissed.

The air turned misty. Piper felt frost gathering on her eyebrows and freezing her ear canals, but she feigned a smile.

“Whatever.” She winked at Zethes. “But it was pretty funny.”

“The beautiful girl must be lying,” Zethes said. “Khione was not beaten at the Wolf House. She said it was a…ah, what is the term? A tactical retreat.”

“Treats?” Cal asked. “Treats are good.”

Piper pushed the big guy’s chest playfully. “No, Cal. He means that your sister ran away.”

“I did not!” Khione shrieked.

“What did Hera call you?” Piper mused. “Right—a D-list goddess!”

She burst out laughing again, and her amusement was so genuine, Zethes and Cal started laughing too.

“That is très bon!” Zethes said. “A D-list goddess. Ha!”

“Ha!” Cal said. “Sister ran away! Ha!”

Khione’s white dress began to steam. Ice formed over Zethes’s and Cal’s mouths, plugging them up.

“Show us this secret of yours, Piper McLean,” Khione growled. “Then pray I leave you on this ship intact. If you are toying with us, I will show you the horrors of frostbite. I doubt Zethes will still want you if you have no fingers or toes…perhaps no nose or ears.”

Zethes and Cal spat the ice plugs out of their mouths.

“The pretty girl would look less pretty without a nose,” Zethes admitted.

Piper had seen pictures of frostbite victims. The threat terrified her, but she didn’t let it show.

“Come on, then.” She led the way to the prow, humming one of her dad’s favorite songs—“Summertime.”

When she got to the figurehead, she put her hand on Festus’s neck. His bronze scales were cold. There was no hum of machinery. His ruby eyes were dull and dark.

“You remember our dragon?” Piper asked.

Khione scoffed. “This cannot be your secret. The dragon is broken. Its fire is gone.”

“Well, yes…” Piper stroked the dragon’s snout.

She didn’t have Leo’s power to make gears turn or circuits spark. She couldn’t sense anything about the workings of a machine. All she could do was speak her heart and tell the dragon what he most wanted to hear. “But Festus is more than a machine. He’s a living creature.”

“Ridiculous,” the goddess spat. “Zethes, Cal—gather the frozen demigods from below. Then we shall break open the sphere of winds.”

“You could do that, boys,” Piper agreed. “But then you wouldn’t see Khione humiliated. I know you’d like that.”

The Boreads hesitated.

“Hockey?” Cal asked.

“Almost as good,” Piper promised. “You fought at the side of Jason and the Argonauts, didn’t you? On a ship like this, the first Argo.”

“Yes,” Zethes agreed. “The Argo. Much like this, but we did not have a dragon.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Khione snapped.

Piper felt ice forming on her lips.

“You could shut me up,” she said quickly. “But you want to know my secret power—how I will destroy you, and Gaea, and the giants.”

Hatred seethed in Khione’s eyes, but she withheld her frost.

“You—have—no—power,” she insisted.

“Spoken like a D-list goddess,” Piper said. “One who never gets taken seriously, who always wants more power.”

She turned to Festus and ran her hand behind his metal ears. “You’re a good friend, Festus. No one can truly deactivate you. You’re more than a machine. Khione doesn’t understand that.”

She turned to the Boreads. “She doesn’t value you, either, you know. She thinks she can boss you around because you’re demigods, not full-fledged gods. She doesn’t understand that you’re a powerful team.”

“A team,” Cal grunted. “Like the Ca-na-di-ens.”

He had to struggle with the word since it was more than two syllables. He grinned and looked very pleased with himself.

“Exactly,” Piper said. “Just like a hockey team. The whole is greater than the parts.”

“Like a pizza,” Cal added.

Piper laughed. “You are smart, Cal! Even I underestimated you.”

“Wait, now,” Zethes protested. “I am smart also. And good-looking.”

“Very smart,” Piper agreed, ignoring the good-looking part. “So put down the wind bomb, and watch Khione get humiliated.”

Zethes grinned. He crouched and rolled the ice sphere across the deck.

“You fool!” Khione yelled.

Before the goddess could go after the sphere, Piper cried, “Our secret weapon, Khione! We’re not just a bunch of demigods. We’re a team. Just like Festus isn’t only a collection of parts. He’s alive. He’s my friend. And when his friends are in trouble, especially Leo, he can wake up on his own.”

She willed all her confidence into her voice—all her love for the metal dragon and everything he’d done for them.

The rational part of her knew this was hopeless. How could you start a machine with emotions?

But Aphrodite wasn’t rational. She ruled through emotions. She was the oldest and most primordial of the Olympians, born from the blood of Ouranos churning in the sea. Her power was more ancient than that of Hephaestus, or Athena, or even Zeus.

For a terrible moment, nothing happened. Khione glared at her. The Boreads began to come out of their daze, looking disappointed.

“Never mind our plan,” Khione snarled. “Kill her!”

As the Boreads raised their swords, the dragon’s metal skin grew warm under Piper’s hand. She dove out of the way, tackling the snow goddess, as Festus turned his head one hundred and eighty degrees and blasted the Boreads, vaporizing them on the spot. For some reason, Zethes’s sword was spared. It clunked to the deck, still steaming.

Piper scrambled to her feet. She spotted the sphere of winds at the base of the foremast. She ran for it, but before she could get close, Khione materialized in front of her in a swirl of frost. Her skin glowed bright enough to cause snow blindness.

“You miserable girl,” she hissed. “You think you can defeat me—a goddess?”

At Piper’s back, Festus roared and blew steam, but Piper knew he couldn’t breathe fire again without hitting her too.

About twenty feet behind the goddess, the ice sphere began to crack and hiss.

Piper was out of time for subtlety. She yelled and raised her dagger, charging the goddess.

Khione grabbed her wrist. Ice spread over Piper’s arm. The blade of Katoptris turned white.

The goddess’s face was only six inches from hers. Khione smiled, knowing she had won.

“A child of Aphrodite,” she chided. “You are nothing.”

Festus creaked again. Piper could swear he was trying to shout encouragement.

Suddenly her chest grew warm—not with anger or fear, but with love for that dragon; and Jason, who was depending on her; and her friends trapped below; and Leo, who was lost and would need her help.

Maybe love was no match for ice…but Piper had used it to wake a metal dragon. Mortals did superhuman feats in the name of love all the time. Mothers lifted cars to save their children. And Piper was more than just mortal. She was a demigod. A hero.

The ice melted on her blade. Her arm steamed under Khione’s grip.

“Still underestimating me,” Piper told the goddess. “You really need to work on that.”

Khione’s smug expression faltered as Piper drove her dagger straight down.

The blade touched Khione’s chest, and the goddess exploded in a miniature blizzard. Piper collapsed, dazed from the cold. She heard Festus clacking and whirring, the reactivated alarm bells ringing.

The bomb.

Piper struggled to rise. The sphere was ten feet away, hissing and spinning as the winds inside began to stir.

Piper dove for it.

Her fingers closed around the bomb just as the ice shattered and the winds exploded.