Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

031, i prayed for times like these

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SILVIANA          DUVALL

If Sylvie Duvall had one more panic attack today, she was going to institutionalize herself.

There wasn't really much she could do except for panic, though. She'd already paced the deck of their flying warship, the Argo II, forty-eight times, checking and double-checking everything to ensure nothing of was out of place or out of order. She'd already made sure Annabeth Chase told her the plan a million times over—and the backup plan, and the backup plan for the backup plan. She'd already yanked aside their war-crazed chaperone, Coach Gleeson Hedge, and sent him down to his cabin so that he was out of the way. At one point, she'd even peered so far over the ship's side to check for the white "We come in peace" flag that she would've dived overboard if Jason Grace hadn't been watching over her in worry.

The crew tried telling Sylvie to chill, but they must not have known her that well. She'd reached a point where she refused to touch the camp necklace around her neck, in fear that one more tug of the cord would have it snapping off. Unfortunately, that meant the olive green, knitted, fingerless glove on her right hand received the wrath of most of her nervous energy. There was only so much fidgeting it could take before the thread unraveled completely—and that would be majorly difficult, considering the glove concealed a Celestial bronze dagger named Halcyon.

Long story.

Sylvie wasn't even worried much about the state of her glove right now. She just hoped to all the gods that everything was in order. Even that mysterious chill she'd been feeling since the ship launched. That could wait, for at least an hour. The universe could give her one less thing to worry about, just this once.

Because, yeah. If you're new here—this was Silviana Henriette Duvall. A demigod that could give Phobos a run for his money, the literal godly personification of fear and panic. She'd been second-guessing herself even before the warship descended through the clouds. What if this was a bad idea? What if they spontaneously blew up? What if the Romans panicked and attacked them on sight?

The Argo II definitely did not look friendly. Two hundred feet long, with a bronze-plated hull, mounted repeating crossbows fore and aft, a flaming metal dragon for a figurehead, and two rotating ballistae amidships that could fire explosive bolts powerful enough to blast through concrete.

Yeah. It wasn't the most appropriate ride for a meet-and-greet with the life-long rivals.

Sylvie had tried to give the Romans a heads-up. She'd asked Leo Valdez to send one of his special inventions—a holographic scroll—to alert their friends inside the camp. Hopefully, the message had gotten through. Sylvie wouldn't know. She'd immediately broken down into another fit of panic just by Leo pulling the invention out. She didn't even let Leo paint WASSUP? on the bottom of the hull because she'd fretted so hard. She wasn't sure the Romans had a sense of humor.