Fire and Ice (A Leo Valdez fanfic) [2017]

Chapter 20: Jason

"I TOLD HIM TO IRIS-MESSAGE US!" Jason said indignantly. Piper was pacing the Zeus cabin; the door was open and Jason was watching for Leo. He'd been gone several hours and there was no sign of the snow slowing down.

"We should never have let him go alone. He could be frozen to death by Khione or Eira and none of us would even know," Piper said miserably.

"That's not true. Nico and Hazel," Jason pointed out. "They'd know. Plus, you know we couldn't have stopped him-- if Leo's anything he's stubborn."

"Fine. It's just..." Piper sighed. "I don't want to lose him again."
Jason walked over to her and squeezed her hand. Then he resumed watching out the door. Suddenly he heard what sounded like a metallic humming, distant but distinct.

"Do you hear that?" Jason said, tilting his head. "That humming?"

Piper joined Jason at the door. They listened together. The sound was definitely getting louder. Some sort of engine. Either an airplane, or...

Jason stepped out into the snow. Piper followed just in time for them to see Festus flying into view over the woods for the second time that day. Jason could see two figures on his back.

Piper let out a gasp of relief and ran across the snowy field. She tripped and nearly fell into the snow, but Jason lifted her up and hovered a few feet above the ground, flying her over to the bronze dragon. Leo climbed off Festus' back, then helped Eira down. They looked extremely cold and a little beaten up, but neither of them seemed very injured.

"Did you fight her?" Piper said when she'd finished hugging Leo and checking both of them for injuries. Jason smiled. She'd already taken up a motherly attitude with Eira after barely knowing her two days.

"Yeah," Leo said. "Well, it wasn't really me. But Eira here-- you should have seen her!"

"It wasn't that great," Eira said, blushing.

Leo snorted. "You fought off a goddess single-handedly on your second day as a demigod. That's not impressive?" He launched into a detailed explanation of the battle, and how both of them were frozen into ice blocks, and Eira broke the two of them out all by herself.

"And she started glowing a lot, and she was getting really warm, she melted the snow all around her, and Khione finally disappeared when she couldn't stand the heat."

"You helped," Eira said with a smirk. "You were glowing and burning up too."

"Yeah, but that's normal for me, Snow Queen."

Jason made eye contact with Piper to acknowledge Eira's earning of the Leo Nickname badge. But Piper had a familiar look on her face: trying to hold back a smile, a mischievous look in her eyes. She looked at Nico and Will that way, as well as Percy and Annabeth. Jason dubbed it her "ship face." Since Piper was a daughter of Aphrodite, she could usually tell when two people were in a relationship, and she definitely thought so with Leo and Eira.

Sure enough, several seconds later the question came. "So, are you dating?"

Leo and Eira glanced at each other with the same embarrassed expression Nico and Will had worn when Piper had asked them. "How did you know?" Leo said.

Piper squealed. "You are?" She waved her hands in front of her face, something a lot of people around at camp called "fangirling." Jason thought it was extremely cute.

The rest of camp had gathered around Festus, some because they wanted to see Leo but most because Festus was the warmest thing in camp. When this conversation played out, Lacy whooped and held out her hand to Mitchell, who cursed in Greek and handed her two drachma.

"You're kidding! You made bets on us?" Leo said in disbelief.

"Before capture the flag," Lacy explained. "He made me pay up after the game, but now he gets to pay me."

Eira smiled. Her resemblance to Khione was less striking when she looked happy, and even less so when she looked at Leo.

"Guys?" Percy said. "By any chance, could you heat this place up?" He was shivering, having given Annabeth his jacket.

"Oh," Eira said. "Right." She and Leo held hands, ignoring Piper's squeal of delight. Heat started to radiate from them, melting the snow around their feet and showing the grass underneath. The campers watched in awe as the snow retreated and the camp was once again bathed in September sunlight. The last trace of snow disappeared from Thalia's pine tree, and the campers cheered.