Where You Go ― Jason Grace

xiii. the after

THE AFTER WAS a blur.

Nico told Ophelia what she, Jason, and Piper missed. After the explosion, giant eagles had plucked the three out of the sky and brought them to safety. But Leo didn't reappear. The entire Hephaestus cabin scoured the valley, finding bits and pieces of the Argo II's broken hull, but no sign of Festus the dragon or his master.

All the monsters had been destroyed or scattered. Greek and Roman casualties were heavy, but not nearly as bad as they might have been.

Overnight, the satyrs and nymphs disappeared into the woods for a convocation of the Cloven Elders. In the morning, Grover Underwood reappeared to announce that they could not sense the Earth Mother's presence. Nature was more or less back to normal.

Their plan had worked. Gaea had been separated from her source of power, charmed to sleep, then atomized in the combined explosion of Leo's fire and Octavian's man-made comet.

An immortal could never die, but now Gaea would be like her husband, Ouranos. The earth would continue to function as normal, just as they sky did, but Gaea was now so dispersed and powerless that she could never again form a consciousness.

At least, that was the hope...

Octavian the stulte would be remembered for saving Rome by hurling himself into the sky in a fiery ball of death. But it was Leo Valdez who had made the real sacrifice.

The victory celebration at camp was muted, due to grief—not just for Leo, but also for the many others who had died in battle. Shrouded demigods, both Greek and Roman, were burned at the campfire.

Jeremy, one of Ophelia's little half-brothers, was one of the fallen. He was thirteen, just a few weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday.

Things didn't get easier from there. After the funeral, Nico and the seven surviving demigods met on the porch of the Big House.

Jason hung his head, even his glasses lost in shadow. "We should have been there at the end. We could've helped Leo."

"It's not right," Piper agreed, wiping away her tears. "All that work getting the physician's cure, for nothing."

Hazel broke down crying. "Piper, where's the cure? Bring it out."

Bewildered, Piper reached into her belt pouch. She produced the chamois-cloth package, but when she unfolded the cloth it was empty.

All eyes turned to Hazel.

"How?" Annabeth asked.

Ophelia swallowed hard. "In Delos, Leo pulled me, Hazel, and Frank aside. He pleaded with us to help him."

Through her tears, Hazel explained how she had switched the physician's cure for an illusion—a trick of the Mist—so that Leo could keep the real vial. Frank told them about Leo's plan to destroy a weakened Gaea with one massive fiery explosion. After talking with Nike and Apollo, Leo had been certain that such an explosion would kill any mortal within a quarter mile, so he knew he would have to get far away from Everyone.

"He wanted to do it alone," Frank said. "He thought there would be a slim chance that he, a son of Hephaestus, could survive the fire, but if anyone was with him... He said that Ophelia, Hazel, and I, being Roman, would understand about sacrifice. But he knew the rest of you would never allow it."

"He wanted me to make sure he was alone," Ophelia whispered. "He didn't want anyone else getting hurt in the crossfire."

At first the others looked angry, like they wanted to scream and throw things. But as Frank, Hazel, and Ophelia talked, the group's rage seemed to dissipate. It was hard to be mad at the trio when they were all crying. And... the plan was exactly the sort of sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.