“I just…I wanted…” Don groaned, his eyes becoming brighter.
“Save your strength,” I pleaded.
“For what?” He croaked a grotesque version of a laugh. “I wanted to ask: Does it hurt? Reincarnation?”
My eyes were too blurry to see properly. “I—I’ve never reincarnated, Don. When I became human, that was different, I think. But I hear reincarnation is peaceful. Beautiful.”
The dryads and fauns nodded and murmured in agreement, though their expressions betrayed a mixture of fear, sorrow, and desperation, making them not the best sales team for the Great Unknown.
Lavinia cupped her hands around the faun’s fingers. “You’re a hero, Don. You’re a great friend.”
“Hey…cool.” He seemed to have trouble locating Lavinia’s face. “I’m scared, Lavinia.”
“I know, babe.”
“I hope…maybe I come back as a hemlock? That would be like…an action-hero plant, right?”
Lavinia nodded, her lips quivering. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.”
“Cool…. Hey, Apollo, you—you know the difference between a faun and a satyr…?”
He smiled a little wider, as if ready to deliver the punchline. His face froze that way. His chest stopped moving. Dryads and fauns began to cry. Lavinia kissed the faun’s hand, then pulled a piece of bubble gum from her bag and reverently slipped it into Don’s shirt pocket.
A moment later, his body collapsed with a noise like a relieved sigh, crumbling into fresh loam. In the spot where his heart had been, a tiny sapling emerged from the soil. I immediately recognized the shape of those miniature leaves. Not a hemlock. A laurel—the tree I had created from poor Daphne, and whose leaves I had decided to make into wreaths. The laurel, the tree of victory.
One of the dryads glanced at me. “Did you do that…?”
I shook my head. I swallowed the bitter taste from my mouth.
“The only difference between a satyr and a faun,” I said, “is what we see in them. And what they see in themselves. Plant this tree somewhere special.” I looked up at the dryads. “Tend it and make it grow healthy and tall. This was Don the faun, a hero.”
If you hate me, fine
Just don’t hit me in the gut
Or, well, anywhere
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were almost as hard as battle itself. War leaves a huge mess that cannot simply be addressed with a mop and a bucket.
We cleared the rubble and shored up the most precarious damaged buildings. We put out fires, both literal and figurative. Terminus had made it through the battle, though he was weak and shaken. His first announcement was that he was formally adopting little Julia. The girl seemed delighted, though I wasn’t sure how Roman law would work out adoption-by-statue. Tyson and Ella were safely accounted for. Once Ella learned that I hadn’t messed up the summoning after all, she announced that she and Tyson were going back to the bookstore to clean up the mess, finish the Sibylline Books, and feed the cat, not necessarily in that order. Oh, and she was also gratified Frank was alive. As for me…I got the feeling she was still making up her mind.
Peaches left us once more to go help the local dryads and fauns, but he promised us, “Peaches,” which I took to mean that we would see him again soon.
With Thalia’s help, Reyna somehow managed to find One Eye and Short Ears, the abused pegasi from the emperors’ chariot. She talked to them in soothing tones, promised them healing, and convinced them to come back with her to camp, where she spent most of her time dressing their wounds and providing them with good food and plenty of open air. The animals seemed to recognize that Reyna was a friend of their immortal forefather, the great Pegasus himself. After what they’d been through, I doubted they would have trusted anyone else to care for them.
We didn’t count the dead. They weren’t numbers. They were people we had known, friends we had fought with.
We lit the funeral pyres all on one night, at the base of Jupiter’s temple, and shared the traditional feast for the dead to send our fallen comrades off to the Underworld. The Lares turned out in full force until the hillside was a glowing field of purple, ghosts outnumbering the living.
I noticed that Reyna stood back and let Frank officiate. Praetor Zhang had quickly regained his strength. Dressed in full armor and his maroon cloak, he gave his eulogy while the legionnaires listened with awed reverence, as one does when the speaker has recently sacrificed himself in a fiery explosion and then, somehow, made it out alive with his underwear and cape intact.
Hazel helped, too, going through the ranks and comforting those who were crying or looking shell-shocked. Reyna stayed at the edge of the crowd, leaning on her crutches, gazing wistfully at the legionnaires as if they were loved ones she hadn’t seen in a decade and now barely recognized.
As Frank finished his speech, a voice next to me said, “Hey.”
Thalia Grace wore her usual black and silver. In the light of the funeral pyres, her electric-blue eyes turned piercing violet. Over the past few days, we had spoken a few times, but it had all been surface talk: where to bring supplies, how to help the wounded. We had avoided the subject.
“Hey,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She folded her arms and stared at the fire. “I don’t blame you, Apollo. My brother…” She hesitated, steadying her breath. “Jason made his own choices. Heroes have to do that.”
Somehow, having her not blame me only made me feel guiltier and more unworthy. Ugh, human emotions were like barbed wire. There was just no safe way to grab hold of them or get through them.
“I’m so sorry,” I said at last.
“Yeah. I know.” She closed her eyes as if listening for a distant sound—a wolf cry in the forest, perhaps. “I got Reyna’s letter, a few hours before Diana received your summons. An aura—one of the breeze nymphs—she plucked it out of the mail and flew it to me personally. So dangerous for her, but she did it anyway.” Thalia picked at one of the buttons on her lapel: Iggy and the Stooges, a band older than she was by several generations. “We came as fast as we could, but still…I had some time to cry and scream and throw things.”
I remained very still. I had vivid memories of Iggy Pop throwing peanut butter, ice cubes, watermelons, and other dangerous objects at his fans during his concerts. I found Thalia more intimidating than him by far.
“It seems so cruel,” she continued. “We lose someone and finally get them back, only to lose them again.”
I wondered why she used the word we. She seemed to be saying that she and I shared this experience—the loss of an only sibling. But she had suffered so much worse. My sister couldn’t die. I couldn’t lose her permanently.
Then, after a moment of disorientation, like I’d been flipped upside down, I realized she wasn’t talking about me losing someone. She was talking about Artemis—Diana.
Was she suggesting that my sister missed me, even grieved for me as Thalia grieved for Jason?
Thalia must have read my expression. “The goddess has been beside herself,” she said. “I mean that literally. Sometimes she gets so worried she splits into two forms, Roman and Greek, right in front of me. She’ll probably get mad at me for telling you this, but she loves you more than anyone else in the world.”