Camp Half-Blood

Everyone at Camp Half-Blood thought their leader was untouchable. The mashup child—the daughter of every god and goddess, the girl who had died and returned, who had fought Kronos and Luke and still stood strong—wasn’t just the camp’s leader. She was its heartbeat. The younger campers copied her stance when she sparred, the older campers respected her orders, and even Chiron admitted she had a way of uniting everyone when nothing else could. So when she came back from weekends in the mortal world with new bruises, everyone believed her excuses. “Training accident.” “Got too close to the climbing wall lava.” “Pegasus kicked me.” Nobody questioned it. Why would they? If she could go toe-to-toe with Titans, what could possibly hurt her? But Percy noticed the way her smile dimmed whenever