Jason P.O.V

Normally, walking through the streets of Quebec with Piper would have been a dream come true. But this time together felt even more special knowing that any moment could be my last. Standing there in front of the Samuel de Champlain statue across the street from Chateau Frontenac, she looked impossibly beautiful in a simple red and white chevron print dress and straw hat.

I leaned in to kiss her and she threw her arms around my neck.
"Smile lovebirds," Annabeth cooed, snapping pictures with her Kodak camera.

Blushing, Piper and I continued to kiss while Annabeth recorded this moment for posterity.
Annabeth's dove grey frock suited her cool style of beauty.

Her face was shaded by straw cloche hat with a wide brim.

"Samuel de Champlain was the one who founded the city of Quebec?" Percy asked, looking at the inscription on the base of the statue.
"So you were paying attention when I read aloud from my guidebook, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth replied with a giggle.
"Don't you mean, teet-dez-al-gus?"
A/N "Seaweed Brain" in French would be "Tête des Algues" which Percy is butchering. "Sage Fille" is "Wise Girl."
"Percy, your French is horrible."
"If you say so, sage fille."

We descended down the Escalier Frontenac to Le Petit-Champlain, part of the lower city.

The escalier "or staircase" is lined by shops and cafes. Le Petit Champlain reminded me of pictures I had seen of little villages in Europe: narrow, winding, cobblestone streets; cafes and boutiques; old world style architecture.

Something about this part of Quebec made me uneasy, mostly because it seemed to have been built along the side of a hill. I recalled Annabeth telling us that the city had been constructed on a series of cliffs to give it a defensive advantage against British attacks.
I've always been afraid of heights, specifically, falling from them. Annabeth, Percy, and Piper all admired the view of the St. Lawrence and Petit Champlain from the boardwalk behind Chateau Frontenac but looking down at the lower city and river made me dizzy. My vision was blurry and there was a ringing in my ears. I had to look away or else I would have thrown up.
"Are you alright, Jason?" Piper had asked, taking my arm.
"Nothing," I replied, "It's just my vertigo acting up again."
I had been suffering from vertigo since I got hit in the head with a brick as a kid.
A/N I looked up on the internet that one of the causes of vertigo is a traumatic brain injury.
Thalia had called an ambulance which took me to the hospital where I woke up after being unconscious for an hour.
I spent a week in the hospital, two days in a dark room with ice on my forehead.
A street over from the Escalier Frontenac is a section of Le Petit Champlain called Place Royal, a town square surrounded by stone buildings with overflowing flower boxes which looked like something out of a storybook. In the center of the square was a bust of Louis XIV, who was the king of France when Quebec was founded.

At the west end of the square is an old church called Notre Dame des Victoires.
"Under construction from 1687 to 1723," Annabeth read aloud from her guidebook, "the church was originally dedicated to the Christ Child. It was named Notre Dame de la Victoire (our lady of victory) following the Battle of Quebec in 1690 when the French colonists of Quebec defeated an expedition force from the British Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1711, the name was changed to Notre Dame des Victoires (our lady of victories) when bad weather sunk a British fleet sent to invade Quebec."
Piper, who, like Annabeth, understood French, looked at a sign on the door of Notre Dame des Victoires.
"There's going to be a choir performance in ten minutes," she said, "Are you interested?"
We decided it would be a good idea to get out of the sun and heat and sit in the shade for a while.

After the choir concert, Annabeth, Percy, and Piper took the cable car called a funicular, back up to the upper part of the city. Just looking at the damn thing made me uncomfortable, so I decided I would walk.

I climbed the Escalier Frontenac and then the aptly named Rue Côté de la Montagne. Stopping to catch my breath, I saw a man and a girl walk out of a cafe. The girl was dressed in white: frock, hat, and shoes. The skirt and tucker of her frock and her shoes had a grey floral print.

She was very pale with bluish-black hair and coffee brown eyes. I recognized her as Khione, the daughter of one of our Canadian contacts. Khione was beautiful, in an icy sort of way, but she had never interested me. She was one of those girls who do little but pout, roll their eyes, and turn their noses up contemptuously at everything. If she ever did open her mouth, it was only to be haughty and bad-tempered.
The man at her side was a similarly unpleasant looking figure. He had a gloomy face with a thin, tight-lipped mouth and his brown hair was thin and streaked with grey. I felt like I should know who he was but his face didn't quite ring a bell. He looked like a mean son-of-a-bitch who I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of.
The man took Khione's hand and kissed it.
"Always a pleasure, Mademoiselle," he said.
Khione gave him her signature eye roll-pout-upturned nose trifecta.
"Save your gallantry, Monsieur Titan," she replied, "This was purely a business meeting."
"Did your pa authorize this little meeting? I thought your family was on the Olympian side?"
"We're on no one's side but our own."
Speak of the Devil, I said to myself. The point of this little jaunt to Quebec was to track down and confront Atlas Titan and here I come across him by accident my first morning there.

When I rejoined the rest of my group at the Champlain statue, we walked across to the other side of the street to a small cobblestone alley where a number of artists had set up their wares. You could buy a painting or have your portrait drawn in pastels. While Annabeth and Piper sat for a couple of artists, Percy and I found a bench where we could have a talk.
"Guess who as I saw climbing up the mountain?" I asked him.

Reyna P.O.V

Nico came to see me at the police station during my lunch break a few days after the war council. He was walking Cerberus, his stepmother's spotted bulldog.

"Hades Di Angelo's son," I said, kneeling down and scratching Cerberus behind the ears, "At a police station? I never thought I'd live to see the day."
"I have some news about Jason," Nico replied, "He's going up to Quebec to challenge Atlas Titan."
"Why the hell would he do that? Coffee?"
"Thanks."
I lead Nico into the station's kitchen and put a pot of coffee on the stove.
"He thinks that if he sorts everything out between him and Titan, It'll stop a full-scale war between Titans and Olympians."
"That sounds like him."
I poured us each a cup of coffee. Nico likes his black while I like mine with a little milk.
"Grace started this whole thing and if you ask me, he should be the one to finish it."
"Harsh much, Neeks?"
"He was stupid enough to get involved with that Piper McLean. It's his fault we're all in this mess."
I didn't want to admit that Nico was right. Jason's affair with Piper was at the heart of this tense situation between Olympians and Titans. Poor Charles Beckendorf ended up as a casualty of Atlas Titan's jealousy and there would be more casualties if something wasn't done right away. We police couldn't give less of a damn if a bunch of gangsters went around killing each other; it made our jobs easier. But it was another thing if innocent people got caught up in their battles.
Nico finished up his coffee and bid me a good afternoon.
"There's another thing I heard," he said before walking out of the door, "Jason's getting married, to Piper."

The rest of the day was a pain. I had to keep up my appearance of being a tough girl who never let anything get to her but longed to go home and break down into tears and screams.
After everything that had happened, Jason was going to marry the bitch.
Piper McLean was the type of woman who ruined other people's lives yet never had to face any of the consequences. Men always fell in love with her and that was their downfall.
After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to go home. I changed into my favorite pair of purple pajamas and poured myself a shot of whiskey.

It's not fair, I kept saying to myself. What did Piper have that I didn't? I felt stupid for moping over unimportant things such as whether or men liked me and tried to drown these thoughts in Jack Daniels.
In my whiskey fog, I remembered the time I went to a fortune teller when I was younger. Like most little girls, I asked about my future husband. The fortune teller told that I was never going to find love and was destined to be an old maid. Perhaps she had been right, the only man I had ever loved didn't return those feelings. On top of that, he had run off and married some floozie.
If Hylla had been there, she would have slapped me and told me to pull myself together. I was just being melodramatic and feeling sorry for myself. How many suitors I had was not a measure of my worth. Most girls could catch a man but few of them could make it in the masculine world of law enforcement as I had. But I felt ashamed that I couldn't accomplish the least of what was expected of me. I was a failure because Jason didn't love me and no one else ever will.
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