The Last Olympian

you’ve always known that, deep down.”
    I stared at her. Maybe I wasn’t the brightest guy in the world when it came to girls, but I was pretty sure Rachel had just dumped me, which was lame considering we’d never even been together.
    “So . . . what,” I said. “‘Thanks for bringing me to Olympus. See ya.’ Is that what you’re saying?”
    Rachel stared at the fire.
    “Percy Jackson,” Hestia said. “Rachel has told you all she can. Her moment is coming, but your decision approaches even more rapidly. Are you prepared?”
    I wanted to complain that no, I wasn’t even close to prepared.
    I looked at Pandora’s jar, and for the first time I had an urge to open it. Hope seemed pretty useless to me right now. So many of my friends were dead. Rachel was cutting me off. Annabeth was angry with me. My parents were asleep down in the streets somewhere while a monster army surrounded the building. Olympus was on the verge of falling, and I’d seen so many cruel things the gods had done: Zeus destroying Maria di Angelo, Hades cursing the last Oracle, Hermes turning his back on Luke even when he knew his son would turn evil.
    Surrender , Prometheus’s voice whispered in my ear. Otherwise your home will be destroyed. Your precious camp will burn.
    Then I looked at Hestia. Her red eyes glowed warmly. I remembered the images I’d seen in her hearth—friends and family, everyone I cared about.
    I remembered something Chris Rodriguez had said: There’s no point in defending camp if you guys die. All our friends are here . And Nico, standing up to his father, Hades: If Olympus falls , he said, your own palace’s safety doesn’t matter .
    I heard footsteps. Annabeth and Grover came back into the throne room and stopped when they saw us. I probably had a pretty strange look on my face.
    “Percy?” Annabeth didn’t sound angry anymore—just concerned. “Should we, um, leave again?”
    Suddenly I felt like someone had injected me with steel. I understood what to do.
    I looked at Rachel. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? I mean . . . you talked to Chiron, right?”
    She managed a faint smile. “You’re worried about me doing something stupid?”
    “But I mean . . . will you be okay?”
    “I don’t know,” she admitted. “That kind of depends on whether you save the world, hero.”
    I picked up Pandora’s jar. The spirit of Hope fluttered inside, trying to warm the cold container.
    “Hestia,” I said, “I give this to you as an offering.”
    The goddess tilted her head. “I am the least of the gods. Why would you trust me with this?”
    “You’re the last Olympian,” I said. “And the most important.”
    “And why is that, Percy Jackson?”
    “Because Hope survives best at the hearth,” I said. “Guard it for me, and I won’t be tempted to give up again.”
    The goddess smiled. She took the jar in her hands and it began to glow. The hearth fire burned a little brighter.
    “Well done, Percy Jackson,” she said. “May the gods bless you.”
    “We’re about to find out.” I looked at Annabeth and Grover. “Come on, guys.”
    I marched toward my father’s throne.
    The seat of Poseidon stood just to the right of Zeus’s, but it wasn’t nearly as grand. The molded black leather seat was attached to a swivel pedestal, with a couple of iron rings on the side for fastening a fishing pole (or a trident). Basically it looked like a chair on a deep-sea boat, that you would sit in if you wanted to hunt shark or marlin or sea monsters.
    Gods in their natural state are about twenty feet tall, so I could just reach the edge of the seat if I stretched my arms.
    “Help me up,” I told Annabeth and Grover.
    “Are you crazy?” Annabeth asked.
    “Probably,” I admitted.
    “Percy,” Grover said, “the gods really don’t appreciate people sitting in their thrones. I mean like turn-you-into-apile-of-ashes don’t appreciate it.”
    “I need to get his attention,” I said. “It’s the only way.”
    They exchanged uneasy looks.
    “Well,” Annabeth said, “this’ll get his attention.”
    They linked their arms to make a step, then boosted me onto the throne. I felt like a baby with my feet so high off the ground. I looked around at the other gloomy, empty thrones, and I could imagine what it would be like sitting on the Olympian Council—so much power but so much arguing, always eleven other gods trying to get their way. It would be easy to get paranoid, to look out