“Have you seen one?” Kaia wiggles toward the edge of her chair, as if chasing down a herd of murderous Ipotane sounds like a fine idea to her.
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know?” she asks.
I think the smile that twists my face must scare her a little because her eyes lose some of their eager glitter. “Bedtime stories.” I leave out Mother’s favorite part—how if I didn’t rat out someone’s lies, she would stir a herd of Ipotane into a frenzy and then drop me into the middle of it, weaponless and alone.
Nerissa gives me a disapproving look, sweeping it to Griffin next. “These don’t sound like creatures you should approach.”
“That’s why we need the Chaos Wizard,” I explain. “So we don’t blunder around and get ourselves killed.”
“Chaos.Sounds like fun. Not very reassuring, though.” Carver picks up a goat cheese–filled phyllo wrap and inspects it with a critical eye. “Can’t we find a Tell-Them-What-They-Want-To-Know Wizard?” he asks.
I push my own wrap to the far side of my plate because goat cheese—gah! “Life would be too easy if we had any of those,” I say dryly.
“What about an Oracle? They seem to like you.” Carver pops the goaty atrocity into his mouth.
I shrug. “I’ve seen two, and neither of them killed me.” In fact, they were more than helpful. “But Oracles are about judgment and doling out magic, weapons, or death. You can’t just ask questions and get answers. And a Chaos Wizard isn’t—”
“He has nothing to do with wreaking havoc or creating disorder,” Piers interrupts me.
I blink. Set down my fork. “Perhaps you’d like to finish my explanation for me?” I ask sarcastically.
Piers does, as if that were a real invitation. “In this case, the word reverts to its original meaning. Before the cosmos took shape, there was only Chaos—a whirling mass without form.”
“I just had this lesson!” Kaia exclaims. “From Chaos, Gaia emerged. Her son, Uranus, fashioned the first world. From the two of them, all life was made.”
Piers nods. “Their children, among others, were the Titans. The Titans birthed our Olympians.”
“Then the Titans and the Olympians warred. I’m not sure why.” Kaia’s face falls. “My tutor hasn’t gotten to that part yet.”
I jump in before Piers can. “The Titan king was so intent on maintaining his power that he started swallowing his babies whole to keep them from growing up and overthrowing him. Poseidon, Hades, their sisters—they all went right down the hatch, unharmed, but gone. No one liked that, especially not Zeus, who escaped being eaten and then freed his siblings. He slipped his father a potion that made the Titan king vomit everyone back up. The New Gods and the Old fought bitterly and for a small eternity before Zeus and his brothers finally killed their father. Their victory ushered in the new age.”
Piers looks at me like he can’t quite believe I just summed up the longest, most important war in the history of the universe in a few sentences. I smirk. I’m clever like that.
“After winning the War of Gods,” Piers adds, apparently needing the last word, “Zeus banished the Titans to Tartarus.”
Ah, Tartarus. Those Olympians don’t fool around with eternal torment. They have a whole realm just for that. “Actually,” I say, because I can’t help needling Piers with information he left out, undoubtedly to simplify matters for us idiots around the table, “Cronus, the Titan king, got to go to Elysium, even though he didn’t deserve it, and his war leader, Atlas, was cursed to hold up the heavens for all of eternity.”
“And that’s how the Olympians came to power?” Kaia asks.
I nod. I knew all this and much more by the time I was half her age, but this kind of learning is neither taught nor prized in Sinta. Southern Hoi Polloi are usually about as versed in ancient history as northern Magoi are in farming. But now Kaia has her royal tutor, and I’m constantly filling in knowledge gaps for the rest of the family. Well, not for Piers. With the amount of time he spends in the library, he could probably teach me a thing or two—not that I wouldeveradmit it.
“Zeus and Hera took over, and the Dodekatheon was formed—twelve Gods to rule Olympus. Zeus eventually got bored, created man, a few more worlds, et cetera, et cetera.” I wave a hand in the air. “He impregnated a bunch of mortal women and at least one Titan princess, and here we are.”
Anatole quirks a grizzled brow. “Here we are?”
“What Cat means,” Griffin clarifies, obviously remembering a recent conversation we had at the realm dinner, “is that the Titan princess had a son. Zeus took him from Tartarus and created Thalyria for him. He was the Origin of this world—and its first king. He ruled until his own Demigod children struck him down and then warred amongst themselves, eventually splitting Thalyria into three realms—Sinta, Tarva, and Fisa.”
Griffin cuts me a sharp look, the few remaining pieces of the puzzle that used to be me slamming neatly into place. “Fisa’s royal house is the only one still blood-related to the Origin. That means Zeus is Cat’s great, great, great—”
I wave my hand in the air again. “Go back a few millennia.”
“Grandfather,” Griffin finishes.
I frown at him. “You don’t have to sound so put out about it.”
“It’s just so…” He stops talking, probably trying to figure out a way to say it’s incredibly disturbing without offending me.
