More sorcery. Thistime, it was called a shower.
Piers stood under the hot stream of water, groaning. Sophronia probably thought he was dying in here, but he couldn’t help himself. It was incredible. The whole room was. Human waste flushed away at the press of a button. Water turned on and off with a flick of the wrist. Bright lights that required neither oil nor wick. Soap that smelled just like something you could eat. He wanted to lick it off his arm and see what it tasted like. He didn’t, but he was tempted. The bubbles were hard to resist.
The only thing intruding on Piers’s bathroom bliss was wishing he could tell his family about the wonders of this place. His sisters, especially, would love it. Egeria would explore every nook and cranny, discovering how things worked. Jocasta would quietly observe until she produced a pearl of insight that would transform everyone’s vision of things. And Kaia. His heart pinched. Her boundless excitement would be contagious.
Piers squeezed his eyes shut. Would he ever see his family again? Not only his three sisters, but Griffin and Carver, too? His parents? He’d always lived in the middle of a constant throng of people, activity, and projects, and suddenly finding himself lost and alone—well, not quite alone—made it hard to breathe sometimes. The truth was, he didn’t know how to get back to them—if he evencouldget back to them. And it was hard to make a plan when he didn’t know where he was or why he’d ended up here.
The one thing he did know was that humans didn’t travel between the gods’ worlds. Gods could. Magical creatures could. But not regular people. Which meant something had gone colossally wrong.
Knowing where he was would help. “Earth” meant nothing to him, but maybe what Sophronia called her home world was just a different name for something hedidknow. It was too big for Atlantis, too pleasant—despite the ruffians chasing an innocent woman—for Tartarus, and he’d already ruled out the Underworld. It definitely wasn’t Thalyria, even if he took into consideration the places he wasn’t familiar with, such as the nearly inaccessible Ice Plains. The northern reaches of Thalyria weren’t quite God Touched, but they were almost dangerous enough to be so, especially with Mount Olympus looming in the distance.
Which brought him back to Attica. Athena’s favored world.
But that didn’t add up, either. There was magic here. Wasn’t there? Sophronia called it technology, but to him, it seemed synonymous so far.
“Are you okay in there?” she called through the door.
Piers reluctantly turned off the water. “Your turn in just a moment,” he called back.
He’d been hesitant to go up into this hired chamber with her, but she’d insisted, and in the end, he didn’t appear to have the correct currency to pay for his own space. He’d pulled out several gold coins, but Sophronia had just closed his hand back around them, her eyes wide, telling him they’d look into that later, when they had time.
“There’s no hurry. I took a shower this morning.” She paused, laughing a little. The sound made Piers’s skin tighten. “Although, that wasbeforeI got tackled in a filthy New York alley.”
It was suddenly hard not to picture her in this very shower. Warm water, soap and suds, hands gliding all over her wet, heated body. A low groan escaped him as he pushed at the sliding doors, opening them and stepping out of the box, the perfectly transparent glass now clouded with steam and moisture.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You’re pretty beat up. That nose…”
Cool air swirled over him, and Piers reached for the fluffy white drying cloth the hotel provided. His nose ached somewhat. The rest of him seemed fine. He didn’tlookexactly fine—the miraculously clear mirror in the bathroom told him so—but he’d been more broken and battered than this. War wasn’t fun, which was why he’d wanted to avoid more of it.
He cinched the big cloth around his waist, frustrated. What wasn’t he remembering?
Meet Griffin and Cat.
Avoid more bloodshed.
Protect his family.
Griffin and his ferocious wife had already conquered two realms. Did they really need a third? Cat’s ambition would get his family killed. He needed to stop it—stopher—before it was too late.
He could’ve sworn he’d found a solution. What was it? And how had it landed him here?
He looked around the steam-clouded bathroom, but no clues jumped out at him. Since there were extra drying cloths, he used a second one to scrub his hair. “That noseis fine,” he finally answered. “I fixed it.”
“What? Like, yourself?”
He scoffed. “I hardly need a healer for that.”
“Okaaaay.” Pause. “Do you like the other outfit?”
Piers winced. Sophronia had purchased more clothing for him when he hadn’t been looking. He blamed the wonder of waterproof and that fascinating zipper contraption. It wasn’t that he was ungrateful. Sophronia was kind and thoughtful. He just didn’t want her spending her money on him, and especially on useless items, such as those thin, tiny pants. What was a man supposed to do with those things?
“Everything’s perfect,” he called back. “Thank you.”
He donned the same cargo pants and sweater he’d worn before. They were still fresh enough. Finished in the bathroom, he hung up the drying cloths, finger combed his hair, and pulled open the door. Sophronia was right on the other side of it.
He stopped short, warmth surging through him.
She sucked in a breath. “Sorry.” She backed up a step. “It was just… We were talking.”
