“You don’t mean the prison in Upstate New York, do you? The one where they had that horrible riot?”
He shook his head. “Attica isn’t a prison. It’s a world. Athena’s favored world—or that’s what we’re taught.”
She visibly swallowed. “Attica is the region around Athens. It’s a big city named after Athena.”
Hope jumped in Piers’s chest. “Is she there? Is that her main residence? I mean, other than Mount Olympus.”
Sophie couldn’t have looked more shocked if Hades had just come knocking from the Underworld. “It’s halfway around the world,” she whispered, “and the Greek gods aren’t…real.” She trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut. They popped open again, blue fire in a pale face. “Or Ithoughtthey weren’t real until a few days ago. All that’s just stories and myths. Ancient history—here.” She addedhereas though she couldn’t quite believe there was anythingother. Piers knew better.
“Athena is as real as you and I. It’s the people of Attica that forgot her, not the other way around. When Atticans still worshiped the Olympians, the gods remained. And there was magic, not thistechnologyyou talk about.”
Her brows drew together. “Is there a way to contact Athena?”
Wariness stirred inside him. “Why would you want to do that?”
Sophie sat back, failing to look casual when, clearly, that was her misguided aim. She had no reason to pretend with him, and Piers would have to make sure she knew that. “Just say…hypothetically. Is it possible?” she asked.
He didn’t know where she was going with this, but he hated to disappoint her, especially with her thunderbolt-to-the-heart gaze so intense on him and her breath trapped in her lungs. “I’ve prayed to Athena all my life and never received an answer. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t listening. She answers those she chooses to.”
Sophie grimaced. That caged exhalation gusted out in a rush. “So how do you make yourself heard?”
From out of nowhere, a surge of dread rose inside Piers. It came with the echo of a chant, indistinct in his mind, but gut-wrenching and awful. Somehow, he knew down to the very marrow of his bones that finding the words and saying them aloud led to heartbreak and loss.
“You pray. The gods come if and when they want.” The words scraped past the stranglehold some memory had on his throat. Days of studying… Weeks of searching… But for what?
Whatever he’d discovered could only be bad, considering his visceral reaction to it. His body must remember something his brain didn’t. Piers hated that.
He cleared his throat. “Only those they choose to favor ever see or hear from them. Men aren’t meant to have a say in it.”
Sophie cocked her head. “What about women?”
“Humansaren’t meant to have a say in it.” Piers wasn’t sure how, but he knew bending those laws would be bad.
His last, indistinct moments in Thalyria tried to take shape in his mind. They stayed vague and just out of reach, slipping and sliding until he lost them again. He nearly growled in frustration. Why couldn’t he remember? What had Cat done to him? Because he had no doubt his brother’s hot-headed wife was the one who’d broken his nose and left him bruised and aching. But why? Cat was a self-centered brute, but she’d never attacked him before. So…
What hadhedone?
The question churned like spoiled meat in Piers’s stomach. He set it aside for now. From the look on Sophie’s face, her troubles were just as bewildering and pressing as his.
“What’s going on, Sophie?” He reached for her hand across the table. If he couldn’t solve his own problems, maybe he could help Sophronia with hers. “Why this sudden interest in gods you think are pure mythology? They’re not, by the way.” He had to add it. The urge was too strong. “Tell me what’s wrong, so I can try to help.” He was beginning to think he was here for that—for her—because nothing else made sense.
Sophie chewed her bottom lip, which Piers tried hard not to find distracting. “It’s why those men were chasing me. A friend of mine sent me this ice shard. He works”—she gulped down a quick breath—“workedfor a completely unhinged billionaire scientist who must’ve dug it up from somewhere. Maybe Mount Olympus.” A distraught laugh tangled in her throat, and she lowered her voice. “My friend said it’s super powerful. Or else, itmakespeople powerful. I’m not really sure. He sent it to me because I’m supposedly vaguely related to Heracles, and he somehow thought that meantIcould give the Shard of Olympus back to Athena. But I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“The Shard of Olympus?” Piers’s interest exploded, and he was already interested enough.
“Right?” A harder laugh burst from Sophie. She shook her head. “A few days ago, Athena and the rest of the Olympians were just stories to me, and even if they’re real, you don’t just dial up a goddess and say, ‘Hey girl, come get your shard back.’”
Piers wondered ifdialing upwas the equivalent of praying here. “Can you show it to me?” he asked.
Sophie sliced her head back and forth. “Not here.It glows. Those hired guns were calling it a crystal, but I think it’s ice that never melts. It’s so freaking cold.” She shivered from head to toe.
Piers tightened his hold on her hand, instinctively trying to warm her. “I’ve seen something like this before. My brother Griffin’s wife Cat has a necklace made from the same type of ice shard from Mount Olympus. It shores up her already considerable power when it’s depleted and amplifies it when it’s not.”
“Power…as in…magic?” Sophie wrinkled her nose. She didn’twantto believe. Piers could tell her skepticism wasn’t stopping her from starting to accept the truth, though.
He nodded. “I don’t think even Cat knows this about her necklace, but I’ve done some research. Those rare chunks of Olympian glacier that never melt? It seems they’ve been struck by Zeus’s thunderbolt. The intensity of the magic hardens them to rock—crystalizes them, in a way—and infuses them with a small portion of the primordial power the Elder Cyclopes used to forge Zeus’s lightning bolt. But magic only works where magic exists. It’s strong in Thalyria. Here, it’s supposed to be long gone.”
“Then what does it mean if there’s magic in the ice shard?” Just from her low, trembling question, Piers knew there was—and that Sophie had felt it.
