“They could enchant, persuade, even command if they wished. Entire armies have been said to fall silent at but a whisper.”
I stared at him before shaking my head a little, as if trying to rid myself of the image he painted.
“That sounds wildly impractical,” I told him, and he arched an eyebrow slightly.
“You find power impractical?”
“I find accidentally hypnotizing people during casual conversation a bit of a social nightmare, yes.” For a second, I thought I saw the ghost of a smile threaten again, but it faded quickly.
“They were not cruel beings,” he continued, ignoring my comment.
“They were loyal. Devoted to their creator and to the role he had given them.” He did not pause after saying it, nor did he look as though he expected me to interrupt. Instead, his gaze drifted briefly toward the dark window behind the desk, as if the story he was telling reached far beyond the walls of the office around us.
“For a time, they existed as they were meant to, guardians placed at the side of a daughter Zeus valued greatly. Their purpose was simple, to watch over her, to guide her, and to ensure that nothing from beyond Olympus could ever reach her without consequence.” Something about the quiet certainty in his voice made it clear that he wasn’t repeating some myth half-remembered from a dusty book. He spoke like someonedescribing history, not legend, and the distinction made a strange unease settle low in my stomach.
“But the gods were never known for their restraint. Zeus made a bargain with his brother, one that required the girl to be taken from Olympus and delivered into the Underworld,” he continued, his tone carrying the faintest thread of dry contempt now. As if nothing in the world would have made him give up his own child.
My brows pulled together slightly as I tried to follow the chain of events unfolding in his explanation. The names meant very little to me. Yet the way he described them made it sound less like mythology and more like some political arrangement between very powerful, very dangerous beings.
“And the Sirens were involved in this somehow?” I asked carefully, and his eyes returned to mine.
“They were used…” he said before correcting himself,
“Commanded to lure the girl beyond the protections that surrounded Olympus. To guide her somewhere she should never have been.” That didn’t sit particularly well with me.
“So, they were tricked or basically forced into helping kidnap her,” I deduced, feeling a strange spike of anger I didn’t fully understand. Of course, there was the injustice of it all, but this felt heavier, more personal somehow.
“Precisely.” There was no hesitation in the answer, no attempt to soften the truth of it.
“Yet when the girl was taken, blame fell not upon the god who ordered it, but upon those who carried out his will.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Of course it did, I thought bitterly, as that sounded depressingly familiar, and again, I couldn’t say why.
“And the punishment?” I prompted quietly.
Oblivion held my gaze for a moment longer before answering,
“Their wings were taken from them.”
For a second, the words didn’t fully register. My brain seemed to stall somewhere between confusion and disbelief before finally catching up with the image those four words produced.
“Wait… they had wings?”
“They were not creatures of the sea, that is another lie your world prefers to tell itself. The Sirens were closer to angels than monsters,” he said evenly, and I blinked slowly.
Eleven angel-like beings were stripped of their wings and cast out because a god wanted to avoid responsibility for his own decisions. It was crazy, and right now, that was saying something, considering all I had witnessed in the last few days.
“Well, that’s a truly spectacular abuse of authority,” I muttered under my breath. The corner of his mouth lifted, nearly giving me a full smile this time.
“They were cast out of Olympus and forced into the mortal realm,” he continued, his voice lowering slightly as though the words carried weight even now.
“Their wings taken, their power diminished, their purpose destroyed.” A strange heaviness settled in my chest as he spoke, something I couldn’t quite explain. I told myself it was sympathy, the normal human reaction to hearing about something unjust. But the feeling ran deeper than that, almost like an echo.
“They became human,” he finished, and that finally snapped me out of the strange quiet that had settled over my thoughts.
“O… kay,” I said slowly, folding my arms again as I tried to process everything he had just dropped into my lap,
“I’m not saying your gods sound particularly pleasant to work for, but turning immortal angel-things into humans feels like a bit of an overreaction.” His gaze sharpened slightly.
