Page 219 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Cali settled in beside me, sipping on her own cup, her hair still a hot mess.

Freya looked a touch bewildered and more than a little skeptical as she eyed the group of us. I couldn’t tell if she was hunting for motives or waiting for one of us to jump her.

“Hello?” Cali finally grumbled irritably. “Someone? Anyone? Did somebody die?”

“Freya is attempting to decipher letters between Reagan and Adrastos. He called for the hit on Valora’s calling because he was preventing the reunification of ‘TGC’.”

Cali blinked, glancing between us before downing another mouthful. “Oh—so not at all strategizing how we’re retaliating to the attempted assassination on our current queen? Got it.”

“I’m marinating,” Freya said simply, picking up a monstrous paperback copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot and scowling when she noticed the annotations. “Cyrus was sticking his nose in my business,” she added primly as she snapped the book closed and set it atop Persuasion by Jane Austen and Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning—one of my favorites.

“It’s right on the board,” I countered.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Well, maybe you’d have answers by now if you had.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I have theories.”

“Oh boy, here we go,” she muttered. “So help me, Cyrus, if you bring up the Roman⁠—”

“Look. There’s something there. But no, that’s not what I was thinking, smartass.”

“How refreshing.”

“You gonna keep mouthing off or should I take a shot in the dark here?”

“By all means, stab blindly—it’s worked so well for us in the past.”

“Well damn. Six a.m. and shots fired,” Jo muttered, her eyes tracking our volley.

“Piss off,” I muttered, earning a swift elbow to the ribs from Cali.

“Better than the silent treatment,” Carr mumbled behind me.

“Agreed,” Orion added helpfully, right as Freya launched a stack of Post-it notes at my cousin. With a snicker, he caught it, peeled the top one free, and promptly stuck it to my shoulder.

“Children,” I scoffed, shaking my head as I swiped it, and then made my way to stand in front of Freya, holding her gaze as I leaned in until the heat of her hit my skin. She didn’t back down. Didn’t waver. It’s what I’d always admired most about her. Swiping up the pen on the desk beside her—if that chaos of paper towers and homeless writing utensils could be called a desk—I turned for the board, jotting two names on the paper before sticking it beside ‘reunification’.

“Who are Shu and Tefnut?” Carr asked as he tossed me the stack of sticky notes without prompting. I scratched out another name, drew two lines stemming from it and stuck it beside the first. “And how do they know Zeus?”

I took a long sip, glancing pointedly at Freya. Those jades narrowed on my face.

“Fine,” she groaned. “Jesus H. Christ, Cyrus, do your geek thing, please.”

“Thank you.” Setting the cup down beside her, I turned for the board, eyes scouring for any other connections I might’ve missed. “Shu and Tefnut are two of the original gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Air and water, they were seen as divine balance. Both twins and spouses.”

“How very reduce, reuse, recycle of them.”

The woman could snark all she wanted. Somehow, just hearing her run her mouth felt like coming home after a long trip away. I needed every syllable of breath she’d give me—bitter or not.

“They’re credited with being the origin of the concept of soulmates: two perfect halves to one whole.”

“And Zeus?” Carr pressed.

“In true Zeus form, the egotistical bastard decided to split powerful human souls in two, damning them to wander the realm searching for their other half.”