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?”

“Humans aren’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 had he done?

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—“worked for 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, it makes people powerful. I’m not really sure. He sent it to me because I’m supposedly vaguely related to Heracles, and he somehow thought that meant I could give the Shard of Olympus back to Athena. But I can’t. I don’t know how.”