“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 if dialing up was 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’t want to 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.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure. “It must mean it’s very powerful. Maybe from Zeus’s first lightning strike. Or…” His nostrils flared. Could it be?

“What?” Sophie asked.

“What if your shard goes all the way back to powerful, new magic created not for just one god but for three? The Titan War happened here, on Attica. Zeus and his brothers were instrumental in toppling the Titans—Zeus with his lightning bolt, Hades with his invisibility helmet, and—”

“Poseidon with his trident,” Sophie finished for him. “What if the shard contains magic from all three gifts from the first Cyclopes?”

Piers was thinking the same thing. And it was a frightening concoction of power. “Then it would truly be the Shard of Olympus—one of a kind and made when the brothers stood back-to-back, conquered the Titans, and forged a new kingdom.”

“Holy shit.” Sophie gaped at him.