She wasn’t sure how—possibly all those paranormal romance novels and fantasy TV shows—but she’d adjusted surprisingly quickly to the idea of Piers being from a different world where they worshipped the gods of Olympus. Aaron’s whole the-Greek-gods-are-REAL thing probably helped. And the glacial-blue shard glowed for her. She’d inspected it from top to bottom, her fingers turning numb, and there was no reason for the chunk of ice to shine, let alone not melt into a puddle. Piers said it was magic, and she believed him.

As to why it glowed for her… Apparently, that had something to do with her being Heracleidae. It really wasn’t such a stretch to accept that she truly descended from Heracles. Herakles to Greeks. Hercules to the modern world. Sophie didn’t believe—or rather, hadn’t believed—a lot of that stuff about him completing his twelve herculean labors and becoming immortal, but she’d always thought he was a real person who’d become famous thanks to a certain number of monumental exploits. Heracles supposedly had sex with the fifty daughters of King Thespius in one night and impregnated every single one of them. They gave him fifty sons, and that was on top of his other children, so it wasn’t crazy to think there were Iraklidis all over the place. Maybe they didn’t all have the name, like she did, but they were out there. She knew that. Besides, as insane as everything sounded, she didn’t feel unhinged. Piers, for all his weirdness, didn’t seem unhinged, either. And if they didn’t mutually require a psychiatric hospital, then they needed to figure out how to contact Athena and give her the Shard of Olympus.

Okay, that sounded a little crazy. But she was going with it.

Sophie savored the smell of roasting chestnuts and smiled to herself as they walked, light snow falling around them. She wasn’t alone in this anymore. The Olympian gods had sent her a guardian angel. She didn’t care that she was tragically mixing her religions. It felt right to her. Piers felt right. Like destiny.

“Do you think I’ll get sucked back?” he suddenly asked her. “To Thalyria?”

“I don’t know.” It was on the tip of Sophie’s tongue to say she hoped not, but that would be incredibly selfish. She had no idea what Piers wanted, but it probably wasn’t to be stuck on a foreign planet helping a woman he’d only met a few hours ago. She was honest, though, so she added, “If you do, I hope we figure out how to get the ice shard to Athena first. I don’t think I can do this on my own.” She didn’t have the first clue where to start. A trip to the Acropolis? Manhattan was expensive enough. Last-minute tickets to Athens would break her bank account.