“Come,” he said. “Let’s look at the shard together.”

“Come,” she teased in a deep voice. “You sound very imperious sometimes.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Piers was used to giving orders and being obeyed, but he hadn’t meant to treat Sophie like one of his soldiers.

She looped her arm through his and moved toward the ice shard. It radiated cold blue light from where it sat on the desk across the room. “It’ll be an acquired taste.” She glanced up at him with a glitter in her eyes and a smile on her lips. “I might call you Caesar here and there after all.”

Piers’s heart gave a tight, hard bounce. Did that mean she meant to keep him around and get used to him? Even when all this was over, and she was safe?

He gazed down at the top of her head, feeling something shift in his chest. If he couldn’t go home, he’d like that.

What if he could go home?

The question hit him like a Cyclops’s fist, leaving his head ringing with doubts. Home was home, family, and everything he’d ever known and worked for. But lose Sophie? He’d only just met her, but somehow…

Fear sent a hot-cold rush of panic through his veins. His nostrils flared.

Somehow, now that they’d found each other, he knew they weren’t meant to be apart.

Sophie gaped at him. Piers liked it.

“I’m supposed to believe that people can do powerful and crazy magic with this thing?” She turned a skeptical look on the Shard of Olympus.

Piers nodded. “If you’re Magoi, then yes. It’ll amplify your natural abilities. Otherwise, it’s useless.”

“Magoi—a person with magic?”

He nodded again.

“As opposed to Hoi Polloi—the many.” Her blue eyes owlishly wide, Sophie reiterated what he’d said earlier. Hoi Polloi was a term she’d known anyway. Apparently, people used it the same way here, to describe the general populace.

“In Thalyria, there are many more people without magic than with.”

“More Hoi Polloi than Magoi. Got it.” She used both hands to sweep her hair back. “But Earth is what you’ve been calling Attica all this time. No one has magic here. Not real magic.”