“Are you so sure?” Piers glanced at the Shard of Olympus, which illuminated Sophie’s face with an eerie luminescence. “That doesn’t glow for everyone. It didn’t glow for me.” They’d proved it. Sophie went down the hallway and back to test their theory that the ice shard only shined for her. The moment she’d shut the heavy hotel-room door behind her, the shard went dark. The moment she came back, it lit up again. Being out of the room, she hadn’t seen it for herself and didn’t want to believe, so they’d documented the experiment on her phone. Piers now knew about a fantastical thing called videos, but she still insisted there wasn’t magic here. It was absurd.

“You’re not only Heracleidae; you’re Magoi.” He was sure.

“Pfffft.” She waved her hand in the air.

Piers caught her hand and held on to it. “Think about it. Who was the father of Heracles?”

“Zeus,” she said slowly.

“Heracles, the man, died. His immortal side went to Mount Olympus, joining Zeus and the other Olympians. Your lineage isn’t only powerful, it’s the most powerful. You’re a direct descendant of Zeus.” Just like Griffin’s wife, Cat. But while Cat already used her incredible power to conquer realms, Sophie was only just becoming aware of hers. “Any magic that remains in Attica would definitely be trapped inside a person like you.”

Her eyes grew rounder. “A person like me?”

Blink. Breathe, Sophie. Piers squeezed the hand he held. “I mean you’re special. You’re more.”

Her troubled gaze darted to the glowing blue shard. “But if Novalight can’t use the shard for anything, what does it matter if I just give it to him? Then I’ll be safe. My family will be safe. I can go home.”

“We don’t know his origins. Maybe he can.”

Sophie chewed her bottom lip, thinking. “I don’t think so, which means he’s going to eventually figure out that he needs me along with the shard.”

Piers wanted to crush that possibility under his boot heel and kick it all the way to the Underworld. “Or someone else with a direct ancestral line to a powerful Olympian.”

Her face fell. “That’s what Aaron figured out. That’s why he sent me the shard. He knew I could make it work, but Novalight couldn’t. But why send it? All that did was put me and everyone else in danger. If it was useless in Novalight’s hands, it could’ve just stayed that way.”