I pivot in the desk chair, staring at the hole I made in the snake’s enclosure.

When I left this office, I had both my eyes. I had Ananke’s ability to see the future. To see it clearly. But the moment I took Lyon’s magic, that ability was gone. And so was my eye.

If the old stories are true, Ananke had gouged out Michael’s eye to punish him for coveting her power and seeking to control her. He had stolen her eye as payback and put it in his staff. I rub the stubborn pain in my chest. Is this my curse? Is their magic fighting inside me now? Did Ananke’s magic burn out my eye just to spite Michael’s?

It takes two eyes to see clearly. . . .

The eye. I need to find it and put it back in the staff. Maybe then I’ll get my vision back.

I tear through every corner of my new office, only pausing when a maintenance tech comes to re-key the locks. The missing crystal isn’t anywhere here, but there are only so many places the old man could have hidden it. I’m just about to lift the throw rug from the floor when there’s a knock on the door.

“Chronos?” Lixue steps over the threshold, a tablet under her arm. Her attention drifts to the broken terrarium and the pile of ash on the floor.

“Sit.” I point to the chair in front of my desk.

She perches on the edge of the seat, as far from Gaia’s magic as she can manage. The staff leans against the wall beside me, and she darts an anxious glance at it. I hesitate, trying once more to pick through Lixue’s memories. The images are slippery, hard to grab. Choosing one, I chase it and focus, forcing it to slow, but I’m only able to hold it for a moment before it’s lost in a tidal wave of others. But that one moment, a flicker of her in her new role over the last hour, was enough. It has to be.

I reach for the scythe. “No one else is to know about this.” I wait for her small nod before tearing the sash from the staff.

A glimmer of understanding passes over her face.

“From now on, you have one job. Lyon must have hidden the eye. It has to be in the Observatory somewhere. You, and you alone, are to search for it. Jora can’t be trusted with this.” She nods as if she’s already surmised this much. “Lyon’s apartment, his old office in the Winter wing, his old staff quarters . . . I want them all turned upside down until you find it.”

“Yes, Chronos. But what about Jack?”

“What about him?”

“We think we’ve located Jack, Fleur, and the others.”

“What do you mean, you think?” I growl.