The two conversed quietly by the fire for a few minutes, then footsteps echoed from the stairs again and both turned that direction.
Maelea’s gaze shifted to the stairs. Skyla’s boots clanked against the hardwood as she skipped stairs to reach the bottom. She wore the same outfit Maelea had seen her in since the first, but this time the perfectly coiffed Siren was nowhere to be found. Her hair was a wild tangle around her face, her shirt inside out, one boot not zipped all the way to the top. And the panic in her eyes was a dead giveaway something had happened.
Isadora rose from the couch. “Skyla? What’s wrong?”
“Maelea,” the Siren said in a breathy voice as if she’d been running. “I have to find Maelea.”
“I haven’t seen her,” Isadora said. “We’ve been with Gryphon. What’s happened?”
“He took the Orb.” Skyla pressed both hands against her eyes. “He remembered and he took the Orb and now he’s gone. And I have to find him before he does something…”
Callia pushed up from the couch, followed Isadora across the floor to the base of the stairs where Skyla stood. She placed both hands on Skyla’s shoulders, turned her into the light. “Calm down and tell us what happened. You’re talking about Orpheus, right? What did he remember?”
“Everything,” Skyla said in that same broken voice. “All of it. He…” She drew in a shaky breath, dropped her hands. “He’s Perseus’s son. Zeus’s grandson.”
“What do you mean, Perseus’s son?” the queen asked. “Orpheus is only three hundred years old. How—?”
“He was given a second chance at life.” When both looked at her as if she was nuts, Skyla waved her hands. “Two thousand plus years ago he stole the air element from Zeus. I was sent to get it back and then kill him. Only I didn’t. I…we…we had…a relationship. And then I found out he really had stolen the element. I couldn’t kill him at that point, but I didn’t stop it either. I didn’t think…” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again to focus on the queen. “When Zeus sent me after Orpheus because he was hunting the Orb, I knew something wasn’t right. But I didn’t find out until later that Orpheus was Cynurus reincarnated. They told me he wouldn’t remember his past life, but they were wrong. They were wrong about so many things. And I believed them. Just like always.”
Isadora and Callia stared at the Siren in disbelief, and Maelea found herself thinking back to what she knew of Perseus and his son Cynurus, about whom she’d heard whispers but had never met. He’d done something to anger Zeus. Something more treacherous than simply being born, like her.
“I have to find him before he does something he’ll regret later. He has the Orb and the earth element. And he thinks I betrayed him. He’s angry and hurting. If he tries to challenge Zeus with the Orb…”
Callia shot a look at Isadora. “Theron needs to hear this.”
“Go get him,” Isadora said.
As Callia rushed off, Isadora added, “Now tell me what this has to do with Maelea.”
“Maelea can sense energy shifts. She’ll know if he tries to use the power of the Orb. She can locate him before he—”
Maelea stepped out of the shadows. Skyla’s head came around and her mouth closed. Stopping in the middle of the room, Maelea rubbed her arms to ease the chill that had settled over her skin with this news. “He’s my nephew. In three thousand years I’ve not met a direct relative until now. I—I didn’t even suspect.”
“I need to know where he is.”
Maelea nodded. She knew all too well what would happen if Orpheus tormented Zeus with the Orb. And a part of her—the part that had believed in him the night he told her he wanted the Orb to rescue his brother from the Underworld—needed to know a soul could still overcome all that darkness. “He came down the stairs just before you. He left through there.” She pointed toward the far end of the hall.
“What about the Orb?” Skyla asked.
“I—I didn’t see it.”
“Orpheus can flash on earth,” Isadora interjected. “He won’t need to tap into the Orb’s energy to open a portal like the warlock did.”
“Damn it,” Skyla muttered, running a hand over her face. “I forgot about that.”
“He doesn’t need to,” Maelea said. When Skyla’s head came up, she added, “He’s using the Orb to give him strength. The strength he lost from his daemon.”
“Where?” Skyla asked.
Maelea closed her eyes, focused on the darkness she’d felt when Orpheus had come down the stairs. It had left the colony with him, she now knew. She loosened her mind and the tendrils of awareness she so often kept locked tight.
She opened her eyes when she located it. “In the hills outside Litochoro, Greece.”