“What is it, Papa?”
He sighed, rubbing his brow. “Some people have very special minds, Love. These people can catch glimpses of the greater Truth of the World, what scholars call the Ontos. Some can use this to see into the future, and we call them Oracles. But the ability, the Sight, it can manifest in many ways. Others, Mediums like you, can see through the Veil that separates our world from the next.”
A fresh surge of panic welled up in her, tightening her stomach into knots. “T-the Underworld?”
Her father nodded grimly. “The edge of that Realm we call the Penumbra, for it is like a shadow of this one. And, it seems, you have looked into it.”
“It was … horrible.” And yet far too thrilling. “I saw dead men.”
Papa frowned, taking her hand. “Perhaps you saw mere phantom echoes imprinted upon that Realm by strong emotion. Or perhaps you beheld actual shades, wandering in torment. If so … Pyrrha, if you can see them, they too can see you. That is why you must avoid looking across the Veil. You are not prepared for what you might draw to you.”
See her? Yes, it certainly seemed the ghost had seen her too. The one on the beach had actually reached for her. But this ability made her special, different than the others, and Papa wanted her to ignore it? Wish it away?
“What is the Veil?” she pushed.
“An Etheric membrane that impedes beings from the Otherworlds from entering the Mortal Realm.”
That sounded like a bunch of nonsense words, and Pyrrha withdrew her hand just so she could fold her arms over her chest and make her dissatisfaction clear. Papa could always tell, anyway, but sometimes a girl had to make her point.
“Love, listen to me, I beseech you. You cannot begin to imagine the danger you invite in when crossing between Realms, even with just a piece of your soul.” Her soul? “Leave the dead be and remain tethered in this world.”
Pyrrha huffed, but reluctantly nodded. Papa clearly wasn’t going to support her nurturing this gift, which meant she’d need to conceal any further investigation from him. Tethys had a library, and perhaps that would hold more information about ghosts and the Underworld.
But let it go? No, that was impossible. All her life, Pyrrha had been a small child, harried by the princes and princesses of Thebes. Alone save for poor Sharvara.
This Sight, as Papa called it, however terrifying, meant she mattered. A person couldn’t give that up.
Not for the World.
3
Pandora
1570 Silver Age
Two days had passed since the Pleiades’ symposium, and, even pacing about Dardanus’s estate, Pandora found herself haunted by those crystal blue eyes that seemed to glimpse into her soul. She saw their echo in the fountain in the atrium, glinting in the sunlight. She picked up hints of them in the vibrant fresco that decorated the back wall beyond the columns encompassing this atrium. She found herself, on more than one occasion, glancing about as if that Titan might yet be looking upon her.
“Well?” Dardanus demanded. The man had hired her to teach him rhetoric, though the bastard son of Zeus and Elektra spent almost as much time ogling her arse and tits as he did focused upon logic. A fact clearly not lost upon his young wife, Bateia, who perpetually happened to stroll by the atrium so she might cast withering glances upon Pandora.
Or perhaps the Ilian princess merely resented the freedom afforded to hetairai. Bateia had probably never even been allowed to leave her house grounds since her marriage, so Pandora could not judge her too harshly. Even if her ire grew tedious.
“Well what?” Pandora asked, mind racing to catch up with whatever Dardanus had just said. Alexis’s supposed refutation of Urania’s Utopia. “You’re still stumbling over the fallacy of the converse. The breakdown of social class systems is a necessary condition of her ideal state, not a sufficient one to satisfy Urania’s requirements. More generally, that sort of verbal trickery may convince the mob, but anyone looking at your arguments dispassionately will eviscerate you in debate.”
The man actually glared at her, his father’s arrogance shining through his convivial facade. As if it were her fault he lacked the wit for debate while fancying himself a scholar. Elektra herself had hired her—Pandora knew her own reputation—on one of the Pleiad’s visits to the polis. ‘Teach my son languages and philosophy and mathematics,’ she’d ordered, and—though Pandora would have loved to reject her given Dardanus’s father—she could not afford to say no.
Not so unlike her dealings with Elektra’s sister.
But, though her mother wanted the best possible tutors for her son, Pandora suspected that, not unlike many in his position, Dardanus chafed at learning aught from a woman.
“Let’s try something else for today,” Pandora said, suppressing a sigh. One simply did not express disappointment to the aristoi. One did not say, ‘Perhaps if you spent a bit more time with the scrolls and less gazing at arses, you would be able to form a coherent thought.’ There were a great many things one did not say. Not if one wanted to remain healthy, hale, and employed. “Have you been practicing your Phoenikian?”
Dardanus, on the other hand, actively groaned. “Is it not the most tediously dull language in the Thalassa?”
“They invented the alphabet.”
“You would say that. You’re from there, aren’t you, metic?”
“Yes.” With her deep complexion, she might as easily have passed for an Atlantid—save the golden eyes—but she was well known as a foreigner. It was, she supposed, part of the allure for men seeking to bed her. “But as I also speak Elládosi, Kemetian, Rassenian, Neshian, and a fair bit of Nusantaran, I daresay I am versed enough in linguistics from around the Thalassa to offer the opinion that
