Lore

But the aegis didn’t belong to the Kadmides—it wasn’t theirs, and now that they had a new god, now that Aristos Kadmou had shed his mortal skin, he might be able to use it. Her father told her that wasn’t true, but her father had been wrong before.

Lore crouched behind a bench near the Mall, her body feverish with fear. She smeared the sweat from her face with dirty hands.

And all the while, Medusa watched her. I see you. I know what you’ve done.

No. She could still fix this.

Lore stayed there, her body curled and her face pressed to her knees, until, finally, she decided what to do.

LORE’S CHEST BURNED WITH a scream that wouldn’t come. She was gasping for it, ripping it from the deepest part of her soul, but only a low cry escaped her lips.

Her body no longer seemed to be completely her own. Lore stumbled into the wall, disoriented.

“You . . .” She tried to get the words out. “You . . . you knew . . .”

“Do you see it now?” Athena asked, speaking in the ancient tongue. Any warmth, any sign of humanity had gone out like a doused flame. “The steady hand guiding the loom?”

Lore’s body shook with enough force that it was a struggle to keep her grip on the hilt of her blade. Her vision swarmed with black. If Hermes had told Athena that Lore took the aegis . . . if Athena had known where to find her family and had come looking for it that day . . .

The poison of truth moved through her, turning her insides to ash.

As if knowing her thoughts, a faint smile touched the goddess’s lips.

She killed them.

Not Wrath. Not the Kadmides. It had always been Athena.

As Lore’s shock faded, a feral panic set in.

“I thought—” she began.

She had left her alone with Miles and Van. . . . She had trusted her to honor her oath to not harm Castor. . . . She had . . . She had . . .

Believed her.

“You thought what, that I possessed a heart?” Athena said. “The heart is only a muscle.”

“You killed them.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Why?”

“I almost didn’t believe Hermes when he told me what he’d seen. The aegis, the object I had spent centuries searching for, found by a child. Carried by a child,” Athena said. “I knew where the last of the Perseides resided. The hovel they called a home. I was delighted to discover a window had been left open for me, almost as if in invitation.”

Lore clawed at her hair, her breathing growing erratic, her heart on the verge of shredding itself against her ribs. Desperation flooded her veins. No—please

no—

“But as I stood inside the room I thought, surely, the thief could not have been either one of these tiny, insignificant creatures. They were smaller than the shield,” Athena said, taking a single step forward into the cell. “I stood over their beds and thought about how easy it would be to simply smother them.”

She moved another step closer to Lore. “But I waited, until your mother and father came to look in on them, until my powers were fully restored to me at the cycle’s end.” Athena stopped before Lore, looming over her. “And then I claimed one piece from each girl for every question they refused to answer. About their missing child. About where you might be hiding.”

The memory of her sisters, carved up beyond recognition, burst the pressure trapped in her chest. Rage and grief ripped through her; the world swung off its axis, and Lore attacked.

She slashed her blade down toward Athena’s chest. The god used her dory to parry it with little effort, her face expressionless, then swung it down, battering Lore’s right shoulder.

“No restraint, no discipline, no strategy,” Athena said. “Only anger. I saw it in you immediately. Like molten bronze waiting to be shaped by skilled hands. I merely had to plant the suggestion of the new poem. I knew you would find out where it was inscribed, and you would return for it. It became a matter of patience.”

Lore was knocked back by the force of the blow, but used the distance to toss the knife to her left hand, changing her grip. She feinted right, and when the goddess moved to block it, Lore sliced up. Athena leaned back, but the tip had caught her chin. The gash painted the side of her neck with blood.

Athena let out a single caustic laugh. She rubbed a thumb against the cut, studying it for a moment. “The problem with mortals that small, of course, is that there is only so much lifeblood in them. They die too quickly.”

Lore screamed. The sound was ragged, torn from the broken part of her. She gave herself over to the pain, cutting and clawing and slicing until the cell disappeared around her and she began to dissolve into instinct.

The hit from the dory came from behind, smashing against her skull. The knife flew from her hand as Lore fell to the ground. She rolled to face forward, but Athena clubbed her once more, then plunged the dory’s sauroter into her thigh. With a single stroke, she had pierced muscle, cracked bone, and pinned Lore in place.

The agony was so complete, Lore could barely draw enough breath to sob. Athena turned the spear, digging the tip deeper. Survival and instinct roared in her. Lore slapped a hand against the dank ground, feeling for the knife, and she seized it in triumph.

But before she could lift it, Athena gripped that same hand, wrenching it away. Then, with all the effort it would have taken to crumple the head of a flower, she tightened her fingers around Lore’s and crushed every bone in them.

Lore shook violently with gasping cries. Sour vomit rose in her throat at the pain, at the sight of her mangled hand.

“Why?” she begged. “Why?”

“They called for you,” Athena said. As the goddess pulled the dory free, the sauroter broke off, still buried in Lore’s leg. “Both of the girls. Do you think they knew you were the one who killed them?”

The memory of that night assailed her. Lore did not have to close her eyes to see it—the blood smeared on the walls and floors, her sisters thrown down on their beds, the dark gaps where their eyes should have been.

“They were just little girls,” Lore sobbed. “Damara was a baby. They were innocent!”

“None of you are innocent,” Athena growled. “Least of all you, Melora. Your father died first, begging, then your mother, who at least knew it would be wasted breath. I waited hours for you to return, and when you did, it was no longer in your possession. I watched as you stood in the doorway of your home, as you saw the gift I had left for you. But you did not cry. You did not make a single sound. You were stronger then than you are now.”