Lore

“Why didn’t you torture me to find out what happened to it?” Lore gasped out, one hand clutching at her face, her hair. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

“I needed you to show me where you had hidden it,” Athena said. “And to give it to me willingly. Of course, once I learned of the poem, I had yet another reason to keep you alive. I could not let it disappear with your death until I read it myself.”

Lore clawed at her throat. She almost had, only an hour before. It had felt like her own idea. An inevitability.

“All those years with the House of Odysseus, I watched your pathetic existence, waiting for you to one day retrieve it or to reveal where you had hidden it,” Athena said. “I might have intervened and come to you in another form, to ingratiate myself to you, had Hermes not found you first.”

Lore shook her head, trying to shut out the words.

“I followed him to this city, curious as to why he was wearing a false face,” Athena said. “I had my answer soon enough. I felt the power of the averting charms he cast on his home. I could not enter it, nor even approach. There was but one reason he would go to such lengths to deny me. Only one mortal he would go to such lengths to protect. The fact I could not see you—that I could only catch the sound of your footsteps, the smell of you—confirmed it.”

The goddess studied the tip of her dory. “Hermes made such an effort, and all out of a misplaced sense of guilt. You see, he had traded his sighting of you and the aegis to keep his lover alive. He knew I had found the false Dionysus’s hiding place,” Athena said. “And when this hunt began, and I watched Hermes die from a distance, I saw my opportunity. His power would not hold beyond his death. I could finally go to you, unhindered.”

Keeping her blade up became impossible as Lore’s body turned to lead. Blood poured from her leg. It throbbed with every heartbeat. She pressed her back against the wall, its dampness soaking through her shirt.

“But Artemis attacked you . . .” Lore began weakly.

“As if my sister could strike such a blow without my consent,” Athena said. “We had planned to kill all the imposters this cycle, but she agreed to aid me in the deception once I told her of your connection to the boy who had murdered our brother. But he is so curious, is he not? I knew the moment I felt his power we could not kill him. Not until I found out what he was. It angered her, but it allowed me to get close enough to some of the other imposters to ensure they died by a true god’s hand.”

Artemis hadn’t been raving as her sister had claimed—Athena had betrayed Artemis by not giving Castor to her.

“You told Artemis to track me that first day thinking I would go to find him, didn’t you?” Lore said, finally putting it together. “And then you just—you watched her die?”

“We were not all meant to return to Olympus,” Athena said coolly. “Only the strongest among us will be recognized by the Horae and allowed to pass through the gates once more. Artemis faltered.”

Athena’s hand lashed out, catching Lore’s chin in a painful grip. “Shall we end your suffering and go retrieve it at last?”

Lore looked up at her, pouring every ounce of her trembling fury into her gaze. Her mind was a torrent of terror and disbelief. “It won’t be willingly given if you torture me for it. You wouldn’t be able to use it.”

“Not yet, no. However, I will have the inscription. I will know how to end the Agon,” Athena said. Lore felt her jaw begin to crack under her grip. “And when I am restored to my full power, I will be able to wield it once more.”

“But Wrath will . . . He’ll come for it,” Lore rasped out. “He won’t let you have it—”

“When I achieve the final ascension, he will be nothing more than a worm I crush beneath my heel,” Athena said. “Along with all those who dared to turn away from their true gods. I warn you, Melora, I will destroy everything and everyone you love, one by one, until you bring me to it.”

Lore’s heart lurched in her chest.

No.

Not Miles. Not Castor. Not Van. Not Iro.

Not her city.

A calm certainty took control of Lore’s mind, quieting the chaotic storm of her thoughts and clarifying the choice. Accepting it, even as she saw all their faces—even as she thought of her family and knew their souls would never find peace.

There was one last choice. At least she would be the one to make it.

I’m sorry, she thought. There would be a single god left for Castor to face, but no one would ever possess the aegis again.

Lore’s unmarred hand gripped the broken piece of the spear’s shaft still attached to the sauroter and, with a cry, she pulled it from her leg. She thought of her sisters. Her fearless mother. Her father’s face glowing in their campfire’s light, showing her how to grip the hilt of a dagger.

Shift your thumb to the spine of the hilt, Melora. It’ll give you better control.

“No.” She raised her voice, making sure the word thundered.

Athena’s nostrils flared. “Impertinent child—”

Lore stared up at her through the strands of her dark hair. “The choice is mine.”

She turned the blade on herself and slid it into her chest.

LORE HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT that there would be more to death than this.

The hunters believed that there was no greater honor than to die on the hunt in the pursuit of glory, rather than be taken by Thanatos, the god of gentle death. She knew better than to buy into the bullshit, but some part of her still wanted to believe that the last fire of pain would burn away her past and transform her into someone who would be judged worthy in the world below.

Instead, death was only numbing. Her mind shut itself down to protect her from the shock of the steel parting her skin and scraping across bone.

Her hand slid from the makeshift weapon, falling limply into her lap.

There was a terrible scream, like the screech of a saw against metal.

Look, Lore thought. Open your eyes.

It was the gray-eyed goddess.

“Oh, you fool,” Athena snarled. “I will not let you do this—I will not allow you to take it from me!”

“You won’t need it . . .” Lore got out, “where . . . you’re . . . going. . . .”

One hand closed around Lore’s neck, tightening as if to break it. Athena’s face was rigid with fury, her teeth bared. Undaunted, and unbowed by the weakness of impending death.