Lore

A heavy hand fell on her shoulder. She turned slowly.

Her body came alive with a pain that sawed at her. Her limbs contorted into agonized shapes. She gasped for air and clawed at the ground. She was cold—so cold—cracking like ice. . . .

The dark world of the river flickered in and out of the underground cell, until Lore could no longer tell one from the other.

“Steady, Melora,” the same voice said. “The worst, I’m afraid, is yet to come.”

A glowing face hovered before her own. He was young and beautiful, his lips cast in an impish line. His hair curled almost sweetly; above it, wings fluttered on either side of his helmet, keeping time with her pulse.

“You . . .” she whispered. “No . . .”

The figure shifted in the strange light. His form unraveled like ribbons, the layers of him pulling apart to reveal what was hidden beneath.

Someone else.

Lore lifted a shaking hand, swiping it against her eyes to clear the haze from them. An old man hovered before her now, his feet not quite touching the ground. His silver hair seemed to rise, shimmering like waves around his head, above his long face. His white skin was lined with age and veins, his shoulders stooped. His green eyes sparkled as he looked her over.

“Hello, darling,” Gil whispered. “Are you all right?”

“You’re not . . .” Lore began, unable to catch her breath at the sight of him. He was perfect, in his familiar tweed jacket, that knowing look on his face.

“Real?” he finished. “Stand up and discover for yourself.”

Lore’s eyelids were too heavy. They drifted shut as she gave a single, small shake of the head.

“No,” Gil said sharply. “Look at me. I need you to look at me.”

Lore tried.

“Do you want to live?” Gil asked. The words echoed through Lore’s mind, twining with memories.

Lore took in a slight breath. The others . . . the city . . . She wasn’t finished yet . . . but her body . . . she couldn’t . . .

“You already know that you are enough,” Gil told her. “Stand up, Melora. Come on. Prove me right.”

She had thought she was enough to hunt, to save her city, to protect her friends, and avenge her family. And now there was nothing left. Everyone who loved her was gone.

Not everyone.

Not everything had been a lie.

“Do it for yourself,” Gil said, his voice a balm to Lore’s confused mind. “Not to get back at her. Not out of anger. For yourself.”

Humiliation and rage and betrayal had all fused in her, but there was something else. She could . . . There was something left in her . . . something . . .

“You have to stand up on your own. I can’t carry you the way you once carried me,” Gil said. “And I can’t take you far, only to the boundary, as he’ll permit. Only as I am meant to do. You must stand up on your own and follow me to it.”

That—she had enough left in her for that. To stand. To get to the others. To warn them . . .

Lore reached out, bracing her hand against the wall behind her, feeling for something to anchor herself. Her fingers hooked into a depression the uneven drilling had left behind. Her shoulder and arm ached as they absorbed her weight, but she set her jaw. She hissed with the effort it took to get her feet beneath her.

“Good,” Gil said, sounding relieved. “That’s it, darling.”

Her right leg was fine, but her left, the one Athena had impaled, was broken. The smallest bit of weight sent white-hot agony shooting through it. Lore’s knee buckled as she took an experimental step, but she braced a shoulder against the wall.

Hot blood escaped the wound in her chest as she bent, forcing her to press a hand there to stanch the flow. She shivered; the pain was so bad now, she felt almost drunk with it.

“Follow me, darling,” Gil said. “Keep your eyes on the light.”

Lore limped forward, one shuffled step, then the next. Water sloshed at her feet. The world of the river and the world of the tunnel bled into one another until everything was darkness and stone. But there was light ahead of her now. She could see it—that spark.

Her right hip swung forward again and again, her muscles seizing up with the effort it took. Forward. Forward. Their progress was excruciating and slow.

Gil knew the way, as he always did, taking each curve and turn with confidence. Lore let him lead, her eyes fixed on the light emanating from the torch that now appeared in the man’s hand.

Its flame was hypnotizing, playing tricks on Lore’s eyes. Making them see things that weren’t there.

Gil’s tweed jacket broke apart like dashed embers, revealing an ivory tunic below. In his left hand, a winged staff with gold snakes twining around it appeared. Their small scaled heads stroked against one another, then turned to watch her.

Help me, Lore thought, because she could not say the words. Stay with me.

As if she had called them to her, shadows appeared along the walls of the tunnel. The silhouettes of a man and woman, of two small girls, glided beside her, keeping her tortured pace. Faces she knew. Faces she loved.

Lore reached out a hand toward the woman, her fingers skimming her face.

Stay with me, she thought. Stay with me. . . .

Gil’s form blurred as Lore’s vision failed. She leaned heavily against the wall, using the last of her strength to draw herself forward with her uninjured hand, crawling through the cold water. Fighting to keep her head above it.

Maybe it was her punishment for what she’d done. She’d be forced to make this journey in the darkness, to live in the small eternity of it, for all time. Repeating the agony, repeating the realization she would never make it back to the entrance of the tunnels, or find the strength to climb the ladder out.

A small chime sounded sweetly somewhere behind her, then another, until it became a song, like birds in the morning.

Gil stopped, turning back to her. “That’s far enough, then.”

Lore took in a shaking breath, her back pressed to a rough wall. She tried to grasp at the shadows, to pull them to her, but the sight of them had faded with her vision.

Stay with me.

“For my part in this, I am sorry,” Gil said, his voice near. There was a gentle, warm touch on her forehead.

Lore could no longer tell if her eyes were open. Her body drifted beneath her, her mind untethered. When Gil spoke again, the words bloomed inside her mind, his voice melting into a clearer, deeper one. The eyes of the gods are upon you.