Lore

Had everything else been real, too?

She looked around them, only to realize she was a few feet away from the ladder leading back up to the street. Deeper in the tunnel, in the cell, there wouldn’t have been reception.

Castor followed her gaze down the length of the path behind them.

“Tidebringer’s body is down there,” Lore said haltingly.

She knew that the mortal remains would disappear at the end of the cycle, but the goddess deserved more than to be left to rot.

He nodded, helping her to her feet. “I’ll take care of it.”

Castor made his way down the winding tunnel, disappearing at the first turn. Lore leaned against the wall, imagining she could see the golden glow of his power as it released Tidebringer’s body to ash. Sooner than she would have expected, his footsteps were coming toward her again, splashing in what was left of the standing water.

He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this. . . .”

“I hope to never see anything like it ever again,” Lore said. “I’ll tell you everything—just not here.”

“No arguments from me,” Castor said, starting toward the ladder. “I’ll go up first, in case anyone’s waiting. Step back—there’s still some water.”

She tucked her dagger between her teeth. The trapdoor groaned open. Dim light and water poured in. Lore turned away, letting it fill the tunnel around her feet.

“All clear,” Castor called down. “Ready?”

Lore nodded, gripping the first rung until her hands stopped shaking. There was a hollow ache in her healed leg, but even that faded as she reached up for the next rung and, bit by bit, drew herself up toward Castor and the fiery sunset that crowned him.

THE NEW ADDRESS CAME in just as they fought through the floodwaters and barriers around Central Park to cross to the west side. It was a vacant office space situated above a boarded-up clothing store, not far from Lincoln Center.

Castor melted the lock on the door, prying it open, then sealed it shut behind them. Lore looked around. Judging by the city seal etched on its glass, it was likely being renovated to become some sort of government office. The smell of new paint and the plastic tarp covering the stairwell seemed to confirm it, even before they found the spread of empty cubicles upstairs. Toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, all papered over, was a small sitting area, complete with a table, couch, and chairs.

Unoccupied and unguarded by security, it was a good choice—and all thanks to Miles and the access he had at his internship. She hoped he and Van would be back sooner rather than later. She needed to see with her own eyes they were both all right.

Castor removed the plastic covering the couch, guiding Lore over to it. She sat heavily, exhausted. As night fell, and the city’s power remained off, her eyes began to adjust to the growing darkness. The new god squeezed his hand into a fist, gathering a faint glow around it.

“Very impressive, big guy,” she told him.

“I’m getting better at controlling it,” he told her. “I can now take it from zero to thirty instead of zero to a hundred.”

Her smile slipped as she watched him explore the kitchen area, then disappear into a back room. When he emerged, Castor carried a five-gallon water bottle, clearly destined for a water cooler, on his shoulder and a package of brown paper towels under the other arm.

He knelt in front of her, wetting some of the towels. Lifting Lore’s hand from her lap, his sole focus turned to wiping away the dirt and grime and blood. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until the warmth of his skin spread over her again. She tried to help him by lifting her arm as he rolled up her shirt at the shoulder, but her body wouldn’t obey her.

For the first time in days, Lore felt safe enough to stop pretending she could keep pushing through the pain and fatigue.

This is why, she thought. Athena had worked a slow, methodical manipulation. Each suggestion was designed to separate her from the others, who might have been able to recognize what was happening, and deepen Lore’s belief in her and her alone.

Castor gave her a small, reassuring smile as he retrieved a new paper towel and began on her other arm, gently dabbing at the dark stains on the hand Athena had broken and he’d healed. Lore watched him, her heart full to bursting.

The goddess wasn’t mortal, and she didn’t have a human’s understanding of the world. Emotions were nuisances to a purely rational mind, but even Athena had recognized the threat the others posed simply by being near. A person alone could be controlled, but a person loved by others would always be under their protection.

Lore had been angry for so long—at the world, at the Agon, but most of all at herself. It wasn’t that anger was inherently good or bad. It could lend power and drive and focus, but the longer it lived inside you unchecked, the more poisonous it became.

Even now, every fiber of her being was straining to head back down the staircase, to go out into the city with nothing but a blade and the image of the god it was meant for burning like a star in her mind. The impulse shoved at her from all sides, and her whole body shook with the effort of forcing herself to stay still.

Castor brought a fresh towel along her neck, and there was a brief flicker of distress in his expression as he ran the cool water along the curve of her jaw. Lore wondered, for a moment, if Athena had broken it, and if the pain elsewhere in her body had been so tremendous she hadn’t noticed it.

He gave a playful flick of water against her cheek, startling her out of her thoughts. Lore let out a faint laugh. To her surprise, he moved next to her hair, running damp fingers back through the tangled mess of it with as much care as he could. He braided it over her shoulder, but had nothing to tie it off with.

Finally, he turned his attention to the tear in her shirt, stiff with dried blood. The place she had driven in the blade.

Lore loosely grasped his forearm with both hands, stilling him. “I need to apologize to you.”

He shook his head. “Lore, really—”

She pressed on. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. For not immediately siding with you about searching for Artemis, even though I knew why you wanted to find her, and for not fulfilling my promise to help you find out what happened to you.”

“It’s all right,” he said quietly.

“No,” she interrupted. “It’s not. If there’s only one thing I’ve been certain of for most of my life, it’s that you’re always on my side. That I can always trust you.”