Lore

The pain in his voice made Lore’s chest clench.

“I didn’t see him at first. He knew how to play with the shadows and light.” Castor drew in a breath. “I was bedridden. Barely alive at that point. Thetis House had been emptied as the hunt went on, and my father had left, just for a little while, to run an errand. I woke up and Apollo was there, standing at the end of my bed.”

Lore’s lips parted in surprise.

“He looked . . .” Castor’s voice trailed off. “He was covered in blood. There was a wound in his side.”

“What did you do?” Lore asked. “You couldn’t have been armed.”

He shook his head, turning his palms up to look at them. “I wasn’t. I asked him if he needed help.”

Lore stared.

“I know. It’s ridiculous to even think about. A twelve-year-old, believing he could help a god?” He let out a faint laugh. “I should have been terrified. All those years we’d been taught to hate them, but I saw him and I just thought, He looks sick. I saw something in him, in his face, in his eyes, that I’d seen so many times in the mirror. He was aníatos, like me.”

Aníatos. Incurable.

“He asked what my name was, and laughed when I told him. It was a horrible sound, like a clarion. But there was this pull to him. It was . . . It felt like all those times you’re told not to look into the sun, but something tells you to try, just once,” Castor said. “He asked why I had offered him help. I told him that he looked like he needed rest.”

Castor finally looked up at her. “That’s all I remember. I wish it was a better story. I wish that I could tell you that I was brave and strong, and that I deserved this power, but I can’t, and even though I know I might have to let that go, the thought kills me. I would do anything to prove myself to you.”

“You have nothing to prove to me,” Lore said. “Why would you think that?”

Castor turned to look at her, a faint smile on his face. But his eyes blazed with power, and with that same wild, irrepressible feeling she was drowning in.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked quietly. “I wanted to be worthy of you.”

“Worthy of me?” she began. Her words often came out too quick, too clumsy, too sharp, and she didn’t want that. Not this time. “Cas.”

“Lore.” He kept that same soft tone. “I was born knowing how to do three things—how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you.”

Lore began to tremble. Her breath turned shallow, as quick and light as her pulse as it caught fire in her veins.

How did she say this? How did anyone say this? It was like untying her armor, setting aside her blade, and exposing every soft part of herself to the world. Yet the moment he’d said it, Lore had recognized that sense of inevitability that had woven through all their moments together, old and new. How she’d been stumbling toward him, even as she pulled back against the tether between them.

Tears dripped down her face, curling over her cheek. She had always been that girl, her feelings unbearable, her hair wind-matted as she ran through the city. But then, Castor had always been that boy who ran alongside her.

“Did you hear the one about the turtle on Broadway?” he said softly, touching a finger to one of the tears.

Lore gave up on words and kissed him.

Castor drew in a sharp breath as her lips touched his, uncertain at first. Lore pulled back, holding his face in her hands as she studied him and his bright, burning eyes; she wondered if it would be her last kiss, or if any of that mattered when this was now, and they were here, and the growing wind was singing through their city’s streets.

Castor wrapped an arm around her waist, carefully drawing her into the heat of his body. He ducked his head and found her mouth again, brushing her lips with his smiling ones, like a challenge.

When had she ever refused a challenge?

Lore kissed him again, meeting him there, pace for pace, touch for touch, until she became lost in it, rising and falling with the push and pull, the advance and retreat. She’d acted on instinct in the park, giving in to the pull of him, but this—this was intention.

Lore had kissed others before. Almost always drunk and in the dark, letting alcohol become the barrier between her and the emotions she hadn’t wanted to feel, and the things she wanted to forget. What had happened that night in the Odysseides’ home was like a phantom tide that swept in and out of her mind, etching deeper into the sand with each return. Sometimes she could go weeks without thinking about it, sometimes days, sometimes only hours. But then it would come again: disconnection from the body she fought so hard to strengthen, the suffocating feeling of powerlessness.

Maybe it would always be part of her, but she was learning how to move through it and reclaim herself with choice. Right now, with Castor, she didn’t feel powerless. She felt triumphant. Like everything in her body had suddenly connected and electrified.

His lips were soft as they brushed against hers, capturing the last of her tears, but grew insistent, harder, at her urging. It wasn’t enough. She wanted to touch him everywhere, to melt into the warmth pooling low in her body that was desire, and the tender ache in her heart that was love.

A peal of thunder finally broke them apart. Lore started to drift back, but Castor held on a moment longer, running his hands down her arms, absorbing the feeling of her skin against his.

She pressed her face to the warm curve of his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him. Her hand trailed along his chest to the place where he’d been shot.

“What’s going to happen to you when the Agon ends?” she whispered.

Lore felt him smile against her skin. “You gonna miss me, Golden?”

“Maybe I like having you around,” she said. “You’re easy on the eyes.”

She was tempted to stay there forever, listening to the storm, imagining a different life. But as thunder broke over the sky again, Lore made a decision.

“I’m going to the Phoenician,” she said. “Will you come with me?”

His eyebrows rose. “The old Kadmides place? Why?”

“Because,” Lore said. “I left something there, and it’s finally time to go pick it up.”

“CAN’T SAY THEY DIDN’T improve the place . . .”

Lore glanced at Castor, allowing herself a little laugh. “I got a big hit of nostalgia being up here again.”