Lore

A day after the ill-fated meeting between her father and the Kadmides, Lore had brought Castor into the Murray Hill neighborhood to spy on the Phoenician with her. They’d climbed the fire escape of the building across the street, the exact way they had that evening. Back then, Lore hadn’t told Castor the truth of how she’d found the location—she just said that they were on their own kind of hunt.

After the Kadmides sold the property, it looked like it had become a fitness boutique, which also closed. In the months between then and now, rats had invaded, it had been bombed out with pesticide, and now a pita restaurant was being put in. A true New York City circle of life.

Lore looked over to Castor’s face, his striking profile outlined by the night-stained clouds. The air had taken on a warm, drowsy quality as humidity settled back over the city. If it hadn’t been for the reek of stale water and rot, she might have felt like she was dreaming.

The floodwaters had been slow to recede after Tidebringer’s death. To Lore’s eye, everything was starting to look as if it had been painted with watercolors; edges were softened and colors stained darker.

Lore pushed up from where she’d been flat on her stomach at the roof’s edge and scanned the nearby buildings one last time. It was just shy of midnight and the start of the Agon’s fifth day, but there were no New Yorkers out and about—or, it seemed, hunters.

Castor straightened as well, letting out a soft hum of thought. His hair was curling and glossy in the damp air.

He really was beautiful. Lore had wondered, from the moment she’d found out what he’d become, how much of the old Castor was left—as if their years apart hadn’t dismantled and remade her, too. She had asked her father once if inheriting a god’s power meant absorbing their beliefs, their personalities, and their looks.

Power does not transform you, he’d said. It only reveals you.

From what she had seen, immortality turned back the clock on the older hunters who claimed it, returning them to their physical prime and imbuing them with more power, more beauty, and more strength. But it couldn’t fix what was broken or missing inside them.

The same was true for Castor, but power had only strengthened the good in his heart. Each time she met his gaze, she saw all those things she’d lost when he left her life. Things she never thought she’d have again.

Things that would be taken from her once more at the end of the Agon.

It was too painful to think about, so she didn’t.

“I have to admit,” Castor said, “I’m a little sad it’s gone.”

For a moment, Lore wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“The last time we were here, I imagined us older, sneaking inside the bar under all of the Kadmides’ noses and ordering a drink,” he said. “Do you remember the serpent mask they hung in the window?”

“The one that supposedly belonged to Damen Kadmou?” Lore asked. The first new Dionysus. “Yeah, why?”

Castor had a faint smile on his face as he said, “I imagined us stealing it to check if the stories were true and the inside was still stained with his blood.”

“I really was a bad influence on you as a child,” Lore said.

He winked at her. Lore flushed, turning her head away so he wouldn’t see the wash of pink spreading over her face. She lay down again beside him, her fingers brushing where his gripped the cement ledge. Castor shifted his hand, curling his pinkie finger over hers.

“You really thought about that?” she asked quietly. “Us going together?”

Back then, Lore had mostly thought about setting the place on fire and watching the Kadmides flee like rats from their dark booths—probably more than was strictly healthy for a child of ten.

“Stupid, I know,” he said, “considering how little time I had. But you were like this invincible force to me, even then. You were a safe place to hide my hopes.”

Her lips parted and her body flooded with sensation and sudden awareness. She didn’t know what to do with it, so she looked out onto the street again.

“Come on, big guy,” Lore said, pushing up off the roof. “I just hope it’s still there.”

They climbed down the fire escape. Lore kept herself alert, one hand on her small blade, as she crossed the street.

The gate protecting the narrow path to the courtyard behind the old restaurant was blocked by trash bags and fallen scaffolding. Castor broke the padlock on it with ease.

Filthy water swirled around their ankles as they trudged forward. The stench of trash instantly brought her back to this same place, seven years ago.

Lore searched the wet ground, making her way toward the piles of construction supplies in the courtyard. Dread ran a cold knuckle across the back of her neck.

Where is it?

“What’s wrong?” Castor asked.

“The storm drain—” she began, only to notice that the water was slanting down, toward the stack of plywood lined up against the restaurant’s wall. “Can you help me? We need to move these out of the way.”

They made quick work of it together. As they removed the last of the wood, water rushed around her feet, pouring through the rusted iron grate covering the storm drain.

When she tried to lift the cover, it wouldn’t budge.

“If you’re not too busy standing there looking pretty . . . ?” she said, gesturing to Castor.

He pretended to push up his sleeves. The movement only highlighted how his shirt clung to the ridges of his shoulders and chest. A warm thread curled low in her stomach as she watched him bend over to grip the grate.

He grunted, bracing his feet. The muscles of his arms strained as he pulled at it, until, finally, he used his power to heat the rust seal that had formed. Castor set the cover aside with a look of relief. “How did you lift this as a kid?”

“Panic,” Lore said, crouching beside the opening. The force of the water flowing by her nearly pushed her in.

She shifted, sitting at the edge to lower herself into the drain.

“Wait,” Castor said, suddenly serious. “You’re actually going down?”

It wasn’t much of a drop; the darkness made the drain pipe seem much deeper than it actually was. Water roared around her, racing down to meet the bigger drain it connected to. It was fuller than the last time she had done this, but she wasn’t afraid.

Lore looked up, shooting a visibly worried Castor a reassuring look.