Lore

“You want me to help protect you, and, I’m guessing, to hide you from the same people that would happily kill me, too,” Lore whispered. “But you already know that. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

Athena gave a slight nod.

“So exactly what’s in this for me?” Lore said, taking another step closer. “I realize this is a new experience for you, but even if you heal faster than the average mortal, you’re not exactly doing well. So why would I tie my life to one that might not make it a few hours, let alone a few days?”

“I heard . . . what had happened to you . . .” Athena said. “The years between . . . Searched . . . for you . . .”

The hair on Lore’s body rose.

At the end of each Agon, the gods, new and old, regained their immortality, but they remained in the mortal world, unable to return to whatever home they’d once known.

The new gods, brimming with power, manifested physical forms and lived lavishly, manipulating the workings of the world to fill the vaults of their mortal bloodlines. But the old gods, with their power ever-waning, usually chose to

remain incorporeal. It made them untraceable as they set about the world, trying to plan for contingencies for the next hunt or seeking retribution against those who had tried to kill them. The threat of that vengeance was the reason hunters always wore masks.

“You searched for me?” Lore said. “Why?”

“I believed . . . you could be . . . persuaded to aid me. . . . I heard your . . . name . . . from the other bloodlines. . . . Your family . . . murdered. Mother . . . father . . . sisters,” Athena said, her breathing labored. “They called you . . . lost. Some believed . . . dead.”

Lore’s throat locked until she almost couldn’t speak. “What do you know about that?”

Athena looked to her again, this time with the expression of someone who already knew they’d won. “I know . . . who killed them.”

THE MEMORY ROSE SHARP and true, cutting through all the barriers Lore had built around it. The way the door to her family’s apartment had looked as she came toward it that morning. The chilling silence inside. The smell of blood.

Lore drew in a deep breath and pressed a hand to her eyes, hard enough that light and colors danced beneath her lids. It distracted her mind from the dark trail it had started down again, but only for a moment.

She didn’t know how she kept her voice so calm as she said, “I already know who killed them. Aristos Kadmou of the House of Kadmos.” The new Ares, as of the last Agon.

“The false god may have . . . ordered their deaths . . . but who held the blade?” Athena pressed. “For it was not he. He was only a newborn god. . . .”

Lore’s body tightened to the point of pain.

“It doesn’t matter. He was the one who gave the order,” Lore said. “He was the head of his bloodline, and then became their god. They are all responsible, every last man, woman, and child who kneels before him, but only he had the power to put it all into motion.”

And his bloodline had obeyed his command, murdering her parents and two little sisters so savagely that it had taken the Kadmides weeks to clean the apartment enough to hide the evidence. In the end, they’d still had to purify it with flames. According to the New York City Police Department, the family had set the fire themselves after a rent dispute and left town, never to be heard from again.

No one in the House of Kadmos had ever claimed responsibility for the murders, or ever would. The hunters had taken a blood oath centuries ago to never intentionally kill a hunter of another bloodline between the cycles of the Agon. It had been the only way to ensure peace between them.

Her family had been murdered the morning after the Agon’s completion, when that oath should have protected them. The Kadmides had broken a sacred vow, but no other house was powerful enough to challenge them, and no gods had ever listened to her prayers.

“Why did you . . . not avenge them?” Athena panted. “These many years . . . you have done nothing. . . . You . . . do not recognize your . . . moira. . . . You never sought . . . poiné . . . only fell . . . to . . . the worst aidos. . . .”

Lore sank to the floor, her legs folding beneath her. She braced her hands beside them, fighting the familiar pressure expanding in her chest. Her moira—her lot in life, her destiny.

“Those words mean nothing to me now,” she said hoarsely. But hearing them felt like scars being cut open.

Poiné. Vengeance.

Aidos. Shame.

A life without the excellence of areté and the earned possessions of timé. Of never attaining kleos.

“I was just a little girl,” Lore said, barely hearing her own words. “They would have killed me, too. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them all. And I knew I could never get to him, not after he ascended.”

In the years since, she’d killed to keep from being killed. She traveled by foot, by boat, by air, only to arrive back at the city that had raised her. She’d escaped the labyrinth of oaths that had been designed to trap her until the day came when the Agon called for her to sacrifice her last heartbeat.

But Lore had done nothing to avenge her family.

Athena’s lip curled. “Excuses . . . These lies you tell yourself . . . You were never . . . a mere . . . little girl. I heard . . . what the others whispered about you . . . that you were the best of your generation . . . that it was a shame . . . you had been born to a different bloodline. . . .”

“You’re lying,” Lore whispered, unable to stop the involuntary shiver that moved through her. Years ago, those words would have meant everything to her—she’d craved recognition from the very people who had refused to give it to her.

“The Spartan . . . they called you,” Athena breathed. “Little Gorgon . . . I searched for you . . . chose you . . . knowing that skill . . . knowing that you are no longer one of the hunters. . . . But you have . . . never been weak . . . never powerless. . . . So I ask . . . why did you do nothing . . . to avenge your family?”

Lore drew her arms close to her chest, throwing out Gil’s words like a shield. But there was no protection against the truth. “It’s not— You wouldn’t understand. The only real thing in this world is what you can do for others. How you can take care of them.”

The goddess snorted with derision.