Lore

“No,” Wrath told her with an arrogant smile. He spoke with the tone of a parent indulging a simple child. “You are not strong enough to bear it. I will allow you to carry it once our work is through and I’ve no need for it.”

Lore lifted the aegis to hide that she was replacing the earbud in her ear. Her voice sounded muted as she spoke.

“You’ve lowered yourself to work with him now?” Lore asked, addressing Athena, not Wrath, in a way she knew would infuriate him. “With one of the inferior new gods you claim to despise?”

He stepped between Lore and the goddess, blocking Athena from her sight. His chest swelled as he drew himself to his full height, leering down at her.

She looked past him.

“The Gray-Eyed One recognizes her master,” Wrath said, a streak of anger in his words. “Something you have refused to do—but you’ve always been excitable, haven’t you? The little hellion who needed to be broken. From this day forward, you will serve me in every way I desire—you and that girl from the Odysseides. I’ll have one on each knee. The wait will make it all the sweeter.”

Fury and disgust blazed in Lore, threatening to burn through her control.

Focus, Lore thought. Her plan could still work—she could still play them off each other.

“So you and Artemis entered this Agon with the plan to kill the new gods,” Lore said to Athena as she moved right, away from Wrath and toward the car and tank. “And you got close to me, in the hope that I would give you the aegis and that it would give you the opportunity to kill the new Apollo—maybe even some of the other new gods, too, including this one.”

It was so obvious to Lore now, all of it.

Wrath drew in a breath like a growl. Agitation spread over his face as he angled himself between them again, trying to force Lore’s gaze onto him.

“She is loyal to power, and recognizes it in me,” Wrath said. “I could have molded even you, a hideous, feral little beast, into something. But you’ll die the same way you lived, as no one. Powerless and alone.”

Focus, Lore thought again, steeling herself against her rising nausea. Her grip on the aegis tightened to the point of pain. Every muscle in her body was clenched with tension, begging for release.

She reached up and subtly found the switch on her earbud. Whatever other smirking cruelty he was about to deliver disappeared into an unnatural, humming silence.

The quiet concentrated Lore’s thoughts, sharpening the hunger in her heart. She wanted them to feel her pain. She wanted to watch these gods bleed and suffer the way her little sisters had, and beg her for mercy.

Athena’s cold smile was deliberate, as if she knew each and every last one of Lore’s thoughts.

Lore knew what she expected—that her temper would take hold and Lore would lash out. That she would be destroyed by that same impulsive streak Athena had helped to stoke.

Instead, she held herself steady. The aegis would never tremble in her hands, not out of fear, and not out of anger. If she had to use her hate to devour those last lingering doubts, she would welcome it. But Lore wouldn’t let it incinerate her purpose in coming here, or throw herself onto it and be obliterated.

After years of practice at Thetis House, Lore easily read the clear command on his lips. He stretched out a hand toward her, his gaze focused and face beaming with triumph, and Lore knew he was using his power. She pretended to struggle with the weight of the shield, to sway.

Bring it to me, he was saying. For all his paint and costume, for how imposing the shadows had made him seem, she still only saw the old man he had once been, sitting on a meaningless throne. Give me the aegis.

His body quaked with excitement. Lore forced her own to tense, as if bracing herself against the draining nature of his power. She twisted her features, straining her face to show resistance, even as she took a step toward him. Even as she used the aegis to hide that she was sliding her flashlight out of her pocket.

Athena’s eyes narrowed, the word Wait on her lips, but Wrath had never been the kind of man to listen to a woman, and immortality hadn’t changed that.

He held out his other arm, blocking Athena and all but pushing her back from the shield as Lore approached.

Give it to me, he said again, holding out that hand . . . stretching out a long, powerful arm . . . his face already exalting in his victory. Give it to me, give it to me, good girl.

She had meant to momentarily blind him with the highest setting of the flashlight. Yet, as hot as her rage had flashed in the moments before, it had condensed and iced over at those two words, good girl.

Lore jammed the flashlight’s switch up to its brightest beam and watched both gods turn their faces away.

He was never going to touch her again.

The seconds dragged as Lore dropped the flashlight and ripped Mákhomai out of its scabbard, then sped up again as she made a decision. The hide of the Nemean lion protected Wrath’s back and draped down over his bronze chest plate—but neither it nor his gauntlets covered the exposed joint of his elbow.

Lore brought the razor edge of her sword down hard, and, in one clean stroke, severed his entire right forearm from his body.

Wrath staggered back as blood sprayed from his open wound.

“This good girl,” Lore spat out, “is waiting for you to come and get it.”

She pulled the aegis flush against her body, but as she spun away from his thrashing form, sound rushed back into her left ear. The small earbud had somehow popped out.

Shit, she thought, searching the surface of the water. But it was gone.

Wrath expelled a bark of pain from where he’d dropped onto one knee. His lungs worked like bellows as he brought his remaining hand up to stanch the flow of blood. A vein throbbed in his forehead as he leveled a look at her that promised pain beyond agony.

“Bitch . . .” he gasped out, “little bitch—”

“He’s all yours,” Lore told Athena. “Might as well take out the competition while he’s down. We both know you’ll never let him carry the aegis.”

The goddess smiled as she came to stand beside Wrath. “Do not listen to her, my lord. She seeks to divide us. Rise, and prove how strong you truly are.”

Wrath did, sweating and cursing as blood pumped out beneath his fingers. At the sight of him, his teeth bared and expression livid, Lore wondered if all she had really done was drain the last bit of humanity from him.

“Your false god healed you, I assume,” Athena said, a taunting edge to her voice. “Where is he now, Melora? Did you lose him to the dark?”