Lore

The new god’s sword clattered to the ground as he fell to his knees, his head hanging. Athena retrieved his blade from the water, then came to stand in front of him. She drew the aegis near his face, until he was forced to meet Medusa’s gaze.

Wrath lifted his hand. There was something dark clutched in it.

He squeezed it tighter, into a fist. There was a metallic groan as a valve at the back of the tank opened, and foul, oily chemicals spilled from it.

The subway car let out a loud clang as it suddenly rolled forward. It kicked up waves of water as it sped up down the track, leaving a trail of the sea fire behind it.

Wrath dropped the device and struggled to reach something else inside his armor—a lighter.

His bloodied fingers lit its small flame, and he snarled as he tossed it into the chemicals. A line of white-blue fire flared in front of him, blazing down the heart of the tunnel.

The air near Lore shimmered and turned scalding. Just before the car disappeared into the tunnel that would connect it to countless other tracks, she saw there was some sort of metal heat shield covering the back of the car where the chemicals burned. The shield was the only thing keeping the flames from igniting the tank and causing an explosion. For now.

Fire drifted toward her, but Lore couldn’t move. The word, the one she’d feared all her life, rang out in her mind. Powerless.

The air filled with smoke, but Lore could still make out Athena’s form as she raised Wrath’s sword.

“You,” he panted out, blood dribbling over his lips. “You—lose!”

“You die,” the goddess said, and, with her usual cold precision, cut the head from his body.

Lore closed her eyes against the heat growing around her. Agony shot down her spine and legs as she was dragged through the water. When she opened them again, the world was lit by fire and Athena was hovering over her.

The goddess didn’t look right to Lore. Her skin was clammy with beads of sweat, and the skin around a cut at her jaw was turning black. Even the glow of the goddess’s eyes seemed to dim.

Poison, Lore thought. She hadn’t escaped it after all.

Athena coughed and it was a vicious, wet sound. She seemed startled by it, pressing an uncertain hand against her chest. Blood dripped from her eyes, her nose, her mouth.

“Tell me—what to do,” the goddess demanded. “Tell me—how to—stop it.”

But Lore was beyond speaking. Her soul began to unravel from her body, the world fading.

The goddess gave Lore one last look, the skin between her eyebrows creasing, and rose. Lore was so sure that the goddess was leaving, that she was saving herself, that she released a sound like a wounded animal. Her breath rattled as she struggled for it.

But Athena returned a moment later, struggling to hold on to one of Wrath’s daggers.

For the first time, a story was playing out across the goddess’s face. Emotion rippled through the placid exterior. Anger. Regret. Acceptance.

The goddess slid the hilt into Lore’s hand, carefully closing her fingers over it, and her own hand over Lore’s.

Lore’s eyes widened as she stared up at her; her body seized with fear. With dread.

She wouldn’t . . . Athena would never do this, and even in her deepest hatred of her, even desperate for a way to protect her loved ones, Lore never would have wanted her to. She never wanted this.

“It must be this way,” Athena rasped out. Her body trembled violently now, trying to fight off the poison’s effects. “I am . . . lost. . . . You will be born again. You will have more time. Fight again . . . to the last. It is . . . the only . . . logical choice. The city . . . must be defended.”

The goddess positioned the point of the blade over her heart. She gave Lore the final choice.

Never free.

Lore shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to claw at the small, throbbing hope in her, the one she’d carried like a torch against impossible darkness. She wanted the life she’d fought so hard to create, and was as desperate for it as her next breath. She wanted to cry in a way she hadn’t since she was a child. She wanted her parents.

She wanted everything, but never this. Never this.

Lore had been born into this cage, and now she would die in it—if not her body, then her soul.

But the city had to be defended, and it was hers to protect.

She met Athena’s gaze and nodded.

The look the goddess gave Lore was sharp, ever-commanding. “Through the heart.”

Together, they plunged the dagger forward, the blow striking hard and true. The goddess shook, her eyes open, flashing silver as she saw something, felt something, beyond knowing.

It was a warrior’s kill.

A god’s final reckoning.

BREATH EXPLODED INTO LORE’S lungs, her chest expanding painfully as she drew in more and more air, trying to ease the boiling beneath her skin. Her heart became thunder, threatening to tear through her rib cage and skin.

Then her body roared with fire.

A storm of light spun down around Lore, swallowing her into its depths. Her body rose from the water. Veins of lightning traced over her limbs.

Athena’s mortal remains burned away to ash. The being that emerged from it, drifting up like light breaking over a sleeping land, was nearly indescribable and cast in pure, radiant power.

The goddess looked down at Lore one last time, reaching a hand toward the aegis. Between one heartbeat and the next, both vanished, leaving behind sparks that trembled in the darkness as they fell.

And then the world Lore had once known disappeared with them.

She screamed as the pain set in. Power rippled through her, consuming blood and muscle and bone. It was a hollowing. An eradication of every bit of matter that had once lived inside her.

The seconds dragged by, slowly regaining their speed. Lore felt her consciousness begin to go—to drift. The lightning, that unbridled power, was threading through her, threatening to tear her mortal body apart.

Lore didn’t know what she would be left with, only that she might not have the ability to touch the sea fire tank, let alone stop it.

“I need—” She had to shout over the maelstrom of whipping wind and rumbling forces around her. “I need to stay—I need a little longer—I need to stay!”

Power blasted down her spine as her body was dropped back into the burning water. Lore staggered upright. Inside her, something was thrashing, pulsing against the barrier of her skin.