Lore

Lore looked down at her hands. Strands of that same lightning danced over her knuckles and palms. She hadn’t realized how dull her senses had been until they awoke in her again. The air suddenly felt like a living creature, cool in places, damp in others, always moving, always brushing against her.

Her legs were primed as she took off at a run, exploding with unfamiliar strength and speed.

The subway car flew down the tracks, the fire trailing behind it. The flames began to climb up the stone walls, devouring supports and the tracks themselves.

Lore caught up to it just before it broke through the tunnel that would send it beneath Grand Central station. With a cry, she cut in front of it, bracing her hands against the flat edge of the car. Digging her feet into the tracks, she pushed back against the force of the engine.

The car sputtered and creaked as it struggled to press on. Lore set her jaw, releasing a ragged cry as she lifted her foot long enough to slam it down against the front-right wheel, and then the left, beating them both out of shape. She tipped the whole car forward, folding and crushing the metal down as if it were paper, until it could no longer move.

She snapped the restraints on the tank, pulling its massive body toward her. Lore hissed as the sea fire licked at her legs and bare arms, but she held on until she could crush the open valve and stop the flow of the sea-fire chemicals.

Lore rolled the tank as far into the station as her strength would allow, into water that wasn’t yet burning.

The flames couldn’t be doused by water. Her father had told her about sea fire, he had told her . . .

It could only be smothered by dirt. Starved of oxygen.

Lore turned and looked back into the empty tracks below Grand Central one last time. The distant platforms she could use to climb out of the burning hell and find the others.

She drew in a breath, bracing her hand against one wall of the tunnel.

Not free. The thought pierced her. Never free.

But the others would be.

Lore tore at the stone wall, punching her fists into it until the entrance to the tunnel rained down fractured stone and the sight of the station disappeared behind the wall of rubble.

The fire’s path was cut off for now, but it wouldn’t stop burning as long as there was water. If enough heat built up, it would collapse the streets above. She had to find a way to smother it. To starve it of oxygen.

Lore ran back the way she came. Heat tore at her from all sides, but she didn’t stop, not until she reached Track 61. The whole station was on fire; there was no end to it. There was no way to drain the water.

Yes, she realized, there is.

She wasn’t powerless.

With a deep breath of burning air, Lore waded out into the center of the station, gasping as the sea fire crawled along her clothes and skin. She dropped to her knees and pressed her fists against the ground hidden beneath the burning water.

She could send the water, the fires, deeper into the belly of the earth. Where there would be no air, and nothing but darkness to feed on.

Please, she thought, drawing a fist back. The electric feeling was still building in her core, only this time, Lore didn’t resist it.

She unleashed it.

Power gathered around her hand, glowing molten gold. She slammed it against the earth with a guttural scream. The ground roared back as it splintered. Spidery fractures glowed gold beneath the flames and water.

Lore closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling of the heat and energy pouring through her. She felt herself sinking deeper and deeper as her power incinerated the stone beneath her. There was no way to escape it. She would be carried down into the darkness below and extinguished with the flames. Alone. She was alone. . . .

“Stay with me.” Lore let out a choked cry, sobbing for breath and relief at the crush of it all. Don’t leave me. . . .

They didn’t.

She felt her family around her—the soothing touch of them, brushing her cheeks, wrapping around her center. And beyond them, the presence of unseen eyes.

Power raged in her body, as pure as the fiery heart of the world. As old as Chaos and the worlds born from it.

“Lore!” Castor’s voice carried across the station. “Lore!”

She looked up, searching for him through the smoke and finding him in the elevator.

“Get out of here!” she choked out.

The smell of burnt hair and skin rose around her and she realized it was her. Sweat poured from her face as Lore beat the ground, overturning the hard rock, pulverizing it. The burning water rushed down through the growing cracks. It was working. This was working.

At the edge of her vision, she saw Castor rush forward, shielding his face from the fires.

“Don’t do it!” he called. “We need to get out! There’s nothing else you can do!”

There was always something she could do.

Sparks of her power flew around her, catching in her hair and turning her skin into a glowing cosmos. Her arms quivered with the effort of trying to keep that last grip on herself. Her hands blazed gold as she slammed them down one last time and finally broke the world open beneath her.

The sea fire poured into the deep crevice, draining out of the station. She punched the tunnel again, pulverizing more stone in order to bury the fire. The tunnel shook with the force of each hit, as if it might cave.

Only one thought made sense to her. She needed to bury the fire. . . . But she hurt. . . . Every part of her burned. . . .

The glow at her hands intensified, spreading up her arms, washing over her, until Lore couldn’t tell if the light radiating around her was coming from her or the fires.

“Stop!” Castor’s terrified voice reached her. “Lore, stop!”

He fought through the heat, bold and shining as her vision started to fade to darkness.

“It’s enough!” he said. “If the street caves in, it’ll take the hotel with it!”

“The fires—” she rasped.

“They’re out!” he told her, gripping her arms, trying to force her to look at him. The walls and ground stopped shaking, and the remaining water hissed as it poured into the crevice she had created.

But Lore was beyond hearing; the same deep pull of power she had felt before returned, threatening to tear her body apart as she ascended. Her veins glowed gold beneath her skin as the last of her mortal blood burned away. She felt as insubstantial as smoke.

Castor pressed her to him, hard.

“No—stay,” he begged. “Stay here!”