Lore

It was strange to feel both deeply ingrained revulsion and sympathy for the new god. Lore had been taught to hate her, to blame her for what became of the House of Perseus. Over and over, she’d been told Tidebringer was wrong, as if the unnatural thing wasn’t that a mortal had killed a god and taken his place, but that a woman had dared to try.

“Okay, but why would the Poseidon lady mean the death of your . . . house?” Miles asked, hesitating over the word. “I thought you said that the new gods protect and serve their family?”

“That’s just it,” Lore said. “She was shunned by the Perseides and was forced into hiding during the next Agon and all of the ones that came after because she had no family to protect her. The bloodlines saw her as a direct threat to the order of their world. No one had even been sure a woman could ascend until she’d done it. The idea was too dangerous to them.”

Miles sighed. “I think I know where this is going.”

“To make sure it never happened again, the other families, led by the archon of Kadmos’s bloodline, destroyed almost the entire House of Perseus on the last day of that Agon, when the killing of other hunters was still permitted,” Lore said. “Aside from Tidebringer, the only survivor was my great-great-grandfather, who had decided to stay at university instead of participate in that cycle.”

“Holy shit,” Miles said mildly.

“The other bloodlines decided to keep him alive to torment him a different way—humiliation,” Lore said. “They split the Perseides’ stores of weapons and armor, divvied up their lucrative shipping and textile-manufacturing empires, and gave the head of the Kadmos bloodline the family’s greatest inheritance.”

The aegis. The shield of Zeus, carried into so many battles by his favorite daughter, Athena, bearing the head of the gorgon Medusa, and given to them by the king of gods himself to aid in their hunt. An object capable of summoning lightning and striking unnatural terror in the heart of all enemies who beheld it.

It had been the envy of all the other bloodlines, who resented the Perseides for getting what they considered to be a superior inheritance. Over the centuries, many of the other objects of power had been destroyed by rival bloodlines to keep them from being used.

But only those in that particular bloodline who bore the house’s name could use their respective gifts. The Kadmides may have stolen the aegis, but none of them could wield it. And the truth of her great-great-grandfather’s survival was even more sinister than she’d let on. Lore assumed he’d been spared for the same reason she had been: the aegis would disappear when the last of the Perseides died.

“Wow . . .” Miles said slowly. “But then your family—your parents?”

“And sisters.”

Miles’s face fell. Lore had only told him and Gil that her family had died and she’d been taken against her will to be raised by a member of her mother’s family. Both of which were true, in a very vague manner of speaking.

“Their deaths were ordered by Aristos Kadmou, the grandson of the man who had led the initial execution of the Perseides,” Lore said.

“Who is now the new . . . Ares?” Miles finished. “After he killed the last new Ares in the Agon seven years ago?”

“The mortal believes you lie.”

Lore startled at the sound of Athena’s low voice. Miles did more than that. He leaped out of his chair, knocking it to the ground, and stumbled back against the nearby counter, clutching his chest.

“Jesus!” he gasped out. “I mean—I don’t—”

Miles dropped into what looked like half a curtsey and half a bow.

“Do you?” Lore asked him. “Do you believe me?”

Athena filled the doorway of the kitchen, leaning heavily against the frame with one hand pressed to the wound at her side.

“I mean, yes,” Miles said. “I do believe you. It’s just going to take a little while for me to get a grip on it, you know?”

The goddess took in the sight of him with derision before turning back toward Lore.

“This vessel requires sustenance.”

“You want . . . breakfast?” Lore guessed.

Athena lowered herself into the free chair. Lore stared at her there for a moment—something swirling in the pit of her stomach at the sight of her in Gil’s house, in Gil’s chair—but in the end, she only stood up and went to the refrigerator.

Within a few minutes, Lore set down three plates of scrambled eggs and bacon and three glasses of water. She and Miles watched, both gripping their forks, as Athena pinched a piece of bacon between her fingers and brought it to her nose to sniff it.

As far as Lore was concerned, free food tasted the best, but it was clear the goddess didn’t share that opinion. She took an experimental bite, and all six feet of her shuddered.

Ever loyal, even in the face of years of deception, Miles took a big bite of his own and declared, “Best bacon I’ve ever had.”

“If you don’t want it, don’t eat it,” Lore told Athena coldly.

The goddess sipped at her water, her lips curling into a sneer.

“It’s the sensation,” Athena said, forcing herself to swallow a small bite of egg. “To lower myself to such . . . base needs. To need such bland, repulsive victuals or feel hollow. Feel pain. It is intolerable.”

“Yeah, well,” Lore said, “intolerable pretty much sums up a lot of human existence.”

Miles looked at her in surprise but, for once, kept his thoughts to himself.

“So . . .” he began, his eyes darting over to the celestial being beside him. Athena was still covered in dried blood and grime. “Where’s your owl?”

The look Athena gave him would have incinerated a city block if she’d been at her full power.

Undaunted, he pressed on. “Your shield?”

A glass slipped from Lore’s hand, shattering in the basin of the sink.

“Lore?” Miles rose, coming to help her, but Lore waved her hand behind her, motioning for him to sit before carefully cleaning it up.

“The aegis,” Athena ground out, making sure to use its proper name. “I carried my father’s shield. It was given to the hunters by my father centuries ago, along with many of our weapons and divine possessions. I have not seen it since, nor could I use it if I desired to. Not unless it is in my hands by the last of the seven days as I regain my immortal form.”