Lore

“Not true,” Lore said. “It has to be willingly given by someone in the bloodline, which is impossible. The Kadmides have had it for decades.”

“And you know all this for certain, do you?” Athena said. “What is your purpose in telling the mortal all of this, Melora? What good will it possibly bring?”

“I’m tired of lying to him,” Lore said, fighting to keep her temper in check. “I realize that’s a foreign concept to you. Let me know if you need an updated definition of friends—I realize Artemis was likely the last one you had before she stabbed you.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but setting aside the stabbing—which, wow, first time I’ve ever been glad to not have a sister,” Miles said, looking a bit pained. “Is Artemis the only other original god still in the Agon?”

Athena’s chin lifted, as if daring Lore to answer him.

Lore ignored her. “No, there’s Hermes. Apollo, too.”

“There you are most certainly wrong,” Athena said sharply. “Apollo perished at the end of the last Agon.”

A twinge of eager curiosity passed through Lore before she could suppress it. She squeezed her hands together beneath the table until the uninvited feeling had passed.

“Apollo was supposedly killed in the last Agon, but no one witnessed it,” Lore explained. “There were only rumors, which could have easily come from a bloodline that wanted to mislead the others so they alone would know to hunt him in the next cycle. If he is dead, whatever house has the new Apollo has kept his identity quiet. Personally, I think it’s someone in the House of Theseus. That bloodline made considerable investments in solar energy last year.”

Lore had already explained to Miles how a new god might benefit their family financially by meddling in world events, to further their own interests. The current new Aphrodite, for instance, had led the House of Odysseus into vastly successful Hollywood projects. A new Ares, including Aristos Kadmou, could inflame international conflicts to support their bloodline’s investments in weapons manufacturing, and a new Dionysus could start a megachurch or a doomsday cult. The opportunities were vast and limited only by the new god’s creativity.

“That brings us to eight,” Miles pressed. “Who’s the other one?”

“It was Hephaestus,” Lore said. “But he’s gone.”

“Eradicated by a power-hungry imposter,” Athena snarled.

“Maybe your father should have considered leaving better instructions instead of trusting a few men to write crappy poems about the encounter,” Lore said. “It’s not the hunters’ fault they had to figure out the rules for themselves.”

“Of course,” Athena said with a derisive snort. “It was not enough for that hubristic imposter to have the power of one god, the fool had to attempt to slay another to see if he could gain Hephaestus’s as well. It is only just that he could not.”

“I don’t disagree with you there,” Lore said. “No one has made that mistake again. The hunters want to keep as many opportunities for immortality as possible. It’s the reason the Agon will never end. They won’t let it.”

Gil’s grandfather clock ticked nearby, each stroke cutting at Lore’s nerves a little more.

“So what’s our plan?” Miles asked.

“You’re going to your internship,” Lore said. “And you’re going to find a friend to crash with until next Sunday.”

“What?” he said. “Then what was the point of telling me all that?”

“The point,” Lore said, “was to make you understand how dangerous this is.”

“If it’s that dangerous I’m not leaving this house, or you,” he said. “I’ll email my boss and tell her I have strep. But I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”

Athena looked on with surprise and approval. Lore gritted her teeth at the sight of it.

“I prefer the company of this mortal,” she informed Lore.

“That mortal doesn’t even know basic knife-fighting,” Lore said, rising to gather their empty plates. “So if you go down first in a fight, good luck.”

Lore turned back to Miles. “I don’t know how long this house will be safe. All I’ve done is try to confuse any of the hunting dogs that have picked up her scent. Eventually, it might not be enough.”

“I will not be a prisoner in this house,” Athena told her. “I will use my power to disguise my presence if necessary. I am content to remain here while this mortal shell recovers its strength. However, to complete our oath, I will have to leave these walls. And you, Melora Perseous, know less than you believe—you do not even know what the false Ares has spent these last seven years searching for.”

Castor’s face lit up again in her mind. He’s searching for something. . . .

“And you do?” Lore pressed.

Athena nodded. “This . . . poem you hold so dear, the one you recite as fact, it is either incomplete, or he searches for another version of it. One which tells of how the Agon ends and how its victor will claim unfathomable power.”

Lore’s mind shut down, leaving her body to react. She stood so quickly from her chair that it fell back and clattered against the tile. There was nowhere to go, and nothing her hands could grip except the opposite arm. “What?”

Miles looked between them, confused.

Athena swayed in her seat, clearly unsteady from blood loss and internal injury.

“My sister and I tracked him. He desires this information above all else and has set his many hunters to search for it,” Athena said. “I am sure I do not need to tell you the sort of ruin he will bring to this world if he is able to find it. We must act with haste. If we locate this fragment or . . . new iteration . . . it will bring us into his path, and I will finish him.”

Finding a new version of the origin poem—if it even existed—would, of course, give Athena the same information Aristos Kadmou was after. Lore didn’t like the thought of any of them having it, hunter or immortal. She would have to find it first and, if possible, destroy it or . . .

Her mind finished the dark thought. Destroy any hunter who knows what it says.

“You’re not going to be able to kill him in your current state,” Lore told the goddess. “You probably need a blood transfusion and some kind of antibiotics at the very least.”