Lore

“I need no such remedies,” Athena said. “Do you doubt my strength, child?”

The goddess didn’t seem to notice that she was blinking rapidly with the effort to keep her eyes open.

“I doubt your mortal body,” Lore clarified.

“Is there anyone you trust enough to ask for help?” Miles asked.

“Yes,” Lore said, but didn’t add the important maybe.

Castor had been trained as a healer, and he would have access to his bloodline’s supplies—medicine, blood, and everything else Lore would never be able to buy out on the streets. She was more than willing to swallow her pride enough to try to find him if it meant Aristos Kadmou’s death. But Lore had been angry and somewhat unreasonable when Castor had come to find her. While the friend she’d once known had never been one to hold grudges, she didn’t know this new Castor at all.

Apodidraskinda.

That had been an invitation . . . hadn’t it?

“I can get help and try to find out more information about the new version of the origin poem and who might have it,” Lore began. “Most of the hunters are here in the city now, but it could be stored in one of the bloodlines’ archives in another country.”

“It is here,” Athena said. “I am certain of it, and the false Ares appears to still be here as well. Whether stored in a vault or in memory, we will find it in this city.”

Lore nodded. “Are we going to have to worry about your sister coming to finish the job in the meantime?”

“Artemis only wounded me so she herself could escape the hunters of Kadmos’s line who fell upon us during the Awakening,” Athena said. “Our alliance may be at its end, but she will have other . . . preoccupations. I will return the favor with my blade when the time comes.”

“What about Hermes?” Lore asked.

“I have not seen Hermes in some time,” Athena said, her face impassive. “Nor have I desired to. Once the fool shattered our pact four decades ago, we refused him all aid, and he us.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Lore muttered. Turning back to Athena she added, “You can try to get yourself cleaned up while I’m gone.”

The goddess pulled at the hair glued to her cheek with blood and nodded. She followed Lore upstairs to the hallway bathroom. Eager to ensure peace after she left them, Lore ran a bath and added salts and oils. She set out a clean roll of bandages near the sink.

“I’ll find you a change of clothing,” Lore told Athena as she exited the small space and the goddess entered. “I have to warn you that it won’t be up to your usual standards.”

Athena looked back over her shoulder, her eyes sparking. “I’m sure whatever you find will be . . . tolerable.”

Lore stopped in the doorway, her fingers curled against the frame.

“I’m going to have to leave for a while,” Lore said in a low voice, “to find you a healer. Miles will be safe with you, because I don’t know what I would do to myself if something were to happen to him.”

Athena’s lips curled into a mockery of a smile. “Indeed. Though—”

“What?” Lore asked.

“There is one part of our story you have misunderstood,” Athena said. “We were punished not for the lives lost, but for interfering in the lands of other gods, which threatened the peace of ours—the world beyond the knowing of mortals.”

“That’s—” Lore began. There were any number of ways she could have finished that statement. Terrible, cruel, unbelievable. All true.

In the end, she didn’t finish her thought. Athena shut the bathroom door, leaving Lore standing alone in the hallway. She reached into her pocket again for the necklace Gil had given her. Her palm curled over the feather charm, and, for a moment, she did nothing but stand in the dim hallway, waiting for her heart to steady.

Not lost, she thought. Free.

Once this week was over, and Athena had held up her end of their deal, Lore would be truly free. Of the Agon. Of the gods. Of the hunters.

She wasn’t surprised to find Miles already in her small room, sitting at the edge of the bed. He was the most interesting thing in the otherwise plain space.

“All right,” she began, “I know you want to stay, but—”

Miles was suddenly in front of her, wrapping her in a tight hug. Lore froze, her arms limp at her side.

“Why didn’t you leave?” he whispered. “You could have left last week. I would have helped you.”

Lore squeezed her eyes shut and pulled back out of his embrace to move toward her dresser.

“If something happens while I’m gone, or you see anyone suspicious out on the street, I need you to leave Athena and run,” Lore said.

“I’m not going to leave,” he insisted.

“You can’t fight hunters, Miles. They’re trained to kill gods and anyone else that stands in their way. I would never even find your body.”

He gave her a strange look.

“I’m not going to fight them,” Miles said. “I’m going hide in the basement and call nine-one-one like a normal person.”

Lore allowed herself a small smile as she carefully set the necklace down on the dresser and methodically pulled an oversize white shirt, black leggings, undergarments, and socks from the drawers.

“Do you want me to try to fix that for you?” he asked.

“Could you?” she asked, passing it to him. “I don’t have a chain to replace it, and I don’t want to risk losing it by using string.”

He examined the place the thin gold chain snapped. “I can definitely try.”

“Thank you,” Lore said. She had so few things she cherished. Everything she’d had in her old life had been lost.

Not Castor, her mind whispered.

She drew in a deep breath, allowing the small bit of warmth to spread through her at the realization. She still had Castor. The Agon had taken so much, but it had given him back.

“You know, I get why the hunters want immortality,” Miles said, looking up from the necklace. “And I get what it can do for them and their bloodlines. But even that doesn’t feel like enough of a reason when they know they’re going to be hunted, too.”

The initial panic of telling Miles everything had worn off to a kind of exhausted relief. A small part of her even felt grateful for the fact that she’d been able to choose how to tell the story.