Lore

He didn’t. The hunter fired.

Lore shoved the screen down, reaching for her screwdriver. It was no knife, but it did spiral through the air the way she’d hoped. It glanced off the attacker’s mask, knocking him to the ground.

She launched forward as the hunter scrabbled back toward the secret door, too furious in her fear to let him escape.

The hunter slid a long dagger out from the hilt at his side. Chiron leaped to his feet on the bed, barking wildly—it was enough of a distraction for Lore to seize the small marble bust on the dresser and smash it against the hunter’s head. Once. Twice.

The assassin slumped to the ground, unmoving. Blood trickled out from beneath the dark hood. Lore shoved it back and ripped the mask away, revealing Philip Achilleos’s slack face.

“Bastard,” she seethed. And a traitor, too, hiding behind another line’s mask. It wouldn’t have protected him from the kin killer’s curse, just as it hadn’t protected him from her.

Chiron whined, snapping Lore out of the fight’s daze. He was near where Castor had fallen to the floor, sniffing his hand. Lore retrieved her screwdriver and scrambled over to the new god, searching him for any signs of a bullet or wound. There was only a small feathered dart near his heart—a tranquilizer.

She added coward to the archon’s tally. He hadn’t wanted any resistance from the new god as he drove a blade into Castor’s heart and ascended.

“Oh, damn you!” She gripped the front of Castor’s robes, shaking him. “You could have avoided that easily—snap out of it!”

His head lolled back. She pressed an ear against his chest, but couldn’t hear anything over her own heartbeat.

“Castor?” she said, shaking him. “Cas!”

He didn’t respond. Lore pressed the heel of her hand against his chest, driving it down and down and down. Castor surged up, gasping. He twisted onto his side, disoriented, his legs and arms sliding against the carpet.

“Cas . . .” Lore began, reaching for him.

The new god dragged himself farther away, throwing out a hand toward her.

Her sharp gasp was the only sound Lore managed before the air turned to fire in her lungs, and a writhing mass of heat and light blasted out from his fingertips.

LORE HAD BEEN RAISED with a blade in her hand.

She’d drilled for endless hours and days with practice staffs, blades, spears, and shields, repeating those deadly movements until she no longer had the strength to hold up her weapons. The hilts had left dark grooves of memory in her palms, like the rivers in the Underworld. She’d nurtured those calluses, thickening her skin so it no longer shredded.

Lore had wanted her body to remember it all: the weight of the weapons, the angle of the strike, the exact power she needed to coax from her muscles. Some part of her had always understood that there would come a time when her mind emptied with exhaustion or pain, and all she’d be left with was that work, that practice. A moment when ingrained skill finally blurred into reflex.

Like now.

The armoire behind her exploded into thousands of splinters, catching in her hair and skin. She didn’t feel any of it. Didn’t waste a breath. She dove away, gasping.

Mask, she thought, trying to flip it off her face. Its laces had become tangled in her hair, and she couldn’t pull it away, no matter how hard she clawed at it.

The wind was knocked out of her as she slammed into the wall behind her. Castor’s arm banded over her chest like a steel bar.

He shifted his arm, bringing it up against her throat. Black gathered at the edge of her vision as her air supply was cut off. There was no emotion in Castor’s face; it was as if he, too, was acting on pure instinct now, his body striving to survive.

She kicked viciously, trying to hit his kneecaps. Somewhere in the background, she was aware of barking, of the dark blur behind her opponent snapping and lunging.

Lore bashed her forehead against Castor’s, letting the bronze mask do its work. He groaned, blood bursting from a cut across his forehead. Castor staggered back and she tackled him, all broken nails and raw, desperate strength. His weight was impossible—suffocating as it settled over her—but he was still flesh and blood.

She wrapped her legs around his torso and flipped him over so that she was on top. Lore brought the screwdriver to his throat, but Castor gripped the metal and pushed the tip back toward her face. His blood sizzled on the steel as it heated in his hand, turning molten gold. The scalding intensity of it was so near to her eye that it finally broke Lore out of her frenzied haze.

Chiron was all but howling, gripping the new god’s other arm in his mouth. He didn’t seem to feel the fangs or the brute force of the massive dog. Castor’s pupils were dilated, ringed by the gold embers of his power. He was looking at her, but not seeing her, even as he tore her mask off.

“It’s me!” Lore choked out, trying to twist away from the burning blade. “It’s me—it’s Lore!”

The transformation that stole over the new god’s face was like the slow unfurling of a wing. Fury spread to shock, then horror.

He released his hold on her, and Lore scrambled off him, dropping to her knees, panting. The screwdriver fell to the carpet. The smell of singed wool quickly filled the room. Lore had enough sense to kick it toward the tile in the bathroom.

The silence that followed was almost as painful as the heat had been. For a long time, Castor did nothing but stare at her as she leaned forward over her knees, trying to gulp more air into her lungs. Her blood was still drumming in her veins.

Chiron trotted over to her on stiff limbs, and for a moment she did nothing but press her face into the fur of his neck. The weaker part of her wanted to disappear into it.

Finally, Lore forced herself to turn around.

“Surprise?” she said, because Lore had never met a situation she couldn’t make even more painfully awkward.

“I could have . . . I could have killed you,” Castor said hoarsely. “I thought . . . I was confused, and the assassin—”

No. He would have killed her. Her arms were throbbing with the effort it had taken to hold the screwdriver back.

“I seem to remember being the one on top, big guy,” she said.

He closed his eyes, releasing a long breath. Castor rubbed at his forehead, which reminded Lore of how much her own hurt.

“Should have known it was you from that first hit,” he said. “Only you would immediately go for the head. Do I want to know where you got that mask?”