Lore

As if just realizing what he’d done, he released his hold on her and took a step back.

This was Castor, but somehow it wasn’t. She only had to look at his eyes to know that for sure. He may have retained some of Castor’s genetic destiny with his looks, but he’d been . . . enhanced. The imperfections that had made him as messy a human as the rest of them had been smoothed over, and the result was devastating, in more ways than one.

Then again, she wasn’t the Lore he had known, either.

“I’m sorry,” Castor said, an edge of desperation in the words. “Just . . . talk to me. Why do you want to know what Wrath’s plans are?” His eyes widened. “Tell me you aren’t going after him. . . .”

Silence hung between them, dividing the distance between past and present. It was the only line in her life that Lore had no idea how to cross.

He closed his eyes, his whole body strung tight. “Why did he have them killed?”

Lore wondered, then, if it was possible the Kadmides had kept what she had done a secret all this time. She supposed pride might explain that, too. Sometimes, when the memories of that night surfaced and she replayed it all in her mind to punish herself, Lore took comfort in knowing how humiliating it would be for Aristos Kadmou—to all of the Kadmides—to know he had been bested by a little girl.

“Van thought you might be with your mother’s bloodline, but no one was willing to say,” Castor said. “No one would risk the Kadmides punishing them for protecting you. But why would he come after your family in the first place?”

They had risked it, and she’d repaid them with blood. Interesting, too, that Van’s searching hadn’t turned up that gruesome story, either.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lore said. “Wrath wanted to finish what his grandfather started. He wanted the House of Perseus taken out of the hunt.”

“Why wouldn’t he have ordered it before?” Castor asked. “Why wait until he ascended? Why not come and do it himself as an immortal?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Lore said sharply. “I don’t know why he did it, okay? Because my father rejected his offer. Because my father embarrassed him. Because he just felt like it! All I know is that the Kadmides took them from me. They took everything.”

But that wasn’t true, and she had the proof of it in front of her. They hadn’t taken Castor. The Agon had.

Her throat thickened, but Lore wasn’t a little girl anymore. She would control her emotions. “And I thought . . . I thought you were dead, too.”

“I’m sorry. Gods, Lore,” Castor said quietly. His voice slipped into a tone she’d never heard before, one of anger and self-contempt. “I couldn’t help you. I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t do anything, for years. Even if I had found you, you never would have known.”

“What do you mean?” Lore leaned toward him, staring up into the sparks of power glowing in his dark irises. Her hand opened at her side and started to rise, as if needing to smooth away the harsh lines setting into his face.

“I couldn’t manifest a physical form.” Castor let out a dark, humorless laugh. “It turns out that I’m just as weak and useless as a god as I was as a mortal.”

Lore frowned. Acantha had said as much during the ceremony. The estate we built for you in the mountains remained empty, your offerings untouched.

“You are not useless,” she told him. “And you’ve never been. Not ever, no matter what anyone in this horrible bloodline told you.”

Castor looked as if he desperately wanted to believe her.

“I couldn’t even save my father.” He looked down at his hands. “He’s dead now, did you know that? I saw it happen—I was there, drifting between the places I used to go and the people I wanted to see.”

“I didn’t know,” she said softly.

“A heart attack. I watched it happen.” Castor’s hands curled into fists. “And the thing I can’t get over, the thing I can’t accept, is that I had the power to heal him. To save him. But back then . . . it was too new. At least I’ve learned how to invoke my power, but controlling it . . .”

Lore pressed her hand to her chest. In her mind, the final image she had of her father’s body braided with the last moments she imagined for Castor’s. She had to close her eyes and breathe deeply to keep from being sick.

“I came back for answers,” he told her, his voice as intent as his gaze. “It’s reason enough for me to stay alive. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Lore tried to gather her thoughts as she bent down to pick up a thick leather-bound book that had tumbled off a nearby table. She caught sight of the door out of the corner of her eye and Lore stopped. Her grip on the book tightened.

“What’s wrong?” Castor asked, coming toward her.

“The guards,” she began. They should have heard her and Philip fighting. They should have heard her and Castor fighting. They should have heard Chiron the way he’d been carrying on. She shouldn’t have been able to land one hit on him without a bullet or blade slicing through her. “Where are they?”

“There were never any guards, Melora,” a ragged voice said.

Philip rose, clutching the knife in one hand and the wound on his head with the other. He advanced toward the new god.

“I’ve always remembered you as a stupid child,” Philip continued, “but I never thought you would be foolish enough to show your face here.”

“Funny,” Lore said, “I’ve always remembered you as an asshole, and I definitely thought you’d be foolish enough to try to kill your new god.”

The archon spat at her. Castor took a step forward, furious.

“Leave now,” Castor told him. “No one has to know what happened, and you’ll run no risk of the kin killer’s curse.”

“I will gladly curse myself,” Philip told him. “I will welcome it, if it means that this bloodline will survive. You know it, as do I. You are too pathetic to bear the mantle of Apollo, and you will never have the respect of the Achillides. If I had known what would become of you, I would have spared us all and smothered you as a boy.”

The words landed, a perfect echo of what Castor himself had said. The new god’s hands curled into fists at his side, but he didn’t deny it.