Lore

Gil wasn’t from her world, and he was alone in his. What Lore proposed was purely business: she would travel back to New York City with him and work as a caretaker until he no longer needed a wheelchair. He’d mulled it over with enough obvious reluctance that Lore had steeled herself for disappointment. As they waited for him to be discharged, Lore asked him why he’d changed his mind. Sometimes, he’d said, the braver thing is to accept help when you’ve been made to believe you shouldn’t need it.

Lore held the words in her heart, using them to ward off the last measure of her reluctance as Castor brought her into the laundromat’s dingy bathroom.

He had to duck to accommodate its low ceiling. Lore’s thoughts became warm and small as she watched his throat bob and his fingers become unsure of where they should rest on her hip as he supported her.

He really is beautiful, she thought. Not just for what he’d become, but in a way that was undeniably Castor.

In one swift movement, he lifted her so she was sitting on the narrow edge of the counter surrounding the sink. Like many bathrooms in the city, it verged on inhospitable, most likely to discourage people from spending too much time in it.

“Very macho, big guy,” she told him.

He gave her a quelling look as he took the towel from her hands and dropped it on the floor. Carefully, without disturbing the wound, he pulled the collar of her shirt over to better see it. “Can we focus on the traumatic injury in the room?”

His attention was as earnest as it was anxious. It reminded her of when they were young, the quiet way he’d watch her after sparring as if needing to reassure himself she was fine.

“Easy, tiger. It’s hardly traumatic,” she informed him. “Stupid on my part, but not traumatic.”

He shook his head. “I swear, you are truly the only person I know who would pick a fight at a time like this.”

“That’s because, unlike you, I can multitask,” she said with a wink. “What’s the prognosis, doc? Am I gonna live?”

All at once, she realized how that would sound to him. “Sorry—Cas, I’m sorry. Me and my big mouth.”

He seemed to brush the comment aside, but she could tell that something about it had landed. “Can I rip the shirt to get it out of the way?”

She nodded, cringing as he carefully split the fabric from the collar to the edge of the sleeve. It was only then that she saw the full extent of the deep, jagged wound. Several small pieces of glass were embedded into the muscle there, and for all the many gruesome wounds Lore had witnessed in her short life, this one still turned her stomach.

Her bra strap was in the way, stuck to the crust of one of the more shallow wounds. His fingers hesitated on it, hot against her slick skin. The bleeding had slowed, but the cold she felt gathering beneath her skin was setting in deeper.

She nodded, swallowing. He snapped the strap, watching her face the whole time.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she told him. “That has to be good, right?”

“That is the opposite of good,” Castor said, his voice tight. “Who managed to get you?”

“Why? So you can avenge me?” She tried to look down at it. “Is it really that bad? It doesn’t seem that bad.”

“I think you’re in shock,” he told her. “Who was it? I lost sight of you once the dust and smoke got too thick.”

“I don’t know,” Lore admitted.

In one quick movement, Castor had gripped the biggest of the glass shards and pulled it out. The pain was so scalding, Lore couldn’t draw a breath deep enough to scream, even as he removed the remaining pieces.

But then his hand was there, pressed tight to the blood pouring from the wound. Lore felt heat, a sharp burn that faded into a numbing warmth.

“Son of a—” she managed to gasp out.

“Don’t speak,” Castor said. “Just try to breathe.”

“Could have . . . warned me . . .” she said.

“You would have tensed the muscle, and it would have been hard to remove the glass,” Castor told her. “I do remember a few things Healer Kallias taught me, it seems.”

She knew he was right, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to be bitter about it for a few minutes.

“Just breathe,” he told her.

So she did. And with each breath she felt his power stitch her torn flesh back together. His power had an almost drugging quality to it. It wrapped around her body and mind, lulling her with its softness.

Castor caught her hand in his. Lore shut her eyes and leaned her head against the mirror behind her. She held on to him, wanting to stay in the moment, wanting to steady herself with something real before his power turned her mind soft.

“Was it me?” he asked quietly. “Did I do this to you?”

Lore forced her eyes open. The gold in his irises swirled, bright in the dingy bathroom’s darkness.

“Did I do this because I couldn’t control the force of it?” he asked her again.

“No,” she told him. “It was one of the Kadmides.”

Castor didn’t seem convinced. She squeezed his hand again, pulling on it until he looked at her.

“This power is a new skill,” she said. “And just like any skill, you have to practice in order to master it, right?”

His thumb began to absently stroke along her collarbone as he healed her, leaving a warm, shimmering trail on her skin. She leaned into the touch.

“I wish it were that easy,” he said, “and I could explain this better, but . . . ever since I regained physical form, it’s like I can’t fully catch my balance. There’s a disconnect between what my mind expects and what my body actually does.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me that before?” Lore asked.

“You confuse me,” he said plainly. “It’s always been this way. I want to tell you everything, but there’s a part of me that’s still afraid of seeming weak.”

Lore gripped his wrist. “I’ve never seen you that way.”

“I know,” he said. “But I was weak, for a long time, and it wasn’t the fault of anything or anyone. It was just my body. Strong or weak—I hated those were the only things we were allowed to be. I wanted to be defined by the life I lived.”

The life he’d lived. The one that would have been cut unmercifully short, if it hadn’t been for his ascension. She could almost feel the story he was holding back. The way it rippled beneath his skin, as if desperate to be told.