Lore

“Cas,” she said softly. “How did you kill Apollo?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. He seemed to be debating something, and Lore almost wished she hadn’t asked. For all the things that had changed between them, she wasn’t sure if she could take him lying to her for the first time.

“I don’t know.”

Lore’s gaze shot up. “What?”

Castor glanced at the door, as if worried someone might be listening. “I don’t know. I have no memory of what happened.”

Her mouth opened, then shut.

“I know,” he said, strained. “There were no cameras in my bedroom. Van told me that the other security cameras malfunctioned when Apollo entered Thetis House. I was alone when it happened.”

“Van knows?” Lore asked. She had no reason to feel hurt by the revelation, but she was.

“Van doesn’t know about the lost memory,” Castor said. “I can tell he’s been fishing around, trying to figure it out himself. I just . . .”

“That’s why you were trying to talk to Artemis?” Lore said, finally putting it together. “You think she might know?”

He nodded. “I don’t know what their connection was like, or if she saw what happened. Athena doesn’t seem to know, though. Would Artemis have told her if she witnessed Apollo’s death?”

“Artemis tried to stab her no more than five minutes into this Agon, so let’s not bank on sisterly love for anything here,” Lore said.

Castor’s smile was small and fleeting. Lore took his free hand in hers again and squeezed it.

“I need to figure it out,” he said. “I have to. I can’t . . . This has to have happened for a reason. It has to mean something that I have this power.”

Lore felt something in her chest crack open at the quiet desperation in his words.

“I don’t believe in the Fates, but I do believe in you,” Lore said. “Whatever happened must have happened because you were you. We’ll figure out what it was, I promise. You can hold me to it.”

Castor nodded.

The heat faded from his touch as he finished healing her, but he didn’t pull away, and neither did Lore. He wet a small washcloth and began to clean the blood from her new pink skin—stroke by stroke, with a tenderness that came close to breaking her heart. Lore widened her legs, letting him step closer, and closed her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really?”

His long fingers grazed up along the curve of her shoulder, coming to cup her other cheek, to brush her old, long scar. The tight muscles in her neck eased as he stroked the hollow where the base of her skull met the ridge of her spine.

“I saw him,” Lore murmured. “I told myself I would never come back to this world—that I would never let it force my hand or drive me to kill. I thought I could get back out clean if Athena was the one to do it, but . . . I don’t know if I can do this, keeping one foot in the ring and one foot out.”

“You can,” Castor said. “Don’t let them pull you back in. There’s nothing but shadows for you here now.”

Lore knew exactly how easy it was to get lost in that darkness. To need it.

Even now, she could imagine her hands wrapped around Wrath’s throat, choking him until the sparks of power faded in his eyes—or her blade flashing as it plunged into his chest again and again and again. But Lore didn’t feel sick at the thought.

She only wanted it more.

Lore leaned forward against his chest, hearing the powerful drumbeat of Castor’s mortal heart.

“I used to believe in this world,” Lore said. “I used to want everything it promised so badly.”

“I know,” Castor told her. “But I never thought you would win the Agon. I thought you would destroy it.”

Lore looked up at his words, her brow creased in confusion. But before she could ask, a crash tore through the silence, then a ferocious scream.

Iro was finally awake.

BY THE TIME LORE reached the office, Iro had her arm wrapped around Miles’s throat and the sharp tip of a letter opener pressed to his jugular.

Van had his hands out, speaking in a low, soothing tone as the girl dragged Miles toward the door. Athena watched from the corner of the office, arms crossed over her chest. She looked amused, but her dory was within reach.

“No!” Lore knocked the blade out of Iro’s hand, giving Miles a moment to drop and crawl away. “Iro, listen to me—”

She tried to lock the girl’s arms at her sides, but Iro had always been faster, and her instincts sharper. Lore didn’t see any awareness register on the girl’s face as she gripped one of the heavy binders off the bookshelf and launched it toward Castor.

He shifted, letting the book smash into the wall behind him. He turned his wide eyes toward Lore, uncertain of what to do.

Seeing her, Iro lunged—not to attack Lore, but to shield her from the others. “Get out of here, Melora!”

“Hey!” Miles barked. “That was Mrs. Cheong’s!”

The words caught Iro off guard. She turned toward him. “I—what?”

Lore pushed through her shock at Iro’s protectiveness and managed to wrap her arms around the other girl before she could recover.

“Let me go! You need to get out of here!” Iro said between gritted teeth, straining and thrashing to throw Lore off her. Her faint French accent was never more pronounced than in the rare instances she raised her voice.

“Stop”—Lore forced them both to the ground with a hard drop—“it! No one is going anywhere. You’re safe here—I’m safe here.”

“Iro,” Van said, crouching beside them. “This is Castor Achilleos. Like Athena, he is working with us to try to kill Wrath. He used his power to help you escape. He’s not going to hurt you. None of us are.”

Iro wrenched herself free from Lore, rolling up onto her feet to face her. Her black hunter’s robes were askew, revealing the slim body armor she still wore beneath them. It seemed to take her a moment to understand what Van had told her. “Castor Achilleos is dead. You told me yourself—or did you lie about that, too?”

“That’s what your people told me,” Lore reminded her, shoving up from the ground. She felt like she might retch at the memory—the sheer pleasure on the face of the House of Odysseus’s archon as he leaned down to tell her, One less Achilleos for us to kill.