Lore

“You know what happened to the Achillides,” Van said. “Everyone who stands against Wrath has to stand together, otherwise he’ll wipe us all out.”

“That is not Castor,” Iro spat. “That is not your friend.”

“Yes, he is,” Lore said, coming to stand beside him. “He’s Castor the way Heartkeeper was your father.”

“He—he wasn’t—” Iro said, struggling for the words. “He is—he was—my lord. Our protector. He . . .”

“He was your father,” Lore repeated.

He had been archon of the Odysseides for years before ascending to become the new Aphrodite in the last cycle of the Agon. Lore had come to the family after, and she had never been present when the new god manifested a physical form and appeared to them.

From the stories she’d gathered from Iro and a few other members of the family, he had been a strict but not entirely unloving parent to his sole child.

The problem had always been the bloodline’s determination to uphold logic over everything else, including emotion. But Iro hadn’t been like that—not always. Lore had met her just once before seeking refuge with the Odysseides, but Iro had always treated her as if they had known each other from the time they’d slept in cradles, assuming the role of big sister though she was barely a year older.

In Lore’s first few weeks at the Odysseides estate, she had been so shell-shocked by her family’s murders that she had only survived because Iro had gently forced her to. She had made her eat, stayed up talking to her after Lore woke screaming from nightmares, and let Lore trail after her day in and day out. It hadn’t been Iro’s strength and skill as a fighter that Lore had admired, though she respected it. It had been her compassion within a bloodline that strove to rid itself of that.

“She won’t understand,” Castor said. “She doesn’t want to.”

“You know nothing of my mind,” Iro seethed. “Come closer and see how well I understand what you are, killer of Apollo. Tell me, did you feel clever when you set your trap for him? When you killed him from afar like a coward and stole his power from your archon?”

Everyone in the room seemed to pivot at once toward Castor, whose face shifted like the sky at sunrise. Shock became denial became desperation.

“Who told you that?” he demanded. “Who?”

Iro looked victorious. “It is true, then. There was no honor in your ascension.”

“That’s . . .” Lore’s words trailed off as she looked between the two of them. Iro’s outright hatred, Castor’s sudden uncertainty. “That’s impossible. Castor was confined to his bed at that point.”

The new god blew out a harsh breath, his hands curling at the memory of it.

“You’re speaking from a place of rumor,” Van said. “The Odysseides always spread mischief and lies to make themselves feel better for their own failures.”

“If she does not speak the truth,” Athena told Castor, “then tell it yourself.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Castor said. “The Odysseides can distort the truth all they want. I’ve never had any honor, and I can’t bring myself to care about it now.”

“You may not,” Iro said, shifting her gaze between the two gods. “But I will do what Melora failed to. I will ensure your deaths are delivered by the House of Odysseus and win back the kleos stolen from my lord in death.”

Athena snorted, but Lore’s lungs tightened at Iro’s words.

She heard herself in them.

She heard her parents and her instructors. She heard the lines from the ancient texts she’d read over and over. Even logic wasn’t going to break through seventeen years of careful psychological conditioning.

“You have the look of him about your eyes,” Athena said evenly.

“Don’t speak of my—of Heartkeeper,” Iro warned.

“I do not speak of him,” Athena said, “but of the man of many ways.”

A long stretch of silence followed.

“We’re trying to kill Wrath,” Lore said finally, echoing Van’s earlier words. “No one is going to hurt you. We went to Ithaka House tonight in the hope that we could call a truce with your father and the Odysseides before he came for all of you. We were too late.”

The tendons in Iro’s neck bulged with her panting breath.

“The Odysseides on the bus are safe,” Van told her. “I got them away, something I could not do for most of my own bloodline. Our archon lies dead with no one willing to take his place. At least you are alive to serve your

kin.”

“I cannot be the archon,” Iro said sharply.

“Why not?” Lore challenged.

“No woman will become archon of an ancient bloodline. But if the others live, then . . . I will go to them.”

Iro softened her rigid stance. For the first time, Lore sensed something of an opening.

“We need to know what you told Wrath,” Lore said. “Was it about the origin poem? An alternate version of it?”

Iro stood, feet rooted to the ground, hands curled into fists. Wanting to run, wanting to fight, but held in place by her mind.

“Will you talk to me alone?” Lore asked her. “Just the two of us?”

The other girl hesitated, and nothing hurt Lore more than that.

“We always used to be able to talk,” Lore said softly. “Do you really hate me that much now?”

Iro went ashen. “I don’t hate you.”

Van’s phone beeped, cutting through the tension. His dark eyes flicked over to Iro before he said, carefully, “No sightings. But there is a new category that might interest you, Lore.”

He turned the phone around, holding it up for Lore to see.

“What the hell?” She took it from him in disbelief.

Melora Perseous was listed just beneath the Reveler’s name, but before Castor’s. When she clicked on it, the map of Manhattan lit up with glowing pins that marked supposed sightings. Some were frighteningly accurate—near the restaurant that hosted the fighting ring, outside Thetis House—but others were scattered in lower Manhattan, in places she hadn’t gone.

Lore pressed her free hand against her jeans, trying to hide how slick it had become. The static was growing in her ears again. She tried to speak, but no words came.