Lore

Of course, the problem would be dealing with what happened once Wrath was dead, and Athena realized he didn’t have the aegis after all.

But that was a problem for the future, and for the first time all day, Lore felt calmer. Secure, at least, in the knowledge that neither god would ever find the shield or the secrets it possessed.

Athena mistook her expression for worry. “Do not trouble yourself, Melora. It is to our advantage that he seeks you out. It will draw him directly into the path of my weapon.”

“Great,” Lore said. “Can’t wait.”

“What I cannot abide, however,” Athena continued, the words edged like blades, “is the knowledge that your ancestors would sully the perfect form of the aegis with any inscription. Defiling my father’s shield, yet still praying and offering for his blessings . . . It is little wonder he does not protect these hunters.”

“We’ve never needed gods to protect ourselves,” Lore ground out.

Athena turned her sharp gaze on her. “When true darkness is upon you, you will remember us. But if the world persists in the way it is now, who will be left to answer you?”

“Who says,” Lore answered sharply, “that we’ll even remember you?”

The goddess had no answer for her.

“You don’t care about this city or any other,” Lore continued, unable to stop herself. “All that matters to you is power.”

Lore hated her temper more than she hated any other part of herself—how quick she moved from spark to flash, incinerating everyone around her.

“Listen,” Lore began, slowing her steps. “I didn’t mean—”

But before she could turn, something sharp pressed against her lower back, right against her kidney. She turned, looking over her shoulder.

A Minotaur mask stared back at her.

Lore gripped her dory, lifting it.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he warned. “I wouldn’t do anything other than drop your weapon and come with me quietly.”

Lore searched the street around her, but Athena was nowhere to be seen.

“Working with gods,” the hunter continued, edging her forward. “I should have expected you to become a blade traitor eventually.” His tone shifted as he began to speak to someone else, likely through his earpiece. “Yeah, tell him I’ve found her—”

Lore leaned left, letting his blade graze her, but giving herself enough room to jab her dory back. She spun it, bringing the covered tip around to bash against his mask. Its straps broke, sending the mask to the ground.

“You bitch,” the hunter snarled.

She jabbed him with the dory, but he brought his blade down and cleaved the wood staff in two. Lore spun forward, avoiding his reach as he came at her with the blade again. The only thing that finally stopped him was the feel of the dory’s kitchen-knife tip cutting through the pillowcase to press against his windpipe.

Breath heaved in and out of her, and her arms strained with the need to push forward just a little more and end the fight completely.

“You should have killed me when you still had the chance,” Lore hissed.

“Can’t,” he told her, an unnerving excitement in his words.

The hunter spun left, kicking her chest with enough force to knock her to the sidewalk. The piece of the dory flew from her hands, rolling beneath a nearby parked car.

He was on her in an instant, bringing his dagger down toward her shoulder. Lore blocked it with one arm, trying to buck him off, even as she felt along the ground for the head of the dory. Her hand found something else instead.

Lore brought a broken chunk of cement against the side of the hunter’s head, knocking him sideways off her. She slammed it into his face and heard the satisfying sound of gagging as blood filled his mouth. He crawled back, desperate to get away from her.

She brought the piece of cement up again, her gaze narrowed on his temple. Olympia’s small, singsong voice in her mind repeating the words they’d heard a thousand times, Kill, or be killed—Kill, or be killed—Kill, or be killed—

Lore clambered off him. The hunter lay spread out on the ground, his face bloodied. He wheezed, his lungs wet and desperate for a breath.

I could have killed him. Icy needles pierced her skin, instantly cooling her blood. She shuddered.

After everything . . . after what Gil had helped her through . . .

Someone peeled out of the shadows beside them. Athena.

“He,” Athena said, “will never have her.”

She was the last thing the hunter saw.

The young hunter’s body jerked as the goddess slammed her spearhead through his rib cage. The wet suck of muscle as she pulled it out was even worse. His eyes widened, blood pouring from his mouth as he tried to speak.

Athena dragged the hunter and leaned him against the nearest building. She wiped the blood from his mouth with his black robe, pulling it tighter around him to disguise the wound.

“When you see him,” Athena began, leaning down to bring herself eye level with the hunter, “tell Lord Hades that the rest of Theseus’s line will soon join you in the world below, for today you have cursed them all.”

Lore turned her gaze down, her hands clenched tight around her upper

arms.

“Do not look away,” Athena told her. “You are no coward.”

She wasn’t. In that moment, though, Lore almost envied Athena for the hollow place inside the gods where a mortal’s humanity would be.

Athena handed her the hunter’s dagger, then collected the pieces of Lore’s dory. She kept one of the kitchen knives but threw the other one, along with the splintered wood, into a nearby gutter.

“Sorry,” Lore said softly. Her life wasn’t completely her own this week.

“There is no forgiveness in the Agon,” Athena told her. “There is only survival and what must be done.”

THE MOMENT LORE LAID eyes on it, she realized she had seen the Frick before—many times. She’d walked by it and hadn’t bothered to stop and investigate the large, handsome building that stretched from Seventieth to Seventy-First Street. The city was a place where you only saw what you were looking for.

The lock on the construction fence was broken. Lore pushed it open to reveal the museum’s nondescript entrance a few feet away, and Miles crouched on its steps. He looked up at the sound of their approach, his face wan.