Lore

Lore craned her head back. She knew this power.

“Cas?” she choked out.

Castor stood hunched over her, his arms up, his palms outstretched. Above him, trying to drive down through the new god’s barrier, was a massive slab of concrete.

It bobbed in the air, riding the blasting heat and light. It was the source of the sound she had heard before, not rushing sand. The concrete was being incinerated to a fine dust. It poured down along the edges of the barrier and piled up around it.

“Don’t. Move,” Castor got out between gritted teeth.

The tendons in his neck bulged with the effort of keeping his power stable. As the concrete burned away, patches of morning sky and smoke were revealed just beyond Castor’s broad shoulders. His body was taut with strain, as if he truly held the whole of the heavens on his back.

Sweat dripped from his chin, and Lore realized her own body was drenched with it.

The word whispered through her. God.

Lore stared up at him, her thoughts in chaos. He met her gaze for a second, the embers of his power brighter than she’d ever seen them, then squeezed them shut, turning his face away.

“Stay. Close.”

The burning ring of light shrank closer to her, flickering like a flame on the verge of going out.

Lore turned so she faced him and drew close enough to rest her cheek against his shoulder and wrap her arms around him.

Belen.

They shouldn’t have gone after him.

“All of those people—” she began, choking on the words.

The explosion flared in her mind again, searing with terrible detail. The bystanders who slowed to stare at the drone. The ground erupting like a wound. Shattering glass. The bellow of metal being tortured and bent.

Castor shook his head. “Tried—”

The light quivered around them again, sweeping in closer.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

“Fine,” he promised, turning to rest his cheek against the top of her head.

Lore forced herself to breathe in and out, hoping to steady her heart. Or was it his she felt now, beating hard and steady for the both of them?

Alive. Somehow, he’d— Lore tried to imagine it, how he’d crossed that distance and shielded her, not just from the blast, but the fall as well. She pictured it a dozen ways, but each made less sense than the one before it.

The sand kept slithering down the light barrier. A faraway siren wailed. Lore fixated on the familiar sound, using it to ground herself back in the moment. They needed to get out of there before any emergency services arrived.

That fear, at least, was a tool. Lore turned it into her ballast as the terror finally released its grip on her mind.

“Can’t.” Castor sounded pained. “Please.”

The last few feet of the cement block broke in half over their heads, slamming into the debris around them. The protective barrier vanished like a breath in the air.

Castor slumped forward, his arms wrapping around her, burying his face in her hair. Lore swayed, absorbing the enormous weight of him.

“Can’t,” he began weakly.

“Cas?” she said, her throat aching. When he didn’t respond, she gave him a hard shake. “Cas!”

Her knees buckled, but Lore fought it, searching for a way out of the crevasse and back up onto whatever remained of the street.

“Don’t make me drag you, big guy,” she said hoarsely.

Lore tried to shake him again, but he was gone. For a terrifying moment, she was worried that the power she’d been so in awe of had burned out his mortal body.

Castor’s weight was impossible, but Lore didn’t have a choice. She pulled him toward the left, where there was a more obvious, if unsteady, way up and out through the collapsed rubble.

Now and then, the loose cement and ash shifted, but Lore’s footing was steady, and her grip on Castor didn’t waver. She struggled, dragging and pushing and lifting him until her whole body shook and the edge of the crater came within reach.

Lore looked up.

Athena stood a dozen feet away. Her arms were raised above her head, bearing the weight of a massive piece of a nearby building’s stone facade. It hovered over those carrying the victims and the injured away from the site of the explosion. If anyone noticed the massive display of power, they were too grateful to be alive to fixate on it.

The dead littered the street and sidewalk around them, some blown into grotesque shapes, others stretched out in pools of their own blood. It had become a battlefield. Ash and cement dust clouded the air, swirling in mourning patterns before settling over the bodies like funeral shrouds.

Athena waited until the last of the wounded was removed before she lowered her arms, releasing the smoldering debris onto the sidewalk with steadfast care.

Defender of cities. Something uncomfortable stirred in Lore at the thought, and she shoved it away before it could fully take form.

Lore braced herself for the goddess’s fury, to be told how selfish it had been to risk both of their lives. Instead, as she passed through the wall of smoke to reach them, Athena looked at her with those gray, knowing eyes.

“I will carry him,” Athena said. “Let us leave this place.”

Behind her, a tide of uniformed officers and firefighters arrived and fought their way toward the victims and wreckage. Those who had survived fled in pure, primal panic. The dust and powdered debris had painted them pale as ghosts.

Athena lifted Castor onto her shoulder with ease, and they took off at as much of a run as Lore could manage, narrowly avoiding the barriers being set up around the building complex.

“Miles?” Lore gasped out.

“He returned to the house,” Athena told her.

Lore nodded, trying to swallow the bile and ash at the back of her throat.

“Tell me what has happened,” Athena said urgently. “Who was it you pursued?”

Lore relayed the story, her voice halting. She had braced herself for the goddess’s disapproval and fury at the actions Castor had clearly seen as reckless. Instead, Athena gave her a nod.

“What you have done was necessary,” she said. “While it will make the false Ares angry, it will also make him impulsive, and that, Melora, we can use to our advantage.”

“Castor thinks all I’ve done is put a bigger target on everyone’s backs,” Lore said, glancing to him.

“Then it may be time for us to part ways with the others,” Athena said. “They will not understand what must be done now. I see that you blame yourself for what has happened, but is it not the false Apollo who shoulders the blame? You were not the one who wished to follow Belen Kadmou.”