For Gil.

“Ready to go?” she asked as Mel returned from the kitchen with their orders.

“Promise me you’ll be safe,” Miles said, catching her hand before she pulled it back. “I don’t care if you need to keep fighting, I just don’t want to see you hurt.”

Too late for that, Lore thought.

They ducked back out into the dim light of the street, clutching their breakfasts and coffees. The storm had turned into a shroud of fine mist. New York City was one of the few places in the world that looked dirtier after it rained, but Lore loved it.

As they made their way home, Lore decided that she would tell Miles she was going to spend the next few days traveling, even if that meant catching a bus and sleeping rough out in the woods where no one could find her.

Right then, though, nothing sounded better than spending the rest of her Sunday morning in bed. Lore looped her arm through Miles’s as they made their way down their sleepy street, Miles humming a song she didn’t recognize. She tried not to think of anything at all.

They were a block from the brownstone when Miles suddenly stopped, jerking her back a step.

“What?” she asked.

He leaned closer to the wall of Martin’s Deli, the place that had banned Lore for complaining about their shamefully stale bagels, and brushed his fingers through a smear of some dark substance. Lore pulled him back in horror.

“Okay, I think you need a refresher on the rules of New York—one, do not take anything someone tries to pass to you in Times Square; two, do not touch mysterious substances on the ground and walls—”

“I think it’s blood,” Miles interrupted.

Lore’s hand fell away from him.

He spun, searching the ground. “Holy shit. There’s so much of it. . . .”

There was. Lore had mistaken the splattered drops on the cement for rain, but now she could make out the dark blood washing down the gutter as the storm began in earnest.

Miles lunged forward, swinging his head around to look for the person bleeding. Lore caught him by the back of his shirt with one hand and, after passing him her food container and coffee, pulled out the pocket knife on her keychain with the other.

“Stay behind me,” she ordered.

It was like tracking wounded prey. The victim seemed to have been staggering, moving from support to support—a street light, a banister, a parked car. With a growing sense of dread, Lore realized they were headed in the direction of the brownstone.

Lore’s grip on her dull blade tightened as they approached it. The bloody path turned toward their door and the cheerful flowerpots Gil had placed along the front steps.

Miles gasped, and Lore followed his gaze.

A woman sat with her back against the old brownstone’s stoop beside the empty trash cans. Her sky-blue robes were drenched with rain.

Lore felt the air quicken around her, like the moment before a lightning strike.

“Show me your hands,” Lore choked out, raising her own pathetic blade.

The goddess’s eyes were the color of sacrificial smoke, flecks of gold glowing in the irises, drifting like embers. The only hint of suppressed divine power.

They called her the gray-eyed goddess, but Lore understood now that it wasn’t for their color. It was because when she stared at you, the way she stared at Lore now, her true age was revealed. Wars, civilizations, monsters, death, technology, exploration—those eyes had watched millennia pass by, and measured them the way Lore would casually note the hour of the day.

Strands of burnished-gold hair were splayed across the goddess’s face like well-earned scars. Even in her current form, she was unsettlingly flawless, her features bold and perfect in their symmetry.

The goddess leaned back, pulling her palm away from where it had been pressed to her opposite hip. As it fell into her lap, the long, elegant fingers curled like claws.

The hand was empty, but stained with blood.

Lore stared, half-aware that she’d lowered her own arm.

The goddess leaned forward, causing the tear in her side to gush with hot, reeking blood. Too big and jagged for an arrow or bullet. A blade, then. That wound had to have come from a professional.

Her thoughts were all logic, but Lore felt like she was moving through a dream.

“Someone clearly had your number,” Lore choked out. “Bad luck with the landing?”

“Attend to me.”

Lore jumped. Half-dead or not, each of the goddess’s words rang out like a sword striking a shield. They vibrated along Lore’s nerves until every hair on her body rose. It had been so long since she’d heard anyone speak such a pure form of the ancient tongue, it took her mind a moment to translate it.

When she did, her voice was a thin whisper. “What did you say?”

The goddess’s eyes were unfocused now, quickly losing some of their steel. There was no fear in her face as she returned her hand to her side to press against the wound, only bitter disbelief. Rancor. When she spoke again, her words were labored but the command seemed to echo across Lore’s soul.

“Attend . . . to me . . . mortal.”

Then gray-eyed Athena slumped to the cement, and slipped out of consciousness.

“OH MY GOD!”

Miles’s panicked voice pulled Lore out of her own shock. When she turned to him, his face was already illuminated by the glow of his cellphone. His hands shook as he thumbed in numbers.

Lore tore the phone out of his hands, ending the call before it could connect.

“What are you doing?” he cried. “She needs help! Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?”

“Stop!” Lore said sharply. “Keep your voice down!”

“Do you know her?” Miles looked like he was about to start clawing on his face. “Oh no, the blood— I just—” He gagged, coughing into his fist.

Lore spoke without thinking. “I— Yes. She’s like— She’s a fighter, too.”

“She has to—” Miles gagged again. “Sorry—I just— Hospital. She needs the hospital. And the police.”

Lore swore, her mind racing. If they brought the goddess in, the police would want to question Lore, putting her name and possibly a photo into their system. And the bloodlines always posted at least a few hunters at each hospital, in the hope a Good Samaritan might unknowingly call emergency services and deliver a god right to them. But Athena had trailed her scent and blood here for any of the bloodlines’ dogs to track, right to Lore’s sanctuary. Putting Miles at risk, and forcing Lore to do something about it.