Lore

Numbness pricked at Lore’s fingertips, her palms. Her mind looped her thoughts into circles, one dark fear chasing the next. She jammed her nails into the skin of her arms, using the pain to break through it.

“I don’t have it,” Lore said. “Maybe he found out that Aristos Kadmou bragged about its location to my father.”

“Indeed.” The goddess let out a low hum.

She remembered then what Belen had said. You are a distraction. It is a distraction.

Lore hugged her arms to her chest, leaning forward over her knees. “Do you think it could be about more than the poem—that it could be that the idea of a girl stealing it cuts at Wrath’s pride?”

“He may have many reasons for desiring it. He wishes to know the secret of winning the Agon. He wishes to mend his wounded pride at being bested by a young girl. He wishes to have the glory of the aegis as a symbol on his arm,” Athena said, “and to use it as a tool. It can summon thunder and call down lightning, but it does not have to be used at its full power for it to drive fear into the hearts of those who behold it.”

The goddess seemed to consider something else, adding, “If you will not give the shield to him willingly, he will need you to wield it on his behalf, and he will do whatever he must to compel you.”

“You say that like you care,” Lore said. “Why pretend you actually have some interest in me beyond the terms of our agreement?”

“Like any craftsman,” Athena said, tilting her head toward her, “if I see potential in raw material, I have the urge to shape it into something great.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Lore said.

“I do not understand your accusation,” Athena said plainly.

“You’ve never guided women,” Lore elaborated. “Not the way you did for your heroes. But you were always more than happy to punish them.”

“Women and girls belonged to my sister and were beyond my responsibility,” Athena said, the words edged with warning. “I owe you no explanation.”

Athena’s face dared her to continue, and Lore had never backed down from a misguided fight.

“Do you know why female hunters aren’t supposed to claim a god’s power—how the elders of the bloodlines have always justified it?” Lore asked, letting years of quiet anger fill her chest like steam. “They point to the origin poem, but they also look to you. To the fact that you only ever chose to mentor male heroes on journeys. You only helped them attain battle-born kleos—the only kleos that matters to the elders. To them, you have always been an extension of Zeus’s will.”

“I was born from my father’s mind. I am an extension of his will.”

The goddess’s jaw set, turning her face into a mask of fury.

“My presence here, now, is all that is needed to understand what becomes of those who upset the natural order of things. Who betray the father.”

“Weren’t you angry?” Lore asked, hearing her voice break. “How can you not be furious that even you weren’t completely free to decide who or what you wanted to be?”

The goddess remained silent, but there was something to her expression now—a narrowing focus.

“You let men use your name and image to reinforce their rules—you represented what they alone could strive to be,” Lore said. “But what about the rest of us? Those of us called women, and everyone who isn’t so easily sorted?”

“I did not realize my gift of artful craft belonged solely to men,” Athena said. “Or that I did not acknowledge those women who displayed excellence in their home and the care of their family.”

Lore drew in an unsteady breath. “You know, what almost makes it worse is that you actually see yourself as the myth men created for you. Just now you claimed you were born from your father’s mind—but you had a mother, didn’t you? Metis. Wisdom herself. That was her gift, not Zeus’s, and he devoured you both to save himself, and claimed it. Denying her is denying who you are. It’s denying what men are capable of.”

“I know precisely what they are capable of, child of Perseus,” Athena said coldly.

Lore flinched at the name of her ancestor.

“You cast your opinions with unearned certainty,” Athena said. “However, I am not the one you do battle with now. Your anger lies not with me, but with yourself. Why?”

Lore ran her hand back through her hair, gripping it.

“You are so very angry. I felt it from the moment I first laid eyes upon you, and it has only grown more powerful as you have tried to stifle it,” Athena said. “You ask me why I did not see fit to use my power the way you might have, and yet, you hold yourself back from your own potential. I would not have thought you to be such a coward.”

I am not special, or chosen. Lore pressed her fists to her eyes. The memory of the realization was just as agonizing as what had happened. “I’m not holding myself back, I just . . . I just can’t make another mistake.”

Athena made a noise of derision. “The false Apollo has weaseled his way into your mind and made you doubt yourself. You know what must be done. He does not even know how he came to possess his power.”

Lore looked up sharply at that.

“Did you think I would not unravel the truth?” Athena asked. “When he has been so very forward with questioning those he meets about my brother’s death? Why else would he seem to despise and resent his power? Why else would he want to seek out my sister, knowing she only wishes him dead?”

“He . . .” Lore began, uncertain. She didn’t want to talk about this. It felt like a betrayal of Castor. “He doesn’t want me to go too far.”

“And you are not capable of determining that limit yourself?” Athena asked. “You rely on his judgment over your own?”

“He’s trying to protect me,” Lore said. It was what Castor had always done, as much as she’d tried, in her own way, to protect him.

“From whom? From what?” Athena asked. “Yourself? All that you might become if you embrace who you are and not who he wishes you to be?”

Lore trusted Castor with her life—she knew he would never intentionally hurt her. But the way he had looked at her when he’d caught up to her in Central Park, the shock and disgust on his face . . .