Lore

The memory of his blood spilling, staining his white skin and her dress, the weight of him slumping against her as he struggled to kill her in retaliation, even in the throes of his own death, came back in a cold rush. She touched the long scar on her face, the last cut he’d made as she’d slipped out from under him. Sweat broke out across her body, and she was shaking, scarcely able to draw a breath.

But what Lore remembered most from that night was her rage. The way it burned through her fear and shock and devastation and gave her what she needed to survive.

Lore had done what she’d been trained to do, knifing his body until it was still and there was no air moving in his lungs. It had been rage that carried her on bare feet across the fields and unpaved roads. It had been rage that kept her alive and moving. Her rage had fed her when she went hungry.

And then Lore had done exactly what Athena accused her of. She had suppressed it, making it smaller, making it feel irrelevant and undeserved. And then Hermes had found her, when she was almost empty.

“That’s . . .” Lore began. “That’s what’s so— It kills me to know that I was wrong about Gil. I knew better. I did. I let my guard down, even after what happened with the archon, because I thought I was the one making choices. That he wouldn’t be able to hurt me or control me like the men in the Agon had tried to do.”

“But you do not regret your actions against the archon that night?” Athena asked.

Lore shook her head. She had never, beyond knowing she had left Iro behind.

“That is because they were justified. You did what was necessary,” Athena said. “Just as we act out of necessity now. You fear the judgment of others in our pursuit of the imposter Ares, but you will not regret your choices once he is dead—only the opportunities you will lose if you allow others’ fears to keep you prisoner to your doubt.”

“It’s . . .” Lore closed her eyes. “It’s not that simple. I don’t—”

I don’t want to remember how good it felt to have a purpose, she finished silently. I don’t want to forget why I had to leave the Agon when it feels so right to me.

Children shouted to one another as they sped down the street on their bicycles. Their light laughter seemed to sparkle in the silence. Lore wondered if she had ever been that carefree.

“I gave her fury power,” Athena said quietly.

Lore turned to her, confused.

“I transformed Medusa,” Athena continued, “so that she would have protection against all those who would try to harm her.”

“That’s bullshit. You didn’t give her a choice, did you?” Lore bit back. “And now history remembers her as a villain who deserved to die.”

“No. That is what men have portrayed her as, through art, through tales,” Athena said. “They imagined her hideous because they feared to meet the true gaze of a woman, to witness the powerful storm that lives inside, waiting. She was not defeated by my uncle’s assault. She was merely reborn as a being who could gaze back at the world, unafraid. Is that not what your own line did for centuries, staring out from behind her mask?”

Lore almost recoiled as her words sank in.

The Perseides had worn the gorgon mask—the mask of Medusa, her ringlets of snakes, her mouth set in a line of grim determination—for centuries. Both of her parents’ masks had been taken when their apartment was cleaned and their bodies buried.

Lore hadn’t been old enough to have her own made, though one of her clearest memories was of taking her mother’s out of its silk wrappings and bringing it close to her face. In the end, the feel of the bronze snakes against her small fingers, and what she saw reflected in the mirror, had made her feel powerful.

Now she only felt her stomach clench. How many men, her own beloved father included, had worn that mask and the anger of Medusa’s gaze, twisting it into something that served them? The bloodlines wore masks of their ancestors’ greatest accomplishments and kills, not to honor them, those terrible monsters of their age, but as trophies.

“Your ancestors carried the shield that bore her head,” Athena said. “They wielded her power until they lost her. If the shield should be carried by anyone, it should be you—you, the one who knows the darkness of men yet refuses to be afraid.”

Lore could picture herself with the shield so clearly, the way her face would mirror Medusa’s grim expression cast in silver. There was no fear or shame in the thought, and none of the agonizing regret that had kept her from so much as speaking its name for years.

The aegis should be carried by her. It was her birthright, yes, but it was more than that—it represented everything that she stood to gain, and everything she had ever truly wanted to be. Not the lie that Hermes had convinced her she needed, but the powerful hunger that lived in her still.

If she could use it against Wrath, if Medusa’s face and her own were the last the new god saw as his life bled from him, it would mean it was all worth it.

It would mean her family hadn’t died for nothing.

Go get it, her mind whispered.

“But . . . you gave Perseus the shield,” Lore said. “The one he used to kill her. You guided him, and were a friend to him.”

Athena rolled the dory across her lap. “I have played my part in wicked games, and lived at the mercy of more powerful gods. I have been quick to temper and relished striking at those who wounded my pride or dishonored me.”

The first droplets of rain began to fall, pattering softly against the roof.

“You could have stopped it,” Lore whispered. “You could have stopped Poseidon.”

Athena’s face became hideous with cold anger. “Know this, Melora: Even the gods are bound by fate. Even the gods serve a master. I have done many things, among them lashing out at a weaker being when I did not have the strength to punish one more powerful than even myself.”

Athena paused, smoothing her fingers along the staff of her dory.

“There is a story greater than all of us, a fabric that spreads far and wide, guided by hands more powerful than my own,” Athena said. “You may call that complicity, and perhaps it is. But I deemed it survival.”

“How could you be sure that your path was written for you?” Lore asked. “What if you always had the chance to live on your own terms, and you didn’t see it?”

Athena made a sound of derision. “All I have ever desired is to do that which I was born to do.”