Lore

Artemis kicked her bow up off the ground, holding it out in front of her like she would a club, then made her way back toward him. Castor threw one last blast, and, without thinking, Artemis stepped left to avoid it.

“Stop!” Lore shouted.

Artemis’s foot caught the edge of the trap she’d set. It collapsed, falling in on itself to the jagged wood points arrayed below. Athena reached for her, but Artemis spun away from both her sister and the trap.

“He’s mine!” Artemis snarled. “His life is mine! His life is mine!”

That small movement brought her foot into the heavy stream of running rainwater that fed into the waterfall. Howls filled the air once more. Artemis bared her teeth in defiance as she righted herself and tried to jump the open air between the head of the waterfall and where Castor knelt at the edge of the outcrop.

A flowering bush hid the true edge of the cliff. Every muscle in Lore’s body clenched as Artemis’s foot hit it and slid out from under her. Castor reached out, trying to catch her before she plunged down into the pond, but Artemis pulled back, repulsed.

And fell.

UNTIL THE DAY HER life left her and she woke in the dark world below, Lore would remember the crack of bone and the strangled cry suddenly silenced.

Castor dropped down onto his knees, gripping his hair and releasing a ragged cry of frustration.

Lore fought her way forward, bracing her hands on the trees and rocks, crawling until she reached the edge of the waterfall.

The strap of Artemis’s quiver had caught on a long branch hanging over the waterfall, and it had turned into a noose, breaking her neck in an instant.

And the goddess’s face . . .

The shocked scream was still lodged in Lore’s throat, trying to claw its way out. She thought she might choke on it if she tried to breathe.

Athena came to stand beside her, staring down at Artemis’s crown of leaves and thorns. The only sign of emotion on her face was the tightening of her jaw. It was a warrior’s countenance, too hardened by centuries of death to be at the mercy of grief.

“I’m . . .” Lore began, uncertain of what to say. She wasn’t sorry. But . . . “What do we do? Do you want me to cut her down so you can . . . so you can bury her until the Agon ends?”

“How do you bury a god?” Athena said. “She was power, not flesh. This was little more than a crude vessel. Now she is . . . free.”

And, Lore realized, Athena was the last of the original nine.

The dogs on the trails began to whine and howl in mourning. In the face of everything that had happened this week, Lore hadn’t felt nearly as close to blowing apart as she did in that moment, hearing them drown out the creak of the quiver as Artemis’s body turned and turned and turned like the endless wheel of life and death and rebirth.

Lore moved toward the small sloped cliff beside the waterfall, toward Castor. He had remained in place to heal his leg. He still looked agonized as he rose, though it clearly had nothing to do with the pain.

“You all right?” She held out a hand to help guide him over the last few perilous steps of the outcrop.

“Been better,” he admitted as he reached out toward her.

Suddenly, Lore heard a whirring. At first, she thought it was the wind picking up again, rasping through the branches and stones. Then came the searing pain in her left shoulder.

Lore looked down in disbelief at the new split in her shirt, at the blood welling at her shoulder. Behind her, an arrow shivered where it had struck the trunk of a tree.

“Lore—”

Castor’s expression was pained and frightened. She watched, her hand still outstretched, as blood blossomed on his drenched shirt, pouring from a single gaping wound on the left side of his chest. Through his heart.

Lore screamed, surging forward to catch his arm, but she was too slow. His lips formed a last, silent word.

Lore.

The life left his eyes, extinguishing the sparks of power. Castor slid back over the edge of the outcrop, into the water below.

LORE HAD SPARRED WITH Castor enough to know when something was wrong.

The others were distracted with excitement over the start of the Agon in two days’ time, electrified by the preparations being made as the rest of the Achillides gathered in the city. Lore was distracted by something else: the countdown that Aristos Kadmou had initiated two days before, when she and her father had gone to see him.

Send me your answer by the end of the Agon.

That was nine days from now. Her father had told her not to worry, that he would never say yes. But Lore couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Castor wasn’t preoccupied like she and the others were. His movements seemed to drag through the air, as if his body had become too heavy for him. They had always been perfectly matched in speed—or, at least, he kept up with her, the way she tried to match his strength.

His face worried her, too. She had seen a shadow drift over it, the way a cloud passed over the sun and dimmed the world below.

Tap-tap-tap.

Lore pushed harder with her training staff on the last strike. Castor retreated a step, his back foot slipping through the pool of sweat gathering beneath him.

“Again!” the instructor ordered. “Faster!”

Lore raised her staff once more. Castor was bent slightly at the waist, shaking his head. His eyes blinked rapidly, struggling to focus on her face.

She tilted her head, silently asking, Ready?

He brought his own staff up. She read the answer in the set of his mouth.

Lore began the drill again—tap high, tap center, tap low, over and over. Castor blocked her strikes, but as he slowed, she was forced to as well.

The quick clattering of the staffs around her served as the drumbeat to a song of battered shields and ringing blades. The room was hot with the afternoon sun pouring through the windows high on the walls. The other training classes were blurs around them. The stench of bodies, oil, and rubber mats was heavy in her lungs.

On the last tap, Lore tested her theory, hitting harder than she needed to. Castor lost his balance, slipping down onto his knees with a faint gasp.

Lore glanced back at their instructor. The man had his back to them as he circled their section of the training hall, giving corrections and faint praise. “Good, Abreas—harder, Theron—”

As Castor righted himself, Lore feigned a wrestling hold, leaning forward until their foreheads touched and she had a hand on the back of his neck. It was the only way she’d figured out how to talk to him between breaks.