Lore

There was a panicked intake of breath outside the cell, followed by quick steps splashing through the water coating the ground.

The guard.

Shit, Lore thought.

She started toward the door, but Athena was already there.

“No,” the goddess said. “I will take care of the problem you have failed to.”

She took off, not needing to run. It would be a slow, confident pursuit.

A hand clamped over Lore’s wrist and wrenched her back. Pain shot up her arm and her wrist bent as it hit the ground.

Tidebringer lunged forward to block the door. Lore scrambled up onto her feet, lungs squeezing tight as she reached for her knife.

“You stupid girl!” Tidebringer hissed to her. “What are you doing with her?”

“I— We have a deal,” Lore told her haltingly.

“What could she offer you that could ever be greater than what she’s taken?” Tidebringer shook her head. “Go now, before she comes back!”

“What are you talking about?” Lore demanded. That cold dread, the one that seemed to have awakened in her the first time she laid eyes on the dying goddess outside her home, slithered through her blood, whispering, You know.

“After I learned what happened I searched for you across the world, but you had vanished—I could never find you,” Tidebringer said.

“I was with the Odysseides at their protected estate, and then Hermes gave me an amulet,” Lore said. “It hid my presence from gods—”

Tidebringer swore viciously. “He should never have tried to protect you alone, the fool!”

“Is that why you were looking for me?” Lore asked, trying to understand. Tidebringer had been a god for so long that Lore was shocked she even cared to remember her mortality, let alone the last remnant of her doomed family.

“No, child, to warn you—I would have come to you days ago if I hadn’t been taken at the Awakening,” Tidebringer said. “I only agreed to Wrath’s terms because I thought it would keep me alive long enough to escape and find you. To tell you that Hermes saw you that night, and that he told her. He told her, knowing how badly she wanted it back—how she thought she needed it—”

“What?” Lore asked rolling up onto her feet. “What did he tell her?”

You know.

Tidebringer’s eyes widened as she released a thick, wet gasp. Blood poured from her mouth as the jagged metal tip of a dory punched through her chest. She struggled, her body lashing back and forth in the doorframe like a fish caught on a hook. As her gaze locked on Lore, the sparks of power there faded.

“Everything,” Athena said, pulling her weapon free. Tidebringer’s lifeless body collapsed to the ground. “He told me everything.”

IT WAS EASIER THAN she had ever imagined.

Lore had hated the Kadmides for a lot of things over her ten years of existence, but just then, standing in the cramped back courtyard behind the Phoenician, she hated them most for acting like they didn’t have to try. That no one would dare to take what they themselves had stolen.

There was a narrow, fenced-off gap between the restaurant and the building beside it. They’d made the mistake of leaving its gate unlocked to bring their bags of trash up to the street level for collection in the morning. Lore had slipped inside and crouched behind the rows of trash cans, watching as hunters came and went like bees to their hive.

Between their trips, the restaurant’s back door always shut firmly behind them. They all entered the same code on its keypad.

3-9-6-9-3-1-5-8-2.

She repeated the series in her head again and again. She wouldn’t forget it.

The moon was nearing its pinnacle in the sky when she felt a prickling at the back of her neck.

Lore turned, searching the courtyard and nearby windows for another shadow. The only camera that she could see was the one posted above the door, and that was easy enough to avoid. She and Castor—well, really just her, but Castor kept watch—had practiced staying outside the field of security cameras to slip inside Philip Achilleos’s chambers at Thetis House. She hadn’t been caught then, and she wouldn’t be now.

She would be like the heroes in the stories. She wouldn’t fail.

“Just do it,” Lore told herself, pulling the hood of her sweater up over her ears and tucking her wild hair inside. When no new people came or went for another ten minutes, Lore approached the door, keeping her back tight against the wall to avoid the camera’s eye. She input the code and, with a deep breath, let herself flash across the camera’s sight to slip inside.

The kitchen was still steamy from the dishwashing and smelled of damp onions. A young man kept his back to her at the sinks, softly singing along to the radio. Lore moved slowly around the darkened edges of the room, her steps light and her breathing lighter.

A rumble of voices sounded nearby. Lore slipped beneath one of the stainless-steel worktables and retreated into its deep shadows. She pressed a fist to her mouth and waited.

Several hunters entered the quiet kitchen with a roar of laughter. They’d taken off their masks, but all were still armed within an inch of their lives. One waved to the boy at the sink as they made their way toward the large freezer.

“How’d it go?” the boy asked eagerly, trailing after them, eyes wide.

“Disappointingly quiet for the last night of an Agon,” said one of the hunters. “Though I don’t know that our newly divine lord would have appreciated a rival deity in the family.”

Lore’s top lip curled at the thought of that disgusting old man as a god.

Another hunter shushed him, but the sound ended on a drunken laugh.

“What?” said the first. “He got what he’s always wanted, but he still doesn’t have ears everywhere. At least not yet. I can’t wait to see what his commands are.”

Lore leaned forward again, squinting to see what code they entered on the security pad to the right of the freezer. 1-4-6-9-0. She smirked as they disappeared into it and reemerged a few minutes later with no weapons or robes.

That answered her biggest question. As he’d taunted her father, Aristos Kadmou had revealed that they kept the aegis somewhere beneath the restaurant. And here she’d thought it would be a challenge to find where to access their vault.

“Let’s go, Chares. I’ll take you home to your mother,” the first hunter said to the boy as the others shuffled off toward the side entrance. As they passed by Lore’s table she shrank back and held her breath.