Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  “Your honor would be adorable if it weren’t so stupid,” Lore told him. “Is self-preservation the first thing that gets stripped from you when you lose your humanity, or is it common sense? This city hasn’t changed that much since you left it. You know it better than most of the hunters out there. The safer thing is to go into hiding and wait out the next five nights, or see if you can get to one of the outer boroughs. It’s not ideal, but at least you wouldn’t have to constantly defend yourself on two fronts. The absolute last thing you need to do is stay here and die for people who—”

  “Exactly,” Van said coming to stand beside her. “Which is why you’re going with Melora.”

  It took Lore a moment to process this. “Wait—what? No. He can’t come with me.”

  “I’m not going,” Castor said.

  “It has to be you,” Van insisted, ignoring him.

  Lore was disgusted. “Still sitting out whatever fight you can, I see.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Castor told her sharply.

  Lore grew heated, and forced herself to take a breath. It had always been this way—even as kids, Castor would try to pull her back from any edge, regardless of whether or not it had something to do with Van. The difference was, now she was more than capable of deciding when to jump. “If I wanted a moral compass, I would have stopped at a store on the way here.”

  She couldn’t explain it all to them—she couldn’t tell them about the deal she’d made and manage their outrage, and she sure as hell couldn’t bring more trouble home.

  Van raised his gloved hand and tilted his head, studying her in a way Lore hated. She had to resist squirming as he said, “The real issue here is that you don’t believe that you can protect him, isn’t it? I never took you for a coward, Melora.”

  “Oh, go to the crows, Evander,” she said. “I have enough problems as it is.”

  Lore knew he was baiting her. Knew that her temper was quick and her regrets after the fact long, but there was something about that word, coward. It wasn’t that he’d thrown it at her like a knife; it was already inside her like a painful infestation. At the sound of its name, it began to claw its way out.

  May all cowards be devoured by their shame, her mother used to say.

  “Will the two of you listen to me?” Castor said. “I can’t leave. I refuse to turn the old man’s words into prophecy. My bloodline has considered me a failure from the day I was born. I’m not about to prove them right.”

  Lore turned to him, startled by the vehemence in those words. Even Van looked slightly taken aback.

  “Cas—” she began.

  Brakes screeched outside, the sound followed by revving engines and shouts from the lower levels of Thetis House.

  Lore’s hands curled at her sides, her head warring with her gut. Castor’s stubbornness was bound to get him killed if she left him here. There had to be a way to make Athena see reason. And if not, well, Lore had the entire way home to think of a backup plan.

  “Leave, Cas,” Van said.

  Castor shook his head, pained. “I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Van said. It was the smug tone of someone who knew they’d already won the fight. “You may be willing to give up your life, but I know you’re not willing to risk hers.”

  Van nodded toward Lore. Her lips parted in protest, but Castor drew in a sharp breath and closed his eyes.

  “Van—” he started.

  But the Messenger had already found the right place to slip the blade in. “She won’t leave you here now, knowing they’re coming to kill you. Are you going to risk them finding her?”

  Lore and Van exchanged another look; she read his perfectly. I’m entrusting him to you.

  She groaned. “If you’re coming with me, we’re leaving right now.” Lore looped her arm through Castor’s and pulled him toward the hole he’d blasted in the wall. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get you across the city without leaving a trail—”

  “Take a cab,” Van said. “Pay in cash.”

  Lore blinked. “For the record, I would have thought of that eventually.”

  Van turned back to the new god. Castor had angled his body toward the door and the screech of clashing metal blades. Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  “What about you?” Lore demanded.

  “Come with us,” Castor pleaded.

  “Not until I learn whatever I can,” Van said. “I’ll ask about the poem. Where can I find you when it’s over?”

  Lore’s jaw clenched. Castor trusted him, but that didn’t mean she had to. “Martha’s Diner, Harlem. Wait there.”

  Van nodded, slipping back out into the hallway. The locks clicked into place, one at a time. The metal blast door snapped back down, cutting them off from the rest of the house. Castor stared at it, the muscles of his shoulders bunching with his horror and frustration.

  Lore was overwhelmed by the speed of the seconds slipping by. “Come on. This is a fight you’re not going to win. Sometimes you have to forget about honor—”

  “This is not about honor,” he told her sharply. “It’s about the people I’m leaving to die.”

  She released her hold on his arm, feeling as if he’d burned her with his words. Lore moved to the edge of the fractured wall again, turning her gaze down onto the dumpster.

  “Shit,” she swore.

  The fall was no longer their biggest problem. Hunters wearing the Kadmides’ serpent masks were gathering around the debris from the wall, looking and pointing up. She leaned back, avoiding an arrow fired from a metal crossbow. The beat of helicopter wings forced her attention back up to the roof. Thunder coursed through her veins at the sound of the heavy footsteps walking toward the open skylight.

  Castor was suddenly beside her, holding out both arms.

  It took her a moment to understand exactly what he wanted.

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  “And you’re afraid,” he said. “Do you think I’ll drop you?”

  “No, I think I’m going to have your scrape your mortal body off the cement,” she said. “Are you serious? We’re four stories up.”

  “Trust me,” Castor said.

  The voices were loud enough now that she could make out fragments of what they were saying.

  “He’s just below us. . . .”

  Lore scowled. “If you do drop me, I swear I will come back as one of the Keres and leave you nothing more than ash and blood.”

  Castor nodded, his expression grim. “I’d definitely let you try.”

  Lore reluctantly stepped up beside him, rising onto her toes to loop one of her arms around Castor’s neck. He reached down, lifting her with irritating ease, his own strong arms wrapping around her shoulder and under her knees without the smallest quiver of effort.

  Castor glanced down at her face. “Ready?”

  He didn’t wait for her answer as he stepped up to the edge of the wall. Ropes dropped down from either side of the wall and the last clear thing she heard was a deep, familiar voice snarling, “Take him! Don’t let him get away!”

  Castor freed one hand and sent a blast of power at the hunters scaling the walls from below and firing up at him from the ground.

  Lore turned, pressing her face against Castor’s shoulder as the stench of burnt hair and skin and metal flooded her nostrils.

  “Ready?” he asked again.

  She nodded. Then Castor tightened his hold on her, gripped one of the dangling ropes, and stepped into the air.

  The drop robbed Lore’s heart of several beats, and seemed to yank the oxygen out of her lungs. It was the only reason she didn’t scream.

  Castor grunted as the rope gave a sharp jerk, stopping them. Lore’s eyes snapped open. They had landed in the melting, smoldering trash heap that had once been the dumpster.

  “You okay?” she gasped, dragging herself out of his grip. Castor’s hand was flayed open by rope burn. He grimaced as a glow emanated around his palm and the skin mended itself.

/>   Lore took a big jump down to avoid the charred bodies that surrounded them. “Let’s go—Cas!”

  Castor looked back one last time, even as bullets and arrows rained down again from above them.

  Lore grabbed Castor’s wrist, dragging him away from the building, and didn’t let go until he matched her pace. She led him back around the other dumpsters, through the fence, toward the parking garage—one of a thousand secrets that had knotted their lives together.

  “Don’t lose sight of me,” Lore warned. “I’m not stopping for you.”

  “I’ll do my best to keep up,” he said, still visibly upset.

  Lore accepted a boost up from him into the elevator shaft’s window, then turned back, offering him a hand in return. “I’ll definitely let you try.”

  He took it, even though she knew he didn’t need to, and they set off again.

  Lore’s blood raced through her body as they ran, coming alive with the flush of heat through her muscles and the familiar rhythm of Castor’s steps, just behind her. Their old, hidden route still waited for them, as if they had never left, and had never lost one another.

  In that moment, the past became the present, and the present the past, and it was just the two of them in the shadows of their city, the way it had always been.

  The way it should have been forever.

  THE SUMMER HEAT LINGERED in the city, drawing out the worst smells Manhattan had to offer. As they made their way west, toward the Hudson, Lore felt like she was trapped inside a damp garbage bag.

  She’d stripped off the hunter’s cloak, but Castor was another story. New York was one of the few cities in which a man in full ancient costume wouldn’t be even the third-strangest thing people saw while going about their day. And yet everything about him, from his height to his physique to that face, conspired to catch the eye.

  Lore instructed the cabdriver to drop them off a few blocks from her town house. She still had the cash from the fight in her pocket and struggled to part with it, counting out the fare from her dwindling stack of twenties. She wasn’t sure what she was more anxious about—being spotted by one of the bloodlines, or the reaction she’d get walking through the door.

  Castor hadn’t said a word since they left Thetis House. He didn’t need to.

  The pulse of the city had slowed with late afternoon. Now and then they’d pass someone on the way to the grocery store or laundromat, or kids relishing the spray of an open fire hydrant, but as she hurried them along, Lore was relieved not to see anyone she knew. The fewer lies she had to concoct, the better.

  Some of the pained tension bled from Castor’s face as he watched Lore stoop to pick up stray Duane Reade bags fluttering along the sidewalk like aimless ghosts.

  “What?” she asked, defensive. “I don’t like litter.”

  She would always take care of the neighborhood that had taken care of her. It was part of the contract that came with being a New Yorker.

  Lore felt Castor watching her again as they rounded another corner. She spied Bo the Bodega Cat waiting on their usual bench, but hurried Castor past the storefront to avoid Mr. Herrera seeing her bloodied and covered with dust and smoke residue.

  Lore hesitated as they approached Martha’s.

  “Come on,” she told him, leading Castor around to the side door. She knocked, trying to keep one eye on the street around them.

  It took a few minutes, but Mel’s face appeared behind the door as it cracked open. Her eyes widened in shock at Lore’s appearance.

  Lore gave her a hopeful smile.

  “I thought you were my fruit delivery. Are you all right? What happened?” Mel blinked as she finally caught sight of Castor. “Um, hi.”

  “Bike accident,” Lore lied. “I ate dirt when I collided with him. Do you mind if we use the bathroom to clean up? You know Miles—he’ll freak out if he sees me like this.”

  “Of course.” Mel ushered them inside, hurrying past the kitchen, where Joe, the diner’s cook, was starting preparations for the dinner crowd. “Here, use the back one. Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the hospital?”

  “We’re both fine,” Lore promised as she shut the small bathroom’s door behind them. “Thanks for this.”

  “Yeah . . .” Mel said, her brow creased. “Call if you need anything, hear me?”

  Castor waited until Lore was at the sink, splashing water on her face, to ask, “Who’s Miles?”

  She looked up at him from underneath the paper towel she was using to dab at the cut on her forehead. “Friend and roommate.”

  The new god nodded, leaning back against the door. He watched her silently, and Lore wondered if she had ever been so aware of another person outside a fight in her whole life. The size of him, his sheer immense presence, overwhelmed the small space.

  She glanced up at him in the mirror, taking in his troubled expression and the tattered remains of what had once been luxurious robes.

  “It’s not your fault,” she told him. “You had to go.”

  “Did I?” he asked faintly.

  “You’re no good to them dead,” Lore reminded him.

  “As it turns out,” he said, “I’m apparently no good to them at all.”

  Lore threw her wet paper towel at his face. He startled, looking at her in shock.

  “You are the best thing to come out of the House of Achilles,” she told him. “Maybe the only good thing. Sometimes you just have to survive to fight another day. Even I knew those were bad odds, and you know how I feel about running from a fight.”

  He sighed, resting his head back against the door. “I’ve been weak my whole life. And when I finally did get power—when I finally became strong—”

  Lore cut him off. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known. Always have been.”

  “Now I know you’re lying,” he said. “I could barely keep up with you most days.”

  She fought to control the rising heat in her words. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known, Castor Achilleos, and it wasn’t because of how fast you ran or how hard you hit. It was because even when you got knocked flat on your back, you fought your way back up. You have to do it again now. Whatever you’re feeling, you have to leave it on the mat and get back up.”

  Lore had let the Philip incident go because of the chaos that had come after, but she hadn’t forgotten it.

  “You have to stay alive,” she told him. “If you want to help them, you have to live.”

  Castor’s face was so beautiful, it was almost painful to look at. So she didn’t.

  “And what about you?” he pressed. “Is that what you’re doing—getting back up and into the Agon after escaping it?”

  “That’s rich coming from someone who wanted to rope me back in himself,” she told him.

  “It was a mistake,” he told her. “You were out. I should have let you stay there, but I was selfish, and I wanted to see you. I needed to know that you were alive. But if I’m the reason you got this idea about going after Wrath into your head . . .”

  Lore said nothing. She couldn’t, not with her jaw clenched so tight.

  “Your parents wouldn’t want you to avenge them, and they wouldn’t want you to get trapped in the hell of being immortal. Of being hunted,” Castor told her. “They’d want you to live a free, full life.”

  A cold tingle moved up from Lore’s fingertips and spread throughout her body. Her breathing hitched as she fought for the words against the familiar, crushing tide that rose in her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. They deserve to rest. They deserve— They were— It was a mistake.”

  The words felt slow, almost lethargic compared to the speed of her thoughts. Castor put a hand on her shoulder. Lore tried to shrug it off, to step back, but the memory of her sisters’ faces rose up in her mind. The way they’d looked when she’d found them . . .

  “Lore?”

  “I’m— It’s fine. I’m fine,” Lore managed to get out. Her pulse beat hard and fast, until it clouded her
vision with black. She tried to breathe through it, tried to remember where she was, but all she could see were Olympia and Damara, the dark holes where their eyes had been. The blood still wet on their cheeks, like tears.

  Not now, she thought, the words spiraling, screaming, not now—she had to keep it together. The pressure was building in her again, the strain of it turning her brittle. Lore couldn’t find her way out of the darkness growing around her.

  “Have you ever heard the one about the turtles on Broadway?”

  The words struck her mind like a torch in the dark, sudden and bright, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Have I . . . what?” she asked, blinking to clear her vision.

  “The turtle show on Broadway,” Castor said softly.

  Lore still didn’t understand. “No—what are you talking about?”

  “Really?” he said, his gaze still intent on her. “Because it was a shell-out.”

  The pressure receded, easing out of her shoulders and chest until she could take a deep enough breath to snort.

  Lore looked down at her feet, at the old tile beneath them, and tried to hide her embarrassment. Gil used to tell her stories about his life as a professor, the antics of his former students, or his extensive world travels in low, soothing tones until she came back to herself. They would drink tea and talk, as much as Lore was able to.

  But she didn’t want to talk about it now. Castor, at least, seemed to sense that.

  “It’s easy to be overcome with exasperation when dealing with immortals,” he said simply.

  “Tell me about it,” she said when she trusted her voice to be steady. “You’re all more trouble than you’re worth.”

  “Absolutely,” he agreed.

  “That was a terrible joke, by the way.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got seven years’ worth saved up.”

  “Is that a threat?” she asked.

  The air warmed around her. That was the only reason her skin heated with the smile he sent her way.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. “Honey? There’s someone here asking after a girl that sounds a lot like you. He’s tall, Black, looks like he stepped out of a cologne ad—”