“I don’t believe in the Fates, but I do believe in you,” Lore said. “Whatever happened must have happened because you were you. We’ll figure out what it was, I promise. You can hold me to it.”
Castor nodded.
The heat faded from his touch as he finished healing her, but he didn’t pull away, and neither did Lore. He wet a small washcloth and began to clean the blood from her new pink skin—stroke by stroke, with a tenderness that came close to breaking her heart. Lore widened her legs, letting him step closer, and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really?”
His long fingers grazed up along the curve of her shoulder, coming to cup her other cheek, to brush her old, long scar. The tight muscles in her neck eased as he stroked the hollow where the base of her skull met the ridge of her spine.
“I saw him,” Lore murmured. “I told myself I would never come back to this world—that I would never let it force my hand or drive me to kill. I thought I could get back out clean if Athena was the one to do it, but . . . I don’t know if I can do this, keeping one foot in the ring and one foot out.”
“You can,” Castor said. “Don’t let them pull you back in. There’s nothing but shadows for you here now.”
Lore knew exactly how easy it was to get lost in that darkness. To need it.
Even now, she could imagine her hands wrapped around Wrath’s throat, choking him until the sparks of power faded in his eyes—or her blade flashing as it plunged into his chest again and again and again. But Lore didn’t feel sick at the thought.
She only wanted it more.
Lore leaned forward against his chest, hearing the powerful drumbeat of Castor’s mortal heart.
“I used to believe in this world,” Lore said. “I used to want everything it promised so badly.”
“I know,” Castor told her. “But I never thought you would win the Agon. I thought you would destroy it.”
Lore looked up at his words, her brow creased in confusion. But before she could ask, a crash tore through the silence, then a ferocious scream.
Iro was finally awake.
BY THE TIME LORE reached the office, Iro had her arm wrapped around Miles’s throat and the sharp tip of a letter opener pressed to his jugular.
Van had his hands out, speaking in a low, soothing tone as the girl dragged Miles toward the door. Athena watched from the corner of the office, arms crossed over her chest. She looked amused, but her dory was within reach.
“No!” Lore knocked the blade out of Iro’s hand, giving Miles a moment to drop and crawl away. “Iro, listen to me—”
She tried to lock the girl’s arms at her sides, but Iro had always been faster, and her instincts sharper. Lore didn’t see any awareness register on the girl’s face as she gripped one of the heavy binders off the bookshelf and launched it toward Castor.
He shifted, letting the book smash into the wall behind him. He turned his wide eyes toward Lore, uncertain of what to do.
Seeing her, Iro lunged—not to attack Lore, but to shield her from the others. “Get out of here, Melora!”
“Hey!” Miles barked. “That was Mrs. Cheong’s!”
The words caught Iro off guard. She turned toward him. “I—what?”
Lore pushed through her shock at Iro’s protectiveness and managed to wrap her arms around the other girl before she could recover.
“Let me go! You need to get out of here!” Iro said between gritted teeth, straining and thrashing to throw Lore off her. Her faint French accent was never more pronounced than in the rare instances she raised her voice.
“Stop”—Lore forced them both to the ground with a hard drop—“it! No one is going anywhere. You’re safe here—I’m safe here.”
“Iro,” Van said, crouching beside them. “This is Castor Achilleos. Like Athena, he is working with us to try to kill Wrath. He used his power to help you escape. He’s not going to hurt you. None of us are.”
Iro wrenched herself free from Lore, rolling up onto her feet to face her. Her black hunter’s robes were askew, revealing the slim body armor she still wore beneath them. It seemed to take her a moment to understand what Van had told her. “Castor Achilleos is dead. You told me yourself—or did you lie about that, too?”
“That’s what your people told me,” Lore reminded her, shoving up from the ground. She felt like she might retch at the memory—the sheer pleasure on the face of the House of Odysseus’s archon as he leaned down to tell her, One less Achilleos for us to kill.
“You know what happened to the Achillides,” Van said. “Everyone who stands against Wrath has to stand together, otherwise he’ll wipe us all out.”
“That is not Castor,” Iro spat. “That is not your friend.”
“Yes, he is,” Lore said, coming to stand beside him. “He’s Castor the way Heartkeeper was your father.”
“He—he wasn’t—” Iro said, struggling for the words. “He is—he was—my lord. Our protector. He . . .”
“He was your father,” Lore repeated.
He had been archon of the Odysseides for years before ascending to become the new Aphrodite in the last cycle of the Agon. Lore had come to the family after, and she had never been present when the new god manifested a physical form and appeared to them.
From the stories she’d gathered from Iro and a few other members of the family, he had been a strict but not entirely unloving parent to his sole child.
The problem had always been the bloodline’s determination to uphold logic over everything else, including emotion. But Iro hadn’t been like that—not always. Lore had met her just once before seeking refuge with the Odysseides, but Iro had always treated her as if they had known each other from the time they’d slept in cradles, assuming the role of big sister though she was barely a year older.
In Lore’s first few weeks at the Odysseides estate, she had been so shell-shocked by her family’s murders that she had only survived because Iro had gently forced her to. She had made her eat, stayed up talking to her after Lore woke screaming from nightmares, and let Lore trail after her day in and day out. It hadn’t been Iro’s strength and skill as a fighter that Lore had admired, though she respected it. It had been her compassion within a bloodline that strove to rid itself of that.
“She won’t understand,” Castor said. “She doesn’t want to.”
“You know nothing of my mind,” Iro seethed. “Come closer and see how well I understand what you are, killer of Apollo. Tell me, did you feel clever when you set your trap for him? When you killed him from afar like a coward and stole his power from your archon?”
Everyone in the room seemed to pivot at once toward Castor, whose face shifted like the sky at sunrise. Shock became denial became desperation.
“Who told you that?” he demanded. “Who?”
Iro looked victorious. “It is true, then. There was no honor in your ascension.”
“That’s . . .” Lore’s words trailed off as she looked between the two of them. Iro’s outright hatred, Castor’s sudden uncertainty. “That’s impossible. Castor was confined to his bed at that point.”
The new god blew out a harsh breath, his hands curling at the memory of it.
“You’re speaking from a place of rumor,” Van said. “The Odysseides always spread mischief and lies to make themselves feel better for their own failures.”
“If she does not speak the truth,” Athena told Castor, “then tell it yourself.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Castor said. “The Odysseides can distort the truth all they want. I’ve never had any honor, and I can’t bring myself to care about it now.”
“You may not,” Iro said, shifting her gaze between the two gods. “But I will do what Melora failed to. I will ensure your deaths are delivered by the House of Odysseus and win back the kleos stolen from my lord in death.”
Athena snorted, but Lore’s lungs tightened at Iro’s words.
She heard herself in them.
/> She heard her parents and her instructors. She heard the lines from the ancient texts she’d read over and over. Even logic wasn’t going to break through seventeen years of careful psychological conditioning.
“You have the look of him about your eyes,” Athena said evenly.
“Don’t speak of my—of Heartkeeper,” Iro warned.
“I do not speak of him,” Athena said, “but of the man of many ways.”
A long stretch of silence followed.
“We’re trying to kill Wrath,” Lore said finally, echoing Van’s earlier words. “No one is going to hurt you. We went to Ithaka House tonight in the hope that we could call a truce with your father and the Odysseides before he came for all of you. We were too late.”
The tendons in Iro’s neck bulged with her panting breath.
“The Odysseides on the bus are safe,” Van told her. “I got them away, something I could not do for most of my own bloodline. Our archon lies dead with no one willing to take his place. At least you are alive to serve your
kin.”
“I cannot be the archon,” Iro said sharply.
“Why not?” Lore challenged.
“No woman will become archon of an ancient bloodline. But if the others live, then . . . I will go to them.”
Iro softened her rigid stance. For the first time, Lore sensed something of an opening.
“We need to know what you told Wrath,” Lore said. “Was it about the origin poem? An alternate version of it?”
Iro stood, feet rooted to the ground, hands curled into fists. Wanting to run, wanting to fight, but held in place by her mind.
“Will you talk to me alone?” Lore asked her. “Just the two of us?”
The other girl hesitated, and nothing hurt Lore more than that.
“We always used to be able to talk,” Lore said softly. “Do you really hate me that much now?”
Iro went ashen. “I don’t hate you.”
Van’s phone beeped, cutting through the tension. His dark eyes flicked over to Iro before he said, carefully, “No sightings. But there is a new category that might interest you, Lore.”
He turned the phone around, holding it up for Lore to see.
“What the hell?” She took it from him in disbelief.
Melora Perseous was listed just beneath the Reveler’s name, but before Castor’s. When she clicked on it, the map of Manhattan lit up with glowing pins that marked supposed sightings. Some were frighteningly accurate—near the restaurant that hosted the fighting ring, outside Thetis House—but others were scattered in lower Manhattan, in places she hadn’t gone.
Lore pressed her free hand against her jeans, trying to hide how slick it had become. The static was growing in her ears again. She tried to speak, but no words came.
“Only Wrath could have demanded something like this,” Van added. “He must have a good number of hunters searching for you if they’re turning up this many leads.”
Lore forced herself to draw another breath as she returned Van’s phone. “I wounded his pride by escaping his attempt to wipe out the House of Perseus. He’s not going to let it go lightly.”
“No,” Castor said quietly, “he’s not.”
The worry was back, turning his gaze soft. Lore hated that for all of his power, for all of his obvious physical strength, her choices could still bring him back to the boy he’d been. He already had enough to handle this week without needing to fear for her.
“Which is why we’re going to have to get him first,” Lore said.
Athena nodded. “Indeed.”
“If we’re going to find the Reveler, we need to get going,” Van said. He stood and quickly split the remainder of the money between his leather backpack, which he handed to Castor, and the other, simpler one Miles had picked up. “I’ll meet you all there. I’m going to regroup with the remaining Achillides and bring them supplies.”
“Are you going to take the Ody—” Miles began.
“No,” Van said sharply. Lore gave him a pleading look, but he refused to acknowledge it. He wasn’t going to reveal the location of the Achillides to anyone, not even to offer the Odysseides aid. She didn’t know why she had expected anything else this week.
Lore followed Van through the side door to make a case for sharing the location of the warehouse, only to find that Iro had followed her. Iro stepped out into the street, hugging her arms to her chest.
Lore watched Van disappear into the darkness, and was tempted to call after him. Iro, however, spoke first.
“They say his father did that to him.”
“Did what?” Lore asked, turning to her.
“His hand,” Iro said. “The story told to me was that his father was so ashamed of his boy’s unwillingness to fight, his ineptitude for it, that he severed Evander’s sword hand to give him an honorable excuse not to.”
Lore blanched. “No. Tell me that’s not true.”
“I think he did it to himself,” Iro said, her expression turning thoughtful. “Not out of weakness, but strength. The will to decide his own path.”
The words gave Lore her first glimmer of hope that she could get through to Iro. If the girl believed an act like that could be courageous, and hadn’t dismissed it as cowardice the way they’d been taught to believe, there was something for Lore to work with.
“And this hunt, these families who would have Van fight against his will—that’s the world you believe in?” Lore asked her. “The one you feel such loyalty to?”
“No world is perfect. God, mortal, hunter,” Iro said. “I believe in our divine purpose. I believe in honor, and in kleos, and that we will never be destroyed. I believe in it, even if you’ve allowed yourself to be led astray.”
“You know why I left,” Lore said. “Everyone knew what that man was, and no one said a word. Where was the honor in your bloodline elevating him to its highest position? Where was the kleos in that, Iro?”
The girl looked down. “You should have stayed. I would have protected you from them.”
“It wouldn’t have been enough,” Lore told her.
“I don’t believe that,” Iro whispered.
“You don’t have to for it to be true,” Lore told her. “Can you honestly tell me that they wouldn’t have killed me for what I did?”
“I don’t know what they would have done,” Iro said. “We don’t speak of what happened. It is acknowledged only as a terrible accident.”
Of course, Lore thought bitterly. To tell the truth would have dishonored the dead—because it meant admitting that their family’s monster hadn’t been confined to a labyrinth or exiled to some far-off place. He’d walked freely among them.
“I know it feels wrong to you that I’m working with gods,” Lore said. “But look at Prometheus—he brought us fire, even knowing what it would cost him. There comes a point where you have to decide what’s right for yourself and act, no matter the consequences.”
Iro drew in an uneven breath beside her. “We were not born to carry fire.”
“The rest of my family is gone,” Lore said. “I don’t want to lose you again. Please stay with us. Help us.”
Iro closed her eyes and was silent for a long time. “My family is gone now, too.”
“Even your mother?” Lore asked. “You’re sure?”
Dorcas’s presence had lingered like a ghost at the estate; she’d vanished a few days after Lore had arrived, and no one, save Iro, was ever willing to acknowledge or question it. It wasn’t until months later that Iro and Lore had broken into her locked chambers to look for answers. Inside her empty jewelry box they found a slip of paper with a single word on it.
Mákhomai. I make war.
“I can’t go with you to find the Reveler,” Iro told her, her accent softening the words until they seemed to run together in a whisper. “I have a duty to my bloodline. But there’s a debt that has to be paid, even I know this, for none of us would have survived without you.”
The girl stood, her hands clenched b
efore her. Lore waited, struggling to hide her impatience.
“The poem you asked about before,” Iro began. “There is another, more complete version of what Zeus told the hunters at Olympia when he first gave the command to begin the Agon.”
Lore’s lips parted in surprise. “And you know it? The complete version.”
Her heart fell like a stone in her chest as Iro shook her head.
“Our archivist found a letter from centuries ago, forgotten in a safe-deposit box in the Alps,” Iro continued. “From one of your ancestors to one of mine.”
“About its existence?” Lore pressed.
“About where to find it,” Iro said. “Lore, it claims the full text is inscribed on the aegis.”
Lore drew back a step, static burning in her ears as disbelief emptied her thoughts. It felt as if she had run here, to this moment. “That’s impossible. That’s . . . I would have known about it. My father would have known it. I would have—”
I would have seen it myself.
But—would she have? In those few precious moments she’d laid eyes on it?
“Does Wrath know what it says?” Lore asked. The Kadmides held the aegis in their possession for decades. They had to have studied every inch of it to discover its secrets.
“I don’t think so,” Iro said. “The letter describes the text as being hidden or disguised in some way. The only reason he found out about it is because some of his hunters raided the archive vault where we kept the original letter.”
“Then what did he need you for?” Lore asked. “What information did you have that he didn’t?”
Iro looked pale. “His hunter didn’t just find the letter. There was record of the fact that we sheltered you.”
“No,” Lore breathed.
“He wanted to know where you were,” Iro said. “I think he believes that you know how to read the inscription, and, whatever he’s planning, he needs you in order to see it through.”
THEY SPLIT UP INTO pairs to make the journey up to the Frick, approaching the museum from different directions. Lore tried to keep her composure, but she was struggling to hold on to her threadbare nerves.
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