Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  Lore felt light and giddy as she opened the door to the freezer and stepped into its icy arms.

  Thinking twice, she caught the door before it shut behind her and used a heavy cut of frozen meat to prop it open, letting in more heat and light.

  The surfaces of the freezer were covered in a thin sheen of frost, including the floor. The area around the rubber mat at the center had recently been disturbed; Lore lifted the mat with her foot before kicking it off all the way.

  Her lip curled at the sight of the trapdoor, unsecured by a lock—her family wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  Lore lifted the hatch open and climbed down the steps beneath it. Lights flickered on around her as they sensed her movement, revealing shelf after shelf of weapons, money, and tech. Her eyes went wide at the sight of it all, even before she saw the treasures at the center of the room. One, draped over a mannequin, was what had to be the hide of the Nemean lion. The House of Herakles had traded it willingly to the Kadmides centuries ago in exchange for desperately needed weapons. And just beyond that, in a glass case, was the aegis.

  Thoughts fled her mind, replaced by an involuntary shiver that crawled over her scalp.

  Even cast in silver and gold, Medusa’s visage was still so lifelike that Lore’s feet rooted to the ground. She flinched as the gorgon’s lips seemed to part to draw breath—but it was only her own reflection shifting in the glass.

  Medusa’s face, and the wild knot of snakes in her hair, protruded slightly from the shield, as if the gods had melted her severed head down into the stiffened leather and metal. A delicate filigreed pattern of lightning and vines framed her visage. The gold tassels that hung from it were still in place after thousands of years, as bright and gleaming as the day they had been made.

  I see you, the gorgon seemed to say. I see you, Melora.

  Lore drew in a deep breath, trying to shake the nerves firing through her.

  “Stop it,” she ordered herself. There had to be cameras hidden around the room. Someone would be coming to stop her. “Get going.”

  There was no latch to open the glass case, and it was too big for Lore to lift on her own. She had one option left to free the aegis, and that was a very, very bad one.

  Lore circled the case. Judging by the thickness of the glass, it was reinforced, likely bulletproof. She glanced to the trapdoor.

  There would be an alarm. She would have only seconds. . . .

  Lore backed away, retrieving the heaviest-looking sword she could find from the nearby rack, and climbed the stairs to the freezer. She laid the blade across the opening of the trapdoor. Just in case.

  Then, without risking another minute to second-guess herself, Lore returned to the aegis. With a grin, she used all the strength in her body to shove the case and its pedestal over.

  A siren screamed as the room flashed red around her. There was a loud bang that made Lore nearly jump out of her skin. She whirled around. The trapdoor had swung shut as the alarm was triggered, but the sword had stayed in place and kept it cracked open.

  As she’d expected, the glass case around the aegis hadn’t shattered when it hit the ground. She picked up a nearby dory and wedged its head down where the glass had been sealed to the flat surface of the marble pedestal. Her arms strained as she cut away at the sealant until, finally, the case and pedestal separated enough for her to draw the shield out.

  It was almost as big as her, but despite its size, the shield felt lighter than the arm she hooked through its leather straps. Her heart punching up into her throat, Lore turned and fled up the stairs. The trapdoor pushed back at her, still struggling to shut, but she braced the shield against it and shoved up.

  A blast of pressure and light exploded from the shield, whipping the door open. It crashed against the freezer’s floor so hard it broke from its motorized hinges and slid under a nearby shelf. Lore stared at it a moment, then at the aegis. The dull thudding of the freezer door opening and shutting against the flank of meat drew her back into the moment and set her running again.

  Lore barreled through the opening into the dark kitchen. The door to the outside had locked as the alarm was triggered, but Lore, quickly developing a theory, smashed the aegis against it. The metal door fell flat against the uneven asphalt of the courtyard.

  Lore ran until the world blurred around her. The shield bumped against her side and beneath her chin, but she felt like she was wearing winged sandals as she fled up the east side of Manhattan, weaving in and out of its grid of empty streets.

  Every part of her, from her bones down to her soul, felt suffused with glee and pride. The aegis was back where it belonged and the Kadmides would never forget this night or her name. Her family wouldn’t be leaving the Agon, or the city, and Lore wouldn’t be leaving Castor.

  By the time she reached Central Park, however, that same fizzing giddiness in her blood began to still, and then cool. She started to turn toward the west side, toward home, but her feet refused to move.

  Realization set in the way Medusa’s gaze had once turned men to stone.

  The Kadmides wouldn’t forget her name, because they would know exactly who had taken their prized treasure. She hadn’t been careful about checking for cameras in the vault. Any number of them could have captured her face.

  Lore sagged against a nearby bench, her thoughts spinning dark, terrifying patterns in her mind.

  If the Kadmides had caught her on camera, they would know where to look for the shield. Who to blame and who to punish. And now, with their archon a god, no one and nothing would stand in their way.

  Lore let out a choked sob, her heart punching against her ribs until she thought she might throw up. There were so many Kadmides, and so few Perseides.

  For the first time, courage abandoned her. Her trembling body took over, jumping the stone wall to retreat into the familiar safety of the park. She needed to find a place to hide.

  She needed to do more than that.

  I have to take it back, she thought, choking on the realization. They won’t punish us if I take it back.

  But the aegis didn’t belong to the Kadmides—it wasn’t theirs, and now that they had a new god, now that Aristos Kadmou had shed his mortal skin, he might be able to use it. Her father told her that wasn’t true, but her father had been wrong before.

  Lore crouched behind a bench near the Mall, her body feverish with fear. She smeared the sweat from her face with dirty hands.

  And all the while, Medusa watched her. I see you. I know what you’ve done.

  No. She could still fix this.

  Lore stayed there, her body curled and her face pressed to her knees, until, finally, she decided what to do.

  LORE’S CHEST BURNED WITH a scream that wouldn’t come. She was gasping for it, ripping it from the deepest part of her soul, but only a low cry escaped her lips.

  Her body no longer seemed to be completely her own. Lore stumbled into the wall, disoriented.

  “You . . .” She tried to get the words out. “You . . . you knew . . .”

  “Do you see it now?” Athena asked, speaking in the ancient tongue. Any warmth, any sign of humanity had gone out like a doused flame. “The steady hand guiding the loom?”

  Lore’s body shook with enough force that it was a struggle to keep her grip on the hilt of her blade. Her vision swarmed with black. If Hermes had told Athena that Lore took the aegis . . . if Athena had known where to find her family and had come looking for it that day . . .

  The poison of truth moved through her, turning her insides to ash.

  As if knowing her thoughts, a faint smile touched the goddess’s lips.

  She killed them.

  Not Wrath. Not the Kadmides. It had always been Athena.

  As Lore’s shock faded, a feral panic set in.

  “I thought—” she began.

  She had left her alone with Miles and Van. . . . She had trusted her to honor her oath to not harm Castor. . . . She had . . . She had . . .

  Believed he
r.

  “You thought what, that I possessed a heart?” Athena said. “The heart is only a muscle.”

  “You killed them.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Why?”

  “I almost didn’t believe Hermes when he told me what he’d seen. The aegis, the object I had spent centuries searching for, found by a child. Carried by a child,” Athena said. “I knew where the last of the Perseides resided. The hovel they called a home. I was delighted to discover a window had been left open for me, almost as if in invitation.”

  Lore clawed at her hair, her breathing growing erratic, her heart on the verge of shredding itself against her ribs. Desperation flooded her veins. No—please

  no—

  “But as I stood inside the room I thought, surely, the thief could not have been either one of these tiny, insignificant creatures. They were smaller than the shield,” Athena said, taking a single step forward into the cell. “I stood over their beds and thought about how easy it would be to simply smother them.”

  She moved another step closer to Lore. “But I waited, until your mother and father came to look in on them, until my powers were fully restored to me at the cycle’s end.” Athena stopped before Lore, looming over her. “And then I claimed one piece from each girl for every question they refused to answer. About their missing child. About where you might be hiding.”

  The memory of her sisters, carved up beyond recognition, burst the pressure trapped in her chest. Rage and grief ripped through her; the world swung off its axis, and Lore attacked.

  She slashed her blade down toward Athena’s chest. The god used her dory to parry it with little effort, her face expressionless, then swung it down, battering Lore’s right shoulder.

  “No restraint, no discipline, no strategy,” Athena said. “Only anger. I saw it in you immediately. Like molten bronze waiting to be shaped by skilled hands. I merely had to plant the suggestion of the new poem. I knew you would find out where it was inscribed, and you would return for it. It became a matter of patience.”

  Lore was knocked back by the force of the blow, but used the distance to toss the knife to her left hand, changing her grip. She feinted right, and when the goddess moved to block it, Lore sliced up. Athena leaned back, but the tip had caught her chin. The gash painted the side of her neck with blood.

  Athena let out a single caustic laugh. She rubbed a thumb against the cut, studying it for a moment. “The problem with mortals that small, of course, is that there is only so much lifeblood in them. They die too quickly.”

  Lore screamed. The sound was ragged, torn from the broken part of her. She gave herself over to the pain, cutting and clawing and slicing until the cell disappeared around her and she began to dissolve into instinct.

  The hit from the dory came from behind, smashing against her skull. The knife flew from her hand as Lore fell to the ground. She rolled to face forward, but Athena clubbed her once more, then plunged the dory’s sauroter into her thigh. With a single stroke, she had pierced muscle, cracked bone, and pinned Lore in place.

  The agony was so complete, Lore could barely draw enough breath to sob. Athena turned the spear, digging the tip deeper. Survival and instinct roared in her. Lore slapped a hand against the dank ground, feeling for the knife, and she seized it in triumph.

  But before she could lift it, Athena gripped that same hand, wrenching it away. Then, with all the effort it would have taken to crumple the head of a flower, she tightened her fingers around Lore’s and crushed every bone in them.

  Lore shook violently with gasping cries. Sour vomit rose in her throat at the pain, at the sight of her mangled hand.

  “Why?” she begged. “Why?”

  “They called for you,” Athena said. As the goddess pulled the dory free, the sauroter broke off, still buried in Lore’s leg. “Both of the girls. Do you think they knew you were the one who killed them?”

  The memory of that night assailed her. Lore did not have to close her eyes to see it—the blood smeared on the walls and floors, her sisters thrown down on their beds, the dark gaps where their eyes should have been.

  “They were just little girls,” Lore sobbed. “Damara was a baby. They were innocent!”

  “None of you are innocent,” Athena growled. “Least of all you, Melora. Your father died first, begging, then your mother, who at least knew it would be wasted breath. I waited hours for you to return, and when you did, it was no longer in your possession. I watched as you stood in the doorway of your home, as you saw the gift I had left for you. But you did not cry. You did not make a single sound. You were stronger then than you are now.”

  “Why didn’t you torture me to find out what happened to it?” Lore gasped out, one hand clutching at her face, her hair. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

  “I needed you to show me where you had hidden it,” Athena said. “And to give it to me willingly. Of course, once I learned of the poem, I had yet another reason to keep you alive. I could not let it disappear with your death until I read it myself.”

  Lore clawed at her throat. She almost had, only an hour before. It had felt like her own idea. An inevitability.

  “All those years with the House of Odysseus, I watched your pathetic existence, waiting for you to one day retrieve it or to reveal where you had hidden it,” Athena said. “I might have intervened and come to you in another form, to ingratiate myself to you, had Hermes not found you first.”

  Lore shook her head, trying to shut out the words.

  “I followed him to this city, curious as to why he was wearing a false face,” Athena said. “I had my answer soon enough. I felt the power of the averting charms he cast on his home. I could not enter it, nor even approach. There was but one reason he would go to such lengths to deny me. Only one mortal he would go to such lengths to protect. The fact I could not see you—that I could only catch the sound of your footsteps, the smell of you—confirmed it.”

  The goddess studied the tip of her dory. “Hermes made such an effort, and all out of a misplaced sense of guilt. You see, he had traded his sighting of you and the aegis to keep his lover alive. He knew I had found the false Dionysus’s hiding place,” Athena said. “And when this hunt began, and I watched Hermes die from a distance, I saw my opportunity. His power would not hold beyond his death. I could finally go to you, unhindered.”

  Keeping her blade up became impossible as Lore’s body turned to lead. Blood poured from her leg. It throbbed with every heartbeat. She pressed her back against the wall, its dampness soaking through her shirt.

  “But Artemis attacked you . . .” Lore began weakly.

  “As if my sister could strike such a blow without my consent,” Athena said. “We had planned to kill all the imposters this cycle, but she agreed to aid me in the deception once I told her of your connection to the boy who had murdered our brother. But he is so curious, is he not? I knew the moment I felt his power we could not kill him. Not until I found out what he was. It angered her, but it allowed me to get close enough to some of the other imposters to ensure they died by a true god’s hand.”

  Artemis hadn’t been raving as her sister had claimed—Athena had betrayed Artemis by not giving Castor to her.

  “You told Artemis to track me that first day thinking I would go to find him, didn’t you?” Lore said, finally putting it together. “And then you just—you watched her die?”

  “We were not all meant to return to Olympus,” Athena said coolly. “Only the strongest among us will be recognized by the Horae and allowed to pass through the gates once more. Artemis faltered.”

  Athena’s hand lashed out, catching Lore’s chin in a painful grip. “Shall we end your suffering and go retrieve it at last?”

  Lore looked up at her, pouring every ounce of her trembling fury into her gaze. Her mind was a torrent of terror and disbelief. “It won’t be willingly given if you torture me for it. You wouldn’t be able to use it.”

  “Not yet, no. However, I will have the inscription. I will kno
w how to end the Agon,” Athena said. Lore felt her jaw begin to crack under her grip. “And when I am restored to my full power, I will be able to wield it once more.”

  “But Wrath will . . . He’ll come for it,” Lore rasped out. “He won’t let you have it—”

  “When I achieve the final ascension, he will be nothing more than a worm I crush beneath my heel,” Athena said. “Along with all those who dared to turn away from their true gods. I warn you, Melora, I will destroy everything and everyone you love, one by one, until you bring me to it.”

  Lore’s heart lurched in her chest.

  No.

  Not Miles. Not Castor. Not Van. Not Iro.

  Not her city.

  A calm certainty took control of Lore’s mind, quieting the chaotic storm of her thoughts and clarifying the choice. Accepting it, even as she saw all their faces—even as she thought of her family and knew their souls would never find peace.

  There was one last choice. At least she would be the one to make it.

  I’m sorry, she thought. There would be a single god left for Castor to face, but no one would ever possess the aegis again.

  Lore’s unmarred hand gripped the broken piece of the spear’s shaft still attached to the sauroter and, with a cry, she pulled it from her leg. She thought of her sisters. Her fearless mother. Her father’s face glowing in their campfire’s light, showing her how to grip the hilt of a dagger.

  Shift your thumb to the spine of the hilt, Melora. It’ll give you better control.

  “No.” She raised her voice, making sure the word thundered.

  Athena’s nostrils flared. “Impertinent child—”

  Lore stared up at her through the strands of her dark hair. “The choice is mine.”

  She turned the blade on herself and slid it into her chest.

  LORE HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT that there would be more to death than this.

  The hunters believed that there was no greater honor than to die on the hunt in the pursuit of glory, rather than be taken by Thanatos, the god of gentle death. She knew better than to buy into the bullshit, but some part of her still wanted to believe that the last fire of pain would burn away her past and transform her into someone who would be judged worthy in the world below.