Lore Alexandra Bracken PDF

OceanofPDF.com  Copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Bracken All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,...

OceanofPDF.com  Copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Bracken All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023. Designed by Marci Senders Cover art © 2021 by Billelis Marble image © 2021 by Stone/Shutterstock Cover design by Marci Senders ISBN 978-1-368-00231-8 Visit www.hyperionteens.com OceanofPDF.com  Contents Title Page Copyright Dedication Living Lines Dead Lines The Origin Poem Prologue Part One: City of Gods One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Ten Years Earlier Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Part Two: Carrying Fire Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Seven Years Earlier Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Part Three: Deathless Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Thirty-Four Thirty-Five Thirty-Six Thirty-Seven Part Four: Dark Rivers Seven Years Earlier Thirty-Eight Thirty-Nine  Forty Seven Years Earlier Forty-One Forty-Two Seven Years Earlier Forty-Three Part Five: Mortal Forty-Four Seven Years Earlier Forty-Five Forty-Six Forty-Seven Forty-Eight Forty-Nine Fifty Fifty-One Fifty-Two Fifty-Three Fifty-Four Fifty-Five Fifty-Six Fifty-Seven Fifty-Eight Cast of Characters Acknowledgments About the Author OceanofPDF.com For my Greek family. Σας αγαπώ όλους. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com The lord of sky stood bright against the fall of twilight and spoke: Hear me, blooded heirs of those proud men who ventured into the darkness to slay those monsters and kings past. I call you to a final agon to win your own lasting glory. Nine gods have betrayed me and now demand cruel revenge. For seven days at the turn of seven years will they walk as mortal so you men, and all your heirs henceforth, may break your own fated path and turn your thread of life to immortal gold. Reveal your strength and skills and I will reward you with the mantle and the deathless power of the god whose blood stains your bold blade. For this chance I ask much. Gather at the navel of the known world and begin your hunt when the day is born. So it shall be until that final day when one remains who is remade whole. Zeus at Olympia, translated by Kreon of the Odysseides OceanofPDF.com He woke to the feeling of rough ground beneath him and the stench of mortal blood. His body was slower to recover than his mind. Unwelcome sensations burned through him as his skin tightened like newly fired clay. The dew of the grass seeped into the back of his thin blue robe, and he felt the dirt splattered on his bare legs and feet. A humiliating shiver passed through him, sweeping from scalp to heel. For the first time in seven years, he caught a chill. The mortal blood that flowed through him was like sludge compared to the liquid sunlight of the ichor that had burned away all traces of his mortality and released him back into the world. For seven years, he had swept through lands near and far, stoked the vicious hearts of killers, nurtured the embers of conflicts into flames. He had been rage itself. To feel the boundaries of a body again... to be poured back into this weak vessel... it was torment enough to make him pity the old gods. They had lived this atrocity two hundred and twelve times over. He would not. This would be his final taste of mortality. His senses were dulled, but he recognized the city and its grand park. The smell of mowed grass mingling with faint sewage. The sound of traffic in the near distance. The electric, restless feel of its veins deep beneath the street. The corners of his mouth stretched up awkwardly, forced to remember how to smile. It had been his city once, in his mortal life; the streets had offered him riches, and the greedy had sold him pieces of power. Manhattan had once knelt before him, and would again.  He rolled, shifting into a crouch. When he was certain of his limbs, he rose slowly to his full height. Dark blood flowed in rivers around him. A young girl, her mask ripped from her face, stared at him with unseeing eyes from the edge of the crater. A knife was still buried in her throat. A man’s head, severed from his body, bore the mask of a horse. A dagger was balanced in a limp hand that was missing fingers. There was a faint shuffle of footsteps to his right. He reached for a sword that was no longer at his side. Three figures stepped out from beneath the shadow of the nearby trees. They crossed the paved trail between them, their faces hidden by bronze masks that each bore the visage of a serpent. His mortal bloodline. The House of Kadmos. They had come to collect him, their new god. He stretched his neck until it cracked, watching their approach. The hunters were awed, and it pleased him. His predecessor, the last new Ares, had been unworthy to hold the mantle of the god of war. It had been an unspeakable pleasure to kill him and claim his birthright seven years ago. The tallest of the three hunters stepped forward. Belen. The new god watched, amused, as the young man plucked the arrows from the bodies in a ruthless harvest. A shame that his only surviving offspring had been born a bastard. He could not be the heir of Aristos Kadmou, the mortal the new god had once been. Still, his lips curved, and he welcomed the glow of pride at the sight of the young man. Belen lifted his mask and lowered his gaze respectfully. The god reached up, feeling along the lines of his face. The boy’s was so much like his own now. The scarred husk of decades had been peeled away from the god when he had ascended, leaving him young again. In his prime, forever. “Most honored of us all,” Belen said, kneeling. He offered the new god a rolled bundle from the bag at his hip—a crimson silk tunic to replace the hideous sky-blue one he wore now. “We welcome you and offer the blood of your enemies in tribute to your name, as a sign of our undying loyalty. We are here to protect you with our lives until the time comes for you to be reborn again in power.” The words were gravel in the new god’s throat. “Beyond that.” “Yes, my lord,” Belen said.  More hunters approached from behind Belen, all cloaked in a hunter’s black. They dragged a figure also wearing a tunic of sky blue. “Bring him to me,” he told Belen. Two black SUVs, their lights off, approached from the nearby street and drove over the grass to reach them. The Kadmides then began their work. They unrolled tarps on Central Park’s grass and rolled the dead hunters onto them. They overturned the soil. Replaced the bloodied grass. Loaded the brutalized carcasses into the trunk of yet another SUV pulling up behind them. This same ritual, he knew, was being performed by the other bloodlines across the park. The captive lashed out again as he was drawn forward, battering the nearest hunters with his skull like a rabid animal. They had cut the tendons of his ankles to prevent him from using his heightened speed to escape. Good. The hunters forced him to his knees. The new god reached down to rip the hood off his head. Gold eyes burned as they glared up at him, the sparks of power there swirling with fury. Blood poured from a wound at his forehead, staining his once-luminous skin and tunic. “Your last useful power has been taken from you,” the new god said. He clutched a fistful of the old god’s curling brown hair and wrenched his head back, forcing his gaze up. “I know what you desire, Godkiller,” the old god said in the ancient tongue. “And you will never find it.” He’d only needed to know that it hadn’t been destroyed. The new god’s rage was its own kind of euphoria. He brought the razor-sharp edge of his blade to the old god’s soft mortal flesh. The new god smiled. “Trickster. Messenger. Traveler. Thief,” the new god said. Then he slammed the blade through the ridged bones of the prisoner’s spine. “Nothing.” Blood burst from the wound. The new god drank deep the sight of the old god’s fear—that pain, that disbelief—as his power faded. A shame the new god could not add it to his own. “It’s the way of things, is it not?” the new god said. He leaned down, watching as the last flare of life left the old god’s eyes. “The way of your father, and his father before him. The old gods must die to allow the new to rise.” The park was silent around them, save for the wet sounds of the new god’s sawing blade, and the invigorating crack as he finally separated the head from its body. The new god thrust the head of Hermes high enough for his followers to see. The hunters hissed in pleasure, banging their fists against their chests. The new god took one final look at it before tossing the head onto the nearest tarp with the other remains. Come morning, there would be no sign of the eight gods who had appeared like lightning within the boundaries of Central Park, or those hunters who had fallen in their attempts to kill them. The city thrummed around him, aching with barely constrained chaos. It sang to him a song of coming terror. He understood that longing—to be unleashed. “I am Wrath.” The new god knelt, dipping his fingers into the bloody mud. “I am your master.” He dragged them down over his cheeks. “I am your glory.” The hunters around him lifted their masks to do the same, smearing the damp earth across their eager faces. A new age was in reach, waiting to be seized by one strong enough to dare. “Now,” the new god said, “we begin.” OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com HER MOTHER HAD ONCE told her that the only way to truly know someone was to fight them. In Lore’s experience, the only thing fighting actually revealed was the spot on their body someone least wanted to be punched. For her opponent, that spot was clearly the new tattoo on his left breast, the one still covered with a bandage. Lore brought up her fourteen-ounce gloves and let them absorb another sloppy hit. Her sneakers squeaked over the cheap blue mats as she bounced back a step. The lines of silver duct tape holding the makeshift ring together were, after five fights that night, beginning to peel from the moisture and heat. She grunted as she stamped the nearest one flat with her heel. Sweat poured down her face until all she could taste was the salt of it. Lore refused to wipe it away, even as it stung her eyes. The pain was good. It kept her focused. This—the fighting—was nothing more than a recent bad habit, one that had brought her a desperately needed release after Gil’s death six months ago. But her original promise of just this one match had vanished as she’d felt that familiar surge of adrenaline. One fight had been enough to break the deadening grief, to get her out of her head and back into her body. Two fights had disconnected the deep ache in her heart. Three had brought in a surprising amount of cash. And now, weeks later, fight fifteen was giving her exactly what she was desperate for that night: a distraction. Lore told herself she could stop at any time. She could stop when it no longer felt good. She could stop when it dredged up too much of what she’d buried. But Lore wasn’t there. Not just yet.  The cramped basement of Red Dragon Fine Chinese Food was sweltering. The hot press of too many bodies surrounded the mats. The crowd shifted as the fighters did, forming the unofficial boundary of the ring as they clutched their Solo cups and tried to keep from spilling their top-shelf liquor. Bills and bets flowed around her, hand to hand, until they reached Frankie, the ring organizer. Lore glanced to him as he adjusted the order and bets of the next two fights, forever less interested in the winner than the winnings. Steam rolled down the stairs from the kitchen above them, giving the air a satin quality. The smell of kung pao chicken was a delicious alternative to the reek of old vomit and beer that haunted the boarded-up nightclubs the ring usually rotated through. The crowd didn’t seem to mind; whatever it took to give them some illusion of edge. Frankie’s exclusive list seemed a lot less exclusive these days: models, art-scene types, and business guys passing around their small sachets of white powder were now frequently joined by private-school kids testing the limits of their parents’ apathy. Her opponent was a boy about her age—all soft, unmarked skin and unearned confidence. He’d laughed, crooking a finger at her as he’d chosen her out of all of Frankie’s available fighters. Lore had decided to destroy him and lay waste to whatever tattered bit of his pride remained well before he ever called her baby girl and blew her a drunken kiss. “Let me guess,” she said around her mouth guard. Lore nodded toward the bandage on the teen boy’s chest, covering his new body art. “Live, Laugh, Love? Rosé All Day?” His brows lowered as the crowd laughed. The boy swung a glove at her head, grunting with the effort. The movement, combined with his flagging strength, left his chest wide open. Lore had a clear target when she slammed her glove into his tender inked skin. The boy’s eyes bulged, his breath wheezing out of him. His knees hit the mat. “Get up,” Lore said. “You’re embarrassing your friends.” “You—you stupid bi—” The boy choked a little on his mouth guard. Lore had wondered how long it would take before he melted down, and now she had her answer: five minutes.  “I’m sure you’re not going to call me that,” she said, circling him, “when you’re the one on all fours.” He struggled to his feet, fuming. She rolled her eyes. Not so funny anymore, is it? Lore thought. Gil would have told her to walk away from the stupid kid—he had always been quick to remind Lore in that nonjudgmental, grandfatherly way of his that she didn’t have to jump into every fight that presented itself. The truth was, the man would have hated this, and Lore suffered the guilt of that, too. Of disappointing him. But Lore had tried other ways. None of them helped her move through the crushing tide of loss like a good fight did. And now it wasn’t just Gil’s death she needed to escape; there was a new dread clawing beneath her skin. It was August, and the hunt had come back to her city. Despite her best efforts to move on, to forget the shadowed life she’d left behind and step into the sunlight of a new, better one, some part of her mind was still attuned to the slow countdown of days. Her body had grown tighter, her instincts sharper, as if bracing for what was coming. She’d started seeing familiar faces around the city two weeks before, making their final preparations for tonight. The shock had come like a knife to the lungs; each sighting was proof that all her hope, all her silent begging, had come to nothing. Please, she’d thought again and again over the last few months, let it be London this cycle. Let it be Tokyo. Let it be anywhere else but New York City. Lore knew she shouldn’t have ventured out tonight, not while the killing would be at its most fevered. If a single hunter recognized her, the bloodlines wouldn’t just be hunting gods. They’d be out to skin her, too. From the corner of her eye Lore saw Frankie check his ridiculous pocket watch and give the wrap-it-up signal. Places to go, money to rub all over his face, she supposed. “Done yet?” Lore asked. Apparently, the alcohol had decided to hit the boy all at once. He chased Lore around the mats with his clumsy, swinging fists, growing angrier as the laughter of the crowd boomed. As she turned to avoid a blow, her necklace swung out from where she had tucked it beneath her shirt. The charm on it, a gold feather, caught the dim light and flashed. Her opponent’s glove struck it. Somehow he must have hooked on to its thin chain, because as Lore shifted again, the clasp snapped and, suddenly, the charm was on the ground at her feet. Lore used her teeth to undo her glove’s Velcro strap and slid her hand free. She ducked as her opponent swung again, quickly scooping the necklace up and tucking it into the back pocket of her jeans for safekeeping. As she pulled her glove back on, her body heated with a fresh wave of resentment. Gil had given it to her. Lore turned back toward the boy, reminding herself that she couldn’t kill him. She could, however, break his pretty little nose. Which, to the cheers of the crowd, she did. Blood burst from his face as he swore. “I think it’s past your bedtime, baby boy,” she said, glancing back at Frankie to see if he’d call the match. “In fact—” She saw the fist coming out at the edge of her vision, and turned just in time to take the hit to the side of her head, not her eye. The world flashed black, then burst bright with color again, but she managed to stay on her feet. The boy crowed in victory, thrusting his arms into the air, nose still bleeding. He lurched toward her, and the moment she realized what was happening was the only moment she had. Lore instinctively brought up her gloves to protect her chest, but that wasn’t what he was after. The boy locked an arm around her neck and crushed his lips to hers. The panic was blinding, exploding out over Lore’s skin like ice; it locked her out of her own mind. He pressed his body tighter to hers, his tongue clumsily licking at her as the crowd howled around them. Something split open inside her, and the pressure that had been building in her chest for weeks released with a roar of fury. She drove her knee up hard between his legs. He dropped like she’d cut his throat, squealing the whole way down. Then she lunged. The next thing Lore was aware of was being pulled up off the ground still kicking and snarling. Her gloves were splattered with blood, and what was left of his face was unrecognizable. “Stop!” Big George, one of Frankie’s security guards, gave her a small shake. “Honey, he ain’t worth it!”  Lore’s heart slammed against her ribs, beating too fast for her to catch her breath. Her body trembled as Big George set her feet back on the ground, holding her until she gave him a nod that she was all right. For his part, Big George stalked over to the boy moaning on the mat and nudged him with his foot. As the pounding in Lore’s ears receded, she realized the room had fallen completely silent, save for the banging and clattering in the kitchen just upstairs. A slow horror slithered through her, knotting around her heart. Inside her gloves, her fingers curled to the point of pain. She hadn’t just lost control. She’d slipped back into a part of herself she thought she’d killed years ago. This isn’t me, she thought, wiping the sweat from her upper lip. Not anymore. There was more to life than this. Desperate to salvage her night’s pay, Lore ignored the bile, and the singular, sharp hatred she had for the whimpering piece of filth on the ground, and put a sheepish smile on her face. She held up her hands and shrugged. The spectators rewarded her with cheers, thrusting their cups up in the air. “You didn’t win—you cheated,” the boy was saying. “It wasn’t fair— you cheated!” This was the thing with boys like him. What he was feeling just then, that rage, wasn’t the world falling in on him. It was an illusion shattering, the one that told him he deserved everything, and that it was owed to him simply because he existed. Lore tugged her gloves off and leaned over the boy. The crowd hushed, their faces as eager as hungry crows. “Maybe your next one should be Can’t Win for Losing?” she said sweetly as she pressed hard against his bandage, this time with her bare hand. The bell rang over the sound of his outraged cry, ending the match. Big George dragged him back toward his huddle of friends. Lore started back toward Frankie. It had been a mistake to come here tonight. Even now, she couldn’t tell if her body wanted her to break into a run, or scream.  She’d made it to the edge of the ring when he called out, “Next match: Golden versus challenger Gemini.” Lore gave him an annoyed look, which he returned with his usual unbothered smile. He flashed her five fingers. She shook her head, and he added three more. Crumpled bills waved in the air around her, fluttering by as the crowd rushed to place their bets. She needed to go home. She knew that, but... Lore held up all ten fingers. Frankie scowled but waved her back toward the ring. She pulled her gloves back on and turned. If it was one of the boy’s friends, at least she might be able to amuse herself. It wasn’t. Lore reeled back. Her opponent stood just outside the light cast by the fixture overhead, clearly welcoming the darkness. The young man stepped forward, enough for the dim glow to catch the bronze mask that obscured his face. Her breath turned heavy in her lungs. Hunter. OceanofPDF.com A SINGLE WORD BLAZED through her mind. Run. But her instincts demanded something else, and her body listened. She slid into a defensive stance, tasting blood as she bit the inside of her mouth. Every part of her seemed to vibrate, electrified by fear and fervor. You are an idiot, Lore told herself. She would have to kill him in front of all these people, or find a way to take the fight outside and do it there. Those were the only options she allowed herself to consider. Lore was not about to die on booze-soaked mats in the basement of a Chinese restaurant that didn’t even serve mapo tofu. Her opponent towered over Lore in a way she tried to pretend she didn’t find alarming. He had at least a six-inch advantage despite her own tall frame. His simple gray shirt and sweatpants were too small, stretching over his athletic form. Every muscle of his body was as perfectly defined as those men she’d seen on her father’s ancient vases. The mask he wore was one of a man’s raging expression as he released a war cry. The House of Achilles. Well, Lore thought faintly. Shit. “I don’t fight cowards who won’t show their faces,” she said coldly. The answer was warm, rumbling with suppressed laughter. “I figured as much.” He lifted the mask and dropped it at the edge of the ring. The rest of the world burned away. You’re dead. The words caught in her throat, choking her. The crowd jostled Lore forward on the mats, even as she fell back a step, even as she fought for air that wouldn’t seem to come to her. The faces around her blurred to darkness at the edge of her vision.  You’re supposed to be dead, Lore thought. You died. “Surprised?” There was a hopeful note in his voice, but his eyes were searching. Anxious. Castor. All the promise in his features had sharpened and set as the fullness of youth left his face. It was startling how much his voice had deepened. For one horrible moment, Lore was convinced that she was in a lucid dream. That this would only end the way it always did when she dreamed her parents and sisters were still alive. She wasn’t sure if she would be sick or start sobbing. The pressure built in her skull, immobilizing her, suffocating whatever joy might have bled through her shock. But Castor Achilleos didn’t vanish. The aches from Lore’s earlier fights were still there, throbbing. The smell of booze and fried food was everywhere. She felt every drop of sweat clinging to her skin, racing down her face and back. This was real. But Lore still couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away from his face. He’s real. He’s alive. When a feeling finally broke through the numbness, it wasn’t what she expected. It was anger. Not wild and consuming, but as sharp and ruthless as their practice blades had once been. Castor was alive, and he’d let her grieve him for seven years. Lore swiped a glove across her face, trying to refocus herself, even as her body felt like it might dissolve. This was a fight. He’d already landed the first blow, but this was the person who had once been her best friend, and she knew the best way to hit him back. “Why would I be surprised?” Lore managed to get out. “I have no idea who you are.” A flicker of uncertainty passed over Castor’s face, but it vanished as he raised an eyebrow and gave her a small, knowing smile. Beside her, several men and women in the audience trilled and began to whisper. There was no way to send him out without making a scene, and there was no way she was letting him out of this basement completely unscathed after everything that had happened. Lore turned to give the signal to Frankie, hoping that no one could see her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. The bell rang. The crowd cheered. She lowered into a fighting stance.  Go away, she thought, staring at Castor over the tops of her gloves. Leave me alone. He hadn’t cared enough to try to find her in the last seven years, so what was the point of this? To mock her? To try to force her to come back? Like hell he would. “Please be gentle.” Castor raised his hands, glancing down at a split in one of his borrowed gloves. “I haven’t sparred in a while.” Not only was he alive, he’d finished his training as a healer instead of a fighter, as planned. His life had played out exactly as it was meant to, without her there to interrupt it. And he had never come to find her. Not even when she’d needed him most. Lore stayed light on her feet, circling around him. Seven years stretched between them like the wine-dark sea. “Don’t worry,” she said coldly. “It’ll be over quick.” “Not too quick, I hope,” he said, another grin tugging at his lips. His dark eyes caught the light of the bulbs swinging overhead, and the irises seemed to throw sparks. He had a long, straight nose despite the number of times he’d broken it sparring, a jaw cut at perfect angles, and cheekbones like blades. Lore threw the first punch. He leaned to the side to avoid it. He was faster than she remembered, but his movements lurched. As strong as his body appeared, Castor was out of practice. It made her think of a rusted machine struggling to find its usual flow. As if to confirm Lore’s suspicions, he leaned a little too far and had to check his balance to keep himself from stumbling. “Are you here to fight or not?” she growled. “I get paid by the match, so stop wasting my time.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Castor said. “By the way, you’re still dropping your right shoulder.” Lore scowled, resisting the urge to correct her stance. They were already losing their audience. The basement floor shuddered as the crowd stomped their feet into a driving beat, trying to force a change in the tempo of the fight. Castor seemed to read the room correctly, or he’d gotten splattered by enough drinks, because his face set with a newfound focus. The lightbulbs kept swinging on their chains, throwing shadows. He wove in and out of them, as if he knew the secret to becoming darkness itself. He feinted right and launched a halfhearted punch at her shoulder. Fury painted Lore’s world a scalding white. That was how little he respected her now. He didn’t see her as a worthy opponent. He saw her as a joke. Lore slammed a fist into his kidney, and as his body curled, her left hand clubbed his ear. He staggered, eventually dropping to a knee when he couldn’t regain his footing. She threw another punch, this one directly at his face, but he had enough sense left to block it. The impact reverberated up her arm. “Keep toying with me,” she warned him. “See how that ends for you.” Castor stared at her through the dark, unruly hair that had fallen into his eyes, his ivory skin flushed. She stared back. Sweat dripped off Lore’s chin, and her body was still pulsating with the force of the storm inside her. The swinging lights danced in his dark irises again, almost hypnotically. The last traces of humor left his face as if she’d clawed them off herself. He shot forward, locking an arm behind her knees and pulling them out from under her. One moment, Lore was standing; the next, she was flat on her back, gasping for air. The audience cheered. She raised her leg to knock him back away from her, only to hear Frankie’s pleasant voice call out, “No kicking!” Right. Lore rolled hard to her left, coming to the edge of the mat and onto her feet again. This time, when she launched a volley at Castor, he was ready, meeting her blow for blow. She ducked and bobbed, sinking into the current of the fight. Her lips curled into an involuntary smile. There was movement at the top of the basement stairs as someone came down. That one look cost Lore—Castor reeled his arm back and launched a powerful blow into her gut. She wheezed, trying to resist folding at the waist. Castor’s eyes widened, almost in fear. “Are you o—?” he began. Lore lowered her head and drove it straight into his chest. It was like ramming into a cement wall. Every joint in her body suffered, and her vision was dotted with black, but he went down, and she went down with him.  Castor rolled them so he was on top, careful not to crush her with his weight as he pinned her to the mat. Lore was gratified to hear him breathing as hard as she was. “You died,” she managed to choke out as she struggled against the hold. “I don’t have much time,” he said. Then he switched into the ancient tongue. “I need your help.” Her blood cooled at his words, spoken in the language she’d tried to force herself to forget. “Something is happening,” he said. The fight had warmed his body until it was almost burning to the touch. “I don’t know who I can trust.” Lore turned her face away. “And that’s my problem how? I’m out.” “I know, but I also need to warn you— Damn,” Castor breathed, then swore again in the ancient tongue for good measure. He shifted their positions so that Lore rolled on top of him. She was distantly aware of the audience chanting the mandatory eight count. Too late, she realized he was letting her win. “You jackass,” she began. His gaze was fixed on the staircase, on the figure she’d glimpsed before. Evander—Castor’s relative, and occasional playmate to them both when they were kids. Van wore a simple black hunter’s robe, with a glint of something gold pinned just above his heart. His dark skin gleamed with the steam rolling down behind him from the kitchen, the undertone as cool as a pearl. He’d cropped his hair close, which only better served to highlight how devastatingly handsome he was. His eyes were sharp as he signaled something to Castor. “Time’s up,” Castor said. Lore wasn’t certain if he was talking about the match or something else. “Wait,” Lore began, though she didn’t know why. But Castor had already lifted her off him. His hands lingered at her waist a second longer than either of them seemed to realize. “He’s looking for something, and I don’t know if it’s you,” Castor told her. Lore’s head went light as his words sank in. There was only one he that would matter. She fought for her next breath. She fought against the static growing in her ears.  “You may be done with the Agon, but I don’t think it’s done with you. Be careful.” His gaze became intent as he ducked low and whispered in her ear. “You still fight like a Fury.” Castor pulled back, taking his bow, accepting boos from the crowd and a red Solo cup that was offered to him. He pushed through the audience, heading straight for the stairs. As Castor reached him, Evander gripped his arm, and, together, they disappeared into the sweltering kitchen. Someone grabbed Lore’s wrist, trying to tug her arm up into the air, but Lore was already moving, shouldering her way through the crowd. What are you even doing? her mind screamed at her. Let them go! She collided with someone near the stairs, hard enough that he was sent stumbling back against the nearby wall. Lore whirled around, half an apology already escaping her lips, when she saw who it was. Shit. His skin was white as bone, his dark eyes almost comically wide as they met hers. Edgy, vaguely hipster buzz cut. Skinny frame and skinnier jeans. Necklace made of braided horse hair. Miles. Unbelievable, she thought. How the hell had this night managed to get worse? “Wait here!” she ordered. At his stunned nod, Lore ran up into the kitchen, weaving through the irritated cooks and the veil of steam until she found the disabled emergency door and burst onto the dark street. The air glowed red from the taillights of the SUV speeding away. A single red Solo cup rolled toward her feet, something dark smeared across the side of it. Ink. She turned it toward the dim security light above the door, trying to parse the uneven strokes of each letter. Her pulse beat wildly at her temples. Apodidraskinda. A child’s game. Hide-and-seek. A challenge. Come find me. Lore dropped the cup into a nearby trash can and walked away. OceanofPDF.com THE HEAT IN HER body had subsided by the time Lore made her way back down into the basement. She didn’t see Miles as she cut through the crowd and went to retrieve her backpack and night’s pay from Frankie. She only half listened to his instructions on where the next week’s matches would be held, counted her bills to make sure he wasn’t stiffing her, and tried to ignore the thrumming in her veins. He’s looking for something, and I don’t know if it’s you. A shudder passed through her. She shook her head, clearing Castor’s voice and face from her mind to prepare herself for what was coming. Miles was waiting for her outside. In the few minutes it had taken Lore to return to the street, he’d managed to make himself breathless—whether from pacing, rehearsing whatever speech he was about to give her, or a combination of both. He stilled as she came through the door, pretending he’d been checking his phone the whole time. Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t “Want to get a bite to eat at Martha’s?” Lore hesitated. What she wanted was to go home, shower, and sleep for the next six days, until this disgusting hunt reached another end and the next seven-year cycle began. But Miles had a steadying effect on her. “Sure,” she said with forced nonchalance. It still felt like there was lightning beneath her skin. “Sounds good to me.” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re definitely paying this time.” “Am I?” she said, letting herself drift back into their comfortable rhythm. “Or am I going to flutter these lashes and get our meal on the house?” “When, in your entire life,” Miles began, genuinely curious, “has that ever worked for you?”  “Excuse you,” Lore said. “I am adorably persuasive.” She fluttered them now, but her face ached from the hits she had taken, and the swelling likely didn’t help much, either. Miles opened his mouth to say something else, but changed his mind. “What?” she asked. “Nothing,” he said, glancing up at the cloudy sky. “Should we go before we get the shower that only one of us needs?” The air dripped with humidity and was scented with the bagged garbage piled up for collection the next morning. A taxi blazed by, kicking up a wave of gutter water. It had been raining on and off for days, and Lore knew there was more to come. “I’m wearing a perfume of the finest lo mein and BO,” Lore said. “There’s no accounting for taste with you.” That, of course, wasn’t true at all. Miles treated his body like a piece of art, letting it speak for him—his moods, his interests, and the people he carried in his heart. His skin was colored by an array of tattoos, from gorgeous florals and vines that wrapped around his torso, to modern art faces he’d designed himself, to mountains, eyes, and bands of shapes only he knew the meaning of. Lore had always loved the simple hangul tattoos on his neck best because of the story behind them. The phrase was something his grandmother used to say to him when he called her and his parents at home in Florida on Sundays: I love you more with every sunrise. When he’d shown them to her, she’d chided him for yet another tattoo, licking her finger and pretending to try to wipe them away with her finger, but she’d glowed with pride the rest of the night. They walked to the Canal Street subway station to take the A train up to 125th Street. Lore was halfway down the stairs when she heard the approaching train and felt the telltale gust of air whip through the station. She ran, sliding her MetroCard out of her back pocket and through the reader. Miles, never ready, let out a strangled sound and fumbled with his wallet. “Wait, no—ack—” Miles swiped his card again, getting an error message. It was half past three o’clock in the morning, but subway service slowed in the off-hours, leaving the car full. She caught the closing door with her forearm just as Miles all but dove through. He smacked her shoulder as the train lurched forward.  “Martha’s,” she said. “Hungry.” “Taxi,” he said. “Easy.” “Money,” she said. “Wasteful.” The car emptied at Columbus Circle, freeing the seats in front of them. Miles sat down and immediately pulled out his phone. Lore took a deep breath, rubbing a hand against her forehead. With her body still, there was only the chaos of her thoughts. He’s looking for something, and I don’t know if it’s you. Lore had been unsettled by seeing the hunters in the city. She’d known to be afraid of Aristos Kadmou—or whoever he was as a god—finding her. She would be even more careful now and leave the city later that day, steering clear of the fighting and of him. Of all of them. But the overriding feeling in her wasn’t terror. Lore knew she could hide because she had successfully done it these last three years. Instead, there was a restlessness in her body she couldn’t purge, an unwelcome tightness in her chest every time her mind conjured Castor’s face. Alive, she thought, still feeling strangely dazed at the thought. Miles made a noise of dismay beside her. Lore glanced over just as he closed one of his dating apps. “What happened to the guy you went out with on Friday?” Lore asked, welcoming the distraction. “I thought he had potential. Nick?” “Noah,” Miles said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, as if for strength. “I went back to his apartment and met all four of his hamsters.” Lore turned to him. “No.” “He named them after his favorite First Ladies,” Miles continued, sounding pained. “Jackie had a pillbox hat made out of felt and nail polish. He made me feed them. With tiny strips of lettuce. Lettuce, Lore. Lettuce.” “Please stop saying lettuce,” Lore said. “You could take a break from dating, you know.” “You could try,” he pointed out. He shifted a little in his seat. “I’ve never asked you this before, because I didn’t want to pry.” “But... ?” she filled in. “But,” he began. “It’s just that one guy, and the way you reacted to him...” Her hand tightened around her backpack strap. “How was I supposed to act when he came at me like that?” Lore asked. “He deserved to have his face rearranged. Maybe he’ll think twice about doing that to girls.” “Oh, no, he definitely deserved it,” Miles said quickly. “He probably deserved at least another solid thirty seconds of it. I was actually talking about the other one.” “The other one,” she repeated. Her heart gave a hard kick. “The guy who looked like he’d been molded out of every single one of my boyhood fantasies,” Miles clarified helpfully. Castor’s voice was warm in her mind. You still fight like a Fury. “What about him?” Lore asked. “You seemed to know him,” Miles said. “I don’t,” she said sharply. Not anymore. To stop any other questions, she leaned her head against Miles’s shoulder, letting the rocking of the train soothe her until she was able to take her first deep breath of the night. The train barreled on to 125th Street, falling into its usual rhythm of jerking starts and stops in each station. But she was too afraid to close her eyes on the chance Castor’s face, bright and hopeful, would be there to lead her into the memories of the world she’d left behind. It was quiet uptown when they finally emerged from the subway and turned toward Martha’s Diner. Harlem had felt like a foreign land when Lore moved into Gil’s cozy brownstone on 120th Street; her family had always lived in Hell’s Kitchen, and she’d never had a reason to go north of 96th. But at that point, her family had been dead for four years, and she’d spent much of that time living abroad. Coming back to the city had felt like being handed old clothes she’d given away to someone else. Nothing fit. Everything was the same, and yet somehow different. But Lore had treasured the three years that followed, right up until that fateful moment six months ago, when Gil died—hit by a car as he crossed the street, of all things. After, her first instinct had been to pack up and go, only to find that it wasn’t that simple. Gil had left her the brownstone and everything inside it. Lore could have sold the house in a heartbeat and gone anywhere. Miles would have been fine, even if finding a new place in the city was a headache. But each time she thought seriously about it, the streets seemed to wrap around her. The familiar storefronts, the kids playing out on the stoop two doors down, Mrs. Marks hosing down the sidewalk every Monday morning at ten o’clock... it calmed her. It stopped the feeling that her chest might cave in on itself from the weight of the shock and grief. So Lore had stayed. For all its exhausting complications and crowding, the city had always been her home. She understood its difficult personality and was grateful it had given her one of her own, because in the darkest moments of her life, that resilience alone had saved her. In a way, she felt that her new neighborhood had chosen her and not the other way around, and she’d wanted to be claimed by something. And, really, that was New York for you. It always got a say, and, if you were patient enough, it led you where you needed to go. It was four o’clock in the morning, but Lore wasn’t surprised to see another person enjoying an early meal at Martha’s, even in a month as quiet as August. “Hey, Mr. Herrera,” she called, wiping her feet on the old mat. “Hey yourself, Lauren Pertho,” he said, around a mouthful of his breakfast sandwich. Lore had used that name for years, but it still had the tendency to catch her off guard. “How are you, Mel?” “Dry, at least,” Mel said from behind the diner’s counter. She looked up from where she’d been counting out the register. “You both want your usuals to go?” “Creatures of habit,” Miles confirmed. “Do you have any decaf brewing?” “I’ll put a pot on for you,” she said. “Whipped cream?” Miles had the palate of a kid who ate dessert for every meal. “Chocolate sprinkles?” “You got it, sweetheart,” Mel said, ducking into the kitchen to start on their order. One Triple Lumberjack platter for Lore, and chocolate chip Mickey Mouse pancakes with extra whipped cream and maple syrup for Miles. “What?” Miles said. “No comment? No joke about my sugar intake?” It took a moment for Lore to realize he was talking to her. She looked up from where her gaze had fallen to the floor.  “I’m going to get a stomachache just from watching you,” Lore said, leaning back against the side of one of the vinyl-covered booths. Her pulse had jumped, as if she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Miles stared at her for a moment, but kept his voice light. “Rich coming from someone who eats a meal meant for three people.” “Healthy appetite,” Mr. Herrera said as he paid his bill, “healthy girl.” “Exactly,” Lore said, fighting to focus on him. “How’s my Handsome Bo doing?” Bo the Bodega Cat had shown up two years ago, claimed Mr. Herrera’s shop for its kingdom, and never left. The first time she’d seen him, Lore had mistaken him for an extremely large rat, and seriously wondered if he hadn’t clawed up from the Underworld. Now, her favorite late-Sunday- morning activity was sitting on the bench outside the store and sharing the lox from her bagel with her foul-tempered buddy. “He ate twelve chocolate bars, vomited on the produce, and destroyed a shelf of paper towels,” Mr. Herrera said, heading toward the door. “And now I have to take the demon to the vet.” “Do you need me to watch the shop for you?” Lore asked. She enjoyed doing it, especially after the morning rush-hour customers came for their coffee, and she could sit and read a book until the lunchers arrived to decimate the stock of premade sandwiches and sushi. “Not this time,” Mr. Herrera said. “My nephew is here. Maybe you’d like to meet him? He’s a year younger than you, smart boy—” “Can he do laundry?” Miles asked seriously. “Or cook? She needs someone to fill the gaps in her important life skills.” Mr. Herrera laughed, waving him off as he left to open his store. Lore wasn’t sure why she had offered, knowing that she was more than likely leaving town today. Castor’s presence, never mind his warning, should have sent her running immediately, with or without supplies. She rubbed her arms at the place he had gripped them, and was surprised to find her skin was warm despite the chill passing through her. She just hadn’t expected... him. The whole of him. Those familiar soft eyes. His height. The strength of his body. The way he had smiled at her. “Lore—Lore,” Miles said again, this time with more force. She looked up again. “What?”  “I said, is it about money?” Lore stared at him, confused. “Is what about money?” Miles gave her a look. “If it is, I can start paying you rent. But I thought Gilbert had left you money, too... ?” True to his exasperatingly kind form and his love of surprises, Gil had left both of his “honorary grandchildren” a generous sum of money, but Lore still hadn’t touched it, except to do maintenance on the brownstone. It didn’t feel right to use it for anything else. “It’s Gil’s money,” Lore said. Miles seemed to understand. “Well, you could get a part-time barista job like everyone else. It’s basically a rite of passage. You could even charge for the self-defense classes.” She shook her head, trying to focus her exhausted web of feelings and thoughts onto the single thread of their conversation. “I’m not going to charge anyone who wants to learn how to protect themselves,” Lore said, keeping her voice low. The gym owner on 125th let her use some of his equipment when it was too cold to run outside in exchange for teaching the free lessons, and that was more than enough for her. “And it’s not about the money.” “Are you sure? Because you’ve been reusing the same three gross Ziploc bags for the last year,” Miles said. She held up a finger. “They aren’t gross, because I wash them out every time. What are you doing to save the environment?” His eyebrows rose. He was interning that summer with the City Council and studying sustainable urban development at Columbia. “Don’t answer that,” Lore said. Miles was doing that thing she hated where he waited for her to talk while looking extremely compassionate and understanding. “Besides,” she said, “I do have a job. I’m the super, remember?” Lore had originally come to work for Gil as a live-in caretaker, but her role had expanded after she changed out the batteries in the smoke detectors —which said everything about the threshold of tech-savviness in their building at the time. “By the way, Super, can you maybe come up and fix my window before winter?” Lore scowled, smoothing a hand back over the mass of frizz the rain had gifted to her.  “Okay, it’s a little about the money,” she admitted, “but it’s about other things, too.” “Gil things?” Miles pressed. She pulled the necklace out of her pocket, examining the place the gold chain had snapped. Her neck felt strange without it; Gil had given it to her three years ago, on her first birthday after returning to the city, and she had only taken it off once since then. A feather fallen from a wing is not lost, Gil had told her, but free. It had reminded her of that, of what she had gained when she’d offered to work for Gil, every day. She had been hired to help take care of him after he had a bad fall and it became clear he couldn’t keep living alone, but he had done so much more for her. He had been a friend, a mentor, and a reminder that not all men were as harsh and cruel as the ones she had grown up around. “It’s been a few months now...” Miles began. “It’s been six,” Lore said sharply. “Six,” he said, nodding. “We don’t really talk about it that often—” Lore opened her mouth to dismiss that, but he held up his hand. “All I want to say is that I’m here, and I always want to talk about him.” “Well, I don’t,” Lore said. Gil had told her that sometimes you had to push away the bad things until they left you alone for good. One day his loss wouldn’t hurt so bad. “You know...” Miles said in a familiar tone. “I’m not interested in school,” she told him, for the hundredth time. “You don’t even seem to like it.” “You don’t have to like something you need,” Miles pointed out. “You don’t need to do something you don’t enjoy,” Lore shot back. Miles blew out a sigh through his nose. “I just think... whatever happened to you, you have to start thinking about your future, otherwise your past is always going to hold you back.” Lore swallowed, but couldn’t clear the tightness in her throat. “How did you find out about the ring anyway? Did you follow me or something?” “I was out with my friend from school last night and he started talking about this super-crazy, super-secret fighting ring and mentioned a girl with a scar that ran from the outer corner of her eye down to her chin, and I said, wow, that sounds like my friend Lore....”  Without thinking, she rubbed that side of her face against her shoulder. The scar was thin, but it hadn’t faded with age. “Your friend wasn’t the guy I beat up, right?” she asked. “Just checking.” “No, but I have never been so simultaneously amazed and terrified in my whole life,” Miles said. His phone gave a shrill ring, making them both jump. “Is that your alarm?” Lore asked, her hand still pressed to her chest. They’d lived in the same house for years and she’d never heard anything like it. “Sort of,” he said, then answered the call with “Ma, what are you doing up? It’s like four o’clock in the morning— You absolutely do not need to print out those forms now, write yourself a note to do it at a normal hour and— No, you go back to bed— Well, if I wasn’t up, you would have woken me up— Ma. Go back to bed!” Mrs. Yoon’s muffled words were filled with the kind of energy no one was supposed to have this early. Lore watched as Miles closed his eyes and breathed in for patience. “Augh. Fine. You checked all the cords, right?” he asked. “Made sure they didn’t come loose?” Miles sent Lore an apologetic look, but she didn’t mind at all. It was nice, actually. If nothing else, it gave her the opportunity to try to picture him growing up as a baby goth amidst the palm trees and bright pastels of Florida. He was an only child, and sometimes, like now, it really showed. Miles sucked in another deep breath. “Did you actually turn the printer on? The button should be glowing.” Lore heard Mrs. Yoon’s sheepish laughter in response and her loving “Thank you, Michael.” Miles pressed a hand to his face in exasperation, whether at her question or at his given name, which only his family ever used, and told her that he loved her in both Korean and English, and hung up the phone. “She made me change the ringtone when I went home last month,” Miles said. “She thought I wasn’t answering because the old one was too quiet, and now I feel too guilty to ever change it.” Lore smiled, even as something twisted deep in her chest. You never missed calls like that until they stopped coming. “She just wants to hear your voice.”  She wants you to remember her, Lore thought. Her mind drifted, suddenly untethered. The world around her became haloed with darkness until she only saw Castor’s face, and the way the shadows had caressed it. “Hey,” Miles said suddenly. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” “I’m fine,” Lore insisted. She would be. For him. For herself. For Gil. “Ready to go?” she asked as Mel returned from the kitchen with their orders. “Promise me you’ll be safe,” Miles said, catching her hand before she pulled it back. “I don’t care if you need to keep fighting, I just don’t want to see you hurt.” Too late for that, Lore thought. They ducked back out into the dim light of the street, clutching their breakfasts and coffees. The storm had turned into a shroud of fine mist. New York City was one of the few places in the world that looked dirtier after it rained, but Lore loved it. As they made their way home, Lore decided that she would tell Miles she was going to spend the next few days traveling, even if that meant catching a bus and sleeping rough out in the woods where no one could find her. Right then, though, nothing sounded better than spending the rest of her Sunday morning in bed. Lore looped her arm through Miles’s as they made their way down their sleepy street, Miles humming a song she didn’t recognize. She tried not to think of anything at all. They were a block from the brownstone when Miles suddenly stopped, jerking her back a step. “What?” she asked. He leaned closer to the wall of Martin’s Deli, the place that had banned Lore for complaining about their shamefully stale bagels, and brushed his fingers through a smear of some dark substance. Lore pulled him back in horror. “Okay, I think you need a refresher on the rules of New York—one, do not take anything someone tries to pass to you in Times Square; two, do not touch mysterious substances on the ground and walls—” “I think it’s blood,” Miles interrupted. Lore’s hand fell away from him. He spun, searching the ground. “Holy shit. There’s so much of it....” There was. Lore had mistaken the splattered drops on the cement for rain, but now she could make out the dark blood washing down the gutter as the storm began in earnest. Miles lunged forward, swinging his head around to look for the person bleeding. Lore caught him by the back of his shirt with one hand and, after passing him her food container and coffee, pulled out the pocket knife on her keychain with the other. “Stay behind me,” she ordered. It was like tracking wounded prey. The victim seemed to have been staggering, moving from support to support—a street light, a banister, a parked car. With a growing sense of dread, Lore realized they were headed in the direction of the brownstone. Lore’s grip on her dull blade tightened as they approached it. The bloody path turned toward their door and the cheerful flowerpots Gil had placed along the front steps. Miles gasped, and Lore followed his gaze. A woman sat with her back against the old brownstone’s stoop beside the empty trash cans. Her sky-blue robes were drenched with rain. Lore felt the air quicken around her, like the moment before a lightning strike. “Show me your hands,” Lore choked out, raising her own pathetic blade. The goddess’s eyes were the color of sacrificial smoke, flecks of gold glowing in the irises, drifting like embers. The only hint of suppressed divine power. They called her the gray-eyed goddess, but Lore understood now that it wasn’t for their color. It was because when she stared at you, the way she stared at Lore now, her true age was revealed. Wars, civilizations, monsters, death, technology, exploration—those eyes had watched millennia pass by, and measured them the way Lore would casually note the hour of the day. Strands of burnished-gold hair were splayed across the goddess’s face like well-earned scars. Even in her current form, she was unsettlingly flawless, her features bold and perfect in their symmetry.  The goddess leaned back, pulling her palm away from where it had been pressed to her opposite hip. As it fell into her lap, the long, elegant fingers curled like claws. The hand was empty, but stained with blood. Lore stared, half-aware that she’d lowered her own arm. The goddess leaned forward, causing the tear in her side to gush with hot, reeking blood. Too big and jagged for an arrow or bullet. A blade, then. That wound had to have come from a professional. Her thoughts were all logic, but Lore felt like she was moving through a dream. “Someone clearly had your number,” Lore choked out. “Bad luck with the landing?” “Attend to me.” Lore jumped. Half-dead or not, each of the goddess’s words rang out like a sword striking a shield. They vibrated along Lore’s nerves until every hair on her body rose. It had been so long since she’d heard anyone speak such a pure form of the ancient tongue, it took her mind a moment to translate it. When she did, her voice was a thin whisper. “What did you say?” The goddess’s eyes were unfocused now, quickly losing some of their steel. There was no fear in her face as she returned her hand to her side to press against the wound, only bitter disbelief. Rancor. When she spoke again, her words were labored but the command seemed to echo across Lore’s soul. “Attend... to me... mortal.” Then gray-eyed Athena slumped to the cement, and slipped out of consciousness. OceanofPDF.com “OH MY GOD!” Miles’s panicked voice pulled Lore out of her own shock. When she turned to him, his face was already illuminated by the glow of his cellphone. His hands shook as he thumbed in numbers. Lore tore the phone out of his hands, ending the call before it could connect. “What are you doing?” he cried. “She needs help! Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?” “Stop!” Lore said sharply. “Keep your voice down!” “Do you know her?” Miles looked like he was about to start clawing on his face. “Oh no, the blood— I just—” He gagged, coughing into his fist. Lore spoke without thinking. “I— Yes. She’s like— She’s a fighter, too.” “She has to—” Miles gagged again. “Sorry—I just— Hospital. She needs the hospital. And the police.” Lore swore, her mind racing. If they brought the goddess in, the police would want to question Lore, putting her name and possibly a photo into their system. And the bloodlines always posted at least a few hunters at each hospital, in the hope a Good Samaritan might unknowingly call emergency services and deliver a god right to them. But Athena had trailed her scent and blood here for any of the bloodlines’ dogs to track, right to Lore’s sanctuary. Putting Miles at risk, and forcing Lore to do something about it. Lore kept her fingers pressed against the goddess’s neck, checking for a pulse. Right now, the goddess’s ichor ran as red as any human’s blood, and it was pooling around Lore’s knees and sneakers.  Shit, she thought, feeling helpless for the first time in years. She had to bring the goddess inside. Now. “No police,” Lore said quickly, struggling for a reasonable excuse. “No, she’s— She doesn’t have insurance. Can you go unlock the door and help me carry her in?” Lore struggled to hook Athena’s arm over her neck. Even in mortal form, the goddess was over six feet tall, and as Lore and Miles quickly discovered, her body was slick from both the rain and the blood. They made it into the entry before dropping her onto the black-and- white-checked tile. Lore left Miles behind as she ran for the linen closet upstairs, pulling out extra sheets and towels and dropping them over the banister. When she came back down, Lore closed the shutters of the bay window in the front room, sealing it off like a fortress. Miles switched on the ceiling lights. The TV screen above the fireplace was a black mirror as Lore cleared the coffee table out of the way. Miles spread out the dark bedsheets, and Lore realized with a pang that they had been Gil’s. “What is going on?” Miles asked as they dragged Athena’s prone form over. “Lore—seriously, what the hell is happening?” The goddess moaned. Lore glanced toward the entry, the blood smeared there, and remembered that they had another very big problem. “I need you to do something,” Lore told him as she knelt down beside Athena. “I need you to go to Mr. Herrera and ask for as many containers of bleach as he has— Wait. Not the regular bleach, the oxygen bleach, unless the regular bleach is all that he has.” “Oxygen—what?” Miles asked helplessly. “Oxygen bleach, as many as he has,” Lore said. “Tell him to put it on my tab.” “Bodegas have tabs?” Miles asked. “Go,” Lore said, throwing her arm out toward the door. “And hurry.” Miles seemed too stunned to do anything other than what she’d asked. He jumped over the blood, gagging one last time before the door slammed shut behind him. The house’s usual smells of sandalwood and old books vanished beneath the hot stink of blood. Lore’s stomach gave a violent lurch as she turned the goddess onto her back. She tore the fabric of the ruined tunic, trying to get a better look at the wound. Blood spilled over her fingers. “Damn,” she whispered. The liver and kidney had been pierced. Lore knew this work; it was an expert cut by a léaina—one of the young women sent out by the bloodlines to hunt gods and bring back the wounded prey for their leader to kill. She pressed a towel to it, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “Wake up. Wake up!” Athena’s eyes rolled beneath her closed eyelids. Lore did the only thing she could think of. She slapped the goddess across the face. Her gray eyes snapped open, blinking rapidly. “I’d say sorry,” Lore managed. “But you deserved it.” The air in Lore’s lungs suddenly felt scalding. She was surprised at her fear in that moment, the flash of regret she’d had as she’d struck Athena. Years of conditioning to hate the old gods faded away as she saw the sparks of power burning in Athena’s gaze. You could only convince yourself something was prey until it turned around and showed you its teeth. The goddess let out a wet cough, her head rolling against the floor. Even in a mortal body, there was something cold, almost alien, about her appearance up close. Her body was an unnatural container. One made to be killed. Lore pressed her hands against her thighs, trying to stop the involuntary tremble in them. She wouldn’t kill her. She didn’t want a god’s power. She didn’t want any of this. “Feels bad, doesn’t it?” Lore asked, letting a wild recklessness sweep in to replace her fear. “Man, mortality. What a bummer. Dare I ask who got you?” This moment had been over a thousand years in the making. Athena had survived two hundred and eleven cycles of the Agon only for number two- twelve to get her. The honey tone of Athena’s skin paled as death found its way in. The goddess was one of the last of the originals still in the Agon, the others being Hermes and Artemis, and, maybe, Apollo. She had been an impossible target. She was too strong, too quick, too clever. Until now.  They studied each other. If Athena was trying to gauge Lore’s worth, her strength, Lore would have been the first one to tell her not to bother. “I’m out.” There were plenty of pretty words Lore could have used to flatter the goddess. To grovel and appeal to her kind’s exhausting vanity and pride. Lore didn’t care to remember any of them. “And I’m not going to let you or anyone else pull me back in.” The goddess stared, the stern line of her mouth never once relaxing. Lore expected nothing else. There would be no bending; like a blade, Athena would hold, or she would break. “I know you speak this language,” Lore said, refusing to give the goddess what she clearly wanted. The ancient tongue was a mixture of many ancient dialects that had eventually become Modern Greek, but Athena’s version was epic in quality. “Whatever you came here for, there’s nothing to find,” Lore continued. “If this is a trick and you’re here for revenge, you’re too late. Everyone else who bears my name is dead. I’m the last of the Perseides. The House of Perseus is gone.” The expression on Athena’s face told Lore that the goddess already knew exactly who she was. Fear tore through her. Lore had stopped believing in Fate and the old crones tending to it years ago, but this was too much to be mere coincidence, especially after Castor’s warning. Attend to me, she’d said. Help me. “You found me,” Lore said, proud of how steady her voice sounded. “Tell me what you want, and make it fast. I know this is a difficult concept for you, but your time is running out and my plans for this morning don’t include an awkward staring contest with a deity. Why don’t you start with who tried to kill you?” Athena met her gaze again as she said, her voice weaker now, “My sister.” A cold dread slithered through Lore’s body. “As in, Artemis?” The goddess glowered. Her other sister, Aphrodite, had been taken out by a hunter a century ago, and a new god with her powers had been born. That new god had lasted only one cycle before another hunter killed him seven years later. It was a morbid sort of marathon relay, with immortal power as the baton being passed between bloodlines.  “I thought the two of you always worked together,” Lore said. “What happened to that fun little alliance you used to terrorize everyone with?” “Turned... on me,” Athena said, pressing her palm to her side again. “Betrayed. The Ares imposter... he... came after me... at the Awakening—Artemis slowed me, escaped.” “That’s cold,” Lore said with mild appreciation. “Even for her.” “Alliances form from need... break in fear....” Athena struggled for the words. “Now... need... protection. Until I... heal. Bind your fate... to mine.” Bind your fate to mine. Lore shuddered. “Why the hell would I ever do that,” Lore said, “when I can sit here and watch you die instead?” Despite temporarily losing their immortality, the gods did retain a sliver of their might to defend themselves. In their prime, their true powers had been all-encompassing; what remained must have felt like a sad pantomime, and, worse, only Apollo seemed to have been left with the ability to heal himself and others. Athena might have been physically stronger than the other eight gods in the Agon, capable of leveling whole buildings, but it wasn’t going to do her any good now. Miles’s quick steps pounded up to their front door. Lore jumped to her feet, giving the goddess one last hard look. Athena visibly bristled at the impertinence of it. “Don’t say a word to him when he comes in,” Lore said. “Pretend you’re asleep.” “Do not forsake me,” Athena said weakly. “I forbid it.” “Yeah, well, I forbid you to die right now,” Lore said, her pulse jumping. “I have to go clean up after you before the bloodhounds find your trail and lead the hunters here.” Athena’s gaze flickered. Shit, Lore thought miserably. The goddess could bleed, she could slip into unconsciousness, but she would never have forgotten such a crucial strategic detail if she were not in absolute dire straits. The front door burst open. “I’ve got them!” The goddess’s nostrils flared, but she did as Lore asked. “Thank you,” Lore told Miles. “Now go upstairs and go to bed.” “Wait—what?” he asked, trying to follow her back outside. “What are you doing?”  “I’m going to clean up before someone sees the blood and calls the cops,” Lore said. “And you’re going upstairs to bed.” Miles glanced at Athena’s limp form. “Listen to me,” Lore said, her voice steel. Miles flinched, but she couldn’t feel sorry, not for this. He had no idea what he’d been drawn into. “Go upstairs. Don’t answer the door. If you see anyone suspicious outside, call me.” She left before he could lodge another protest, or, worse, ask another question. She bounded down the front steps of the brownstone, curving around to the gate that led into the basement apartment she now used for storage. There’d be almost no time. The sun was rising behind the curtain of clouds, and so were New Yorkers. Lore dumped two containers of the oxy bleach into a bucket and carried it back outside to mix in water from her neighbor’s hose. She used a wire brush and the power of her own terror to scrub the pool of blood Athena had left near the trash cans, until her head was light and her hands stung from the chemicals. Lore started to toss the bucket’s bloodied water in the gutters... only to stop. She watched the rain run along the sidewalk and into the storm drain. She wouldn’t be able to mask the scent of blood, or the stench of the goddess herself, and now she was covered in both. The best Lore could manage was to confuse the hunters with too many trails, and hope they ran themselves ragged before they ever found their way to the town house, and to Miles. Lore followed the path Athena had taken, cleaning and rinsing until the rain washed the visible stains mostly clean and everything trickled down into the gutters. She traced a wide, arcing trail around the neighborhood, leaving splashes of the bloodied bleach water here and there. When Lore was finally within sight of Central Park, she stripped off her soiled shoes and socks, her face twisting in disgust as she stepped barefoot onto the cracked sidewalk. She took off before she could let herself think too hard about what she’d be picking up, and she set on a random, weaving path through the streets, stopping only to dump the shoes and socks one at a time in scattered trash cans and dumpsters. As she neared the brownstone again, Lore tossed her light jacket into the back of a moving garbage truck and stuffed her jeans and shirt into the undercarriages of two different delivery trucks parked near Mr. Herrera’s bodega. Instead of going through the front door, Lore entered through the basement. The smell of Gil’s sandalwood cologne was everywhere, along with faint mildew and dust. Searching through the storage tubs she’d abandoned down there, Lore set aside a box containing Gil’s vast collection of holiday-themed bow ties and found an old pair of pull-on shorts and a T- shirt in the container beneath it. Lore changed into them quickly, dumping her soiled clothes into a trash bag. She took several steadying breaths until the chemical reek faded and her panic had given way to renewed anger. Dragging herself up the inner staircase, she stepped back into the silence of the first level of the house. Some of the tension in her back and shoulders eased as she took a look around, and she almost managed a laugh. Miles had cleaned the blood from the hallway and switched off the lights in the living room, and he’d left a glass of water and bottle of aspirin beside Athena. Helpful, Lore thought with a surge of affection for him. She glanced to her left. Miles hadn’t just locked the door; he’d also reinforced the knob with the back of a chair—like that would stop the hunters from setting enough explosives to blow off the front of the house. Athena’s head turned at the sound of Lore’s approaching steps. She opened her eyes again; they glowed in the room’s relative darkness. Her hand held the towel against the wound. The air was so still around her, the silence so unnatural. “You want me to help protect you, and, I’m guessing, to hide you from the same people that would happily kill me, too,” Lore whispered. “But you already know that. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?” Athena gave a slight nod. “So exactly what’s in this for me?” Lore said, taking another step closer. “I realize this is a new experience for you, but even if you heal faster than the average mortal, you’re not exactly doing well. So why would I tie my life to one that might not make it a few hours, let alone a few days?” “I heard... what had happened to you...” Athena said. “The years between... Searched... for you...” The hair on Lore’s body rose.  At the end of each Agon, the gods, new and old, regained their immortality, but they remained in the mortal world, unable to return to whatever home they’d once known. The new gods, brimming with power, manifested physical forms and lived lavishly, manipulating the workings of the world to fill the vaults of their mortal bloodlines. But the old gods, with their power ever-waning, usually chose to remain incorporeal. It made them untraceable as they set about the world, trying to plan for contingencies for the next hunt or seeking retribution against those who had tried to kill them. The threat of that vengeance was the reason hunters always wore masks. “You searched for me?” Lore said. “Why?” “I believed... you could be... persuaded to aid me.... I heard your... name... from the other bloodlines.... Your family... murdered. Mother... father... sisters,” Athena said, her breathing labored. “They called you... lost. Some believed... dead.” Lore’s throat locked until she almost couldn’t speak. “What do you know about that?” Athena looked to her again, this time with the expression of someone who already knew they’d won. “I know... who killed them.” OceanofPDF.com THE MEMORY ROSE SHARP and true, cutting through all the barriers Lore had built around it. The way the door to her family’s apartment had looked as she came toward it that morning. The chilling silence inside. The smell of blood. Lore drew in a deep breath and pressed a hand to her eyes, hard enough that light and colors danced beneath her lids. It distracted her mind from the dark trail it had started down again, but only for a moment. She didn’t know how she kept her voice so calm as she said, “I already know who killed them. Aristos Kadmou of the House of Kadmos.” The new Ares, as of the last Agon. “The false god may have... ordered their deaths... but who held the blade?” Athena pressed. “For it was not he. He was only a newborn god....” Lore’s body tightened to the point of pain. “It doesn’t matter. He was the one who gave the order,” Lore said. “He was the head of his bloodline, and then became their god. They are all responsible, every last man, woman, and child who kneels before him, but only he had the power to put it all into motion.” And his bloodline had obeyed his command, murdering her parents and two little sisters so savagely that it had taken the Kadmides weeks to clean the apartment enough to hide the evidence. In the end, they’d still had to purify it with flames. According to the New York City Police Department, the family had set the fire themselves after a rent dispute and left town, never to be heard from again. No one in the House of Kadmos had ever claimed responsibility for the murders, or ever would. The hunters had taken a blood oath centuries ago to never intentionally kill a hunter of another bloodline between the cycles of the Agon. It had been the only way to ensure peace between them. Her family had been murdered the morning after the Agon’s completion, when that oath should have protected them. The Kadmides had broken a sacred vow, but no other house was powerful enough to challenge them, and no gods had ever listened to her prayers. “Why did you... not avenge them?” Athena panted. “These many years... you have done nothing.... You... do not recognize your... moira.... You never sought... poiné... only fell... to... the worst aidos....” Lore sank to the floor, her legs folding beneath her. She braced her hands beside them, fighting the familiar pressure expanding in her chest. Her moira—her lot in life, her destiny. “Those words mean nothing to me now,” she said hoarsely. But hearing them felt like scars being cut open. Poiné. Vengeance. Aidos. Shame. A life without the excellence of areté and the earned possessions of timé. Of never attaining kleos. “I was just a little girl,” Lore said, barely hearing her own words. “They would have killed me, too. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them all. And I knew I could never get to him, not after he ascended.” In the years since, she’d killed to keep from being killed. She traveled by foot, by boat, by air, only to arrive back at the city that had raised her. She’d escaped the labyrinth of oaths that had been designed to trap her until the day came when the Agon called for her to sacrifice her last heartbeat. But Lore had done nothing to avenge her family. Athena’s lip curled. “Excuses... These lies you tell yourself... You were never... a mere... little girl. I heard... what the others whispered about you... that you were the best of your generation... that it was a shame... you had been born to a different bloodline....” “You’re lying,” Lore whispered, unable to stop the involuntary shiver that moved through her. Years ago, those words would have meant everything to her—she’d craved recognition from the very people who had refused to give it to her. “The Spartan... they called you,” Athena breathed. “Little Gorgon... I searched for you... chose you... knowing that skill... knowing that you are no longer one of the hunters.... But you have... never been weak... never powerless.... So I ask... why did you do nothing... to avenge your family?” Lore drew her arms close to her chest, throwing out Gil’s words like a shield. But there was no protection against the truth. “It’s not— You wouldn’t understand. The only real thing in this world is what you can do for others. How you can take care of them.” The goddess snorted with derision. “All you know,” Lore continued, hating the thickness in her voice, “all you have ever cared about is power. You don’t know how to want anything else, and because of it, you won’t believe me when I tell you that I don’t want to claim his power, either. I don’t want any part of this sick game.” “Then what is it... that you desire?” Athena asked. The words burst from Lore, wild and pained. “To be free.” “No,” Athena said, her voice labored. “That is not it. What do you... deny yourself?” A vision bloomed in her mind, blazing and pure, but Lore shook her head. “Lie to... yourself... but not to me,” Athena said. “You know... you shall never be... free while the shades of your family... suffer and wander.... Never at rest while he lives.” Lore pressed her fists to her eyes, trying to find the words to protest. “You deny your heritage.... You deny honor.... You deny your ancestors, and your gods.... But this, you cannot deny,” Athena said. “This, you know to be true. Tell me... what you desire.” The truth finally escaped its cage. “I want to kill him.” Lore had denied it for years—forced the truth down deep inside her. All in the name of being good, of deserving the new life she’d been given. She wasn’t ashamed of how badly she wanted it, or how often she dreamed of his death, but of how ungrateful it made her feel for the second chance working for Gil had given her. “But I can’t,” Lore continued, her throat aching. “Even if I could get close enough to try, killing Aristos would mean taking his power. I don’t want to be a god. I just want to live. I want to know my family is... at peace.” “Then I will kill him for you.” Lore looked down at the goddess in disbelief.  “I will kill the false Ares in your name,” Athena said, struggling for breath. “If you swear... you will aid me... if you vow... to bind your fate to mine until... this hunt ends... at sunrise... on the eighth day.” Lore’s heart began to race again, galloping in her chest. This was something. It wouldn’t just destroy Aristos Kadmou, either. A god could not take another god’s power. Athena would be effectively removing Ares’s dangerous power from the Agon—and the mortal world— entirely. “Bind your fate to mine,” the goddess said again, offering her bloodied hand. “Your heart... it aches for it....” Gil’s face, his usual toothy grin, drifted through Lore’s mind. I’m sorry, she thought, agonized. Then she nodded. Athena’s teeth were stained with blood as she bared them. “You know what it means, do you not? What the oath entails?” “I do.” Her own many times great-grandfather had been a cautionary tale, having foolishly bound his fate to the original Dionysus. The old god had needed protection from the descendants of Kadmos. Though he himself had been born into that bloodline through his mortal mother, Dionysus had cursed his kin—and Kadmos himself—when they refused to believe he had been fathered by Zeus. The instant the old god died, cornered and slaughtered like a boar, Lore’s ancestor’s heart had stopped dead in his chest. The strongest of his generation, gone in the time it took to blink, remembered forever by his kin as a blade traitor—and, as her own father believed, the true cause of the centuries-old animosity between the Houses of Perseus and Kadmos. Lore would be agreeing to protect Athena with her life, to shelter her, and to bank on the hope that the goddess didn’t die from this wound or any other. It was a risk she would have to take. An oath was, after all, a curse you placed on yourself—she would be damned if she failed, and damned if she succeeded. But she would never have an opportunity like this again. Lore tried to remember the words her father and mother had always used to make their oaths, but couldn’t bring herself to invoke the name of any gods.  “I will help you survive this week, and you will destroy the god once known as Aristos Kadmou, the enemy of my blood,” Lore said quietly. She took the goddess’s cold hand in her own. “If that’s the bargain, then I swear by the powers below that I will uphold my vow or face the wrath of the heavens.” The goddess nodded. “Then I bind my mortal life to yours... Melora, daughter of Demos, scion of Perseus... Should I fall... you will join me. Should you die in the Agon... I, too, will perish. That is the vow we make to each other.” Warmth wrapped around their joined hands, chased by a chill along the ridges of Lore’s spine like the tip of a knife. How perfect that Athena’s power came only in the form of steel and pain. “Is it done?” Lore asked. Her answer was the goddess’s cruel, bloody smile. Lore pulled back, rising unsteadily to her feet. A sensation of sparks scattered across her skin like stars in the sky, sinking into the marrow of her bones. “We need to stop the bleeding,” Lore said, looking at Athena’s wound. “I don’t know if I have thread to stitch it.” The goddess shook her head. “Burn it shut.” Lore rose, feeling half-removed from her own body, and went to the kitchen. She held one of the carving knives over the fire on the gas stove until the metal glowed as gold as the flecks in Athena’s eyes. Miles, she thought distantly. She needed to check on Miles once this was finished. But he had already come down to check on her. Miles sat on the stairs, his gaze still fixed on what he could see of the living room through the old wood banister. There didn’t seem to be a drop of color left in his face, and Lore knew, even before he looked at her and the knife in her hands, that he had heard everything. “I think,” he said finally, his voice hoarse, “you’d better tell me what the hell is going on.” OceanofPDF.com THEY SAT IN SILENCE for several minutes after Lore had finished giving Miles a ruthlessly pared-down explanation of the Agon, the nine gods it had been created to punish—including the one whose wound she had seared shut in their living room—and the nine bloodlines descended from ancient heroes chosen to hunt them. She distilled over a thousand years of history into mere minutes, feeling more and more insane as his face remained carefully blank. It wasn’t like Lore could blame him; hearing herself say the words “For seven days, every seven years, the gods walk on earth as mortals. If you can kill one, you become a new god and take their power and immortality, but you’ll be hunted in the next Agon as well” had left her stomach in knots, and not just because she had been taught, from the youngest age, never to reveal their world to outsiders. To Miles, these names—Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hermes, and Ares—were ancient stories, not living, breathing monsters who had refused to fade away once a more prominent god rose in their lands. The way the hunters told it, they had attempted to force their worshippers back into submission by stoking chaos at the fall of Rome, by having Apollo create deadly plagues, including the Plague of Justinian, which alone killed tens of millions of people. All in the hope that mortals would beg them for protection and refuge. “And, when Zeus commanded them to stop,” Lore finished, “the nine, led by Athena, tried and failed to overthrow him in order to continue their work.” Gil had always made tea when they’d needed to talk about something, and Lore found herself doing the same thing now—only, as if muscle memory had taken over, she skipped the tea bags and made a very different kind of brew. As a joke, the hunters called their tea nektar, the drink of the gods. They used thyme—the herb for courage—ginger, lemon, and honey to fortify themselves during training and the Agon. But both mugs had gone cold, untouched where she’d set them down on the table. The window AC unit wheezed on, flooding the kitchen with cool air. Lore had drawn the curtains on the window above the sink, and she could tell by the way the sun was still trying to intrude on them that it was already late morning. “Say something,” she whispered. “I mean...” he said, smoothing a hand over his hair. His gaze was fixed on the table. “Your name isn’t even Lauren.” “You get why I couldn’t use my real one, don’t you?” she asked. It wasn’t just about lying low, though. Lauren Pertho was the alias on the papers and passport her mother’s bloodline had forged to get her out of the country after her family’s murder. It was the only documentation she had to use. “I don’t know what I thought,” Miles said. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight: every seven years this... hunt happens. And the location changes —sort of like the Olympics, only with more murders?” “Basically,” Lore said. “The hunters figured out that they could control the location of the Agon by moving something called the omphalos—a large stone that once resided at Delphi and marked what they believed to be the navel, or center, of the world.” “The ‘navel’ in the poem?” he clarified. She had recited the English translation of the account of Zeus giving the original command for the Agon. The original version, in the ancient tongue, had been lost. “Yes. The leaders of the bloodlines gather the year before the next Agon and vote on where it’ll be, which is usually where they each have the most resources and power,” Lore continued. “They have to move the omphalos without the gods seeing its destination, to keep the gods from strategizing. Lately it’s been here, but they also tend to focus on cities in island nations, like London and Tokyo, because it makes it harder for the gods to escape.”  And rarely, in the cycles they truly wanted to torment the gods, they would bring the omphalos back to the old country, so they could be hunted among the ruins of their temples and the people who had once feared them. “The nine families—” Miles began. “There are only four bloodlines still participating in the Agon,” Lore said. “The others have died out.” “Like yours?” Miles clarified slowly. “Because you’re... the last of your line?” “The last mortal,” Lore said. “The new Poseidon, Tidebringer, was once part of the Perseides—the descendants of Perseus.” “What are the others?” “The Houses of Kadmos, Theseus, Achilles, and Odysseus are the only other surviving lines,” Lore said, “but there were also the Houses of Herakles, Jason...” Then she added, because no one ever seemed to know who they were, “And Meleager, who led the Calydonian boar hunt, and Bellerophon, who slayed monsters and rode Pegasus. Those were actually the first two bloodlines to die off.” Their annihilation had come shortly after the bloodlines had decided upon unified surnames to meet the changing legal needs of the sixteenth century. Both houses had been viewed as unworthy of the hunt, even by Jason’s cursed line. Meleager’s because the remaining descendants originated from an illegitimate child, and Bellerophon’s because their ancestor had died hated by the gods, and only Zeus himself would have seen the fallen hero redeemed. “I thought Hercules—Herakles? I thought he rode Pegasus?” Miles said. “Are you telling me my favorite animated film of all time lied to me?” Lore sighed. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Miles said. “But what exactly happened to the rest of your family?” For a moment, Lore wasn’t sure where to begin. “There’s this rule—this fundamental belief—that only men, in particular the agreed-upon head of each bloodline, should be allowed to claim the power of a god,” Lore explained, anger turning her posture rigid. “Only men can be heirs, both in mortal and immortal power. Having a male leader of a bloodline means succession is clearer. Should that archon fall or ascend to immortality, authority falls to his sons, or brother, or nephew. When the bloodline gathers for the next Agon, they cast votes on the next man to hold the title.” Her disgust grew until she could taste the bitterness in her mouth at the explanation. She had once believed all of that, too—more than believed in it. Even as a child, Lore would have gladly died on behalf of all those men to maintain the cruel order of their world. “They really shut women out like that?” Miles asked. “Even now?” Her nostrils flared with the force of her next breath. “It was centuries before they allowed women to hunt at all, and now only a select few are chosen to work in a sort of pack on behalf of the archon. Tidebringer, whether intentionally or by accident, claimed godhood herself fourteen cycles ago. And not from just any god, but one of the originals. Poseidon.” It was strange to feel both deeply ingrained revulsion and sympathy for the new god. Lore had been taught to hate her, to blame her for what became of the House of Perseus. Over and over, she’d been told Tidebringer was wrong, as if the unnatural thing wasn’t that a mortal had killed a god and taken his place, but that a woman had dared to try. “Okay, but why would the Poseidon lady mean the death of your... house?” Miles asked, hesitating over the word. “I thought you said that the new gods protect and serve their family?” “That’s just it,” Lore said. “She was shunned by the Perseides and was forced into hiding during the next Agon and all of the ones that came after because she had no family to protect her. The bloodlines saw her as a direct threat to the order of their world. No one had even been sure a woman could ascend until she’d done it. The idea was too dangerous to them.” Miles sighed. “I think I know where this is going.” “To make sure it never happened again, the other families, led by the archon of Kadmos’s bloodline, destroyed almost the entire House of Perseus on the last day of that Agon, when the killing of other hunters was still permitted,” Lore said. “Aside from Tidebringer, the only survivor was my great-great-grandfather, who had decided to stay at university instead of participate in that cycle.” “Holy shit,” Miles said mildly. “The other bloodlines decided to keep him alive to torment him a different way—humiliation,” Lore said. “They split the Perseides’ stores of weapons and armor, divvied up their lucrative shipping and textile- manufacturing empires, and gave the head of the Kadmos bloodline the family’s greatest inheritance.” The aegis. The shield of Zeus, carried into so many battles by his favorite daughter, Athena, bearing the head of the gorgon Medusa, and given to them by the king of gods himself to aid in their hunt. An object capable of summoning lightning and striking unnatural terror in the heart of all enemies who beheld it. It had been the envy of all the other bloodlines, who resented the Perseides for getting what they considered to be a superior inheritance. Over the centuries, many of the other objects of power had been destroyed by rival bloodlines to keep them from being used. But only those in that particular bloodline who bore the house’s name could use their respective gifts. The Kadmides may have stolen the aegis, but none of them could wield it. And the truth of her great-great- grandfather’s survival was even more sinister than she’d let on. Lore assumed he’d been spared for the same reason she had been: the aegis would disappear when the last of the Perseides died. “Wow...” Miles said slowly. “But then your family—your parents?” “And sisters.” Miles’s face fell. Lore had only told him and Gil that her family had died and she’d been taken against her will to be raised by a member of her mother’s family. Both of which were true, in a very vague manner of speaking. “Their deaths were ordered by Aristos Kadmou, the grandson of the man who had led the initial execution of the Perseides,” Lore said. “Who is now the new... Ares?” Miles finished. “After he killed the last new Ares in the Agon seven years ago?” “The mortal believes you lie.” Lore startled at the sound of Athena’s low voice. Miles did more than that. He leaped out of his chair, knocking it to the ground, and stumbled back against the nearby counter, clutching his chest. “Jesus!” he gasped out. “I mean—I don’t—” Miles dropped into what looked like half a curtsey and half a bow. “Do you?” Lore asked him. “Do you believe me?” Athena filled the doorway of the kitchen, leaning heavily against the frame with one hand pressed to the wound at her side.  “I mean, yes,” Miles said. “I do believe you. It’s just going to take a little while for me to get a grip on it, you know?” The goddess took in the sight of him with derision before turning back toward Lore. “This vessel requires sustenance.” “You want... breakfast?” Lore guessed. Athena lowered herself into the free chair. Lore stared at her there for a moment—something swirling in the pit of her stomach at the sight of her in Gil’s house, in Gil’s chair—but in the end, she only stood up and went to the refrigerator. Within a few minutes, Lore set down three plates of scrambled eggs and bacon and three glasses of water. She and Miles watched, both gripping their forks, as Athena pinched a piece of bacon between her fingers and brought it to her nose to sniff it. As far as Lore was concerned, free food tasted the best, but it was clear the goddess didn’t share that opinion. She took an experimental bite, and all six feet of her shuddered. Ever loyal, even in the face of years of deception, Miles took a big bite of his own and declared, “Best bacon I’ve ever had.” “If you don’t want it, don’t eat it,” Lore told Athena coldly. The goddess sipped at her water, her lips curling into a sneer. “It’s the sensation,” Athena said,