Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

Sometimes, he’d said, the braver thing is to accept help when you’ve been made to believe you shouldn’t need it.

Monsters lived in the shadows. To hunt them, you couldn’t be afraid to follow. And the only way to destroy them was to have the sharper teeth and the darker heart.

“He took away the last of the illusions.”

“They imagined her hideous because they feared to meet the true gaze of a woman, to witness the powerful storm that lives inside, waiting.

“Hold on to what you feel for your home,” Athena told her. “It will never abandon you if you serve it well. It is not so fickle as mortals.”

A person alone could be controlled, but a person loved by others would always be under their protection.

It wasn’t that anger was inherently good or bad. It could lend power and drive and focus, but the longer it lived inside you unchecked, the more poisonous it became.

“I was born knowing how to do three things—how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you.”

It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie.

“I’ve got another ancient proverb for you,” Lore said, sliding her arm out from the interior straps of the aegis. “Go fuck yourself.”