Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

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

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

Building a new life, a better life, Gil had told her, will keep you looking forward, until, one day, you’ll find you’re no longer tempted to keep turning back toward everything you’ve lost.

“You are not my enemy, Lore!” “You’ve made me your enemy!”

She deserves to die, Lore thought viciously. They all do. Let her become the monster who haunted their legends. Her kleos would be glorious infamy.

“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.”

“So it shall be until that day,” Lore read, loosely translating them, “when one remains who is remade whole and summons me with smoke of altars to be built by conquest final and fearsome.”

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