Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

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.

eye. “It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie. They smooth over imperfections to tell a good tale, or to instruct us how we should behave, or to assign glory to victors and shame those who falter. Perhaps there were some in Sparta who embodied those myths. Perhaps. But how we are remembered is less important than what we do now.”

mouth. “You are not my enemy, Lore!” “You’ve made me your enemy!” Lore spun the dory high overhead, allowing Iro to block her strike so she could kick the other girl in the chest. The water saved Iro’s balance, but slowed her advance on Lore.

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.”

near. A person alone could be controlled, but a person loved by others would always be under their protection. Lore had been angry for so long—at the world, at the Agon, but most of all at herself. 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.

“Lore.” He kept that same soft tone. “I was born knowing how to do three things—how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you.”