Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

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.

“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?”

BAHAHAHAHHA i love this girl

“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.

The House of Achilles. Well, Lore thought faintly. Shit.

The rest of the world burned away.

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.

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.

Castor was alive, and he’d let her grieve him for seven years.

“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 wove in and out of them, as if he knew the secret to becoming darkness itself.

“Keep toying with me,” she warned him. “See how that ends for you.”

She wheezed, trying to resist folding at the waist. Castor’s eyes widened, almost in fear. “Are you o—?” he began.

“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.

“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.”

Miles. Unbelievable, she thought. How the hell had this night managed to get worse?

“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.”

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.

“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.”

“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.

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.

One Triple Lumberjack platter for Lore, and chocolate chip Mickey Mouse pancakes with extra whipped cream and maple syrup for Miles.

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.

“I’m not going to charge anyone who wants to learn how to protect themselves,” Lore said, keeping her voice low.

“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?”

A feather fallen from a wing is not lost, Gil had told her, but free.

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.

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 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 would be. For him. For herself. For Gil.

Athena’s eyes rolled beneath her closed eyelids. Lore did the only thing she could think of. She slapped the goddess across the face.

“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?”

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.

“Alliances form from need . . . break in fear. . . .” Athena struggled for the words.

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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.

“Bind your fate to mine,” the goddess said again, offering her bloodied hand. “Your heart . . . it aches for it. . . .”

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.

“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.”

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.

No one had even been sure a woman could ascend until she’d done it. The idea was too dangerous to them.”

As far as Lore was concerned, free food tasted the best, but it was clear the goddess didn’t share that opinion.

“Yeah, well,” Lore said, “intolerable pretty much sums up a lot of human existence.”

“I realize that’s a foreign concept to you. Let me know if you need an updated definition of friends—I realize Artemis was likely the last one you had before she stabbed you.”

“If it’s that dangerous I’m not leaving this house, or you,” he said. “I’ll email my boss and tell her I have strep. But I’m not going, and you can’t make me.” Athena looked on with surprise and approval. Lore gritted her teeth at the sight of it.

She had so few things she cherished. Everything she’d had in her old life had been lost. Not Castor, her mind whispered. She drew in a deep breath, allowing the small bit of warmth to spread through her at the realization. She still had Castor. The Agon had taken so much, but it had given him back.

Your body can die, but your name will live forever.”