Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

He said nothing as he knelt and drew her into a fierce embrace. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing her face against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Papa. . . .” He picked her up, clutching her to him the way he had when she was smaller, and carried her the rest of the way home.

“Your fear will feed him,” Athena told her. “It will bring him pleasure. Do not grant it. He is as mortal as you these next six days. If you falter again, remember what he took from you. He may possess power, but you have righteousness. And should even that abandon you, remember that I am beside you, and I will not let you fail.”

I can still get back out again, she told herself. I’m not doing the killing. This is an end, not a beginning.

Lore went toward him, ducking down to try to meet his gaze. Aside from a cut across the sharp line of his left cheekbone, he seemed to be all right. The tension in his face eased as he saw her.

“No,” Lore said, pulling back. “Iro first. Iro. She’s— She needs to wake up.” “I’m not going to watch you stoically bleed to death,” Castor said, exasperated. She pressed the towel to her shoulder, stepping farther out of his reach. “Iro first.”

“Clever,” Athena said. “Once again, the mortal’s knowledge of this city far outstrips what the rest of you bring.”

“You would know it, too, if you had come with me when I asked if you wanted to go last month,” Miles said pointedly. “I get free tickets through my internship, remember? You said, and I quote, ‘Real New Yorkers don’t play tourist.’” “That sounds nothing like me,” Lore said indignantly. “That sounds exactly like you,” Castor said. “It’s like your whole thing about how ‘authentic’ New Yorkers don’t get their bagels toasted.” Lore was aghast. “Only monsters toast their bagels.”

He turned toward Lore, eyebrows raised. Lore pressed the towel to her wounded shoulder and, just to make Castor feel better, allowed him to help her down the hall, toward the miserable-looking employee bathroom.

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

He had to duck to accommodate its low ceiling. Lore’s thoughts became warm and small as she watched his throat bob and his fingers become unsure of where they should rest on her hip as he supported her.

He really is beautiful, she thought. Not just for what he’d become, but in a way that was undeniably Castor.

His attention was as earnest as it was anxious. It reminded her of when they were young, the quiet way he’d watch her after sparring as if needing to reassure himself she was fine.

Her bra strap was in the way, stuck to the crust of one of the more shallow wounds. His fingers hesitated on it, hot against her slick skin.

She nodded, swallowing. He snapped the strap, watching her face the whole time.

Castor caught her hand in his. Lore shut her eyes and leaned her head against the mirror behind her. She held on to him, wanting to stay in the moment, wanting to steady herself with something real before his power turned her mind soft.

She squeezed his hand again, pulling on it until he looked at her.

His thumb began to absently stroke along her collarbone as he healed her, leaving a warm, shimmering trail on her skin. She leaned into the touch.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that before?” Lore asked. “You confuse me,” he said plainly. “It’s always been this way. I want to tell you everything, but there’s a part of me that’s still afraid of seeming weak.” Lore gripped his wrist. “I’ve never seen you that way.”

Strong or weak—I hated those were the only things we were allowed to be. I wanted to be defined by the life I lived.”

Castor’s smile was small and fleeting. Lore took his free hand in hers again and squeezed it.

“I don’t believe in the Fates, but I do believe in you,” Lore said. “Whatever happened must have happened because you were you. We’ll figure out what it was, I promise. You can hold me to it.” Castor nodded.

The heat faded from his touch as he finished healing her, but he didn’t pull away, and neither did Lore. He wet a small washcloth and began to clean the blood from her new pink skin—stroke by stroke, with a tenderness that came close to breaking her heart. Lore widened her legs, letting him step closer, and closed her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really?” His long fingers grazed up along the curve of her shoulder, coming to cup her other cheek, to brush her old, long scar. The tight muscles in her neck eased as he stroked the ho...

Lore leaned forward against his chest, hearing the powerful drumbeat of Castor’s mortal heart.

“I used to believe in this world,” Lore said. “I used to want everything it promised so badly.” “I know,” Castor told her. “But I never thought you would win the Agon. I thought you would destroy it.”

“No,” Castor said quietly, “he’s not.” The worry was back, turning his gaze soft. Lore hated that for all of his power, for all of his obvious physical strength, her choices could still bring him back to the boy he’d been. He already had enough to handle this week without needing to fear for her.

“No world is perfect. God, mortal, hunter,” Iro said. “I believe in our divine purpose. I believe in honor, and in kleos, and that we will never be destroyed. I believe in it, even if you’ve allowed yourself to be led astray.”

There comes a point where you have to decide what’s right for yourself and act, no matter the consequences.

The goddess had stopped near the steps of St. Jean Baptiste Church, her gray eyes glowing in the deep violet of late night. The church, with its classical pediment and columns, Renaissance-style bell towers and domes, and statues of Christian angels, suddenly struck Lore as an embodiment of history itself. The way it marched ever forward, each civilization devoured by the next.

“You are no mere mortal. I have seen you fight. You may silence her, you may suppress her glorious rage, but a warrior lives in you still.”

“You may deny the Fates, but they will not deny you,” Athena said. “Fighting them will not save you from what is ahead. It will merely quicken the course of things.”

“Do not look away,” Athena told her. “You are no coward.” She wasn’t. In that moment, though, Lore almost envied Athena for the hollow place inside the gods where a mortal’s humanity would be.

The city was a place where you only saw what you were looking for.

Castor shoved him again, this time up against the wall. He pushed his forearm into the god’s exposed throat. “Don’t touch her.”

But Castor’s words had already risen again in her memory. I tried to find you for years, but it was like you vanished. There was no trace of you left.

Castor was breathing heavily, each release of air stirring the loose strands of hair on her face. His hands felt her head, her neck, her chest for a wound. “I’m okay—Cas, I’m—”

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.

He would have the longer reach. But she had more fury.

“You’ve always talked too much for a woman,” he said, watching her jump down over the low fence. “Ironic, given that this is the first time I’ve actually heard you speak for yourself,” she said. “Did Daddy loosen the leash?”

“You ever heard the one about Phaethon?” she asked, leaning close to his snapping teeth. Blood covered his face like a second mask. “How he was desperate to prove his divine parentage—so desperate that he demanded to drive his father Helios’s chariot across the sky?” “Shut up, bitch,” Belen growled. “Shut up—”

“Zeus had to strike him down with a lightning bolt. He paid the price for his desperation and pride with his life.”

Half-blinded by his own blood, he didn’t see the angle of her blade until it had sliced off both of his thumbs. Belen howled in pain and rage. “You may live,” Lore sneered. “But good luck holding a blade.”

Belen would never gain kleos, not from this Agon, and likely not from any other. Maybe one day they could fit him with prosthetics and he would be back in the hunt, but he would always carry the scars of losing to her. He would know what it meant to be followed by whispers. Beaten by the Perseous girl, the last of her name. Beaten by a gutter rat who should have died years ago. Beaten.

Her chest tightened at the way Castor was looking at her. He brought the world into sharper focus: The brightening sky as the hours tilted toward morning; the blood on her hands, arms, and jeans; the breath flaring in and out her. Lore saw herself through Castor’s eyes, how she must have looked half-wild to him. As if she were a monster.

“No,” Castor said. “You are a good person, Melora Perseous. You’re not what they tried to make you, or even what you tried to be for them. Neither of us is.”

Her hands turned to claws against his chest, but his grip on her wrists remained light, as if daring her. The heat of him burned away the cool air and the smell of the grass. He blotted out the rest of the world. He created his own eclipse.

He closed his eyes. “Lore—” The way he said her name . . . The storm broke open inside her. Lore struck at him with her arm and he blocked, as she knew he would, leaving his center open, the way he always did.

Anger became confusion became instinct became need—she gripped his face and pulled him down to bring his lips to hers. Castor went still as stone, his lips parting. He didn’t pull away. Neither did she. Her fingers slid into his thick hair, curling. “Lore—” She wanted him to keep saying her name that way, like it was the only word he knew. She was clumsy and raw and wild, but so was he. His hands covered her, the same hands that had helped her up from the ground countless times. The same hands that had lifted her up to reach higher as she climbed. The same hands she’d held as he lay dying.

Castor overwhelmed her until there was nothing else in the world but his lips and touch. The heat inside her rose, absorbing the feeling of his skin and turning her body soft against the hard lines of his own. His tongue stroked against hers and he drew her closer, until she felt his blatant need for her, and a heaviness settled low in her stomach in response.

They were back to sparring, trying to gain control, to drive the kiss.