Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

“You already know that you are enough,” Gil told her. “Stand up, Melora. Come on. Prove me right.”

“You have to stand up on your own. I can’t carry you the way you once carried me,” Gil said. “And I can’t take you far, only to the boundary, as he’ll permit. Only as I am meant to do. You must stand up on your own and follow me to it.”

Faces she knew. Faces she loved. Lore reached out a hand toward the woman, her fingers skimming her face. Stay with me, she thought. Stay with me. .

The dim light of the torch vanished, but the presence of those around her lingered. Stay with me, Lore pleaded, aching with desperation. Stay. . . . Don’t leave me. . .

The shadows curled around her, and when her thoughts turned to cinders and the world disappeared, she was no longer afraid.

Castor’s eyes were shut, his face tilted up to reveal the sharp line of his jaw. His power pulsated around them, burning away the bleakness of the tunnel. It had turned the standing water into a thick haze that clogged the air. She was draped across his legs, lifted from the rough floor. One of his arms was wrapped around her shoulders to support her weight, and the other hand rested against her side, where the blade had cut her.

She reached up with her free hand, tracing a light fingertip down his cheek. Castor reached up to press the hand against his chest, right beside where his mortal heart was beating.

His face was a book that had been written only for her.

Castor smoothed the hair away from her wet cheeks, easing the curls back around her ears. She wanted to tell him what had happened, to explain it herself, but he already knew. As easily as she could read him, Castor had always had the measure of her.

“You were ice-cold,” he said, the words halting. “I didn’t know . . . I wasn’t sure . . .” She pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “This is fine. A nice change, even. Our reunions usually involve a lot more punching.”

“I’ll kill her.” The words were low, without any varnish, without any hesitation. And so unlike him. “No,” Lore said. “What she did to you—” he began again.

Castor brought her hand up, pressing a soft kiss onto her callused palm.

And you came here, she thought, overwhelmed with gratitude. You came to find me.

He knelt in front of her, wetting some of the towels. Lifting Lore’s hand from her lap, his sole focus turned to wiping away the dirt and grime and blood. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until the warmth of his skin spread over her again.

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

Castor brought a fresh towel along her neck, and there was a brief flicker of distress in his expression as he ran the cool water along the curve of her jaw.

He gave a playful flick of water against her cheek, startling her out of her thoughts. Lore let out a faint laugh. To her surprise, he moved next to her hair, running damp fingers back through the tangled mess of it with as much care as he could. He braided it over her shoulder, but had nothing to tie it off with.

She nodded, gripping his arm. Needing to hold on to something steady before the riptide of her regret and grief carried her under.

Castor leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned into him, listening to rain patter softly down the windows.

“Do you think they hate me?” Castor shook his head, pressing his lips to her temple. “No,” he said fiercely. “They love you. They will always love you.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned this week, it’s this,” Castor began after a while. “When we can’t change the past, the only thing left is to move forward. I need to do the same. I need to stop questioning a gift that’s let me protect the people I care about most.”

“What did you do?” Lore asked. “You couldn’t have been armed.” He shook his head, turning his palms up to look at them. “I wasn’t. I asked him if he needed help.”

It was . . . It felt like all those times you’re told not to look into the sun, but something tells you to try, just once,”

“You have nothing to prove to me,” Lore said. “Why would you think that?” Castor turned to look at her, a faint smile on his face. But his eyes blazed with power, and with that same wild, irrepressible feeling she was drowning in. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked quietly. “I wanted to be worthy of you.” “Worthy of me?” she began. Her words often came out too quick, too clumsy, too sharp, and she didn’t want that. Not this time. “Cas.”

“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.”

She had always been that girl, her feelings unbearable, her hair wind-matted as she ran through the city. But then, Castor had always been that boy who ran alongside her.

“Did you hear the one about the turtle on Broadway?” he said softly, touching a finger to one of the tears. Lore gave up on words and kissed him.

Castor wrapped an arm around her waist, carefully drawing her into the heat of his body. He ducked his head and found her mouth again, brushing her lips with his smiling ones, like a challenge. When had she ever refused a challenge?

Maybe it would always be part of her, but she was learning how to move through it and reclaim herself with choice.

Right now, with Castor, she didn’t feel powerless. She felt triumphant. Like everything in her body had suddenly connected and electrified. His lips were soft as they brushed against hers, capturing the last of her tears, but grew insistent, harder, at her urging. It wasn’t enough. She wanted to touch him everywhere, to melt into the warmth pooling low in her body that was desire, and the tender ache in her heart that was love.

“What’s going to happen to you when the Agon ends?” she whispered. Lore felt him smile against her skin. “You gonna miss me, Golden?” “Maybe I like having you around,” she said. “You’re easy on the eyes.”

Power does not transform you, he’d said. It only reveals you.

The same was true for Castor, but power had only strengthened the good in his heart. Each time she met his gaze, she saw all those things she’d lost when he left her life. Things she never thought she’d have again.

“I really was a bad influence on you as a child,” Lore said. He winked at her. Lore flushed, turning her head away so he wouldn’t see the wash of pink spreading over her face. She lay down again beside him, her fingers brushing where his gripped the cement ledge. Castor shifted his hand, curling his pinkie finger over hers.

“Stupid, I know,” he said, “considering how little time I had. But you were like this invincible force to me, even then. You were a safe place to hide my hopes.”

“If you’re not too busy standing there looking pretty . . . ?” she said, gesturing to Castor. He pretended to push up his sleeves. The movement only highlighted how his shirt clung to the ridges of his shoulders and chest. A warm thread curled low in her stomach as she watched him bend over to grip the grate.

I remember you, it seemed to say. The first time she looked upon the aegis, Lore had seen a monster made into a god’s trophy. Now, as Lore met Medusa’s sightless eyes, she only saw herself gazing back.

Even if Castor was forced into the realm of gods and separated from her again, he would be alive. The pain of knowing what she would gain and lose made Lore feel as if she’d torn her own lungs from her chest.

“Should I be unnerved that you know my jean size?” “Should I be annoyed you always leave your clothes in our washing machine so I end up having to dry and fold them for you?”

Lore couldn’t bring herself to speak. She nodded, opening the clasp to put it on. Whatever power it might have had was gone, leaving behind its slight weight and the meaning she had come to attach to it. The one that had never been more important than now. Not lost. Free.

“This is why I always had to hold all of our grudges as kids. You’ve never had the heart for them.”

Van held up a hand, waving him off. He turned his face back down toward the stairs behind him, but not quickly enough for Lore to miss the way his lips compressed and his eyes squeezed shut in the kind of relief that was so sharp, it became painful. This, she realized, was her family now. This was what had been right in front of her, waiting to be seen, the whole time she’d been chasing the past.

He opened a small white package, then he crossed the short distance to where Miles sat and carefully brushed the hair from his forehead so he could apply the bright-blue ice pack to the bruise. Miles stared up at him, eyes wide. Van, as if realizing what he’d done, pulled back, quickly handing it to him.

“This is so cool,” Miles said, dropping onto a knee. He glanced up at Lore. “Can I take a picture with it?” “What?” Lore said, pulling it back. “No!”

“By the way, that sword has a name. Mákhomai.” I make war. Lore smiled.

Van had his back to them and was rooting through his bag, searching for something. Miles stopped behind him and reached up to tap his shoulder. As he turned, Van’s brows rose at the sight of Miles and a small, expectant smile lit his face at something Miles said. There was a beat of utter stillness, then Van took Miles’s face between his hands and leaned down for a searing kiss.

She looked up at Castor, lacing their fingers together as they continued in silence, moving through the floodwaters until they reached the 7 train’s Thirty-Fourth Street station.

Not even the Spartans were Spartan, her father had told her. It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie.

Lore relished the feel of his hand in hers for just a moment more before letting it go. Both she and Castor would need their sword hands free.

She was here because her father had taught her to hold a blade, because her mother had raised her strong and proud, because her sisters were forever unfinished people. She was here for the city that had raised her, and she came with the pride of her ancestors and the strength of her heart, and neither would fail her.