Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

Miles was doing that thing she hated where he waited for her to talk while looking extremely compassionate and understanding.

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

You never missed calls like that until they stopped coming.

You could only convince yourself something was prey until it turned around and showed you its teeth.

The only real thing in this world is what you can do for others. How you can take care of them.”

“Lie to … yourself … but not to me,”

An oath was, after all, a curse you placed on yourself—she would be damned if she failed, and damned if she succeeded.

while grudges could feed themselves over centuries, memories faded at the pace of years.

She wanted to leave, even as she didn’t. She wanted to look away, even as she couldn’t.

Lore nodded to Castor. He nodded back, his gaze soft but intent. She liked him. His calm made her calm, too.

“This is the most important teaching you will take from this hall,” the instructor said. “You must learn not to fear pain, or else it will shackle you and strip your courage. Fear is the greatest enemy.”

“Surprise?” she said, because Lore had never met a situation she couldn’t make even more painfully awkward.

“In no world is it better for you to die and for Philip Achilleos to become a god. Tell me you understand that. That you believe you deserve to live.”

“Then why did you come here?” he asked quietly. “You told me in no uncertain terms you had no desire to help me, so why risk it?” The question hung like a sword above her neck. Lore turned her back to him, struggling to answer that herself. Because you’re the only one in the world I thought I could trust.

Lore felt a strange sort of guilt that, even now, he was still trying to help her, to put her needs first, the way he always had.

Lore’s blood raced through her body as they ran, coming alive with the flush of heat through her muscles and the familiar rhythm of Castor’s steps, just behind her. Their old, hidden route still waited for them, as if they had never left, and had never lost one another. 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.

“I’ve been weak my whole life. And when I finally did get power—when I finally became strong—” Lore cut him off. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known. Always have been.” “Now I know you’re lying,” he said. “I could barely keep up with you most days.” She fought to control the rising heat in her words. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known, Castor Achilleos, and it wasn’t because of how fast you ran or how hard you hit. It was because even when you got knocked flat on your back, you fought your way back up. You have to do it again now. Whatever you’re feeling, you have to leave it on the mat and get back up.”

Not now, she thought, the words spiraling, screaming, not now— she had to keep it together. The pressure was building in her again, the strain of it turning her brittle. Lore couldn’t find her way out of the darkness growing around her. “Have you ever heard the one about the turtles on Broadway?” The words struck her mind like a torch in the dark, sudden and bright, interrupting her thoughts. “Have I … what?” she asked, blinking to clear her vision. “The turtle show on Broadway,” Castor said softly. Lore still didn’t understand. “No—what are you talking about?” “Really?” he said, his gaze still intent on her. “Because it was a shell-out.” The pressure receded, easing out of her shoulders and chest until she could take a deep enough breath to snort.

To be afraid was to accept you were not infallible.

“Fear is a foreign land I shall never visit and a language that will never cross my tongue,”

“I detest half-truths and shadows,” the goddess warned him.

“You were jealous of me?” she said, turning back toward Van. “Was it the poverty, the endless cycle of ostracism and humiliation, or the ongoing threat of extinction you coveted?”

some people get so used to looking out at life from the edge of their cage that they stop seeing the bars,”

“Surprise is our ally, but timing will be our master.”

“No lie was ever righted by another lie.”

“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.

“We must release the past if we are to ever find a future,”

“Our fates are decided at birth,” Aristos Kadmou said. “As you well know.” “I am less certain of such things,” her father responded. “I believe we choose what we become.”

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.”

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

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

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

“The Fates have nothing to do with any of this. I don’t accept that anything is outside of my control.”

“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.”

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

If she didn’t acknowledge the pain, it would leave her, just like everything else.

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.

Monsters lived in the shadows. To hunt them, you couldn’t be afraid to follow. And the only way to destroy them was to have the sharper teeth and the darker heart.

“Why did he stay in training if it was that bad?” “Because of Lore,” Van said. “He didn’t want to let her down, because she would have lost her training partner and had to leave the program. But more than that, he always wanted to see her. He always wanted to follow her, even if it was right into trouble.”

“And anyway, why are you so loyal to Lore?” Van pressed. “You barely knew anything about her past, and what little you did know was a lie.” “Not all of it,” Miles said. “I always knew her family had died, but none of the details about how, or what happened to her in the years after. It took a long time for her to open up to me at all. Like … months after Gil let me rent the spare room. I had to dig little by little, and it was worth it, because I love the soft heart I found under the somewhat surly surface. That part was never a lie. It’s really rare to find someone who accepts you completely, and I try to give that back to her.”

“He doesn’t want me to go too far.” “And you are not capable of determining that limit yourself?” Athena asked. “You rely on his judgment over your own?”

“He’s trying to protect me,” Lore said. It was what Castor had always done, as much as she’d tried, in her own way, to protect him. “From whom? From what?” Athena asked. “Yourself? All that you might become if you embrace who you are and not who he wishes you to be?”

The goddess seemed confounded by the question. “What is it you accuse me of with Medusa?” “Poseidon raped her in your temple, and instead of stopping him, instead of punishing him, you—” Lore choked on the word. “You made being the victim the worse crime. You made her a monster, and then you sent someone to kill her.”

They make us believe our lives are our own, even as they slip the collars around our necks.

But that moment, with him over me, that’s when I understood what that world was. There would always be a man deciding my fate, whether it was my father, an archon, or a husband.”

It had been rage that kept her alive and moving. Her rage had fed her when she went hungry.

“I gave her fury power,” Athena said quietly. Lore turned to her, confused. “I transformed Medusa,” Athena continued, “so that she would have protection against all those who would try to harm her.” “That’s bullshit. You didn’t give her a choice, did you?” Lore bit back. “And now history remembers her as a villain who deserved to die.” “No. That is what men have portrayed her as, through art, through tales,” Athena said. “They imagined her hideous because they feared to meet the true gaze of a woman, to witness the powerful storm that lives inside, waiting. She was not defeated by my uncle’s assault. She was merely reborn as a being who could gaze back at the world, unafraid.