Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

Her opponent was a boy about her age—all soft, unmarked skin and unearned confidence. He’d laughed, crooking a finger at her as he’d chosen her out of all of Frankie’s available fighters. Lore had decided to destroy him and lay waste to whatever tattered bit of his pride remained well before he ever called her baby girl and blew her a drunken kiss.

“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?”

“You—you stupid bi—” The boy choked a little on his mouth guard. Lore had wondered how long it would take before he melted down, and now she had her answer: five minutes. “I’m sure you’re not going to call me that,” she said, circling him, “when you’re the one on all fours.”

Lore turned back toward the boy, reminding herself that she couldn’t kill him. She could, however, break his pretty little nose. Which, to the cheers of the crowd, she did.

Apodidraskinda. A child’s game. Hide-and-seek. A challenge. Come find me. Lore dropped the cup into a nearby trash can and walked away.

I was actually talking about the other one.” “The other one,” she repeated. Her heart gave a hard kick. “The guy who looked like he’d been molded out of every single one of my boyhood fantasies,” Miles clarified helpfully.

Your friend wasn’t the guy I beat up, right?” she asked. “Just checking.” “No, but I have never been so simultaneously amazed and terrified in my whole life,” Miles said.

As far as Lore was concerned, free food tasted the best, but it was clear the goddess didn’t share that opinion. She took an experimental bite, and all six feet of her shuddered. Ever loyal, even in the face of years of deception, Miles took a big bite of his own and declared, “Best bacon I’ve ever had.” “If you don’t want it, don’t eat it,” Lore told Athena coldly. The goddess sipped at her water, her lips curling into a sneer. “It’s the sensation,” Athena said, forcing herself to swallow a small bite of egg. “To lower myself to such … base needs. To need such bland, repulsive victuals or feel hollow. Feel pain. It is intolerable.” “Yeah, well,” Lore said, “intolerable pretty much sums up a lot of human existence.”

Lore knew to turn even before she heard the faint gasps. A sudden warmth passed over her skin, an incendiary power that set every nerve in her body ablaze. He descended the stairs the way the first ray of sunlight breaks through a window at morning. His form was immaculate—tall, corded with muscles, and a face that echoed in the sweetest part of her memory. Castor.

Lore picked up one of the nearby washcloths and, after wetting it, began to clean the blood from his face. Castor did the same for her, his touch gentle. Their eyes met, and they grinned.

His bloodline had adorned him in a glimmering white chiton, its silk embroidered with golden symbols of his new divinity. One shoulder and part of his smooth, muscled chest were exposed, and his arms and legs were left bare save for the gleaming gauntlets around his wrists and the straps of his sandals. The effect was devastating, even before she noticed the crown of gold laurel leaves nestled in the dark waves of his hair.

But it’s not Cas, she reminded herself. Not anymore. Whoever he had been, whatever he might have become, he was something else now. Lore didn’t understand how she had missed it before—how strange it was for him to tower over her in such peak physical form when the Blooded healers and Unblooded doctors, all those years ago, had been certain death could take him at any moment. She’d even excused the sparks of power in his eyes as being nothing more than his dark irises catching the restaurant basement’s lights. She’d woven a tale she could believe. She’d seen a ghost in place of a god.

“I’m not going to leave,” Castor said. “It doesn’t matter what I think of them, or what they think of me. I do have a responsibility to them.” “Are you a complete idiot,” Lore asked seriously, “or has the smoke gone to your head?” “Charming as always, Melora,” Van said.

Van raised his gloved hand and tilted his head, studying her in a way Lore hated. She had to resist squirming as he said, “The real issue here is that you don’t believe that you can protect him, isn’t it? I never took you for a coward, Melora.” “Oh, go to the crows, Evander,” she said. “I have enough problems as it is.”

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.

“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.”

“That was a terrible joke, by the way.” “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got seven years’ worth saved up.” “Is that a threat?” she asked. The air warmed around her. That was the only reason her skin heated with the smile he sent her way.

“Nike? Really?” “You’re not exactly easy to shop for,” Van told him, gesturing to Castor’s size. “It was the only thing I knew would fit. Besides, we could use a little victory on our side.”

“We’re going to my house. But you’re going to have to listen to me very carefully and do exactly what I say when we get there.” “Why?” Van asked. “Because if we break your rules, you’ll kick us out?” “No,” Lore said evenly, “because, if you don’t, the god who’s already in the house is going to kill you both.” Castor choked on his food, pounding a fist to his chest. “Surely, I just misheard you …” Van began. “Surely.”

They both stared at her, silent. “Oh,” Van said. “Well, that’s great. Aside from, of course, you dying if she does during a week when that’s the principal goal of almost a thousand people. Otherwise a stellar plan, Melora.”

Athena wasn’t at her most terrifying when her skin was flushed with fury, or she was snarling deadly promises. It was in moments like this one, when her eyes cooled and her body went still with a predator’s confidence that nothing would escape it.

“I may be new to all of this, but I’m not useless,” Miles said. “How about you get to know me for longer than ten seconds?” “I don’t need more than ten seconds,” Van said.

“I won’t swear a binding oath to you,” Castor said, finally. “But as your life is tied to Lore’s, I cannot—and will not—allow you to die.”

“Is that a man or a mustachioed pug in a suit?” Miles asked carefully. To Lore’s surprise—and even, it appeared, Van’s—Van let out a sharp bark of laughter. He recovered quickly, pressing his lips together as if to completely erase the smile.

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

“That is not Castor,” Iro spat. “That is not your friend.” “Yes, he is,” Lore said, coming to stand beside him. “He’s Castor the way Heartkeeper was your father.” “He—he wasn’t—” Iro said, struggling for the words. “He is—he was—my lord. Our protector. He …” “He was your father,” Lore repeated.

Lore hated her temper more than she hated any other part of herself—how quick she moved from spark to flash, incinerating everyone around her.

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.

In the years they’d trained together, Lore had come to know his body as well as her own. But every part of him felt like a revelation to her now, something she needed but hadn’t known to want. They were back to sparring, trying to gain control, to drive the kiss. “Lore,” he murmured. “Lore—” Castor pulled back so suddenly it left her unsteady on her feet. Lore was still reaching for him, disoriented and desperate, when he held up a hand to stop her. There was something almost heart-breaking in the way he looked at her then. “Do that again when you mean it, Golden,” he rasped. “When it’s not to distract me.”

Heaps of dark asphalt, the mangled yellow remains of a taxi, and blocks of concrete had fallen in a ring of destruction around her. The chaos was just outside a circle of intense, crackling light that surrounded her like a protective barrier. Lore craned her head back. She knew this power. “Cas?” she choked out. Castor stood hunched over her, his arms up, his palms out-stretched. Above him, trying to drive down through the new god’s barrier, was a massive slab of concrete. It bobbed in the air, riding the blasting heat and light. It was the source of the sound she had heard before, not rushing sand. The concrete was being incinerated to a fine dust. It poured down along the edges of the barrier and piled up around it. “Don’t. Move,” Castor got out between gritted teeth.

Athena stood a dozen feet away. Her arms were raised above her head, bearing the weight of a massive piece of a nearby building’s stone facade. It hovered over those carrying the victims and the injured away from the site of the explosion. If anyone noticed the massive display of power, they were too grateful to be alive to fixate on it.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” Lore said. “About you not caring. Thank you for helping those people.” Athena might have hated the mortals who had rejected her, but she hadn’t relinquished her sacred role. Pallas Athena, the dread defender of cities. “I shall always do what must be done,” Athena said. “Yet the question remains—will you?”

Don’t let them pull you back in, Castor had warned her. There’s nothing but shadows for you here now. But he didn’t understand what Lore finally did. 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.

Her hair was wild and covered in pale dust. Her skin had lost most of its color and her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with bruises, as if she’d fought the night itself with fists and lost. She was surprised no one they’d passed had tried calling emergency services on them, because Lore had never looked more frightening in her life. Or more like a hunter.

“He put his hands on me … He forced his mouth on mine and pinned me to the desk. He was bigger. Heavier. And I thought, I am not special, or chosen. That was the shield I’d used against the truth for years—the certainty that I was meant for something more. 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.” The goddess’s eyes glowed, the sparks flaring into riotous spirals. It made Lore think of the fire in the office again, how much brighter it had seemed as her terror set in. “I never had a choice,” Lore said.

“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. Is that not what your own line did for centuries, staring out from behind her mask?” Lore almost recoiled as her words sank in.

“Your ancestors carried the shield that bore her head,” Athena said. “They wielded her power until they lost her. If the shield should be carried by anyone, it should be you—you, the one who knows the darkness of men yet refuses to be afraid.”

The dogs circled them. The ones at the back edged forward, closer, while those in front of them turned and started down the trail. Not to guide them, she realized, but to keep them from escaping. “Are we just standing here like assholes and waiting for her to come kill us?” Lore said, removing the knife from the sheath strapped to her leg. “Come on.”

“She is not a beast to be soothed,” Athena warned. “When Apollo fell, her mind frayed and she became half a soul.”

She raised her bow, turning the nocked arrow toward Miles. “No!” Van leaped over the bench and ran for the pond, splashing into the dank water as Artemis let her arrow fly.

Artemis moved with the grace of a stag and the uncontrolled fury of a raging boar. Where Lore could occasionally see a touch of humanity in Athena’s calculations, there was nothing but animal in Artemis. She was incomprehensible in what one of the ancient writers had described as her cruel mysteries. She was as unpredictable and merciless as nature itself.

“Oh, you fool!” Artemis sneered. “You cannot even see the truth before you. The Agon cannot be won. It cannot be escaped. It is our own Tartarus.”

“Sister, have you forgotten? Can you not see it, even now? The first light breaking from high above the clouds, the way it swept over the gardens and halls of our home, the purest of golds … the air sweet with incense and smoke … the hearth, ever-burning … the world below us, so green and vast with promise … our unconquerable father, the others …”

“What do we do? Do you want me to cut her down so you can … so you can bury her until the Agon ends?” “How do you bury a god?” Athena said. “She was power, not flesh. This was little more than a crude vessel. Now she is … free.” And, Lore realized, Athena was the last of the original nine.

Suddenly, Lore heard a whirring. At first, she thought it was the wind picking up again, rasping through the branches and stones. Then came the searing pain in her left shoulder. Lore looked down in disbelief at the new split in her shirt, at the blood welling at her shoulder. Behind her, an arrow shivered where it had struck the trunk of a tree. “Lore—” Castor’s expression was pained and frightened. She watched, her hand still outstretched, as blood blossomed on his drenched shirt, pouring from a single gaping wound on the left side of his chest. Through his heart. Lore screamed, surging forward to catch his arm, but she was too slow. His lips formed a last, silent word. Lore. The life left his eyes, extinguishing the sparks of power. Castor slid back over the edge of the outcrop, into the water below.

EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME WTF

“Hey,” he said softly. “Did you hear the one about the dancing dogs?” Lore’s brow furrowed as her spiraling thoughts suddenly stopped. “What?” His smile was weak, but still there. “No one wanted to partner with them because they all had two left feet.” Lore shook her head. Even Chiron seemed to groan. “Castor Achilleos, that is the worst joke you have ever told.”

“You won’t die,” Lore whispered. “You won’t. And if you do, I’ll follow you to the Underworld and drag you back. I’m not scared, either. I’m not scared of anything.”

“No,” he said. “No, Lore—swear you won’t.” When she didn’t, he gripped her by the back of the neck, bringing their foreheads together. His hand shook from the effort it took, but Lore pretended not to notice. “Swear it,” he whispered. His eyelashes were dark against his cheek as he closed his eyes. The tension in Castor’s body released with sleep, but her mind, her very soul, blazed. “I know my fate,” she whispered to him. And I will change yours.

“This is not the rivers,” Athena said, her face shadowed. “It is a god.” “Tidebringer,” Lore whispered. The goddess nodded. “Evander of the Achillides was mistaken. The false Poseidon lives, and she is allied with our enemy.”

Lore turned back toward Morningside Heights, her body straining with the need to move. “So we hunt.” “So we hunt,” Athena echoed, and followed.