Tap-tap-tap.
Lore pushed harder with her training staff on the last strike. Castor retreated a step, his back foot slipping through the pool of sweat gathering beneath him.
“Again!” the instructor ordered. “Faster!”
Lore raised her staff once more. Castor was bent slightly at the waist, shaking his head. His eyes blinked rapidly, struggling to focus on her face.
She tilted her head, silently asking, Ready?
He brought his own staff up. She read the answer in the set of his mouth.
Lore began the drill again—tap high, tap center, tap low, over and over. Castor blocked her strikes, but as he slowed, she was forced to as well.
The quick clattering of the staffs around her served as the drumbeat to a song of battered shields and ringing blades. The room was hot with the afternoon sun pouring through the windows high on the walls. The other training classes were blurs around them. The stench of bodies, oil, and rubber mats was heavy in her lungs.
On the last tap, Lore tested her theory, hitting harder than she needed to. Castor lost his balance, slipping down onto his knees with a faint gasp.
Lore glanced back at their instructor. The man had his back to them as he circled their section of the training hall, giving corrections and faint praise. “Good, Abreas—harder, Theron—”
As Castor righted himself, Lore feigned a wrestling hold, leaning forward until their foreheads touched and she had a hand on the back of his neck. It was the only way she’d figured out how to talk to him between breaks.
“Are you all right?” she whispered. “If you’re sick you should have called
out.”
“I’m fine,” Castor promised. “My rank is bad enough without getting more points docked. And you wouldn’t have anyone to train with now that Van went home.”
Evander, one of Castor’s distant cousins, had come to stay at Thetis House for a few months in the lead-up to the Agon, but had been taken home by his parents after a disastrous series of training sessions. Lore had resented him for invading her time with Castor, but even more for the lessons the instructors had made her sit out so Castor and Evander could partner.
It had made her so angry—Evander couldn’t block a blow without flinching and covering his head. She deserved to train more than he did, even if she wasn’t born of the Achillides.
“Water!” the instructor said. “Quickly. We’ll finish with knife work.”
Lore took Castor’s staff from him before he could protest.
Go, her eyes ordered him. She nodded toward the long bench at the back of the room where their water bottles were lined up. Castor waited for her anyway.
“Give it up, Cassie,” came a snide voice. “You can’t even keep up with a girl anymore.”
“Jealous, Orestes?” Castor shot back, still breathing hard. “As the instructors say, we’re only as good as our partners. Poor Sabas has no chance, does he?”
“Better anyone than a sick, weak worm,” Orestes said. “Hurry up and die already, will you? If your mother hadn’t been such a coward she would have left you on a hill somewhere.”
Lore slammed her water bottle down on the bench and rounded on him. Castor kept a faint hold on her wrist, stopping her.
“You would know all about that,” Castor said, “living so bravely with half a brain. Don’t worry, no one notices that you still haven’t mastered the first-year sword skills. We’re all pulling for you, though.”
Their class traded whispers around them, glancing back at the instructor to see if the man would intervene. He was busy consulting with another instructor. Others grinned, anticipating the fight to come.
“At least I’m not going to become a snake bride,” Orestes snapped.
Lore drew in a sharp breath. Castor glanced at her, dark brows furrowed. Orestes looked like the crow who’d caught the worm.
“She didn’t tell you?” he said as they made their way back toward the thin training mats. “This is her last day here. Patér is furious that her ass of a father agreed to marry her off to the archon of the Kadmides. The elders met last night and agreed to kick her out. My father told me so. The only reason they didn’t send her home this morning is because her father begged and begged for one last day.”
Hurt and confusion wrestled on Castor’s face as he watched her, waiting for confirmation. Lore’s only heated with a flush of blood.
“It’s not true,” she told him. “It’s not!”
She hadn’t told him about the meeting with the Kadmides because . . . because she still didn’t really understand what had happened. But her father would refuse Aristos Kadmou’s offer. He would never give her to him.
“No one refuses the Kadmides archon,” Orestes told her smugly. “Maybe he’ll smother you while he ruts over you like—”
Castor slammed his fist into the side of Orestes’s head, knocking him sideways. The others were brimming with glee as Orestes tackled Castor.
If he had been at his full strength, Castor never would have fallen the way he did then.
“Enough!” the instructor said. “Take your positions. We’ll start again—”
But Castor didn’t move. Couldn’t move.
“Cas?” Lore said.
He didn’t respond. His eyes rolled back and his whole body began to convulse.
Lore dropped to her knees beside him, trying to hold him still.
“What did you do?” she screamed at Orestes. But even the boy seemed shocked. Their instructor dropped a hand beneath Castor’s head to keep it from banging against the wood floor.
“Call for the healer on duty!” he barked at one of the trainees.
“What did you do?” she demanded again. Orestes backed away as she lunged at him, beating her fists into Orestes’s stomach. It was the last thing she remembered before her mind blacked out. The next she knew, her instructor had his arms locked around her center and had lifted her off Orestes. The boy’s face was a bloody, pulpy mess. Her hands were covered in it.
“I’ll kill you,” she swore. Orestes coughed, spitting up snot and blood. His own hetaîros knelt beside him, wide-eyed as he stared at Lore.
“You’ll have to wait another seven years to try, little gorgon,” her instructor growled. “If the serpent ever lets you out of his den.”
Lore tried to break out of his grip, but he had a master’s hold on her. Her hand strained toward Castor, but she couldn’t see him, only his sandaled feet sticking out among those gathered around him.
Hours later, after Healer Kallias had come bringing unwelcome news, Lore was finally allowed into the rooms Castor and his father shared at Thetis House to see him.
Lore stood to the left of his bed, watching the rise and fall of his chest, counting them as she would her steps in a drill. Chiron slept at Castor’s feet. He licked at her hand as she gave him a good scratch behind his ears.
“Do you think I was wrong?” she whispered to him. She saw the no in Chiron’s dark eyes, and agreed.
Her heart hammered in her chest, echoing the blows she had given Orestes. She touched the rough bandages Castor’s father had wrapped around her knuckles after Healer Kallias had refused to. Orestes, apparently, was her nephew.
She heard her parents arrive through the crack in the bedroom door. As the building’s caretaker, Castor’s father could slip them in through a side entrance and the service elevator, lessening their chances of being seen by the Achillides. Lore was ashamed by how badly she wanted to go to her mother—to be held until the healer’s words disappeared.
There is nothing more to be done. No Unblooded treatment can cure him.
Fragments of their hushed conversation drifted through the room, interrupted by the soft whirring and beeping of the strange medical devices around Castor’s bed. Lore drifted toward the door, ears straining to hear them, but reading half of the words on their lips, the way she and Castor had taught themselves to in order to spy on the bloodline’s elders. A sound like radio static grew in her ears
.
“What am I supposed to do?” Castor’s father whispered. “Is he suffering because I can’t let him go? Is this only hubris, thinking I can change an impossible outcome?”
“No, of course not,” Lore’s mother replied, her voice low and soothing as she clasped his hands between her own. “There is always hope.”
“Hope has abandoned us,” Cleon said. “The elders informed me that they will no longer pay for treatment, and he is too weak to travel abroad to those who might help us.”
Lore’s hands curled into fists at her sides, and her whole body, from her skin down to her soul, began to vibrate with fury. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be—
“There’s nothing to be done but surrender to the weaving of the Fates and allow him the dignity of death,” Cleon said.
“No!” She burst out from behind the door. Chiron barked behind her, startled by the noise and movement. Her body felt like it might explode as she lashed out at Castor’s pathetic excuse for a father. He wanted Castor to die—he was going to let Castor go. A hunter always fought, like the men in the legend; they were never supposed to give up.
“Stop this, Melora,” her father ordered, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back. “Stop this at once!”
“You coward!” Lore snarled at Cleon, struggling against her father’s hand. “Hades take you, you soft-bellied dog! You’re the one who deserves to die, not him!”
“Melora!” her mother said, aghast.
But Castor’s father only wept. “I wish he would, I wish he would. . . .”
“Apologize at once,” her father said, shifting her toward Cleon Achilleos.
Lore turned her head away, her jaw clenched. No. The gods hated cowards, and so did she.
Her father drew her back into the bedroom with a sharp “Stay here until you calm down.”
The door shut behind him. Lore banged both hands against it, hot tears streaking down her cheeks. Inside her was a riot of pain and confusion, and she couldn’t stand it.
The instructors said, over and over, that there was no greater dishonor than cowardice. Castor’s father might give up, but she wouldn’t. She would bring Castor to every doctor in the city if she had to carry him on her back. She would fight until her body gave out, and then she would crawl if she had to.
“He’s just sad, Lore.”
Castor’s voice was barely a whisper by the time it reached her.
Lore looked up, dashing the tears in her eyes against her arm. She went to him, crawling onto the narrow bed. Castor shifted over on the mattress as much as he could to make room for her. She lay back, her hands still shaking as she let them rest on her stomach. Chiron let out a grumpy noise as he moved to make room for her feet.
“I don’t care,” Lore whispered, turning to look at him. His skin was still pale, almost as translucent as the tubes in his nose feeding him oxygen. But then he smiled, and it made her feel a little better.
“You’ll be fine,” she told him. “There’s always another way.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not this time.”
She pressed her hands hard against her stomach to force them to be still. “I have an idea for how we can watch the Awakening without anyone knowing.”
“Healer Kallias said I can’t leave this bed,” Castor said. “That . . . I need to rest.”
“And then,” Lore continued, sitting up. The words babbled out of her, but she didn’t care. “After that, we can go buy ice cream in that place near our apartment that’s always open. Our neighbor gave me a few dollars for watering her plants while she was out of town—”
“Lore,” he said, and then used that word she hated almost more than any other. “Stop. . . . It’s okay. Really.”
She drew in a deep breath. Something wild clawed at the inside of her chest. “It’s not okay! You’ll be fine. Healer Kallias is stupid. She doesn’t know anything.”
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “I’ll see my mother again. I won’t be alone. I’m not afraid.”
“I won’t let you go,” she told him, her voice low with promise. She wouldn’t. He was her friend and hetaîros, her companion and partner in all things. She would defend him if he fell, cut at anything or anyone who threatened him; her blade was his, and his hers.
“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.”
He gave a small shrug, but even his little grin fell as silence descended over them, and his breathing became more labored.
“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.”
Her hand closed around his thin wrist, as if she could keep him alive by the force of her will alone. His pulse fluttered beneath her fingertips.
He watched her, his lips pale as they pressed into a thin, bloodless line. He was fighting his exhaustion, blinking against the pull of it. She didn’t like that, either, so Lore forced herself to nod.
“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.
FOR ONE TERRIBLE MOMENT, Lore could not move, could not think, could not do anything other than stare at the place where Castor had been standing. The rain washed the puddle of his blood away, feeding it to the growing stain in the water below.
Dead.
Just beyond the pond stood a dozen hunters. Some wore masks—but not Iro. Not the tall male hunter who stood beside her. The one who still had his crossbow trained in her direction.
Across the distance, through the rain, Lore’s gaze met that of her friend. Iro stared up at her, her eyes defiant, her face cold.
“Get down!” Athena was yelling to her. “Melora!”
Another arrow flew, this time from a different hunter. It sliced along Lore’s upper arm. The searing pain tore through her shock. Iro barked something at the hunters, a few of whom scattered, falling back into the city streets. The others turned their bows away from Lore, toward where Athena sheltered behind a tree.
More arrows flew. Athena sank even lower, careful to keep her head covered as the tree trunk splintered above her.
Lore’s whole body throbbed with her heartbeat. She couldn’t seem to bring her mind back into her body.
Dead.
“We must leave this place,” Athena called to her. She slid something across the wet distance between them. Lore stared down at the silver of Artemis’s hunting knife, watching the rain slide off it.
Dead.
A small flame grew at the center of her chest. She held on to that, she let it burn, because it was something in that numb nothingness. Lore held it until she recognized it for what it was.
Fury.
She seized the knife and stood, keeping low among the brush. Every part of her was straining to rush forward and cut the killer’s throat. To punish Iro. It would be justified. Demanded, even, by the rules of their hunt.
Iro and the hunter who had fired the killing shot stepped over the ledge of the pond and trudged forward through the relentless rain. He dropped his bow and unsheathed a sword slowly, his gaze fixed on Castor’s dark shape face-down in the water. Iro had a dory in her other hand, and used it to check her balan
ce as they made their way across the pond’s unseen basin.
Weapons they had taken from the Kadmides, at Lore’s insistence.
And they had repaid her by doing this. By taking Castor from her.
Her head pounded with the blistering force of her thoughts. Lore reached the lower level of the park, riding the river of mud, rain, and loose rocks down to the edge of the pond.
“Iro Odysseos!” she shouted, her voice hoarse.
Iro spun as Lore jumped into the water, raising her dory. She waved back the other hunters hovering by the pond. “Stay back, Lore!”
“How could you?” Lore snarled. “After everything we did for you—”
Her foot slid against something long and thin in the soft bottom of the pond. An electric trill moved up her spine when she realized what it was.
Athena’s dory.
She pulled it up with her foot, lifting it from the water with relish. The length of the spear would give her the biggest advantage over the hunter.
“We need a god in our bloodline,” Iro shouted back to her. “You’ve turned your back on this world, but we haven’t! If we’re to ever repay Wrath for what he did to our line, we need our own protector!”
Lore turned the dory in her hands, still striding toward her. The hunter beside Iro shifted, uncertain of what to do.
“You couldn’t even do the dirty work yourself,” Lore snarled. “You let a man kill him for you.”
“I had hoped it would be Artemis, or Athena,” Iro said, fighting for a measure of calm in her voice. She didn’t back away, even as Lore threw the knife in her left hand, flinging it into the other Odysseide hunter’s throat.
He went down with a startled gasp, choking on his own blood. Iro whirled back to Lore, shocked.
“You’ll—you’ll ascend,” Iro managed to get out. “Why hasn’t the power taken hold . . . ?”
The words washed over Lore as if they had been spoken in a language she couldn’t understand. There was nothing else in her world aside from the weapon in her hand and Iro.
Lore whipped the dory’s sauroter up, catching Iro under the chin and slicing the right side of her face. She might have split the girl’s eye like a grape if Iro hadn’t leaned back, slamming the staff of her own dory against Lore’s to drive it away.
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