“You may be a god,” she told him, relishing the sight of his struggle. “But I’m the Perseides.”
Her adrenaline overpowered her reason. Lore dove forward with her sword, her heart blistering with the need to plunge it through his.
Wrath shoved off the aegis, meeting her blow with his own sword. Athena disappeared at the edge of her vision, sending a new wave of alarm through her.
Lore drove down harder, and saw the moment his eyes widened when she didn’t take a stance he recognized, and instead drove her knees down onto his lower stomach, just where his breastplate ended.
“Your biggest mistake was trapping yourself in this city with me,” Lore said.
“No more tricks, girl,” Wrath snarled, clenching his knees around her hips to flip her onto her back.
Lore tried to angle her sword up to drive it into his chest, but the blade slid off the armor covering his torso.
Wrath shifted with a yell, pinning her with his full body weight. But without the use of his other arm, there was nothing to brace himself with as she kneed him as hard as she could in his groin. Lore had just enough room to get a hand beneath herself and pull the small, finger-length canister out of her back pocket.
“Actually . . .” Lore thumbed the lid off the canister and sprayed a torrent of mace in his eyes. “Just one more trick.”
She dragged herself out from beneath him, kicking him onto his back as she stood. Lore clutched Mákhomai, raising it over his exposed throat. Years of anger, fear, and pain purified her mind until a single thought remained.
End him.
He deserved nothing less than what she was desperate to give him. Lore drove her blade down—
Only to stop the tip just before it pierced the exposed skin of his throat.
Lore drew in a shaking breath, trying to still her raging heart.
She could kill him—she knew that now. She could kill him and take his power, and use it to truly match Athena, blow for blow. She could burn her name into the memory of every hunter.
But she would never be free.
It was enough to know he had been beaten by her, a mere girl. That, to him, was a fate worse than death. Revenge created the Agon, but it wouldn’t be what ended it. Killing either of them would only continue the hunt for another cycle. For her, and for Castor.
The pressure broke inside her chest, like a sudden storm easing to light rain. She seized the aegis again and rose.
Wrath only growled, thrashing around with unspent rage.
The words reverberated through her again. A fate worse than death.
Lore turned to Athena slowly, the words ringing through her.
Suddenly, she knew. She understood.
What could sacrifice be for the gods, except to give up the one thing they truly desired beyond their own lives and power? To sacrifice that which they wanted most—a conquest final and fearsome.
The embers in Athena’s eyes glowed at the dark center of her helm.
Lore slid her arm free of the shield’s straps and held it out to the goddess.
“Take it,” Lore said.
The goddess did not move. She did not so much as draw a breath.
Lore moved closer to her, setting the aegis down between them before backing up. “What if I were to tell you that the only way to free yourself from the Agon was to take your fists and destroy this shield? To pound it into nothing but twisted metal and leather?”
The goddess didn’t move.
“You were willing to torture and kill two little girls for it. You were willing to murder my parents and countless others to hold it again,” Lore said. “I’m giving it to you, of my own free will. At least have the courage to pick it up.”
Athena took a single step forward, but caught herself.
“It has nothing to do with the poem, does it? Not really,” Lore told her, a strange calmness taking hold. “It doesn’t even summon your father, the way you’ve let Wrath believe.”
Wrath snarled behind her. “Is this true?”
“My lord,” Athena began.
“You can’t let go of it,” Lore continued, cutting her off. “Because it was a symbol of your father’s love. His pride in you. That’s what you want back, not the shield. That feeling you lost when you stood against him.”
“It is true,” Wrath said. His gaze was murderous as it fell on Athena.
The goddess didn’t seem to hear him. Her whole being was focused on where the aegis lay beneath the shallow water. The goddess’s expression turned tortured as the weight of her choice set in.
Athena could escape the Agon—and perhaps end it for all of them—but only by destroying the one thing that mattered most to her.
“Do it,” Lore told her. “It has to be you. You have to finish this!”
A blade appeared in Wrath’s hand, then winged out of it, spinning through the darkness.
No.
Lore felt the certainty of her decision before she recognized making it. In the sliver of time between one heartbeat and the next, she stepped into the dagger’s path.
The shock of it cutting into her chest savaged her, even before the pain took hold and blood poured from the wound. She collapsed onto her knees, into the water, but in the moment before she fell, a face flashed in her mind.
Castor.
Wrath roared as he pulled her from the water, slamming her down again. Water flew up around her, lashing at her from all sides until she was choking on it.
Dying—
Her body locked, twisting as she gasped for her next tortured breath. The sight of Athena split like a prism, spinning until, finally, Lore vomited and tasted blood.
Wrath ripped her from the water once more, bending her back over his knee. Her lower back cracked. Lore screamed.
She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t move. Agony tore into her.
“What have you done?” Athena’s voice sounded as though it was carried on the wind.
“It’s the hydra’s poison, Gray-Eyed One,” Wrath said, pulling the knife free from Lore’s chest as he dropped her into the water. He raised the blade over her chest, just above her heart. “Taken from a piece of the cloth given to Herakles. I coat all of my blades in it. Would you like a taste?”
“No,” Athena said quickly. “Think this through, my lord. Think of the aegis! It will disappear with her.”
“What use do I have for it now?” he said, glowering at her. “When my victory draws near? I cannot summon him and I will not be able to carry it. From this day on, I will only ever hold a sword.”
“Our victory.”
The words emerged through the fog of torment. Lore wasn’t sure if she had heard them, or imagined them into existence. Not until Athena spoke again.
“I am sure you meant to say our victory,” she spat.
The goddess stepped forward, leaning over the aegis. Her hand hovered for a beat, resisting. Then, as easy as drawing her next breath, Athena lifted it from the water, and returned it to her side.
“Just as I am sure that I did not give you my consent to kill this mortal.”
LORE’S MIND WAS A riot of fear and pain. Unable to completely trust her eyes, she focused on the sound of metal clashing against metal. She tried to move her body, to rise from the water that washed over her face again and again in a frenzied tide.
The two gods hurtled toward each other, only to be thrown back by the force of their blows.
“Bitch!” Wrath roared. “How dare you!”
Athena smashed the aegis into his breastplate hard enough to send a shower of sparks raining down. The new god flew as the shield roared, his massive body skidding across the tracks and water. She walked toward him slowly, enjoying the way he crawled toward the flat car, and the tank.
Wrath spun quickly, throwing one blade, then another. Athena was fast enough to deflect the first, but Lore couldn’t see what had become of the second before it splashed into the water. The goddess waited until he had climbed onto his feet, until he was an arm’s le
ngth away from the car—just close enough to believe, for a moment, he would reach it.
Athena, wrapped in ribbons of darkness, leaped high into the air, flipping above Wrath’s head, the dory steady in her hand. Her face showed no emotion or hesitation, and she did not need to look back once as she stabbed the spear’s sauroter behind her, ramming it through Wrath’s breastplate, his chest, and back out through his spine.
The new god’s sword clattered to the ground as he fell to his knees, his head hanging. Athena retrieved his blade from the water, then came to stand in front of him. She drew the aegis near his face, until he was forced to meet Medusa’s gaze.
Wrath lifted his hand. There was something dark clutched in it.
He squeezed it tighter, into a fist. There was a metallic groan as a valve at the back of the tank opened, and foul, oily chemicals spilled from it.
The subway car let out a loud clang as it suddenly rolled forward. It kicked up waves of water as it sped up down the track, leaving a trail of the sea fire behind it.
Wrath dropped the device and struggled to reach something else inside his armor—a lighter.
His bloodied fingers lit its small flame, and he snarled as he tossed it into the chemicals. A line of white-blue fire flared in front of him, blazing down the heart of the tunnel.
The air near Lore shimmered and turned scalding. Just before the car disappeared into the tunnel that would connect it to countless other tracks, she saw there was some sort of metal heat shield covering the back of the car where the chemicals burned. The shield was the only thing keeping the flames from igniting the tank and causing an explosion. For now.
Fire drifted toward her, but Lore couldn’t move. The word, the one she’d feared all her life, rang out in her mind. Powerless.
The air filled with smoke, but Lore could still make out Athena’s form as she raised Wrath’s sword.
“You,” he panted out, blood dribbling over his lips. “You—lose!”
“You die,” the goddess said, and, with her usual cold precision, cut the head from his body.
Lore closed her eyes against the heat growing around her. Agony shot down her spine and legs as she was dragged through the water. When she opened them again, the world was lit by fire and Athena was hovering over her.
The goddess didn’t look right to Lore. Her skin was clammy with beads of sweat, and the skin around a cut at her jaw was turning black. Even the glow of the goddess’s eyes seemed to dim.
Poison, Lore thought. She hadn’t escaped it after all.
Athena coughed and it was a vicious, wet sound. She seemed startled by it, pressing an uncertain hand against her chest. Blood dripped from her eyes, her nose, her mouth.
“Tell me—what to do,” the goddess demanded. “Tell me—how to—stop it.”
But Lore was beyond speaking. Her soul began to unravel from her body, the world fading.
The goddess gave Lore one last look, the skin between her eyebrows creasing, and rose. Lore was so sure that the goddess was leaving, that she was saving herself, that she released a sound like a wounded animal. Her breath rattled as she struggled for it.
But Athena returned a moment later, struggling to hold on to one of Wrath’s daggers.
For the first time, a story was playing out across the goddess’s face. Emotion rippled through the placid exterior. Anger. Regret. Acceptance.
The goddess slid the hilt into Lore’s hand, carefully closing her fingers over it, and her own hand over Lore’s.
Lore’s eyes widened as she stared up at her; her body seized with fear. With dread.
She wouldn’t . . . Athena would never do this, and even in her deepest hatred of her, even desperate for a way to protect her loved ones, Lore never would have wanted her to. She never wanted this.
“It must be this way,” Athena rasped out. Her body trembled violently now, trying to fight off the poison’s effects. “I am . . . lost. . . . You will be born again. You will have more time. Fight again . . . to the last. It is . . . the only . . . logical choice. The city . . . must be defended.”
The goddess positioned the point of the blade over her heart. She gave Lore the final choice.
Never free.
Lore shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to claw at the small, throbbing hope in her, the one she’d carried like a torch against impossible darkness. She wanted the life she’d fought so hard to create, and was as desperate for it as her next breath. She wanted to cry in a way she hadn’t since she was a child. She wanted her parents.
She wanted everything, but never this. Never this.
Lore had been born into this cage, and now she would die in it—if not her body, then her soul.
But the city had to be defended, and it was hers to protect.
She met Athena’s gaze and nodded.
The look the goddess gave Lore was sharp, ever-commanding. “Through the heart.”
Together, they plunged the dagger forward, the blow striking hard and true. The goddess shook, her eyes open, flashing silver as she saw something, felt something, beyond knowing.
It was a warrior’s kill.
A god’s final reckoning.
BREATH EXPLODED INTO LORE’S lungs, her chest expanding painfully as she drew in more and more air, trying to ease the boiling beneath her skin. Her heart became thunder, threatening to tear through her rib cage and skin.
Then her body roared with fire.
A storm of light spun down around Lore, swallowing her into its depths. Her body rose from the water. Veins of lightning traced over her limbs.
Athena’s mortal remains burned away to ash. The being that emerged from it, drifting up like light breaking over a sleeping land, was nearly indescribable and cast in pure, radiant power.
The goddess looked down at Lore one last time, reaching a hand toward the aegis. Between one heartbeat and the next, both vanished, leaving behind sparks that trembled in the darkness as they fell.
And then the world Lore had once known disappeared with them.
She screamed as the pain set in. Power rippled through her, consuming blood and muscle and bone. It was a hollowing. An eradication of every bit of matter that had once lived inside her.
The seconds dragged by, slowly regaining their speed. Lore felt her consciousness begin to go—to drift. The lightning, that unbridled power, was threading through her, threatening to tear her mortal body apart.
Lore didn’t know what she would be left with, only that she might not have the ability to touch the sea fire tank, let alone stop it.
“I need—” She had to shout over the maelstrom of whipping wind and rumbling forces around her. “I need to stay—I need a little longer—I need to stay!”
Power blasted down her spine as her body was dropped back into the burning water. Lore staggered upright. Inside her, something was thrashing, pulsing against the barrier of her skin.
Lore looked down at her hands. Strands of that same lightning danced over her knuckles and palms. She hadn’t realized how dull her senses had been until they awoke in her again. The air suddenly felt like a living creature, cool in places, damp in others, always moving, always brushing against her.
Her legs were primed as she took off at a run, exploding with unfamiliar strength and speed.
The subway car flew down the tracks, the fire trailing behind it. The flames began to climb up the stone walls, devouring supports and the tracks themselves.
Lore caught up to it just before it broke through the tunnel that would send it beneath Grand Central station. With a cry, she cut in front of it, bracing her hands against the flat edge of the car. Digging her feet into the tracks, she pushed back against the force of the engine.
The car sputtered and creaked as it struggled to press on. Lore set her jaw, releasing a ragged cry as she lifted her foot long enough to slam it down against the front-right wheel, and then the left, beating them both out of shape. She tipped the whole car forward, folding and crushing the metal down as if it we
re paper, until it could no longer move.
She snapped the restraints on the tank, pulling its massive body toward her. Lore hissed as the sea fire licked at her legs and bare arms, but she held on until she could crush the open valve and stop the flow of the sea-fire chemicals.
Lore rolled the tank as far into the station as her strength would allow, into water that wasn’t yet burning.
The flames couldn’t be doused by water. Her father had told her about sea fire, he had told her . . .
It could only be smothered by dirt. Starved of oxygen.
Lore turned and looked back into the empty tracks below Grand Central one last time. The distant platforms she could use to climb out of the burning hell and find the others.
She drew in a breath, bracing her hand against one wall of the tunnel.
Not free. The thought pierced her. Never free.
But the others would be.
Lore tore at the stone wall, punching her fists into it until the entrance to the tunnel rained down fractured stone and the sight of the station disappeared behind the wall of rubble.
The fire’s path was cut off for now, but it wouldn’t stop burning as long as there was water. If enough heat built up, it would collapse the streets above. She had to find a way to smother it. To starve it of oxygen.
Lore ran back the way she came. Heat tore at her from all sides, but she didn’t stop, not until she reached Track 61. The whole station was on fire; there was no end to it. There was no way to drain the water.
Yes, she realized, there is.
She wasn’t powerless.
With a deep breath of burning air, Lore waded out into the center of the station, gasping as the sea fire crawled along her clothes and skin. She dropped to her knees and pressed her fists against the ground hidden beneath the burning water.
She could send the water, the fires, deeper into the belly of the earth. Where there would be no air, and nothing but darkness to feed on.
Please, she thought, drawing a fist back. The electric feeling was still building in her core, only this time, Lore didn’t resist it.
She unleashed it.
Power gathered around her hand, glowing molten gold. She slammed it against the earth with a guttural scream. The ground roared back as it splintered. Spidery fractures glowed gold beneath the flames and water.
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