She would always take care of the neighborhood that had taken care of her. It was part of the contract that came with being a New Yorker.
Lore felt Castor watching her again as they rounded another corner. She spied Bo the Bodega Cat waiting on their usual bench, but hurried Castor past the storefront to avoid Mr. Herrera seeing her bloodied and covered with dust and smoke residue.
Lore hesitated as they approached Martha’s.
“Come on,” she told him, leading Castor around to the side door. She knocked, trying to keep one eye on the street around them.
It took a few minutes, but Mel’s face appeared behind the door as it cracked open. Her eyes widened in shock at Lore’s appearance.
Lore gave her a hopeful smile.
“I thought you were my fruit delivery. Are you all right? What happened?” Mel blinked as she finally caught sight of Castor. “Um, hi.”
“Bike accident,” Lore lied. “I ate dirt when I collided with him. Do you mind if we use the bathroom to clean up? You know Miles—he’ll freak out if he sees me like this.”
“Of course.” Mel ushered them inside, hurrying past the kitchen, where Joe, the diner’s cook, was starting preparations for the dinner crowd. “Here, use the back one. Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the hospital?”
“We’re both fine,” Lore promised as she shut the small bathroom’s door behind them. “Thanks for this.”
“Yeah . . .” Mel said, her brow creased. “Call if you need anything, hear me?”
Castor waited until Lore was at the sink, splashing water on her face, to ask, “Who’s Miles?”
She looked up at him from underneath the paper towel she was using to dab at the cut on her forehead. “Friend and roommate.”
The new god nodded, leaning back against the door. He watched her silently, and Lore wondered if she had ever been so aware of another person outside a fight in her whole life. The size of him, his sheer immense presence, overwhelmed the small space.
She glanced up at him in the mirror, taking in his troubled expression and the tattered remains of what had once been luxurious robes.
“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “You had to go.”
“Did I?” he asked faintly.
“You’re no good to them dead,” Lore reminded him.
“As it turns out,” he said, “I’m apparently no good to them at all.”
Lore threw her wet paper towel at his face. He startled, looking at her in shock.
“You are the best thing to come out of the House of Achilles,” she told him. “Maybe the only good thing. Sometimes you just have to survive to fight another day. Even I knew those were bad odds, and you know how I feel about running from a fight.”
He sighed, resting his head back against the door. “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.”
Lore had let the Philip incident go because of the chaos that had come after, but she hadn’t forgotten it.
“You have to stay alive,” she told him. “If you want to help them, you have to live.”
Castor’s face was so beautiful, it was almost painful to look at. So she didn’t.
“And what about you?” he pressed. “Is that what you’re doing—getting back up and into the Agon after escaping it?”
“That’s rich coming from someone who wanted to rope me back in himself,” she told him.
“It was a mistake,” he told her. “You were out. I should have let you stay there, but I was selfish, and I wanted to see you. I needed to know that you were alive. But if I’m the reason you got this idea about going after Wrath into your head . . .”
Lore said nothing. She couldn’t, not with her jaw clenched so tight.
“Your parents wouldn’t want you to avenge them, and they wouldn’t want you to get trapped in the hell of being immortal. Of being hunted,” Castor told her. “They’d want you to live a free, full life.”
A cold tingle moved up from Lore’s fingertips and spread throughout her body. Her breathing hitched as she fought for the words against the familiar, crushing tide that rose in her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. They deserve to rest. They deserve— They were— It was a mistake.”
The words felt slow, almost lethargic compared to the speed of her thoughts. Castor put a hand on her shoulder. Lore tried to shrug it off, to step back, but the memory of her sisters’ faces rose up in her mind. The way they’d looked when she’d found them . . .
“Lore?”
“I’m— It’s fine. I’m fine,” Lore managed to get out. Her pulse beat hard and fast, until it clouded her vision with black. She tried to breathe through it, tried to remember where she was, but all she could see were Olympia and Damara, the dark holes where their eyes had been. The blood still wet on their cheeks, like tears.
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.