We can still do both, Lore thought. We just have to act fast—
Athena lowered her head and charged into the fray with a ferocious cry, only to be brought up short as the heat of Castor’s blast threw her back.
Screams filled the air. The Kadmides fell to the ground, pierced with glass and shrapnel, and others fled, but not far—Castor’s power split, crackling and writhing across the ground like lightning scoring the land. It caught them in its snare.
Lore stumbled forward, shielding her eyes as she searched for Wrath and Iro. The tile and cement caved, sending the escaping hunters down into the lower level. They disappeared into smoke and darkness.
“Where is he?” Athena thundered.
Four Kadmides rushed toward her, blades raised, but Athena was faster, slashing them across their chests with her dory. Lore struggled against the waves of heat roiling off the molten core of Castor’s power blast. She caught sight of Wrath’s outline through the wall of smoke.
A hunter charged toward her, and Lore ducked to avoid his sword. A sharp pain lanced through her shoulder as the blade narrowly missed her neck, and he spun away again, vanishing so completely it was as if the swirling clouds of ash had swallowed him.
But Lore forgot him as she heard Iro’s desperate voice call out, “Papa!”
“Here—” Lore called to Athena. The goddess was still cutting through the remaining Kadmides, her eyes burning, the lines of her face set deep with the pleasure of her fight. “They’re here!”
Lore swept her dory beneath the feet of a nearby hunter, sending him stumbling into a vein of burning power. She coughed, choking on the thick smoke as she struggled forward.
“Iro!” she called. “Iro!”
But it was Heartkeeper’s stricken voice that reached her first. “Don’t look! Iro, don’t—”
Iro screamed.
By the time Lore reached her, Heartkeeper’s remains were at her feet, his torso cleaved into two. The girl knelt slowly, her face rigid with shock. Her hands shook as they reached for his face.
And Wrath was nowhere.
Castor’s power abated, leaving fires and a few last lashes of fury in its wake. Lore looked up, searching through the rising smoke and the dome’s burnt-out frame, a fresh wave of dread rolling through her. The only reason Castor would stop attacking was if the Kadmides had reached the roof and he himself was in danger.
“Where are you, Godkiller?” Athena bellowed into the dark chaos around them. “Stand and fight, coward!”
Lore banded her arms over Iro’s chest, pulling her back. “It’s me—it’s Lore! We have to get out of here! Iro, we have to run—”
Iro broke free of her grip, spinning around to face her. She had the dory out of Lore’s hand and the tip against her throat in the span of a heartbeat.
Lore saw the exact moment her shock wore off, and the other girl recognized her.
A tremor grew in Iro’s body as she held Lore’s gaze. There was a bruise beneath her left eye, and her skin was streaked with sweat and grime. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, the tendons in her neck bulging with the panic of a trapped animal. “You can’t be here! You need to leave! He can’t see you!”
Athena stormed toward them from behind, scattering the smoke and embers. Without a word, she lifted the shaft of her dory and knocked it into the back of Iro’s head. The girl slumped forward into Lore’s arms.
“The imposter has fled,” Athena told her, visibly aggravated. “And now so must we. If the false Apollo could control his power, he may have been able to stop him. Whether intentionally or not, he has sabotaged our efforts.”
“That’s not true—” Lore began.
The goddess strode toward the waiting vault, stepping over the bodies and debris in her way. Lore knelt, lifting Iro over her shoulder. She bit back a cry of pain as the girl’s weight settled there, but it disappeared as soon as she began to run.
They had just reached the safe room when Lore felt a pressure at the base of her neck. She turned slowly.
Wrath appeared again amidst the destruction and eddies of thick smoke. He came toward them, that slow, long stride, closer—closer—
Her hand found the door’s security panel and stilled. She forgot the reason they had come. She forgot the weight of Iro, and the burning in her lungs. She didn’t call out to Athena. She couldn’t speak at all with terror’s cold hands wrapped around her throat.
Behind him, the remaining Kadmides were regrouping, gathering like shadows.
The goddess realized Lore wasn’t following and turned. Seeing Wrath, she reached for Iro’s blade and threw it with all her strength. Wrath turned, letting it graze his cheek as it tore through the air beside him.
Aristos Kadmou had been the monster inside the maze of her mind for so long, she had a near-perfect memory of his scarred face and the way his coarse, dark hair had been shot through with gray. He looked younger now than Lore remembered, as if immortality had drawn him back through the decades.
But there were echoes of him lingering there—the low, thick eyebrows. The deep olive tone of his skin. A face shaped like a cut diamond.
Through the maelstrom of glass fire swirling around him, his golden eyes met hers, and he smiled.
Found you.
Lore punched her fist against the security panel and the door slammed shut.
HER FATHER WOULDN’T TELL her where they were going.
Lore dutifully carried the small parcel her mother had handed her and trailed a step after him. Her father loved to smile, but he hadn’t laughed at all that morning. He and Mama had barely spoken at all. Now his shoulder blades were bunched together like wasp wings. Judging by the expression on his face, she was afraid to ask for their destination, on the chance she might get stung by a sharp word.
She didn’t like it. Not at all.
April had drawn out all of the city’s secret life. Lore carefully avoided the small flowers and grass that pressed themselves up through the cracks in the sidewalk. The songbirds high up in the trees along their street greeted her
as she passed. Lore smiled at them.
Though Lore was older, and taller, her view of her papa never seemed to change. He looked as big and strong as any of the midtown buildings that cut at the sky like shining glass knives.
Lore hurried to match the pace of her father’s long strides. After a moment, though, he stopped to wait for her. When Lore reached him, her father cupped a hand behind her head, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She finally relaxed.