“Right . . .” she said, somehow having forgotten that would still be a problem. “Right.”

“Did the Odysseides’ runner have the other things I asked Iro to get from my stash?” Van asked.

“She did indeed,” Miles said. He handed them both a small wire cutter and a pen-size flashlight.

“This is a lot more powerful than it looks,” Van explained, taking Castor’s flashlight. “At its highest setting, it’ll momentarily blind someone, but it’ll be fine to use as a flashlight at its lower setting.”

Lore tucked both her flashlight and the wire cutter into the back pockets of her jeans.

“Couldn’t find leather straps, but here’s some tape, if you think you’ll need it to support your wrists and hands,” Van said.

When they’d trained in hand-to-hand combat, they’d always worn himantes, strips of leather wrapped to protect their knuckles and wrists. The tape would be more flexible, making it easier to keep her grip on her sword.

“Thank you,” Lore said, taking it from him.

“And last but not least,” Van said, pulling out two little devices on key rings, one gold, the other silver. They would have looked like garage openers if not for the indentations that marked the speakers. “If you pull the cord out of these and hit the button, it lets out a one-hundred-and-forty-decibel alarm.”

“What, no mace?” Lore joked.

“Oh! Actually . . .” Miles slid a small tube out of his jacket. He opened her hand and closed her fingers around it. “I thought you’d enjoy using it.”

“You know me so well,” Lore said.

“We should be able to track you by sharing locations with Lore’s phone,” Van said. “Service may cut out, though, depending on where and how deep you are.”

Lore nodded. “Thank you for this. All of this.”

“It may not be enough,” Van said. “But it was the best we could do, under the circumstances.”

The group held off on their good-byes until they reached Forty-Second Street and Eleventh Avenue. Miles would be heading east, toward Grand Central, Van would be meeting Iro and the combined remnants of the Houses of Odysseus and Achilles to the west, near the piers, and Lore and Castor would be entering the subway at Thirty-Fourth Street and walking the 7 train’s line to approach the station from underground.

Just before they split up, Lore drew Miles away from the others.

“Once you warn everyone, try to get off this island,” she said. “If something happens and you’re caught in the blast . . .”

“I won’t be,” Miles told her. “But please promise me you’ll be all right.”

Lore hugged him tight. “I’ll be fine. After this, we’ll go do all that stupid tourist stuff I never wanted to do, okay? So you need to be fine, too.”

Miles managed a small smile. “I hope you’re hungry for some Coney Island cotton candy.”

Lore’s face twisted at the thought. He hugged her one last time, then turned. Castor and Van were across the street, clasping one another’s arms in the bloodline’s secret greeting and farewell. Van’s face turned serious at whatever Castor was saying, and he visibly struggled to keep his expression in check.

When they were finished, Lore and Van each raised a hand to one another in farewell.

“Oh, to hell with it,” she heard Miles mutter. “If there’s a chance we’re all going to die—”

He crossed the street in long, purposeful strides, passing Castor without acknowledging him. The new god looked back as he came toward Lore, apparently just as confused as her.

Van had his back to them and was rooting through his bag, searching for something. Miles stopped behind him and reached up to tap his shoulder.

As he turned, Van’s brows rose at the sight of Miles and a small, expectant smile lit his face at something Miles said. There was a beat of utter stillness, then Van took Miles’s face between his hands and leaned down for a searing kiss.

Lore’s mouth fell open as she watched it all unfold. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Castor echoed slowly. “Well . . . well.”

Van wrapped his arms around Miles, giving himself over to the embrace, but Miles reluctantly pulled back and straightened.

“Now,” Miles said, “we can go.”

Castor whispered what sounded like a soft prayer in the ancient tongue as the two of them parted, heading in opposite directions. As Van passed by them one last time, his expression was still dazed.

“I guess that’s our cue, too,” Lore said.

He nodded.

They had covered the aegis in a bedsheet for the walk over, but now Lore removed it, drawing the shield tight to her body.

She looked up at Castor, lacing their fingers together as they continued in silence, moving through the floodwaters until they reached the 7 train’s Thirty-Fourth Street station.

Castor melted the lock that kept the security gate in place, lifting it enough for them to pass beneath. Water rushed down the steps into the station, but Lore was surprised to find that it wasn’t completely submerged. The subway must have had some way of slowly draining; there was only about three feet of water on the tracks themselves.

“With it, or upon it, right?” Lore said lightly, adjusting the aegis’s straps so she could carry it on her back.

With it, or upon it. It was what countless Spartan mothers had said to their sons and husbands as they handed them their shields before battle. For a society that loathed rhipsaspides—shield droppers who turned coward and threw them down to escape, or those men who lost them in the fight—there were two avenues for returning home: victorious, or carried home dead upon your shield.

Castor gripped her arm, forcing her to look at him. The station was dark, making the sparks of power glow brighter in his eyes as he said, “Don’t say that. Please—don’t say that.”

Not even the Spartans were Spartan, her father had told her. It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie.

“Then I won’t,” Lore said.

How they were remembered would never be as important as what they did now. Her father had been right about that, too.

They splashed down onto the tracks from the station platform and fought their way forward through the water.

Lore switched on her flashlight’s lower setting. Her sword bounced against her hip as they walked along the rails.

She couldn’t resist looking over at him then, drinking the sight of him in deep to ward off the chill growing along her spine.

“If we’re wrong about your immortality and somehow they take you,” she whispered, “wait for me at the dark river. I’ll bring you home.”

“Hades himself would turn me back at the gates knowing you’re coming,” Castor told her, “and that I’d fight like hell to meet you halfway.”

Lore relished the feel of his hand in hers for just a moment more before letting it go. Both she and Castor would need their sword hands free.

She slid the aegis forward, but kept her flashlight aimed at the track. It was a slow crawl, the tunnel making it feel as though they were trapped inside a bleak eternity, that they would be walking forever toward a place they would never reach. It was the kind of punishment the gods used to love.