The air changed, and Lore knew she was close. An undercurrent of power licked at her senses, guiding her off that line and into a smaller tunnel.

Lore’s focus intensified as she ran along the tracks, water splashing up around her. Sooner than she’d expected, she reached a section of the subway divided off from the rest—the one that led beneath the Waldorf Astoria.

At the sound of voices, she slowed and switched off her flashlight.

“Listen to me, please!”

Belen, she thought. Lore reached up and removed one of the noise-canceling earbuds to better hear.

Indistinct shapes took form at the end of the line, in the cavernous space that was Track 61. Lanterns had been hung around, spotlighting sections of the otherwise pitch-black station.

It was nothing like the other subway stops she and Castor had walked through to get here. As Lore made her way forward, she struggled with her footing over two different sets of tracks hidden beneath the water. There were no raised platforms around them, leaving a generous amount of space to the right of the single flatbed subway car that waited ahead. A large silver tank, as big as the car itself, had been strapped atop it. If it was a bomb, it wasn’t like any she had seen.

“Do you doubt me?”

Wrath’s voice carried over to her, low and menacing. He moved around the flatbed and came into view. Nearby, a massive elevator loomed—one that no doubt led up into the hotel’s parking garage.

He was monstrous in his dark sublimity, his body rigid with muscle. He would have towered over even Castor, just as he towered over Belen now.

The young man backed away from him, holding his hands up. He was dressed in what looked to be a ceremonial robe, crimson embroidered with gold. Both of his hands were bandaged in a thick layer of white gauze.

The sheen on Wrath’s skin had to be some sort of gold paint. It covered his entire body beneath the ivory silk of his tunic. He wore polished bronze armor over his chest, as well as gauntlets and greaves. Worse, there was a familiar, spikey tan hide draped over him. Its head had been long ago cast in bronze to be worn like a helmet, as Wrath did now. It belonged to the Nemean lion, and it would make any skin it covered impervious to blades.

Panic gripped her. If he was dressed for battle, hours before sunset . . .

The information had been wrong again. Wrath’s plan was happening now.

Lore pulled out her phone, but there was still no service. She debated leaving, trying to get to higher ground to warn the others if they hadn’t already discovered it for themselves, but Belen spoke again, this time more desperate.

“You are the most powerful being in this world,” Belen said. “You have us, and we are devoted to you. All of us, my lord.”

“Is that so?” Wrath asked coldly. He circled his mortal son slowly, forcing Belen back toward the flatbed without ever needing to draw a blade.

“You don’t need her,” Belen continued, his voice pitching up.

Lore’s blood turned to ice in her veins at that single word. Her.

“Ask yourself why she would agree to help you—why she has come to you now, when you are so close to all that you have dreamed of,” Belen said. “She and her sister planned to kill you and all the other new gods, and now she wants to pay deference? She is cunning—she will take your plan, she will take it, and she will kill you—she will destroy you, Father. Please—”

“Father?” a soft voice repeated.

Athena stood at the edge of one of the lantern’s lights, her eyes glowing in the darkness.

Lore’s pulse spiked and sweat broke out across her body. Belen’s head whipped toward the goddess, his breath visibly catching.

“Father?” Athena repeated again. “My great lord, I would not have expected one as powerful as you to have a son so sniveling and weak of will.”

Athena moved to stand beside the new god, a dory in her hand. She, too, was dressed in a short ceremonial robe, this one of the purest white, her skin coated in that same shimmering gold. Her armor was as substantial as Wrath’s, as was her helmet. It was studded with what looked to be diamonds and sapphires along its white plume.

The hatred Lore felt looking at them now was breathtaking. All the rage she’d told herself she didn’t need, that she didn’t want, came boiling to the surface.

She forgot her calm, she forgot her plan, she forgot everything but the shame he had tried to use to extinguish her line and his desire to take her life away from her, even as a little girl. She saw nothing but the face of the man who had wanted to destroy her family, and the merciless goddess who actually had.

Wrath angled himself toward Athena, setting his broad shoulders back. He gripped his helmet, but one hand drifted toward the sword at his side.

“She will betray you—she will destroy you, the way she has all the others,” Belen said, this time with real fear. “Listen to me—she’s fed you lies! You don’t need her!”

“I have spoken no lies,” Athena said coolly. “The great Wrath and I are meant for this—we have always been meant for this. The meeting of the old way, and the new. The first Ares was weak, too prone to tempers and madness, and the most hated of my father’s children. But now I have found a worthy partner in war—the balance of strength to my strategy—and a new king to kneel to.”

Belen shook his head. “That—that can’t be true—”

“Do you call me a liar?” Athena asked sharply. “I owe my lord Wrath my allegiance after he graciously told me of the new poem, of my father’s wishes. I am pleased to serve him as he makes his final, true ascension.”

Bile rose in Lore’s throat; even after everything she had done, Athena’s words, her soft, cloying tone, felt like another betrayal. On the roof of the town house, Lore had told her everything—her past, her fears—and she had believed the goddess, she had felt Athena’s own suppressed anger and frustration.

You may call that complicity, and perhaps it is, Athena had said. But I deemed it survival.

It had to be an act, but it was one the goddess had willingly lowered herself to.

“The Gray-Eyed One is the wisest of all beings,” Wrath said, preening at her words. Believing every one of them, the way only a man who saw no faults in himself could. “She has proven herself worthy to serve me. . . . Tell me, how have you? A boy—one who cannot even fight—dares to question my judgment? Dares to believe himself wiser than Athena herself?”

Belen shook his head, backing up until he hit the edge of the flatbed.

“My great lord,” Athena said, watching the young man with a look Lore recognized. Silent victory. “As you know, all great ventures must begin with a sacrifice seeking favor from Zeus if they are to succeed.”

The new god turned toward his mortal son.

Every part of Lore seemed to heave forward, even as she stayed in place.

Belen had time to whisper, “Please—” before his father drew a small hidden blade from a sheath at his forearm and slit his throat.

Blood whipped up against the tank with the force of his strike. Belen fell to the ground, his body twitching as his frantic heart pumped the last bit of life from him.

Wrath watched him die, dark elation spreading over his face. When the young man was finally still, he bent down and placed a hand on his son’s throat, coating it with blood.