“Fool,” Athena growled. “You know nothing.”
It came to her like a slip of sunlight breaking through the clouds—the real reason Athena had come here. Why she had done everything in her power to retrieve the shield.
Wrath forgot his injury and tried to swing that phantom arm forward to strike her. Lore didn’t flinch, not even when Athena’s dory fell between them, cutting Wrath’s second advance short. Her eyes burned in the darkness.
“You’re right, I am a fool,” Lore told her. “And you were right before, too, to mock me for believing you. The truth is, I didn’t just believe you—I believed in you. When you kept those people safe from the explosion and the debris. When you told me about Pallas, about your city, about the role you were born to, and the one you wanted for yourself.”
A flinch, almost imperceptible, moved through Athena.
“Your temples fell. Men no longer feared you. Your legend, once sung, became a whisper,” Lore continued. “But I still believed in you.”
Athena’s nostrils flared, her hands strangling the staff of her spear.
“This isn’t a test, it’s a lesson,” Lore said. “Why would Zeus ever want you to kill innocent people—worshippers of other gods—when that was one of the reasons you were punished in the first place? Even after everything he’s done to you and the others, I never heard you speak about him in anger or resentment. In your eyes, he has no equal. He would never give the world to the victor of the Agon.”
“Silence!” Wrath roared, striking at her.
Van’s words from that morning came back to Lore in a rush, and she pushed on, unafraid. “A sacrifice has to mean something. You only understand sacrifice as something done for you. But Zeus was speaking to mortals at Olympia, and we’ve always understood it a different way. We make sacrifices to honor gods, to thank them, to request their blessings . . . or to seek forgiveness.”
“I will cut the tongue from your head,” Wrath said, “as I should have done when you were nothing but a whelp.”
“Have you ever done that?” Lore asked Athena. “Have you truly sought penance for what happened all those centuries ago? Or have you spent over a thousand years trying to justify what happened by blaming it on the Fates—all because you can’t stand knowing that you—and only you—are to blame for losing your father’s love?”
Athena’s expression was disguised by the darkness, but Lore knew she was unmoved, and it stole the last of her faith. There was no way to reach her, not now.
“You’re supposed to be the protector of cities,” Lore said, “not the cause of their destruction!”
Wrath snarled as he lunged forward again, knocking Lore back as water splashed up around them.
Each blow pushed her farther and farther from the tank and car. Struggling against the drain of his power, Lore dropped to a knee, lifting the shield; she couldn’t do anything but let the aegis be battered by the maelstrom of his strikes.
Her arms shook with the effort of absorbing each relentless blow, her teeth gritted.
Help me, Lore thought. Please!
Yes, it whispered.
She slammed her fist against the front of the aegis, and it roared.
The sound shook the walls of the tunnel, sending loose pieces of stone raining down over them. As Lore drew in her next breath, she felt its power fill her—fill her and fill her, even as Wrath tried to take that strength.
All at once, it stopped. Somehow, Lore knew what was coming.
There was nothing human left in Wrath’s face.
“Was that not enough for you, little bitch? Even your father knew when to submit,” Wrath said in amusement. “By the gods—sea, fire, and women are the three evils.”
Lore hated that saying more than she hated even him.
She drew toward him. He raised his sword once more, undaunted by the blood that still flowed from his other, severed arm.
He’s feeding on my strength, Lore realized. It was the only way he could still be on his feet. The high of the fight only buoyed his bloodlust.
Even if Lore could force him back into regular combat . . .
She stilled.
Regular combat. As if she needed to fight on his terms, as a hunter would.
“I’ve got another ancient proverb for you,” Lore said, sliding her arm out from the interior straps of the aegis. “Go fuck yourself.”
She flung the shield at him. Wrath reached for it, his booming laugh cut off as the shield hit him, cracking bones as it smashed into his chest. Breath raged out of him and he was knocked onto his back, momentarily trapped beneath the shield’s impossible weight.
“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.