The goddess didn’t look right to Lore. Her skin was clammy with beads of sweat, and the skin around a cut at her jaw was turning black. Even the glow of the goddess’s eyes seemed to dim.

Poison, Lore thought. She hadn’t escaped it after all.

Athena coughed and it was a vicious, wet sound. She seemed startled by it, pressing an uncertain hand against her chest. Blood dripped from her eyes, her nose, her mouth.

“Tell me—what to do,” the goddess demanded. “Tell me—how to—stop it.”

But Lore was beyond speaking. Her soul began to unravel from her body, the world fading.

The goddess gave Lore one last look, the skin between her eyebrows creasing, and rose. Lore was so sure that the goddess was leaving, that she was saving herself, that she released a sound like a wounded animal. Her breath rattled as she struggled for it.

But Athena returned a moment later, struggling to hold on to one of Wrath’s daggers.

For the first time, a story was playing out across the goddess’s face. Emotion rippled through the placid exterior. Anger. Regret. Acceptance.

The goddess slid the hilt into Lore’s hand, carefully closing her fingers over it, and her own hand over Lore’s.

Lore’s eyes widened as she stared up at her; her body seized with fear. With dread.

She wouldn’t . . . Athena would never do this, and even in her deepest hatred of her, even desperate for a way to protect her loved ones, Lore never would have wanted her to. She never wanted this.

“It must be this way,” Athena rasped out. Her body trembled violently now, trying to fight off the poison’s effects. “I am . . . lost. . . . You will be born again. You will have more time. Fight again . . . to the last. It is . . . the only . . . logical choice. The city . . . must be defended.”

The goddess positioned the point of the blade over her heart. She gave Lore the final choice.

Never free.

Lore shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to claw at the small, throbbing hope in her, the one she’d carried like a torch against impossible darkness. She wanted the life she’d fought so hard to create, and was as desperate for it as her next breath. She wanted to cry in a way she hadn’t since she was a child. She wanted her parents.

She wanted everything, but never this. Never this.

Lore had been born into this cage, and now she would die in it—if not her body, then her soul.

But the city had to be defended, and it was hers to protect.

She met Athena’s gaze and nodded.

The look the goddess gave Lore was sharp, ever-commanding. “Through the heart.”

Together, they plunged the dagger forward, the blow striking hard and true. The goddess shook, her eyes open, flashing silver as she saw something, felt something, beyond knowing.

It was a warrior’s kill.

A god’s final reckoning.

BREATH EXPLODED INTO LORE’S lungs, her chest expanding painfully as she drew in more and more air, trying to ease the boiling beneath her skin. Her heart became thunder, threatening to tear through her rib cage and skin.

Then her body roared with fire.

A storm of light spun down around Lore, swallowing her into its depths. Her body rose from the water. Veins of lightning traced over her limbs.

Athena’s mortal remains burned away to ash. The being that emerged from it, drifting up like light breaking over a sleeping land, was nearly indescribable and cast in pure, radiant power.

The goddess looked down at Lore one last time, reaching a hand toward the aegis. Between one heartbeat and the next, both vanished, leaving behind sparks that trembled in the darkness as they fell.

And then the world Lore had once known disappeared with them.

She screamed as the pain set in. Power rippled through her, consuming blood and muscle and bone. It was a hollowing. An eradication of every bit of matter that had once lived inside her.

The seconds dragged by, slowly regaining their speed. Lore felt her consciousness begin to go—to drift. The lightning, that unbridled power, was threading through her, threatening to tear her mortal body apart.

Lore didn’t know what she would be left with, only that she might not have the ability to touch the sea fire tank, let alone stop it.

“I need—” She had to shout over the maelstrom of whipping wind and rumbling forces around her. “I need to stay—I need a little longer—I need to stay!”

Power blasted down her spine as her body was dropped back into the burning water. Lore staggered upright. Inside her, something was thrashing, pulsing against the barrier of her skin.

Lore looked down at her hands. Strands of that same lightning danced over her knuckles and palms. She hadn’t realized how dull her senses had been until they awoke in her again. The air suddenly felt like a living creature, cool in places, damp in others, always moving, always brushing against her.

Her legs were primed as she took off at a run, exploding with unfamiliar strength and speed.

The subway car flew down the tracks, the fire trailing behind it. The flames began to climb up the stone walls, devouring supports and the tracks themselves.

Lore caught up to it just before it broke through the tunnel that would send it beneath Grand Central station. With a cry, she cut in front of it, bracing her hands against the flat edge of the car. Digging her feet into the tracks, she pushed back against the force of the engine.

The car sputtered and creaked as it struggled to press on. Lore set her jaw, releasing a ragged cry as she lifted her foot long enough to slam it down against the front-right wheel, and then the left, beating them both out of shape. She tipped the whole car forward, folding and crushing the metal down as if it were paper, until it could no longer move.

She snapped the restraints on the tank, pulling its massive body toward her. Lore hissed as the sea fire licked at her legs and bare arms, but she held on until she could crush the open valve and stop the flow of the sea-fire chemicals.

Lore rolled the tank as far into the station as her strength would allow, into water that wasn’t yet burning.

The flames couldn’t be doused by water. Her father had told her about sea fire, he had told her . . .

It could only be smothered by dirt. Starved of oxygen.

Lore turned and looked back into the empty tracks below Grand Central one last time. The distant platforms she could use to climb out of the burning hell and find the others.

She drew in a breath, bracing her hand against one wall of the tunnel.

Not free. The thought pierced her. Never free.

But the others would be.

Lore tore at the stone wall, punching her fists into it until the entrance to the tunnel rained down fractured stone and the sight of the station disappeared behind the wall of rubble.

The fire’s path was cut off for now, but it wouldn’t stop burning as long as there was water. If enough heat built up, it would collapse the streets above. She had to find a way to smother it. To starve it of oxygen.

Lore ran back the way she came. Heat tore at her from all sides, but she didn’t stop, not until she reached Track 61. The whole station was on fire; there was no end to it. There was no way to drain the water.

Yes, she realized, there is.

She wasn’t powerless.

With a deep breath of burning air, Lore waded out into the center of the station, gasping as the sea fire crawled along her clothes and skin. She dropped to her knees and pressed her fists against the ground hidden beneath the burning water.