She could send the water, the fires, deeper into the belly of the earth. Where there would be no air, and nothing but darkness to feed on.

Please, she thought, drawing a fist back. The electric feeling was still building in her core, only this time, Lore didn’t resist it.

She unleashed it.

Power gathered around her hand, glowing molten gold. She slammed it against the earth with a guttural scream. The ground roared back as it splintered. Spidery fractures glowed gold beneath the flames and water.

Lore closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling of the heat and energy pouring through her. She felt herself sinking deeper and deeper as her power incinerated the stone beneath her. There was no way to escape it. She would be carried down into the darkness below and extinguished with the flames. Alone. She was alone. . . .

“Stay with me.” Lore let out a choked cry, sobbing for breath and relief at the crush of it all. Don’t leave me. . . .

They didn’t.

She felt her family around her—the soothing touch of them, brushing her cheeks, wrapping around her center. And beyond them, the presence of unseen eyes.

Power raged in her body, as pure as the fiery heart of the world. As old as Chaos and the worlds born from it.

“Lore!” Castor’s voice carried across the station. “Lore!”

She looked up, searching for him through the smoke and finding him in the elevator.

“Get out of here!” she choked out.

The smell of burnt hair and skin rose around her and she realized it was her. Sweat poured from her face as Lore beat the ground, overturning the hard rock, pulverizing it. The burning water rushed down through the growing cracks. It was working. This was working.

At the edge of her vision, she saw Castor rush forward, shielding his face from the fires.

“Don’t do it!” he called. “We need to get out! There’s nothing else you can do!”

There was always something she could do.

Sparks of her power flew around her, catching in her hair and turning her skin into a glowing cosmos. Her arms quivered with the effort of trying to keep that last grip on herself. Her hands blazed gold as she slammed them down one last time and finally broke the world open beneath her.

The sea fire poured into the deep crevice, draining out of the station. She punched the tunnel again, pulverizing more stone in order to bury the fire. The tunnel shook with the force of each hit, as if it might cave.

Only one thought made sense to her. She needed to bury the fire. . . . But she hurt. . . . Every part of her burned. . . .

The glow at her hands intensified, spreading up her arms, washing over her, until Lore couldn’t tell if the light radiating around her was coming from her or the fires.

“Stop!” Castor’s terrified voice reached her. “Lore, stop!”

He fought through the heat, bold and shining as her vision started to fade to darkness.

“It’s enough!” he said. “If the street caves in, it’ll take the hotel with it!”

“The fires—” she rasped.

“They’re out!” he told her, gripping her arms, trying to force her to look at him. The walls and ground stopped shaking, and the remaining water hissed as it poured into the crevice she had created.

But Lore was beyond hearing; the same deep pull of power she had felt before returned, threatening to tear her body apart as she ascended. Her veins glowed gold beneath her skin as the last of her mortal blood burned away. She felt as insubstantial as smoke.

Castor pressed her to him, hard.

“No—stay,” he begged. “Stay here!”

Her power left brands on his skin. It stirred a thought in her, pulling her out from the fathomless light she was dissolving into. Hurting him.

Castor kissed her—kissed her until that blazing power lost its grip on her mind and body. The feel of him became a tether to the world, and she held it with everything she had in her.

The blazing power extinguished around them. Nothing felt real but him.

“Stay,” Castor said again, as he pulled his lips away from hers. “Don’t go without me. . . .”

There was nothing left in her mind. There was nothing left of her in this body. And when the darkness finally came for Lore, it didn’t feel like an ending, but a beginning.

TO HER SURPRISE, LORE woke to the world she thought she’d left behind.

The city sang its old song for her, weak but growing in volume and tempo. Dozens of car engines hummed through the streets, the start of what might come in the days ahead. Construction equipment clanged and boomed with the effort of hauling debris. People walked the nearby streets, laughing—and that was the sound that Lore held on to, the one that embedded itself in her heart as she opened her eyes.

Miles’s anxious face stared back at her. His hand tightened around hers as he bit his lip and tried not to cry. It looked like he’d somehow had a shower, or had at least a good scrub and shave.

“Your eyes,” he whispered.

Lore tried to think of what to say to him. Now that she was awake, that disconcerting feeling was back. Power moved inside her, restless in its confinement. Her body, which had served her so well for so many years, the one she had strengthened and loved and scarred, felt too insubstantial for her now. Instead, she looked around.

They were in her bedroom in the town house.

She was surprised at how close to tears she was at the thought. Lore cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

He gave her a watery smile. “That’s why it’s probably okay that it did.”

Miles had opened the curtains in her room, inviting the golden afternoon sunlight in. Lore felt its warmth pass through her as vividly as she felt the slide of the blanket against her skin.

Lore sat up suddenly. “What day is it?”

“Saturday,” he said. “You’ve been asleep since Castor healed you.”

Saturday. The thought filled her with a surge of panic. There were only hours left until the end of the Agon.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, her pulse quickening as she looked around the empty space. “Are they okay?” Lore had a sudden, vivid memory of what had happened in the subway station. “Is Castor—?”

“He’s okay. Everyone is fine. I mean—fine in that vaguely traumatized way that comes with not fully processing everything that’s happened, but fine.” Miles rubbed the back of his neck. “They went up to the roof a few minutes ago to get some air.”

A comfortable silence settled between them. Lore breathed in, and out, and in, and out, relishing the feel of it. How easy it came. She realized she was still holding Miles’s hand, but didn’t let go.

“What’s going to happen to you when today ends?” he whispered. “Are you going to disappear? Will you be hunted like the others in seven years?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But . . . I hope it’s over. All of it.”

Lore suddenly felt desperate for the sight of her city. She stood slowly from the bed, releasing Miles’s hand to make her way over to the window. As she moved, the power moved with her, flowing through her muscles and winding around every joint and sinew.

Miles came to stand beside her. “What if the Agon takes you with it and you can’t come back? Athena said that the gods live in a world beyond ours—is that where you’d go?”