Castor nodded.

The heat faded from his touch as he finished healing her, but he didn’t pull away, and neither did Lore. He wet a small washcloth and began to clean the blood from her new pink skin—stroke by stroke, with a tenderness that came close to breaking her heart. Lore widened her legs, letting him step closer, and closed her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really?”

His long fingers grazed up along the curve of her shoulder, coming to cup her other cheek, to brush her old, long scar. The tight muscles in her neck eased as he stroked the hollow where the base of her skull met the ridge of her spine.

“I saw him,” Lore murmured. “I told myself I would never come back to this world—that I would never let it force my hand or drive me to kill. I thought I could get back out clean if Athena was the one to do it, but . . . I don’t know if I can do this, keeping one foot in the ring and one foot out.”

“You can,” Castor said. “Don’t let them pull you back in. There’s nothing but shadows for you here now.”

Lore knew exactly how easy it was to get lost in that darkness. To need it.

Even now, she could imagine her hands wrapped around Wrath’s throat, choking him until the sparks of power faded in his eyes—or her blade flashing as it plunged into his chest again and again and again. But Lore didn’t feel sick at the thought.

She only wanted it more.

Lore leaned forward against his chest, hearing the powerful drumbeat of Castor’s mortal heart.

“I used to believe in this world,” Lore said. “I used to want everything it promised so badly.”

“I know,” Castor told her. “But I never thought you would win the Agon. I thought you would destroy it.”

Lore looked up at his words, her brow creased in confusion. But before she could ask, a crash tore through the silence, then a ferocious scream.

Iro was finally awake.

BY THE TIME LORE reached the office, Iro had her arm wrapped around Miles’s throat and the sharp tip of a letter opener pressed to his jugular.

Van had his hands out, speaking in a low, soothing tone as the girl dragged Miles toward the door. Athena watched from the corner of the office, arms crossed over her chest. She looked amused, but her dory was within reach.

“No!” Lore knocked the blade out of Iro’s hand, giving Miles a moment to drop and crawl away. “Iro, listen to me—”

She tried to lock the girl’s arms at her sides, but Iro had always been faster, and her instincts sharper. Lore didn’t see any awareness register on the girl’s face as she gripped one of the heavy binders off the bookshelf and launched it toward Castor.

He shifted, letting the book smash into the wall behind him. He turned his wide eyes toward Lore, uncertain of what to do.

Seeing her, Iro lunged—not to attack Lore, but to shield her from the others. “Get out of here, Melora!”

“Hey!” Miles barked. “That was Mrs. Cheong’s!”

The words caught Iro off guard. She turned toward him. “I—what?”

Lore pushed through her shock at Iro’s protectiveness and managed to wrap her arms around the other girl before she could recover.

“Let me go! You need to get out of here!” Iro said between gritted teeth, straining and thrashing to throw Lore off her. Her faint French accent was never more pronounced than in the rare instances she raised her voice.

“Stop”—Lore forced them both to the ground with a hard drop—“it! No one is going anywhere. You’re safe here—I’m safe here.”

“Iro,” Van said, crouching beside them. “This is Castor Achilleos. Like Athena, he is working with us to try to kill Wrath. He used his power to help you escape. He’s not going to hurt you. None of us are.”

Iro wrenched herself free from Lore, rolling up onto her feet to face her. Her black hunter’s robes were askew, revealing the slim body armor she still wore beneath them. It seemed to take her a moment to understand what Van had told her. “Castor Achilleos is dead. You told me yourself—or did you lie about that, too?”

“That’s what your people told me,” Lore reminded her, shoving up from the ground. She felt like she might retch at the memory—the sheer pleasure on the face of the House of Odysseus’s archon as he leaned down to tell her, One less Achilleos for us to kill.

“You know what happened to the Achillides,” Van said. “Everyone who stands against Wrath has to stand together, otherwise he’ll wipe us all out.”

“That is not Castor,” Iro spat. “That is not your friend.”

“Yes, he is,” Lore said, coming to stand beside him. “He’s Castor the way Heartkeeper was your father.”

“He—he wasn’t—” Iro said, struggling for the words. “He is—he was—my lord. Our protector. He . . .”

“He was your father,” Lore repeated.

He had been archon of the Odysseides for years before ascending to become the new Aphrodite in the last cycle of the Agon. Lore had come to the family after, and she had never been present when the new god manifested a physical form and appeared to them.

From the stories she’d gathered from Iro and a few other members of the family, he had been a strict but not entirely unloving parent to his sole child.

The problem had always been the bloodline’s determination to uphold logic over everything else, including emotion. But Iro hadn’t been like that—not always. Lore had met her just once before seeking refuge with the Odysseides, but Iro had always treated her as if they had known each other from the time they’d slept in cradles, assuming the role of big sister though she was barely a year older.

In Lore’s first few weeks at the Odysseides estate, she had been so shell-shocked by her family’s murders that she had only survived because Iro had gently forced her to. She had made her eat, stayed up talking to her after Lore woke screaming from nightmares, and let Lore trail after her day in and day out. It hadn’t been Iro’s strength and skill as a fighter that Lore had admired, though she respected it. It had been her compassion within a bloodline that strove to rid itself of that.

“She won’t understand,” Castor said. “She doesn’t want to.”

“You know nothing of my mind,” Iro seethed. “Come closer and see how well I understand what you are, killer of Apollo. Tell me, did you feel clever when you set your trap for him? When you killed him from afar like a coward and stole his power from your archon?”

Everyone in the room seemed to pivot at once toward Castor, whose face shifted like the sky at sunrise. Shock became denial became desperation.

“Who told you that?” he demanded. “Who?”

Iro looked victorious. “It is true, then. There was no honor in your ascension.”

“That’s . . .” Lore’s words trailed off as she looked between the two of them. Iro’s outright hatred, Castor’s sudden uncertainty. “That’s impossible. Castor was confined to his bed at that point.”

The new god blew out a harsh breath, his hands curling at the memory of it.

“You’re speaking from a place of rumor,” Van said. “The Odysseides always spread mischief and lies to make themselves feel better for their own failures.”