“What did the Reveler say to you?” Castor asked. “What made you so angry that you’d do this after everything you told me earlier? This isn’t who you are!”
“Maybe it is,” she shot back.
“No,” Castor said. “You are a good person, Melora Perseous. You’re not what they tried to make you, or even what you tried to be for them. Neither of us is.”
“We are exactly what they made us,” Lore said, not caring that her voice had cracked, that the words were trembling with long-held pain. “We’re monsters, Cas, not saints. And, no, killing Wrath won’t change what happened, but it’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s the only thing any of us were taught to do.”
Her hands turned to claws against his chest, but his grip on her wrists remained light, as if daring her. The heat of him burned away the cool air and the smell of the grass. He blotted out the rest of the world. He created his own eclipse.
“I want Wrath to suffer,” she whispered. “I want him afraid, and I want to be the one that steals the life from his body.”
“We’ll find other ways to deal with him,” Castor said softly. “Better ways. Don’t let them take that hope from you.”
Castor drew closer. This time Lore did step back. That seemed to alarm him more than anything else. He pulled away, giving her distance when Lore didn’t want that—when Lore wasn’t sure what she wanted.
He closed his eyes. “Lore—”
The way he said her name . . .
The storm broke open inside her. Lore struck at him with her arm and he blocked, as she knew he would, leaving his center open, the way he always did.
Anger became confusion became instinct became need—she gripped his face and pulled him down to bring his lips to hers.
Castor went still as stone, his lips parting. He didn’t pull away. Neither did she. Her fingers slid into his thick hair, curling. “Lore—”
She wanted him to keep saying her name that way, like it was the only word he knew.
She was clumsy and raw and wild, but so was he. His hands covered her, the same hands that had helped her up from the ground countless times. The same hands that had lifted her up to reach higher as she climbed. The same hands she’d held as he lay dying.
Lore didn’t want to think. She wanted to disappear into the sensation of him. Lightning wove down her spine as he groaned.
Castor overwhelmed her until there was nothing else in the world but his lips and touch. The heat inside her rose, absorbing the feeling of his skin and turning her body soft against the hard lines of his own. His tongue stroked against hers and he drew her closer, until she felt his blatant need for her, and a heaviness settled low in her stomach in response.
In the years they’d trained together, Lore had come to know his body as well as her own. But every part of him felt like a revelation to her now, something she needed but hadn’t known to want. They were back to sparring, trying to gain control, to drive the kiss.
“Lore,” he murmured. “Lore—”
Castor pulled back so suddenly it left her unsteady on her feet.
Lore was still reaching for him, disoriented and desperate, when he held up a hand to stop her. There was something almost heartbreaking in the way he looked at her then.
“Do that again when you mean it, Golden,” he rasped. “When it’s not to distract me.”
He didn’t wait for her response; he set off, searching for Belen. Lore tried to catch her breath, dragging her hands back through her hair and gripping it.
“Shit—” she breathed. “Shit.”
She ran after him.
Belen had crossed down and out of the park and was heading into midtown. He was moving faster than she expected—then again, the body could do amazing things under the influence of adrenaline.
Lore and Castor followed the trail of Belen’s blood to Fifth Avenue, eerily empty without tourists shopping and a crush of New Yorkers trying to get into office buildings.
She carefully avoided looking at Castor as they ran, too confused, too flushed with stinging embarrassment and longing at what she—they—had done. It felt like she had broken a bone and it hadn’t been reset in the right way. For a moment, she was terrified that it would feel that way between them forever. That she had done something that could never be taken back.
Belen was a good four blocks ahead, but still staggering. His phone lit in his hands as he struggled to hold on to it.
Castor clenched a fist until it glowed with power. He raised it, as if to send a blast of it toward the hunter, but stopped. The crackling light faded as he eased his grip.
“What’s wrong?” Lore asked, hesitating behind him.
“He’s too far,” Castor said. “And I—I can’t be sure I wouldn’t blow out the block.”
He was right to worry. As they approached Rockefeller Center, several people were already heading into work, or out of it after late shifts. The massive bronze statue of Atlas, struggling with the weight of the world on his shoulders, watched them come and go.
There was a faint whirring like bees nearby. Lore turned, spotting Belen standing directly across the street.
“Hey, Melora,” he called, his voice ragged. “You ever heard of the one about the Stymphalian birds?”
A drone dropped down in front of them, feathers etched into its silver wings. A small arm dropped from beneath it and released something—a device, a streak of silver—
The air around Lore roared, exploding into a wave of pressure and heat that devoured everything in its path and dissolved the ground beneath her feet.
Lore jumped in front of Castor. The blast slammed into her and she was flying, falling, down into the raging light.
SOMEWHERE, JUST BEYOND THE high whine ringing in her ears, Lore heard a sound like the rushing of sand. With her next breath, she realized she was still alive, and that her back was burning.
Lore reared up with a gasp, her back slamming into the wall of flames hovering above her. Sparks of color and light burst in her vision.
The explosion . . .
“Lore,” came the strained voice above her. “It’s—all right—”
Pain flared in her, coming alive with her mind. Her palms were skinned raw, and her jeans and shirt shredded. There was a dull ache throughout her body, but it was nothing compared to her skull, which pounded like it had been cracked open.
“What . . . ?” Her mouth was coated in dust and ash. Lore coughed, struggling to remain upright, to escape the heat billowing behind her. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing.
Heaps of dark asphalt, the mangled yellow remains of a taxi, and blocks of concrete had fallen in a ring of destruction around her. The chaos was just outside a circle of intense, crackling light that surrounded her like a protective barrier.
Lore craned her head back. She knew this power.
“Cas?” she choked out.
Castor stood hunched over her, his arms up, his palms outstretched. Above him, trying to drive down through the new god’s barrier, was a massive slab of concrete.
It bobbed in the air, riding the blasting heat and light. It was the source of the sound she had heard before, not rushing sand. The concrete was being incinerated to a fine dust. It poured down along the edges of the barrier and piled up around it.