Lore gripped it, pressing it against her forehead as she tried to clear the lingering sleep from her mind.

Her thumb stroked along his knuckles, and she felt—she wasn’t sure what she felt. Before, she’d been so convinced the feelings moving through her, an almost painful fusion of tenderness and longing and protectiveness, had been different from what had existed between them as children. But were they really? Or had absence and time simply drawn them out in a way she could finally understand?

She had had her family. Her bloodline. Her name. Lore had borne the weight of those responsibilities from the moment she first learned the word Agon. Castor, though—Castor had always been different. It felt as if he had been given to her by the gods, and she to him.

And now I’ll lose him to the same gods, she thought, her throat tight. Whether he died or won the Agon, the outcome would be no different. He would never be with her like this again. She would never feel the pulse at his wrist, or press her ear to his heart and hear it echo her own.

Her grip on him tightened. Castor let out a soft, reassuring noise in his sleep, and she thought her heart might shatter as he turned to her, lashes dark against his cheeks. Lore forced herself to stand then, to gently drape his arm to rest against his chest, because the only other option was to give in to the need to sob like a child and beg the gods for a mercy she knew she didn’t deserve.

Quietly, Lore gathered clean clothes and changed in the bathroom. There, she heard the front door open and shut and Miles’s faint voice call out, “Hello?”

She started down the stairs, eager to see him, more than a little desperate to make sure he was all right, but slowed as she caught the sound of kitchen cabinets opening and shutting and the beginning of a quiet conversation.

“—into any problems?” Van asked.

“Would you care if I did?” Miles shot back. Then, a beat later, “Sorry. That was rude. Subway service was screwed up, but otherwise everything was okay. But Lore and the others—?”

“Just resting.”

Lore stepped down the last few steps, careful to avoid the one that squeaked. She edged into the hallway that led to the kitchen. There, she could see the two of them reflected in the kitchen window. Van at the table on his computer, Miles at the stove.

“Want anything?” Miles asked. “I’m making a cup of regular tea, but I can also attempt the weird one Lore made.”

“Nektar? No thanks. I’ve always hated the taste of it,” Van said, not looking up from his computer. Lore heard the clattering of his fingers over the keyboard. “I could use a warm glass of milk, though.”

There was a long stretch of silence. The typing finally stopped.

“What?” Van asked.

“A warm glass of milk,” Miles said, amused. “Okay. Coming right up, grandpa.”

Van snorted, but turned back to whatever it was he was working on. Behind Lore, in the living room, the TV was on, but the volume was at a low murmur. She focused on the sound of it, on the breath that eased in and out of her chest.

After a few minutes, just as Lore was tempted to announce herself, Miles set the two mugs down on the table and opened his own laptop. Knowing him, Miles picked the seat right next to Van just to playfully annoy him, but Van couldn’t resist trying to steal a look at Miles’s screen.

“Can I help you?” Miles said, moving it away.

“Are you . . . are you searching Greek mythology on Wikipedia?” Van asked in disbelief.

“What?” Miles said defensively. “I’m a little behind the curve in this group. The last mythology unit I had was in sixth grade.”

“You could just ask me whatever you want to know,” Van said.

“Oh really?” Miles asked, leaning back to sip his tea. “I can ask you anything and you’ll actually give me an answer?”

“I didn’t mean anything,” Van said, uncharacteristically flustered. “I meant anything related to the Agon.”

“Okay, here’s one,” Miles said. “A good number of hunters from your bloodline abandoned Castor, so why are you so loyal to him?”

Lore about fell over when Van actually told him.

“Castor is the only . . .” Van seemed to struggle for the right words. “He’s the only friend I’ve ever had. The only one willing to be my friend, all right?”

“All right,” Miles said softly.

“No—” Van said. “Don’t do that. Don’t feel sorry for me. It’s just the way it was. Unlike everyone else, he never looked down at me for not wanting to fight, and for being relatively bad at it. He didn’t—still doesn’t—like fighting either.”

“I was going to try to draw an analogy to me in PE, but I’m going to rescind that,” Miles said. “Given that your physical education involved learning how to murder people.”

That got a soft laugh out of Van. “I know you think I’m being . . . hard. But all I care about is protecting him and making sure he stays alive this week. I couldn’t help him before, when he relapsed and his cancer came back. I couldn’t convince him to stop going to training when we spoke on the phone, even though it was exhausting him.”

“Why did he stay in training if it was that bad?”

“Because of Lore,” Van said. “He didn’t want to let her down, because she would have lost her training partner and had to leave the program. But more than that, he always wanted to see her. He always wanted to follow her, even if it was right into trouble.”

“Hey now,” Miles said. Lore’s heart swelled at the edge of warning in his voice. “That’s my friend you’re talking about.”

Van blew out a long breath. “I was always a little jealous of how much attention she got from Castor. It sounds stupid now that we’re grown. . . .”

“Oh,” Miles said. “So you’re in love with him.”

Van choked on his milk.

Miles rested his chin on his palm and waited, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“It’s not like that with Cas,” Van said.

“As if you’d be the first guy with a secret, unrequited crush,” Miles said. “Mine was a high school quarterback who was so painfully straight he was practically a pencil. Well, a pencil with bulging muscles and the tendency to answer anything anyone ever said to him with dude.”

Van laughed. Miles grinned.

“I don’t have those feelings for him,” Van said, finally. “I never have.”

Miles let out a soft, knowing hum. Van took a sip of his milk. Miles did the same with his tea.

“And anyway, why are you so loyal to Lore?” Van pressed. “You barely knew anything about her past, and what little you did know was a lie.”

“Not all of it,” Miles said. “I always knew her family had died, but none of the details about how, or what happened to her in the years after. It took a long time for her to open up to me at all. Like . . . months after Gil let me rent the spare room. I had to dig little by little, and it was worth it, because I love the soft heart I found under the somewhat surly surface. That part was never a lie. It’s really rare to find someone who accepts you completely, and I try to give that back to her.”

“So you do understand,” Van said quietly.