Lore began the drill again—tap high, tap center, tap low, over and over. Castor blocked her strikes, but as he slowed, she was forced to as well.

The quick clattering of the staffs around her served as the drumbeat to a song of battered shields and ringing blades. The room was hot with the afternoon sun pouring through the windows high on the walls. The other training classes were blurs around them. The stench of bodies, oil, and rubber mats was heavy in her lungs.

On the last tap, Lore tested her theory, hitting harder than she needed to. Castor lost his balance, slipping down onto his knees with a faint gasp.

Lore glanced back at their instructor. The man had his back to them as he circled their section of the training hall, giving corrections and faint praise. “Good, Abreas—harder, Theron—”

As Castor righted himself, Lore feigned a wrestling hold, leaning forward until their foreheads touched and she had a hand on the back of his neck. It was the only way she’d figured out how to talk to him between breaks.

“Are you all right?” she whispered. “If you’re sick you should have called

out.”

“I’m fine,” Castor promised. “My rank is bad enough without getting more points docked. And you wouldn’t have anyone to train with now that Van went home.”

Evander, one of Castor’s distant cousins, had come to stay at Thetis House for a few months in the lead-up to the Agon, but had been taken home by his parents after a disastrous series of training sessions. Lore had resented him for invading her time with Castor, but even more for the lessons the instructors had made her sit out so Castor and Evander could partner.

It had made her so angry—Evander couldn’t block a blow without flinching and covering his head. She deserved to train more than he did, even if she wasn’t born of the Achillides.

“Water!” the instructor said. “Quickly. We’ll finish with knife work.”

Lore took Castor’s staff from him before he could protest.

Go, her eyes ordered him. She nodded toward the long bench at the back of the room where their water bottles were lined up. Castor waited for her anyway.

“Give it up, Cassie,” came a snide voice. “You can’t even keep up with a girl anymore.”

“Jealous, Orestes?” Castor shot back, still breathing hard. “As the instructors say, we’re only as good as our partners. Poor Sabas has no chance, does he?”

“Better anyone than a sick, weak worm,” Orestes said. “Hurry up and die already, will you? If your mother hadn’t been such a coward she would have left you on a hill somewhere.”

Lore slammed her water bottle down on the bench and rounded on him. Castor kept a faint hold on her wrist, stopping her.

“You would know all about that,” Castor said, “living so bravely with half a brain. Don’t worry, no one notices that you still haven’t mastered the first-year sword skills. We’re all pulling for you, though.”

Their class traded whispers around them, glancing back at the instructor to see if the man would intervene. He was busy consulting with another instructor. Others grinned, anticipating the fight to come.

“At least I’m not going to become a snake bride,” Orestes snapped.

Lore drew in a sharp breath. Castor glanced at her, dark brows furrowed. Orestes looked like the crow who’d caught the worm.

“She didn’t tell you?” he said as they made their way back toward the thin training mats. “This is her last day here. Patér is furious that her ass of a father agreed to marry her off to the archon of the Kadmides. The elders met last night and agreed to kick her out. My father told me so. The only reason they didn’t send her home this morning is because her father begged and begged for one last day.”

Hurt and confusion wrestled on Castor’s face as he watched her, waiting for confirmation. Lore’s only heated with a flush of blood.

“It’s not true,” she told him. “It’s not!”

She hadn’t told him about the meeting with the Kadmides because . . . because she still didn’t really understand what had happened. But her father would refuse Aristos Kadmou’s offer. He would never give her to him.

“No one refuses the Kadmides archon,” Orestes told her smugly. “Maybe he’ll smother you while he ruts over you like—”

Castor slammed his fist into the side of Orestes’s head, knocking him sideways. The others were brimming with glee as Orestes tackled Castor.

If he had been at his full strength, Castor never would have fallen the way he did then.

“Enough!” the instructor said. “Take your positions. We’ll start again—”

But Castor didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

“Cas?” Lore said.

He didn’t respond. His eyes rolled back and his whole body began to convulse.

Lore dropped to her knees beside him, trying to hold him still.

“What did you do?” she screamed at Orestes. But even the boy seemed shocked. Their instructor dropped a hand beneath Castor’s head to keep it from banging against the wood floor.

“Call for the healer on duty!” he barked at one of the trainees.

“What did you do?” she demanded again. Orestes backed away as she lunged at him, beating her fists into Orestes’s stomach. It was the last thing she remembered before her mind blacked out. The next she knew, her instructor had his arms locked around her center and had lifted her off Orestes. The boy’s face was a bloody, pulpy mess. Her hands were covered in it.

“I’ll kill you,” she swore. Orestes coughed, spitting up snot and blood. His own hetaîros knelt beside him, wide-eyed as he stared at Lore.

“You’ll have to wait another seven years to try, little gorgon,” her instructor growled. “If the serpent ever lets you out of his den.”

Lore tried to break out of his grip, but he had a master’s hold on her. Her hand strained toward Castor, but she couldn’t see him, only his sandaled feet sticking out among those gathered around him.

Hours later, after Healer Kallias had come bringing unwelcome news, Lore was finally allowed into the rooms Castor and his father shared at Thetis House to see him.

Lore stood to the left of his bed, watching the rise and fall of his chest, counting them as she would her steps in a drill. Chiron slept at Castor’s feet. He licked at her hand as she gave him a good scratch behind his ears.

“Do you think I was wrong?” she whispered to him. She saw the no in Chiron’s dark eyes, and agreed.

Her heart hammered in her chest, echoing the blows she had given Orestes. She touched the rough bandages Castor’s father had wrapped around her knuckles after Healer Kallias had refused to. Orestes, apparently, was her nephew.

She heard her parents arrive through the crack in the bedroom door. As the building’s caretaker, Castor’s father could slip them in through a side entrance and the service elevator, lessening their chances of being seen by the Achillides. Lore was ashamed by how badly she wanted to go to her mother—to be held until the healer’s words disappeared.

There is nothing more to be done. No Unblooded treatment can cure him.

Fragments of their hushed conversation drifted through the room, interrupted by the soft whirring and beeping of the strange medical devices around Castor’s bed. Lore drifted toward the door, ears straining to hear them, but reading half of the words on their lips, the way she and Castor had taught themselves to in order to spy on the bloodline’s elders. A sound like radio static grew in her ears.