“If she does not speak the truth,” Athena told Castor, “then tell it yourself.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Castor said. “The Odysseides can distort the truth all they want. I’ve never had any honor, and I can’t bring myself to care about it now.”

“You may not,” Iro said, shifting her gaze between the two gods. “But I will do what Melora failed to. I will ensure your deaths are delivered by the House of Odysseus and win back the kleos stolen from my lord in death.”

Athena snorted, but Lore’s lungs tightened at Iro’s words.

She heard herself in them.

She heard her parents and her instructors. She heard the lines from the ancient texts she’d read over and over. Even logic wasn’t going to break through seventeen years of careful psychological conditioning.

“You have the look of him about your eyes,” Athena said evenly.

“Don’t speak of my—of Heartkeeper,” Iro warned.

“I do not speak of him,” Athena said, “but of the man of many ways.”

A long stretch of silence followed.

“We’re trying to kill Wrath,” Lore said finally, echoing Van’s earlier words. “No one is going to hurt you. We went to Ithaka House tonight in the hope that we could call a truce with your father and the Odysseides before he came for all of you. We were too late.”

The tendons in Iro’s neck bulged with her panting breath.

“The Odysseides on the bus are safe,” Van told her. “I got them away, something I could not do for most of my own bloodline. Our archon lies dead with no one willing to take his place. At least you are alive to serve your

kin.”

“I cannot be the archon,” Iro said sharply.

“Why not?” Lore challenged.

“No woman will become archon of an ancient bloodline. But if the others live, then . . . I will go to them.”

Iro softened her rigid stance. For the first time, Lore sensed something of an opening.

“We need to know what you told Wrath,” Lore said. “Was it about the origin poem? An alternate version of it?”

Iro stood, feet rooted to the ground, hands curled into fists. Wanting to run, wanting to fight, but held in place by her mind.

“Will you talk to me alone?” Lore asked her. “Just the two of us?”

The other girl hesitated, and nothing hurt Lore more than that.

“We always used to be able to talk,” Lore said softly. “Do you really hate me that much now?”

Iro went ashen. “I don’t hate you.”

Van’s phone beeped, cutting through the tension. His dark eyes flicked over to Iro before he said, carefully, “No sightings. But there is a new category that might interest you, Lore.”

He turned the phone around, holding it up for Lore to see.

“What the hell?” She took it from him in disbelief.

Melora Perseous was listed just beneath the Reveler’s name, but before Castor’s. When she clicked on it, the map of Manhattan lit up with glowing pins that marked supposed sightings. Some were frighteningly accurate—near the restaurant that hosted the fighting ring, outside Thetis House—but others were scattered in lower Manhattan, in places she hadn’t gone.

Lore pressed her free hand against her jeans, trying to hide how slick it had become. The static was growing in her ears again. She tried to speak, but no words came.

“Only Wrath could have demanded something like this,” Van added. “He must have a good number of hunters searching for you if they’re turning up this many leads.”

Lore forced herself to draw another breath as she returned Van’s phone. “I wounded his pride by escaping his attempt to wipe out the House of Perseus. He’s not going to let it go lightly.”

“No,” Castor said quietly, “he’s not.”

The worry was back, turning his gaze soft. Lore hated that for all of his power, for all of his obvious physical strength, her choices could still bring him back to the boy he’d been. He already had enough to handle this week without needing to fear for her.

“Which is why we’re going to have to get him first,” Lore said.

Athena nodded. “Indeed.”

“If we’re going to find the Reveler, we need to get going,” Van said. He stood and quickly split the remainder of the money between his leather backpack, which he handed to Castor, and the other, simpler one Miles had picked up. “I’ll meet you all there. I’m going to regroup with the remaining Achillides and bring them supplies.”

“Are you going to take the Ody—” Miles began.

“No,” Van said sharply. Lore gave him a pleading look, but he refused to acknowledge it. He wasn’t going to reveal the location of the Achillides to anyone, not even to offer the Odysseides aid. She didn’t know why she had expected anything else this week.

Lore followed Van through the side door to make a case for sharing the location of the warehouse, only to find that Iro had followed her. Iro stepped out into the street, hugging her arms to her chest.

Lore watched Van disappear into the darkness, and was tempted to call after him. Iro, however, spoke first.

“They say his father did that to him.”

“Did what?” Lore asked, turning to her.

“His hand,” Iro said. “The story told to me was that his father was so ashamed of his boy’s unwillingness to fight, his ineptitude for it, that he severed Evander’s sword hand to give him an honorable excuse not to.”

Lore blanched. “No. Tell me that’s not true.”

“I think he did it to himself,” Iro said, her expression turning thoughtful. “Not out of weakness, but strength. The will to decide his own path.”

The words gave Lore her first glimmer of hope that she could get through to Iro. If the girl believed an act like that could be courageous, and hadn’t dismissed it as cowardice the way they’d been taught to believe, there was something for Lore to work with.

“And this hunt, these families who would have Van fight against his will—that’s the world you believe in?” Lore asked her. “The one you feel such loyalty to?”

“No world is perfect. God, mortal, hunter,” Iro said. “I believe in our divine purpose. I believe in honor, and in kleos, and that we will never be destroyed. I believe in it, even if you’ve allowed yourself to be led astray.”

“You know why I left,” Lore said. “Everyone knew what that man was, and no one said a word. Where was the honor in your bloodline elevating him to its highest position? Where was the kleos in that, Iro?”

The girl looked down. “You should have stayed. I would have protected you from them.”

“It wouldn’t have been enough,” Lore told her.

“I don’t believe that,” Iro whispered.

“You don’t have to for it to be true,” Lore told her. “Can you honestly tell me that they wouldn’t have killed me for what I did?”

“I don’t know what they would have done,” Iro said. “We don’t speak of what happened. It is acknowledged only as a terrible accident.”

Of course, Lore thought bitterly. To tell the truth would have dishonored the dead—because it meant admitting that their family’s monster hadn’t been confined to a labyrinth or exiled to some far-off place. He’d walked freely among them.