For all the millions these families spent on security systems and weaponry, they still couldn’t bring themselves to seal these doors, or brick them up the way they had the windows. It would mean cutting off their own potential escape routes if another family or god ever attacked them here.
When it was clear no silent alarm had been triggered, Lore slipped inside and quietly shut the door behind her. She welcomed the caress of the AC and the relative darkness as she drew the shoestring through the hole, removed the magnet, and replaced the brick.
As she’d expected, the room was still being used for storage. It was a maze of boxes and old trunks, all smelling damp, as if they’d barely escaped a basement flood. Lore pawed through them until she found a moldering set of black hunter’s robes. She secured them around her ripped jean shorts and sweat-soaked black tank.
At the bottom of the trunk was a chipped mask. Lore stared at it, hating that she still felt sick at the thought of wearing something other than her family’s own mark.
You need it, she told herself. Take it. Just in case.
The one thing she hadn’t been able to find was some kind of blade or weapon.
“Well,” she muttered, as she pulled a lone screwdriver out of an abandoned toolbox. “It’s pointy.”
Lore slipped it into the hidden inner pocket of the robe. She pulled the hood up, then back down as she realized how ridiculous it would look.
“Come on, Perseous,” she whispered. “Let’s go seek.”
The layout of the hallway was exactly as she remembered it, with the exception of a few keypads that had been installed on a number of its doors. She glanced up, searching the ceiling for disguised cameras.
A voice cut through the quiet like a blade to the back of her neck.
“What are you doing up here?”
LORE SPUN AROUND. A man she didn’t recognize, wearing robes identical to her own, stood at the end of the hall, just at the top of the staircase.
“I—” she began, saying the first thing that came to mind. “I thought I heard something.”
The man’s gaze narrowed. Lore instinctively slid a hand inside her robe, toward the screwdriver, but forced herself to stop. She’d only look guiltier if she didn’t move toward him, so she did.
“Did he sound like he was in some kind of distress?” the man asked in the ancient tongue. A note of anxiety rang through the words. “I thought he had attendants with him.”
Attendants?
“It turned out to be nothing,” Lore said lightly, keeping out of the faint pool of candlelight from a nearby table. She gripped the mask tighter, wishing she’d just put the stupid thing on. “The floor is secure.”
Before she’d left the house, Lore had taken a sharpie and drawn the letter alpha, along with the bloodline’s mark, on her left wrist. It was a design she’d seen inked onto the chests and arms of the Achillides who had trained her. She idly pushed the sleeve up, pretending to scratch at some phantom itch.
The lines of the man’s face relaxed as he noticed the fake tattoo.
While there were always spies willing to do whatever was necessary to slip past another bloodline’s defenses, the hunters were superstitious enough to believe that putting another house’s mark on your body would anger your ancestors, causing them to abandon you.
Seeing as misfortune had been Lore’s constant companion for the last seven years, she was sure her own couldn’t possibly hate her more than they already did.
“Good,” the hunter said. “Let’s go downstairs. We should be able to get some food before they’ll want us back on watch. You’re one of Tassos’s girls, aren’t you?”
“Got it on the first try,” Lore said, letting her face relax into a smile. “How’s—”
A door at the other end of the hallway opened, and several small girls, no more than five years old, were ushered out of one of the rooms.
Lore’s heart clenched like a fist.
All the girls wore simple white tunics detailed with gold embroidery that matched their sandals, and belts. Different styles of diadems and ribbons had been woven into their braided hair.
A woman, her own dark curls in tight ringlets, emerged behind them. The violet silk of her long, draped gown had been printed with ancient symbols and illustrations, including one of Achilles poised for battle.
The woman motioned to the girls, and all of them, every last one of the nine, fell silent and still, their small bodies rigid with what Lore knew to be fear-honed obedience.
A man emerged from the room across the hall like a clap of thunder. Lore’s nostrils flared at the sight of him.
Philip Achilleos had gone silver-haired, and his permanent scowl only deepened with age. His scars seemed more pronounced than ever on his pale face, and while the old goat was still barrel-chested, the body beneath his deep sapphire robe had clearly thinned as he’d left the prime of his life.
His wife, Acantha, trailed behind him, poised and perfectly coifed. She had always been the better hunter of the two—practically legendary by the end of her first Agon cycle. But her marriage, and the temporary alliance it had brought to the Houses of Achilles and Theseus, had clipped her wings.
“Patér,” the woman in violet began, bowing to Philip. “May I present—”
He circled the girls with a look of disgust. One of them risked a glance up at him. The back of his hand whipped against her temple.
Rage swelled in Lore. She took a step toward them, but stopped as the girl straightened again, her face carefully impassive as she lifted her chin.
You have to find Castor, Lore reminded herself. Don’t give yourself away so easily.
But the girls . . . these children . . . She couldn’t stand it. Being back inside Thetis House had been momentarily disarming, but now Lore remembered her hatred—for the hunters, for this life. It shot through her like a bolt of lightning.
The sight of the girl bowing before that pig with respect he didn’t deserve, in the hope of nothing so much as pleasing him, made her want to scream.
Philip didn’t care about these children, just as he hadn’t cared about Castor. The fact that the archon had personally denied Castor’s father the funds to continue the boy’s medical treatment was enough for Lore to hate him in this life, and for all eternity.
“These are the best you could do?” he hissed to the woman in violet. “I told you to select beautiful girls. Where did you find these, crawling in the subway tunnels with the other rats?”
“Patér?” the woman said, her voice smaller now.
“Perhaps,” Acantha said, placing a soothing hand on her husband’s arm. She shared a covert glance with the woman, tilting her head until the string of diamonds dangling from her ears glowed with candlelight. “Perhaps, Patér, the sight of them would be less offensive to your gaze if she were to paint them gold?”
Philip Achilleos let out a low growl before barking out, “So be it. Remember, it is not my disappointment alone you should fear.”
“Yes, Patér,” the woman said, hurrying the girls to her. “Yes, of course. They will be ready in time for the ceremony.”
Ceremony, Lore noted. Not just a celebration.
Philip turned, catching sight of her and the other hunter at the end of the hall. “Why are you standing there like idle fools in need of whipping?”