The bond Lore and Athena made should have killed them both, but Athena lied about the bond, too. She remains alive and well as Lore dies. Athena starts to drag Lore away, intending to find Castor and force him to heal her, but she stops with a new thought. She leaves Lore to die, her parting words that it was a “shame you did not even possess the courage to drive the blade through your heart” (374).

Lore arrives home to find the window she left open is closed. She thinks it means her parents are awake. Knowing she has to face their anger, she goes inside and stops outside their apartment. While she builds up her courage to enter, something wet soaks into her shoe. She looks down, where “dark blood seeped out through the crack below the door and pooled around her feet” (376).

Near death, Lore dreams about the night she found her family dead—complete with pools of blood and her sisters’ eyeless corpses. In the dream, a light calls to her. The light resolves into Gil, who encourages Lore to get up and fight. He begs her to follow him away from the Underworld and toward the world of the living. One agonizing step at a time, Lore does, alternatively walking and crawling through a mix of two realities—life and death. When she’s gone far enough, Gil tells her “the eyes of the gods are upon you” and disappears (381).

Lore opens her eyes to find Castor there, healing her. Gil guided her to the base of the ladder leading up to the street, and Castor found her through the location share Miles set up on her phone. Castor apologizes for leaving Lore alone with Athena and, in a voice so unlike his own, promises, “I’ll kill her” (383). Lore explains she was the one to nearly take her life, and Castor understands Athena killed Lore’s family. Miles, Van, and the others are safe. Castor takes care of Tidebringer’s body, and then he and Lore head for the new safehouse.

At the safehouse, Lore tells Castor the story of how she stole the aegis to keep her family from leaving New York and the Agon. The last few days, she lied about taking it and knowing where it is, promising herself she would only let Castor see the poem if they retrieved it. Athena’s deception and Lore’s desire had been so complete, though, that she almost gave the shield to the goddess because that was “how much I wanted Wrath dead” (391).

Castor confesses he wasn’t honest about his memories involving Apollo. At the time, Castor was bedridden and barely alive. He woke to find a wounded Apollo at the foot of his bed and asked the god if he needed help. Everything after that is blank. Castor wishes he had more to tell—that the story was about him being strong. He wants to prove himself to Lore. When she says he doesn’t need to prove himself and asks why he would even think he does, Castor says he was born knowing how to do three things: “how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you” (393).

Lore kisses him, this time intentionally, and they get lost in one another until a thunderclap drags them back to reality. Lore asks Castor to accompany her to one of the Kadmide houses. She hid the aegis there, and “it’s finally time to go pick it up” (395).