Alia woke at dawn to birdsong—and a crescent moon visible on the horizon, a slender, perfect scythe. The reaping moon. Hekatombaion had begun. We’re almost there, she reminded herself. We just have to reach the spring before sunset.
Either binding Theo and Nim during the night had done the trick or the gods of battle had found some other group of people to harass because no one seemed to be screaming or trying to commit murder. Diana and Jason were already awake, the last of their food stores set out on a rock as they debated the merits of which route to take to Therapne and how they hoped to find the spring once they were there. They sat close together, their shoulders almost touching, the animosity that had hummed between them since that first meeting at the Good Night seemingly gone. Maybe it wasn’t animosity, she considered as she rolled her head, trying to work the crick out of her neck. Ugh. If Jason was making moves on her friends, she didn’t want to know about it. Though he could definitely do worse.
Alia left Nim still snoozing in the reclined driver’s seat and went to wash her face and hands in the upper pool of the falls. She heard Theo before she saw him, the happy whistle of some song she didn’t recognize floating around the bend in the path. Before she could turn and run, he was rounding the corner in his shiny, battered trousers and the stolen blue button-down that now seemed to be missing its sleeves. He was carrying the full water jug in front of him with both skinny arms and stopped dead when he saw her. His crop of locs looked more awake than he did.
“Hey,” he said.
Well, this isn’t going to be awkward at all. “Hi,” said Alia, making her best effort to sound normal. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good, good. You?”
“Great,” she said, continuing past him toward the falls. Easy. Now you just have to spend a few hours crammed in a car with him. No problem.
She heard a thunk and his footsteps and realized he’d set the water jug down and was jogging to catch up with her. Maybe she could just stick her head underwater and hold her breath until he went away.
“Listen…,” he began.
“Theo, whatever you’re going to say is only going to make it worse. It’s not a big deal. I was thirteen. I had a crush.”
“Because my eyes are golden as a sunset sea?”
For a second Alia was just confused, and then the memory came back to her with gut-clenching clarity. Your eyes are golden as a sunset sea. I could drown in them a thousand times. That horrible letter.
“Oh God,” Alia groaned. “I was hoping you never read it.”
Theo grinned. “I read it.”
“Well, it was a long time ago,” she said with an awkward laugh. “I wrote like ten of those. One was to Zac Efron.”
“Oh.” He actually looked a little disappointed. “That’s too bad. It was pretty much the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Alia thought of the string of girls she’d seen with Theo the last few years. “Sure.”
He ran his hand back and forth over his locs. “Do you even remember what you wrote?”
“Not exactly. Every time my brain tries to go back there, I cringe so hard I have to stop or risk an aneurysm.”
Theo looked down at his pointy-toed dress shoes. They were scuffed beyond repair, the houndstooth pattern on their sides nearly hidden by dust. “You said I was smart and that if people didn’t always get my jokes, maybe it was because they couldn’t keep up.”
“I did?” Well, she’d been right about that. Alia remembered how much she’d hated the way Michael picked on Theo, how kids at school had called him weird and goofy. As they’d gotten older, everyone had seemed to realize that Theo’s taste in music and clothes and everything else wasn’t so much weird as interesting. She’d watched girls start to fawn over him and had felt like a disgruntled hipster. I knew he was cool before you did.
“You compared me to a pistol shrimp,” he said.
Alia closed her eyes. “Are you trying to get me to drown myself?”
“No, it was amazing. You said the pistol shrimp was tiny, but it has this claw that can produce a bang—”
“Louder than a jet engine,” said Alia. “Yeah, I remember. I was really into marine biology that year.”
“Right,” said Theo eagerly. “So it makes this bang that can shock big fish or whatever, but you said it survives by being noisy, not by trying to blend in.”
“How do you even remember all that?”
Theo’s grin went lopsided. He jammed his hands into his pockets and bounced once on his heels. “I kept it.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “It was a good reminder. When things weren’t going great.”
Alia folded her arms. “If it meant so much to you, why didn’t you say anything?”
Theo rolled his eyes. “Because there was a lot of ridiculous kissy stuff, too, and you were thirteen and my best friend’s sister. I thought you might pounce on me in the TV room and ask me to marry you. I mean, there’s half a page dedicated to all the signs that we were soul mates. One of them was we both like ketchup.”
Alia covered her head with her hands. “Stop.”
“Lotta loopy stalker talk, some seriously convoluted metaphors.”
“Okay, that’s enough. Go away and leave me to enjoy my humiliation in peace.”
“But that’s what I’m saying—I’m sorry that note embarrasses you.” She lifted a brow. “Okay, I’m not that sorry, because you’re kind of cute when you’re embarrassed, but that letter meant everything to me. You told me you liked the way I wasn’t like anyone else, and that was really what I needed to hear right then.”
“Then…I guess, you’re welcome?” said Alia, unsure of what else to say. She supposed she could live with a little embarrassment. “But you still have to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I really need to go.”
“Right, to the spring!”
“No,” she said, cheeks heating. “To go.”
Theo gave her the thumbs-up. “And I’m out.”
He headed back down the path, but when he picked up the water jug, Alia said, “Hey, Theo?”
“Yeah?”
“The night of the party at the Met, how come you complimented everyone but me?”
He grinned. “Because you in that gold dress turned my brain to mush.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
He took a couple of steps, then paused. “Alia?” he called back.
“What, Theo?”
“That night, at the party? You looked like buried treasure.”
Alia took her time getting back to the car, mostly because she couldn’t shake the goofy grin from her face, and when she finally returned to the clearing, Diana was pacing and Jason looked suitably grouchy. He opened the Fiat’s door to usher them inside, and Alia was pretty sure that if he’d still had a watch he would have tapped it impatiently.
They squeezed into the same formation they had the previous day: Nim behind the wheel, Jason in the passenger seat, and the rest of them wedged into the back, Diana sandwiched between Alia and Theo like the really gorgeous filling in a pressed panini. Alia felt almost guilty for the room she had behind Nim and silently blessed her friend’s short legs.
They decided to keep to their plan to take the Langadha Pass, and a few hours later they skirted the town of Kalamata, pausing only to get gas—after a negotiation that went considerably more smoothly with Diana doing the talking—before they joined up with the road heading east through the hills.
It didn’t take long to realize why locals didn’t use this particular route. It clung to the cliff in a narrow ribbon, bracketed on one side by unforgiving gray rock and on the other by a steep plunge into a tree-choked ravine.
Alia tried to control her nausea as they snaked around another hairpin turn. The road shrank to a single lane in some sections, with no way to see who might be coming the opposite direction or how fast. Even when there were two lanes, they were so cramped that whenever another car sped by, the Fiat shuddered. Alia told herself it was just because of the change in pressure between the two vehicles, but attaching Bernoulli’s principle to the shaking didn’t make her feel any less like they were one careless driver away from a crash that would smash them into the side of the mountain or send them sailing into nothingness.
“This is an ancient road,” said Diana, looking past Alia out the window. “Telemachus traveled it by chariot when he rode from Nestor’s palace to meet Menelaus in Sparta.”
“Menelaus? As in Helen’s husband?” asked Alia.
“I bet Telemachus didn’t get stuck behind a tour bus,” growled Nim, laying on the horn.
“Hey,” said Jason. “We’re trying not to attract attention, remember?”
“Don’t worry,” said Nim, punctuating every word with a horn blast. “No. One. Is. Paying. Attention. To. Me.”
Eventually, the bus found a place to pull to the side and Nim zoomed by as Alia clenched Diana’s arm and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Nim,” she gasped, “I realize we’re fleeing for our lives, but that’s not going to matter if we don’t actually survive this drive.”
“It’s fine!” said Nim, taking another turn with such enthusiasm everyone in the car slid hard to the left.
They’d had to sacrifice the car’s air conditioning to the climb up the hill, and now that they were free of the bus’s exhaust fumes, Alia tilted her head out the open window and breathed deeply.
The part of her brain that wasn’t preoccupied with trying not to vomit could appreciate the beauty of this place, the dense clouds of pine, the jagged peaks and twisting spires of the pass. There were places where the rock hung low over the road like a wave frozen just before it broke, others where the road narrowed and the car passed through a slender, rough-hewn furrow in the stone. Whoever had cut through the rock had left little room on either side. Alia felt like the Fiat was caught in some monster’s gullet, and that at any minute the beast might clear its throat.
They flew past a sign and Jason said, “That was the Kaiadas pit.”
“The what now?” said Alia.
“It’s where the Spartans dropped their enemies so no one would find them. It’s supposed to be bottomless.”
“Yeah, and their kids, too,” said Theo. “If the babies weren’t up to snuff.”
“That’s awful,” said Alia.
“It was a martial culture,” Jason said. “They had different priorities.”
Theo flicked Jason’s ear. “So you’re saying it was okay for them to dump anyone who wasn’t a perfect physical specimen like yourself?”
“I’m just saying it was a different time.”
Nim shuddered. “A barbaric time.”
“Is the world we live in so much better?” said Jason.
“Flush toilets,” offered Nim.
“Antibiotics,” said Alia.
“Smartphones,” said Theo.
“But that’s what I mean,” said Jason. “Antibiotics have created new strains of super bacteria. People are so dependent on their phones that they don’t bother learning anything for themselves anymore.”
Alia leaned forward and swatted Jason’s arm. “I cannot believe you’re talking smack about science.”
Jason held up his hands defensively. “I’m not! I’m just saying all those things that make our lives so convenient have a price. Think about the way technology has changed modern warfare. How much courage do you need to launch an air strike from behind a computer screen?”
“It’s true,” said Diana. “You’re efficient killers.”
“Sure,” said Alia, thinking of all the advances her parents had made at Keralis Labs, even the things they’d been working toward with Project Second Born. “But we’re also efficient healers.”
“And that has a cost, too,” said Jason. “Every generation is weaker than the last. Unable to adapt and thrive without being propped up by vaccines, gene therapy.”
Theo kicked the back of Jason’s seat. “Jesus, Jason, you’re sounding more Spartan by the second.”
“It’s just biology,” Jason said. “I’m not saying it’s good or bad.”
Theo slumped back in his seat. “Yeah, well, all I know is I would have been the first one over the cliff. The Spartans probably weren’t big on scrawny nerd babies in a martial culture.”
“It’s a myth,” said Diana.
Alia wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. “You mean like Warbringers and battle gods?”
“No, I mean, one of the most famous Spartan poets was blind from birth. They had a king with a clubfoot. They knew there was more to being a warrior than strength. All that stuff about leaving babies to die was Athenian propaganda.”
“Hey,” said Nim. “Do you know what the Spartans said when the Persians demanded they lay down their arms and surrender?”
“No,” said Theo. “But I bet it was followed by a lot of yelling and a slow-motion fight scene.”
“Molon labe,” said Jason.
“ ‘Come and get them,’ ” murmured Diana.
“Ha!” said Theo. “Someone knows more than the know-it-all.”
Nim hurtled them past the next turn. “Theo, I’m pretty sure we have time to detour to that bottomless pit.”
Come and get them. Alia wondered if Diana thought they might be facing a battle today. Was she afraid? Or was she like a concert violinist looking forward to a chance to play?
“Alia,” said Theo, ignoring Nim, “what’s the first thing you want to do once you’re purged of all your Warbringer-ness?”
Alia opened her mouth, then hesitated. In all the terror and desperation to get to the spring, she hadn’t really thought about what might come after. “Do you think I’ll feel different?” she asked Diana.
“I don’t know,” Diana said, “but I think the world will.”
Theo laughed. “You mean we’re all going to join hands and sing folk songs?”
“That sounds unpleasant,” said Diana.
“Come on!” said Theo. “Peace, love, the Age of Asparagus.”
“Aquarius,” corrected Nim.
“Is this really what you think peace is?” Diana said, clearly amused. “It sounds like a bad one-act play.”
“No, no, no,” said Theo. “It’s definitely a musical.”
“Oh God,” groaned Nim.
“When the mooooon is in the something something,” crooned Theo.
Nim gripped the steering wheel. “Theo, shut up.”
“And Jooopiter is wearing paaaants—”
“Theo!” snarled Nim. “Shut up. There’s something behind us.”
Alia craned her neck to see out the back window. There was a truck there, flashing its brights. “Maybe he just wants to get by.”
But at that moment the truck accelerated, its bumper kissing the back of the Fiat, sending the little car lurching forward as they all screamed.
Alia looked back again, and through the window she saw the driver’s hollow black eyes, his lips pulled back in a rictus grin, his monstrous face framed by a lion’s helm. The truck flickered, and Alia saw the shape of a chariot drawn by four massive horses, their eyes red as blood, their huge hooves sparking against the asphalt. Fear flooded through her. She needed to get out of this car.
Diana grabbed her hand, keeping it from the door handle.
“Don’t give in to the fear. It’s Deimos,” she said, keeping her voice low, steady, though Alia could see her pupils had dilated and a sheen of sweat had broken out on her brow. “God of terror. Phobos’s twin. Nim, you have to slow down.”
The driver laid on his horn, the sound too loud, filling Alia’s ears. In it she heard the trumpets of war, the screams of the dying.
The truck roared forward and banged against their bumper again. The car jolted, swung far into the left lane, nearly colliding with a car coming the other direction.
Nim clutched the steering wheel, pulling them back into their lane, and hit the gas, trying to outpace the truck. “What do I do?” she gasped, voice trembling. In the rearview mirror, Alia could see the terror on her face, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Slow down,” commanded Diana.
“He’s right on my butt!” Nim yelled.
“Listen to Diana. He won’t try to kill us,” Jason said, his fists clenched, knuckles like white stars. “Slow down. They don’t want the Warbringer dead.”
“Do it, Nim,” said Alia, though everything in her screamed to run as far and as fast from the monster behind them as they could. She made herself squeeze Nim’s shoulder. “Do it.”
Nim huffed a low sob, flexed her fingers, and took her foot off the gas. The car slowed.
Again the truck’s horn blared, and Alia covered her ears. Over it all, she heard the roar of the engine, the thunder of hooves. The truck had moved into the opposite lane and was pulling alongside them.
“He’s going to run us into the cliff!” cried Theo.
“We need to stop,” said Jason.
“I can’t!” sobbed Nim. “There are cars behind us.”
Innocent drivers. What did they see? A little Fiat packed with tourists, slowing and speeding up, driving erratically? A truck trying to pass? Or something worse? If Nim stopped the car, the other drivers might have time to slow and stop safely, or those people might go careening off the cliff into the gorge.
The sound of the chariot seemed to shake the little car, the pounding of hooves was the detonation of mortars, the clatter of its wheels the earsplitting percussion of gunfire.
Theo laughed, and Alia saw Phobos beside Diana. He kicked at Jason’s seat in ferocious glee as Diana put her arm out to restrain him. The Fiat shot forward.
“Nim, slow down!” Alia cried.
But Nim’s only answer was a ragged cackle, her star-strewn hair a glittering tangle, as Eris shoved her foot down on the gas, racing the chariot.
Deimos grinned and cracked his whip, a long black coil that gleamed like a slick-skinned adder in his hand. The chariot roared ahead—one car length, two—and cut into their lane. It screeched to a halt, and Alia saw the truck’s trailer slide around so it was blocking the road. They were going to crash.
She opened her mouth to scream. Jason grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it hard right. The Fiat jounced off the highway and onto a side road, its back wheels squealing against the blacktop as it skidded into a spin and careened off the pavement into the brush, branches crackling against the windshield. Alia realized Diana had braced her body around hers, then heard a loud bang.
One of their tires had blown. The car slowed and finally rattled to a halt.
The air went still, the silence strangely loud in Alia’s ears, until one by one the sounds of the ordinary world seemed to return: insects, the chirp of birds, the rhythm of her own frantic breathing.
Jason had his arms straight out, hands flat against the dashboard, nostrils flaring as he inhaled, exhaled, eyes closed. Theo leaned his head against the back of Jason’s seat, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Diana’s face was pale, her blue eyes wide. She pushed the braids back from Alia’s face. “Are you all right?”
Alia managed to nod.
Nim shoved open the driver’s-side door, stumbled two weaving steps, crumpled to her knees, and threw up.
Alia batted at the door handle. She couldn’t quite make her fingers work. Diana leaned forward and released the lock. Alia slid out after Nim, her legs rubbery. For a moment the world tilted and she thought she might faint. Then she was next to Nim, holding her tight as they both shook.
She heard the car doors open and made herself take a proper look around. They were in a shallow gully pocked with olive trees. It had been sheer luck that they hadn’t slammed into one of them and wrecked the car completely.
“So they weren’t trying to kill us, huh?” said Theo, leaning against the side of the Fiat.
“They stopped the truck there for a reason,” Diana said. She dug into the car’s trunk and brought the water jug over to Nim, crouching down to offer it to her. “Drink,” she said gently.
Jason paced in tight circles. His eyes were a little wild. “They wanted to slow us down. They knew the side road was here. They drove us off the highway on purpose.”
“The chariot,” Alia said, voice dazed. “I saw a chariot when we took off from the Great Lawn. I think it was one of them. I think he was helping us get away, driving the soldiers back, keeping me alive.”
Nim took a sip of water, rinsed her mouth, spat in the dirt, then took another gulp and wiped the moisture from her lips. “Is there a spare?”
“Nim—” said Alia. There was no way Nim was ready to get back on the road.
“Is there a spare?” Nim repeated, her gaze fierce.
“Yeah,” said Theo, looking in the trunk. “There is.”
“Then get to it,” she said, waving at Diana and Jason. “One of you human jacks should be able to get the tire changed fast enough.”
Diana rested her hand on Nim’s shoulder. “Nim, are you sure you can do this? You’ve already proven your strength.”
Nim shook her head. “Alia and I have spent half our lives being bullied. If those asshats think they can scare us into not fighting back, they’re in for an education.”
Nim held up her right pinky and Alia locked her own finger into it. Alia raised her left hand, and after a moment of confusion, Diana hooked her pinky with Alia’s, then offered her other pinky to Nim.
“Are you guys forming a coven?” called Theo, the spare slung over his bony shoulder.
“Bubble, bubble,” said Nim with a determined grin.
Alia squeezed her pinkies and felt Nim and Diana squeeze back.
They answered together, “Make some trouble.”