Sons of Zeus (The Warrior Trilogy #1)

Sera had stood to the side of the cavernous tent for twenty minutes or so, watching the king, his son, Aristotle, and many others excitedly talk about what was going on just a few miles from where they stood. They’d been planning to take the fight wherever they needed to go — and soon — but their enemies had brought it to them instead. The hegemon seemed just fine with that, judging by the expression of something like glee on his face as he pointed at maps and barked orders left and right. The only times he ever paused were to take big gulps of wine from a pewter cup — which his page continually refilled.

A soldier came through the front flap of the tent and didn’t wait for permission to speak before he yelled what he had come to say. “They’ve broken through the front line! It’s all-out war!”

Sera’s heart shriveled like a rotted raisin. Dak. Riq. Dak’s parents. How could they possibly survive? Her only hope was that maybe they hadn’t gotten far before the fighting had begun. Maybe they were stuck in the middle of the huge army safe for the moment.

Dak, she thought. Oh, Dak. Riq. Please be safe. Please! She didn’t know what she’d do if she lost her best friends after all they’d been through.

The hustle and bustle of planning and shouting orders continued inside the tent. Every minute or so, a soldier would leave, sprinting, ready to carry those orders out into the field. At the same rate, others would return with progress reports. The whole thing seemed like chaos, but Sera was sadly familiar with it by now. It seemed to her that war was all too similar across cultures and epochs.

She then noticed something. Something very odd, that everyone else — amid that very chaos — had failed to realize yet. The king had sat down. Just a few minutes earlier, he’d been animated, throwing around his arms, stomping his feet, yelling and screaming. Now he sat as others continued in his place. And he looked weak. Pale. He slumped in the gilded chair, seeming to shrink right before her eyes. Every ounce of blood had drained from his face.

And then she knew.

Poison.

The wine.

Then, to her horror, she saw Alexander with a cup in his hand. The page must’ve just handed it to him — his hands had been empty before. But now he had some of the wine. He was raising it to his lips.

“No!” she screamed. She was running. Jumping over bunched-up carpets. Pushing people out of her way. The cup was almost to Alexander’s lips. She ran harder, the tent suddenly feeling like it was a mile wide. “No!” she screamed again.

Alexander opened his mouth.

Sera took another step.

Alexander tilted the cup, tilted his head.

Sera reached him.

Diving, she lashed her hand out and knocked the cup away from the man’s hand, sending a spray of red wine all over the place. The cup fell to the ground with a thump and a bounce, and wine fell like droplets of rain onto the carpet. Sera landed and rolled, now on her back, looking up at Alexander, who glared down at her with more surprise than fury.

“What in the name of Zeus?” he called out.

But all she could do was smile. Despite it all, despite knowing her friends might be dead, despite the loss of the king, she smiled — a thing of triumph, not glee.

In that moment, without a shred of doubt, Sera knew she had just prevented the Cataclysm. Once and for all. Mission complete.





DAK HAD once daydreamed of moments like this — so often. Lying in bed, sitting in class, staring at a book without comprehending the words. Imagining himself in one of history’s great wars, wielding a sword, bearing down on his enemies with all the wrath of a Greek god on the cusp of defeat.

If he’d learned one thing during his travels, it’s that real war was far from glamorous. This battle was no exception. Most of the time, he just tried to avoid getting trampled by people on his own team. And he’d yet to stab or maim so much as a big toe. Sticking close to Riq, they weaved their way through the chaos of battle, doing their very best not to kill or be killed.

An enemy soldier loomed over them, appearing out of a thick knot of clashing warriors, a spear raised with both hands. His face wore a scowl of hatred, like he’d been oppressed his whole life by two kids from the future. Riq swung his sword upward just as the man’s thrust came down, shattering the wood of the weapon into a dozen pieces. The man screamed bloody murder, but a tide of battling bodies swept him away, and Riq and Dak ran, threading through and dodging the clashes as best they could. Dak had no idea where Riq was trying to go, but he had a sudden and desperate dependency on the older boy.

Dust filled the air, along with screams and grunts, the clang of metal against metal, the peal of horses in pain, and thunderous roars of battle that all melded together into a chorus of war and rage. As much as Dak loved history and reading about wars, he’d never again wish to be in the middle of one.

Soldiers attacked them. Dak and Riq survived moment to moment, deflecting weapons, dodging, running. On they went.

They broke into a rare clearing, and what Dak saw before him made the entire world freeze into a bubble of silence and wonder, every sound a buzz in his ears, barely heard over the hammering of his heart.

Ten feet away, his parents lay on the ground, clasped in each other’s arms.