Diana rose and met his eye. “I could be a man of fifty and you’d still be just as wrong.”
Jason snatched up the red backpack and started toward the door. “We’re leaving, Alia.”
Diana stepped into his path. “No.”
A muscle ticked in Jason’s jaw. “Get out of my way.”
“You said yourself that she’s in danger. If people are watching you—”
“I can keep my own sister safe. We have an extensive security team of trained professionals.”
“And you trust these people?”
“More than I trust a stranger in sweatpants who slammed me against a wall and speaks Bulgarian.”
“Tell me,” said Diana. “When Alia called you from Istanbul, did you relay her location and the details of her situation to your security team?”
“Of course. I—” Jason stopped and his face turned ashen. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, then paced slowly back to the bed. He sat down heavily, his gaze stunned.
“Jason?” said Alia.
“It’s my fault. There must be someone on staff…But I don’t get it. Why would they go after Alia? I’m closer to the company. Why didn’t they come after me?”
Diana almost felt sorry for him. “You’re fighting the wrong battle,” she said gently. “I know you think this is about your family’s business, but Alia is the real target.”
“Diana—” Alia said warningly.
“What are you talking about?” said Jason.
Alia tugged on Diana’s wrist. “Just leave it be.”
“Why?”
“Because you sound insane when you talk about that stuff,” Alia whispered furiously. “Oracles, Warbringers, magic springs—”
Jason’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”
“It’s nothing,” said Alia. “Just some goofy new age stuff Diana got from…her weird family.”
“What do you know about Warbringers?” Jason was on his feet again, and his face was deadly serious.
Alia cut her brother a baffled glance. “What do you know about Warbringers?”
“It’s…it’s something I found in Mom and Dad’s papers. After the accident.”
The information seemed to strike Alia with physical force. She took a half step backward. “What?”
“I had to go through all of their documents. There was a safe in the office. I can show you.”
“Why didn’t you show me before?”
“Because it was all so out there. I didn’t…There was enough to deal with after they died. I had my hands full. And this was just so wild, all of this bizarre stuff about Dad’s Greek ancestors. I didn’t want to put that burden on you.”
“What burden?” Alia said, her voice rising, panic creeping in.
“The burden of your bloodline,” said Diana. She wasn’t angry anymore. If anything, she felt only regret. She remembered visiting the Soldiers’ Pantheon at the Armory, walking hand in hand with her mother past the glass cases, surrounded by blue light, listening to the stories of the Amazons, the courage they’d shown in battle, the greatness of their deeds, their homes, their families, their people, their gods. What’s my story? she’d asked her mother. It hasn’t been written yet, Hippolyta had said with a smile. But as the years passed, Diana had started to hate that memory, the knowledge that her story had been flawed from the start.
“Jason?” Alia asked, her fists clenched.
“It’s just a bunch of legends, Alia.”
“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me all of it.”
Jason looked to Diana almost helplessly. “I don’t know where to start.”
Alia ground her teeth together. She wasn’t mad exactly—no, that wasn’t true, she was angry, off-the-charts angry that Jason had kept this from her—but more than needing to punch him in the face, she needed to know what he knew.
“Just start,” she said, leashing her rage.
But it was Diana who spoke. “Warbringers are descendants of Helen of Troy.”
Of all the things Alia had been expecting, that wasn’t one of them. “Helen,” she said skeptically. “As in ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’?”
“It wasn’t her face,” said Diana. “Helen’s power lay not in her beauty but in her very blood. The birth of a Warbringer signals an age of conflict. If the Warbringer dies before Hekatombaion in her seventeenth year, no war will come. But if her powers are allowed to reach maturity—”
Alia held up her hands. “I know you believe this stuff, but Jason—”
Only Jason didn’t look scornful. He wasn’t scoffing or curling his lip in that contemptuous way that made Alia want to smack him. Instead, he was looking at Diana with deep suspicion. “How do you know all of this?”
Diana shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a story…a legend among my people.”
“And just who are your people?”
Why did it matter? Why was he asking these questions? “Jason, you can’t possibly believe any of this.”
“I don’t know what I believe. Mom and Dad had references to what your friend is describing, these Warbringers. They also called them hap…hap-something.”
“Haptandrai,” Diana finished.
“That’s it. There were other names, too, in almost every country.”
“Mom and Dad were scientists,” protested Alia. “We’re scientists. This is…this is a bunch of superstition. Bedtime stories.”
Diana shook her head, but she didn’t look frustrated, just sad, almost pitying. “After all you’ve seen, how can you still say that?”
Alia’s eyes fastened on the metal bracelets at Diana’s wrists. She remembered the feel of the metal beneath her fingertips earlier that day, cool and solid. Real. But she’d seen that same metal move. She’d seen palaces that shouldn’t be, phantom horses. She’d traveled through the heart of a storm. “There’s an explanation,” Alia said. “There’s always an explanation. Even if science hasn’t found it yet.”
“It was the science they were interested in,” said Jason. “They’d traced the Keralis line all the way back to ancient Greece; other families and offshoots of Helen’s bloodline, too, charting the lives of Warbringers, linking them to world events.”
Alia shook her head. “No.”
“They thought they might be able to help you with the right science.”
“And you believe all of this?”
Jason threw his hands up. “Maybe. I don’t know. Have you looked outside, Alia? Have you watched the news?”
Alia planted her hands on her hips. “We’ve been in the city less than twenty-four hours. Running for our lives. I haven’t been keeping up.”
“Well, something is happening and it isn’t good. You must have seen the soldiers on street corners.”
“I thought there’d been a bomb threat, a terrorist attack.”
“Attacks. Plural. All over the world.” He took out his phone and poked at the screen, then handed it to her.
She flicked through the headlines, one after another, Diana peering over her shoulder. Coup Attempt. Civil War Erupts. Bombings Increase. Talks Break Down. Twenty Believed Dead. Hundreds Believed Dead. Thousands Dead.
A fistfight had broken out in the middle of the UN General Assembly. Emergency meetings of Congress had been called.
“It’s beginning,” said Diana, gazing at the screen, her eyes wide. “It will only get worse. If we don’t reach the spring by Hekatombaion, the tipping point will be reached. World war will be inevitable.”
The images slid by: bombs exploding in cities she did not know, homes reduced to rubble, bodies on stretchers, a man standing in a field with a gun raised over his head, stirring up an audience of thousands. Alia clicked on the next image—a video—and heard people shouting in a language she didn’t understand, screams. She saw a crowd surge past a barricade, police in riot gear opening fire.
“You’re saying”—she cleared her throat—“you’re saying I did this.”
“It isn’t something you did,” said Diana.
Alia choked out a laugh. “Just something I am?”
Neither Diana nor Jason seemed to know how to respond to that.
“It’s the way of men to make war,” Diana attempted. “You’re just…”
“There was another word in the records Mom and Dad left,” said Jason. “Procatalysia.”
“Precatalyst?” Alia asked. It sounded like a scientific term.