The Warrior God (The Ares Trials #1) - Eliza Raine Page 0,13

yelled, when Ares appeared out of nowhere on the sand beside me just ten minutes after he had left.

The giant god looked at me long enough for me to register the fury in his dark eyes, then roared, drawing his sword from its sheath.

I ducked into a low crouch, balling my fists, the red mist descending fast.

But Ares turned, and I rose slowly as he started smashing his sword into a large cluster of boulders as though they had just announced themselves his mortal enemy. He bellowed with rage as he landed his weapon again and again on the rocks, and they cracked and crumbled under his wrath.

“Your business went well then?” I muttered, the red mist leaking away. I cocked my head as I watched him hacking the shit out of the rocks, his sound of his armor moving and the steel clash of his sword ringing though the air.

Whilst it was quite amusing to see his fury with the inanimate objects, I was also reluctantly impressed. Power or no power, the man could wield a sword. I mean, a pile of rocks wasn’t the ideal target but... I’d destroyed enough plasterboard walls that didn’t really deserve it in my time to withhold judgment.

I wondered absently what had made him so mad as I flopped back down on my ass with a sigh. If we really did share the same temper, then it didn’t matter what had set him off, as long as I let him take it all out on the rocks. Especially since I was unarmed. Which was the first of a number of things I had decided needed resolving fast.

He’d only been gone for ten minutes, but that was long enough to be completely alone in a strange place, and for the panic I’d so far kept subdued to make some headway.

I had been abducted by the God of War and taken to a world that by all rights shouldn’t exist. It probably said a lot about me that until I was alone and unarmed, a secret little part of me had actually been excited by that. Something in my life finally felt right, even if it was kind of impossible, and my friend’s life was in danger.

As long as the adrenaline was burning through me I could eliminate anything that made me weak, any self-doubt or emotion that wasn’t helpful. But standing in a fucking desert with nothing at all did the opposite of that. Worry had begun crashing through me unchecked, a whirlwind of doubt and the undeniable truth that I was in way, way over my head smashing into me like a wrecking ball. The reality of my whole life changing in one day, being wanted dead by a violent god and now being expected to chase down a demon escaped from the Underworld finally hit me. And in a world where everyone was armed with dirty great swords or freaking magic, I was woefully under-equipped.

At that point in my runaway-train of panicked thoughts I had managed to latch onto something and steady myself. Weapons. I needed a weapon. With something nice and violent to focus on, I’d sat down on the hot sand, taken a deep breath, and forced myself to concentrate.

Joshua had once told me that list-making was a good way to feel in charge of a situation that otherwise felt out of my control. At the time this had seemed like good advice for when I lost yet another job, or my fuckwit landlord put my rent up for no good reason. But now that I knew Joshua was some sort of magic person from another damned world, I had to wonder under what circumstances he had really intended his advice to be used. It probably wasn’t sat in a desert somewhere in Olympus trying to keep a panic attack at bay. None-the-less, I had made myself a list entitled ‘things I need to survive in the realm of war’.

As Ares yelled again, his huge sword running out of rocks to smash, another stab of betrayal bit at me. Joshua had known I was different the whole time. He had known I really didn’t belong, and that it wasn’t a damned chemical imbalance. He had tried to help me believe that I was normal, instead of just telling me why I’d always felt so out of place, so trapped. So wrong for the world I was in.

I squashed the feeling with a snort, and went through my list again in