The Warrior God (The Ares Trials #1) - Eliza Raine Page 0,24

me, and it was like my normal fighting focus had been multiplied by a million. I could see what was happening around me in slow-motion. It was incredible. I was invincible.

Or at least, I would have been if I had eyes in the back of my head.

Pain lanced through my left shoulder blade, and the magical moment severed abruptly. I couldn’t help the scream that tore from my lips as white-hot agony burned all the way down my spine, and my legs buckled. Sand flew up around me as I crashed to the ground, and my vision swam like I was underwater as I struggled to hold onto what was happening. I heard the drums redouble, a roar from Ares, the snarl of a cat, then my head hit the sand.

10

Ares

“I told you she would get us killed!” The girl was a dead-weight over my shoulder as I stamped through the entrance gates to Erimos. Nobody cast us a second glance. As long as you’d paid entry to the city you could be carrying five dead bodies on your back and no-one would care.

“If you hadn’t accessed her power so much, she wouldn’t have been tempted to try to use it herself,” Hera’s accursed cat answered me. “You were foolish to fight those men. You should have walked away.”

“The God of War does not walk away from a fight,” I spat.

“And now the God of War can’t access any power because his only source has been poisoned by a manticore,” she sang back at me. I screwed my face up, a sick feeling churning through my gut. Gods, I wished I had my helmet on. It felt so completely wrong to have my face exposed like this. But other than a few appreciative looks from the local whores, I was largely being ignored.

I knew where the sole apothecary was in Erimos and turned left into the busiest of the many bazaars in the city. Hawkers shouting and the smell of spices consumed me as I strode through the square, Bella’s cheek bouncing softly against the skin of my back as I walked. Something uneasy flashed through me again as I recalled her face changing from awe to shocked pain as the manticore stinger had sunk into her back. I’d barely had enough time to access her power and deal with the vile thing before she’d fallen unconscious. And as such, cutting off my access to her power.

That was where the uneasy feeling was coming from, I was sure. I was utterly powerless whilst she was like this. It was nothing to do with the fact that actual flames had burned in her eyes when she had looked at me in the camp, her muscles tense, her weapon ready.

She was rude, impulsive, unladylike, and embodied everything I disliked in a woman. She was the opposite of Aphrodite. So it did not matter that I had heard the drums of war when I looked into her eyes. What mattered was keeping her alive long enough to use her power to hunt down the escaped demon and getting my own blessed power back.

“She’s blue,” said the owner of the apothecary, when I slid the girl from over my shoulder onto the stone table in front of him. His store was lined with bottles of hundreds of colors. Some were so bright they made my eyes squint. Bowls of powders and ooze were interspersed with the bottles, and the whole place smelled like iron.

“I’m sure you’ve seen worse,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he responded, dipping his head to look at her face. He was a small human man, with thinning hair and spectacles. “Manticore sting?” He asked, looking at the blackening wound in her back.

“Yes.”

He tutted. “And what is she?”

I paused, trying to work out the best way to respond. “Demigod,” I answered eventually. The skinny man looked up at me over the rim of his glasses, disdainfully.

“I can see that, she’d already be dead otherwise. How strong? Will she be able to handle Ambrosia?”

“I, erm...” Anger rippled through me as I struggled to answer his question. Look at me! One of the twelve most revered beings in the damned world and a tiny human was looking at me like I was an idiot.

“She is powerful,” I said eventually. But I had no idea if she could withstand Ambrosia. It sent those without enough power completely mad, and was highly addictive to those on the cusp. But it healed mortal wounds so it was a risk