The Warrior God (The Ares Trials #1) - Eliza Raine Page 0,49
a grunting noise as the staff slid from his grip. I landed awkwardly, but rolled to the staff before the cyclops could scoop it up again, bringing the back of my heel slamming down on the glowing end.
Instead of the final shock I was expecting, I heard a roar of triumph from Ares, and no pain wracked my body at all.
“I told you I would get the sword!” the warrior God bellowed from behind me. But I didn’t look at him. My gaze was fixed on the cyclops, just as his huge eye was on me. He was only a couple of feet away from where I was sitting on the ground, the smashed staff beneath my boot. He hadn’t straightened and folded his arms like the others.
“Well done, little girl,” the creature said, baring sharp teeth as he grinned at me. “Now those staffs are out of the way, we can play.”
I barely rolled out of the way fast enough, his own massive boots crashing down where I had been sitting. I scrambled to my feet whilst still moving, seeing the other two creatures charging towards me on both sides. I darted for two lumps of rock, and heard a loud thud behind me. Pulling my knife from my pocket and flicking it open, I whirled.
Ares, gleaming and gold and magnificent, was wielding a fine silver sword and landing blow upon blow on the three cyclopes surrounding him. Indignation that the idiot man only had the damned sword because of me, but was now getting all the glory, swamped me, and I cried out as I charged into the melee.
But before I even got close, I felt a huge wrench in my stomach, and Ares glowed gold, his movements speeding up so much I could barely see him. Fatigue and dizziness washed over me and I staggered, my charge broken like I’d hit a wall.
The golden blur in front of me wobbled, my eyelids suddenly heavy, and it took everything I had not to fall to my knees.
“Fucking... asshole...” I tried to say, but the words came out as a whisper.
I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck, and to my dismay, I couldn’t stop my knees from buckling. The blur of gold that was Ares faded from my vision as the red mist leaked away, everything replaced by a pale haze.
He was draining me. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I was sure it was happening, because the only solid thing my fast receding senses could still feel was the fierce pull in the pit of my stomach.
He was using all of my power. Everything I had. To defeat the enemies I had disarmed, with the weapon I had enabled him to get.
A tinge of red crept back into the edges of my vision, the white haze clearing ever so slightly.
A gong sounded, so loud I half-lifted my hands to my ears, but found they were too heavy to get that far, so I let them fall again, my whole torso swaying. The roar of a crowd penetrated my ears, and the pull in my stomach lessened so abruptly that I lost my balance somehow, pitching forward onto my elbows.
I took a shuddering breath, trying to see clearly, but everything was too blurry, and my eyelids simply wouldn’t do what I needed them to do. A shadow moved over me, and my instincts kicked in. Blind and half immobile or not, today was not the day a one-eyed fuckwit killed me. I dropped onto my side, my limbs feeling like they weighed a ton as I dragged them into myself, and kicked up pathetically at the figure looming over me. My steel toe caps rang against metal, and I heard Ares.
“Stand up.”
I tried to roll again, but I simply didn’t have the strength. That kick had finished me. Frustration and anger hit me so hard that the back of my useless eyes burned hot with tears. I was fucking laid on the ground in front of the world I wanted to belong to, weak as a damned kitten.
“I hate you,” I whispered. “You fucking did this to me.” Then for the second time in two days, I passed out.
21
Bella
“You really are a fucking moron, Ares. Learn to control yourself.” The voice was vaguely familiar as it pushed its way through my consciousness.
“That’s rich coming from you! I didn’t know she was still so weak,” I heard Ares snap back.