The Warrior God (The Ares Trials #1) - Eliza Raine Page 0,54

in Eris’ eyes was seriously unsettling.

“Surely we can defeat whatever Pain throws at us?” I said, my usual bluster and confidence returning now that I’d finished my second cup of nectar. Thank god.

“It will be a creature or being with power, designed to face a god. Fighting with no power at all will be... difficult,” said Ares. To hear doubt in his voice was far, far more worrying.

“Then we’ll have to be smart as well as tough,” I said. “If you’d listened to me last time-”

He cut me off. “Then I would have got the sword easier, I know!”

“Christ on a cracker, calm down armor-boy,” I said, giving him a look.

“I must say, it’s more fun to see you get pissed with your helmet off,” said Eris with a smile. “Your jaw does this excellent twitching thing.”

“You’ve seen my face many times before,” he grunted.

“Yeah, but not with someone else around who riles you as much as she does. It’s fun.” She grinned and hopped up onto the stone table swinging her legs. Her enormous boobs were squished into a leather wraparound thing that she must have been sewn into, it was so tight.

“Look, my point is that I don’t think Pain’s tests will just be about brute strength. He embodies pain, they will be endurance tests, that will hurt. In the last test, it was about taking the pain of smashing the staffs to get ahead. We can handle that without magic, right?”

“I can handle any pain,” said Ares, standing straighter.

“You’re about to find out what it feels like to be human, little brother,” drawled Eris.

By the time I was following Ares through a maze of rock tunnels, heading for the sandy stage and whatever foe awaited us, I was feeling much better. I didn’t know if I would get any of my usual focus, or accelerated speed or strength, but the sheer volume of adrenaline buzzing through me would hopefully make up for that.

Knowing that Eris and Ares, ancient all-powerful deities, were worried about our ability to win this fight was only spurring me on. I had a point to prove to both the crowd and the godly siblings.

The thing about years of fighting people much, much bigger than myself was that I’d had to develop a confidence in the skills I had that they didn’t. If it weren’t for my inexorable need for confrontation, I would never have stepped into the ring with most of my opponents. On paper, I should have lost every single fight. And that’s why people came to see me. It took four or five fights in every shady shithouse I found to compete in before the bookies realized what they had on their hands.

I’d smash my first opponent to bits and they would think it was a fluke, a lucky break. They’d pitch me against somebody harder, and when I made short work of them, the odds against me would decrease just a little, but I would still be far from the favorite to win. After seeing me knock out another three guys twice my size, pumped up to the eyeballs on steroids, the odds would finally tip, and I would become the favorite. At which point I always left, to find a new challenge, a new group of lowlifes and adrenaline junkies to shock and delight.

The reason I always won wasn’t because I was stronger or faster, although I often was. It was because I had learned what made me different. I didn’t start out winning. I had my ass handed to me plenty of times at the beginning. But slowly I realized that fighting wasn’t just about having big muscles. Pain wasn’t just about taking blows.

Strength of mind was what had always given me the edge; unbending confidence, and an ability to see from another’s point of view. And that would be what gave me the edge in this fight too. I had to be the reason Ares won this.

I had to be. Because if I could make him see how good I was, he would have to help me with my power. He would have to concede that I was more useful with it than without it.

I repeated that in my head as I walked, trying to make it louder than the traitorous part of me that wanted him to see how good I was simply because I was desperate to impress him.

The roar of the crowd as we stepped out of one of the gates onto the sandy