Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(109)

Alia shook her head. “You think you’re going to save the world and everyone’s going to finally thank you for it? You think all your new gun-toting friends are going to take your side when the battle is over? This isn’t going to change anything.”

“You don’t see it, Alia, but eventually you will.”

“Tell yourself what you want. You’re not a hero. You’re a little boy playing war.”

“That’s enough.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s enough,” she snapped.

His eyes narrowed. “You are a child, Alia. You’ve had the luxury of being a child because I kept the watch, because I made the hard choices. I can’t protect you forever.”

The pain inside her was a living thing, a wounded animal that strained at its leash.

“What’s going to happen to me, Jason? Is someone going to betray everything I believe in and murder my friends? Is that what you’re going to protect me from?”

“Stop being a brat.”

She spat in his face.

Jason recoiled. He wiped his face clean with the hem of his shirt. For a moment he was just a boy, her brother, in a dirty T-shirt and jeans. Then he spoke, and the illusion shattered.

“Get her in the car,” he said to two soldiers standing at attention nearby. “But be cautious. You aren’t immune to her power the way I am. I don’t want you fighting among yourselves. We’ll change drivers as we travel.”

The soldiers hauled her toward the backseat of one of the Humvees, but they paused when Jason said, “Alia, the world’s about to become a very ugly place. Everyone will need allies. You may want to think about how alone you are.”

He was scolding her, like a kid being sent to bed without supper. She loved her brother, maybe she even understood the hurt that drove him, but she would never forgive what he had done.

When she spoke again, she didn’t recognize her own voice. It was a low, thrumming thing, the rage within her burning like a crucible, making it something new.

“I’m a daughter of Nemesis,” she said, “the goddess of divine retribution. You may want to think about how well I can hold a grudge.”

“Cuff her,” said Jason as the soldiers dragged her away. “I don’t want her trying to hurt herself in some misguided attempt to save the world.”

Sister in battle, I am shield and blade to you, she repeated to herself as the soldiers tossed her into the back of the Humvee, as they used plastic zip ties to fasten her wrists to the metal console that divided the backseat. As I breathe, your enemies will know no sanctuary.

I’ll find a way, Diana, she swore. For you, for Theo, for Nim. While I live, your cause is mine.





Diana could see the silver waters of the Eurotas, her own body, facedown in the river, limbs sprawled at graceless angles, drained of blood and white as bone. She made the shape of a shattered star. Nim lay a few yards away, and there was Theo, his arm hooked around a rock, as if he’d been trying to hold on to it, fingers fluttering in the current.

She watched Pinon make her slow progress to the road, her movements sluggish, her blood-bloated tail dragging through the brush as she returned to her master. As if from a great distance, she could hear the whir of helicopter blades, and Alia shouting. She was sorry she could not go to her friend, but the emotion was a faraway thing, a thought that came and went like a memory of sorrow. Diana felt nothing. Without her body, there was nothing to hold to, nothing to keep her tied to the earth.

So this was how it ended. This was death.

Yes, Daughter of Earth, this is death. And rebirth.

Diana saw her then: the Oracle, crouched by the great gray trunk of the plane tree, leaning over the waters of the spring and stirring them with one long finger, as if it were her scrying pool back on Themyscira. Was she real or just a dying vision?

I am as real as anything, said the Oracle. Her hood slid back, revealing piercing gray eyes, a full mouth, her features framed by a golden helm. Diana had seen the Oracle in this guise when she’d first visited her, but she hadn’t realized she was looking into the face of a god.

Athena.

See me now as I truly am, Daughter. See us.

The light from the water shifted, and Athena’s face was gone. She was Aphrodite with her gleaming curls; Hera in her jeweled glory; Artemis, glowing bright as the moon; veiled Hestia, who burned like an ember; Demeter in her crown of wheat; and then Athena once more. She was too beautiful. Diana wished she had eyes so she could look away.

We made Themyscira for the Amazons that they would have sanctuary, and in the guise of the Oracle, we watch over our daughters still.

It is time to return home, Diana, and take your true place among your sisters. You fought bravely for the innocent. You died with honor. And in your final moments, you cried out to me.

The Oracle rose, and Diana saw her shape shift—a warrior, a wife, a woman seated at a loom, an archer with arrow drawn.

Come, Daughter of Earth, and be reborn as your sisters once were, with all the strength that is your due. A war is coming, and you must help your people to prepare. You have earned your place among the battle-born at last.

Battle-born. Diana had dreamed of those words, longed for them. I am an Amazon.

Could she truly return to Themyscira? Fight side by side with her sisters in the war to come? The Council would never allow it. She’d violated the island’s most fundamental laws.