Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(48)

“Maybe if you saw more truly, listened more closely, she wouldn’t have felt the need to lie to you.”

Jason’s jaw hardened. He took a step closer. “You don’t know anything about me or Alia, so just stay quiet and don’t get in my way.”

“You wouldn’t even know your way without me.”

“If you make one move that seems—”

Diana leaned in. She was tired of threats from this boy. They were almost the same height, and she met his gaze easily. “What will you do?”

“I’ll end you.”

Diana couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he growled.

How could she possibly explain? She’d faced the death of her mother and friends in the Oracle’s vision. She’d braved exile and nearly drowned to come here. Besides, when you’d stood toe-to-toe with the great Tekmessa, general of the Amazons, and endured her derision, it was hard to fear a mortal boy—regardless of his well-made frame.

“You’re pretty enough, Jason Keralis. But hardly intimidating.”

His eyelids stuttered. “Pretty?”

“Is Jason being a jerk?” Alia called from somewhere in the penthouse.

“Yes!” Diana called back without breaking Jason’s gaze. “If you’ll excuse me?”

She bracketed his shoulders with her hands, and he emitted a squeak as she picked him up and moved him out of her path.

Diana strode past, not bothering to look back. From behind her, she heard Jason mutter, “Pretty enough?”





Alia hovered halfway up the stairs in the entry as Diana strode from the kitchen. How did she manage to make a crappy drugstore T-shirt look regal?

“What did Jason say?” she asked. “Was he horrible?”

“Yes,” said Diana as she followed her up the steps. “I suppose his motives are good, but his manner makes me want to—”

“Stab him with a pencil?”

“Not exactly that,” said Diana. “But he’s certainly irritating.”

The phone buzzed, and Alia bounced on her toes with a happy whoop. “Nim is on her way!”

“It would be best if she wasn’t seen entering the building.”

Alia paused, her foot on the stair above her. It was too easy to slide out of the reality of her situation. It was like her mind couldn’t accept what was happening, so it just kept defaulting to the ordinary.

She sent a text to Nim telling her to take a car and use the private elevator. They could send Perez down with a key.

“Can she be trusted, this Nim?” asked Diana.

“Definitely. But let’s spare her all the Warbringer talk, yeah?”

At the top of the stairs, Alia hesitated. She longed for her room, her clothes, a good long nap. Instead, she made herself turn right and follow the hallway, the skylights casting squares of sunshine on the black-and-white paneled floor.

“The pattern is different here,” Diana noted.

“Yeah, the tiles in the entry hall make a fractal. This is a DNA sequence.” Alia shrugged. “That’s what happens when you give nerds money.”

She stopped before the double doors to her parents’ office, her hands resting on the handles, then took a deep breath and pushed them open.

There was a time when this had been her favorite room in the apartment. Its walls were lined with bookshelves paneled in the same warm wood as the staircase, and a huge fireplace took up half of one wall. A small table and two chairs had been positioned in front of the cold grate, and a paperback lay open on one of the armrests, just where Lina Keralis had left it. Death in the Air, by Agatha Christie.

“Mom loved mysteries,” Alia said, touching the cracked spine of the book lightly. “And thrillers. She liked puzzles. She said they helped her relax.”

Diana ran her hand along the stone mantel, pausing to pick up a photograph. “Are these your parents?”

Alia nodded. “And Neil deGrasse Tyson in the middle.”

Diana set the frame down gently. “This room is so different from the rest of your home.”

It was true. Her parents had kept the rest of the penthouse light and airy, but the office looked like they’d stolen the library from some English manor house. “My parents loved this kind of old-world stuff.”

“Well, old is relative,” Diana murmured, and Alia remembered her claim that the walls on her island dated back three thousand years.

“They said they worked in a sterile white lab all day; they wanted to feel like they were escaping when they came home.”

Again, Alia touched her hand to the spine of the book on her mother’s chair. A decanter with two glasses beside it sat on a low table. It all felt so immediate, as if they might return at any moment. Alia knew it was a little creepy, definitely depressing, but she couldn’t quite make herself close that book.

“I just can’t believe my mom would have kept such a huge secret from me,” she said.

“Maybe she didn’t want you to feel different,” Diana said. “Maybe she wanted you to have a chance at being like everyone else.”

Alia snorted. “Not much hope of that.” She crossed to the double desk where her parents had liked to work across from each other.

“Why?”