Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(94)
He smiled, and his dimple made a shadow in his cheek. “Truth means something different when it’s given freely.” He bobbed his head toward the valley. “How far away do you think that mountain peak is?”
Diana grinned. “Let’s find out.”
With a laugh, they were plunging down the hill, past the pond, through the silver wood.
Diana shot past him, leaping over a fallen log, under a low branch, her heart pounding a happy rhythm as the forest unfolded before her. She burst from its trees onto a gravelly hillside, sliding more than running as the powdery soil gave way beneath her feet in a shower of pebbles. She heard Jason whoop somewhere behind her, struggling to keep up but apparently enjoying every minute of it.
They were on open ground now, low rolling hills pocked with boulders and scrub clinging to rough planes of granite. She heard Jason’s steady footsteps, and then he was running beside her, matching her step for step. He’s not hiding anymore, she realized. She laughed, and his smile flashed white in the darkness.
Diana let go and ran. You do not enter a race to lose.
She felt the slap of her sandals against the earth, the stars whirling above her. She didn’t bother to pace herself or to worry about how far or how high the mountain might be. She simply ran, Jason’s steps pushing her faster, the hound at the heels of the stag—but she felt no fear, only exhilaration. She didn’t need to worry about what it might mean to lose or how she should comport herself as a princess. There was only the race, the desire to win, the thrill of her wild heartbeat matched to his as they leapt the rocky gully of a stream and began to climb the peak’s steep slope, pushing through thorny scrub and fragrant pine until…there, an old cart track, barely visible, overgrown with weeds and broken by tree roots.
Diana hooted in triumph as her feet met the path, sprinting higher to where the trees were sparse, their trunks bent and twisted by the wind. They looked like women, frozen in a mad dance, the tangle of their hair tossed forward in abandon, their backs arched in ecstasy or bent in supplication, a processional of dancers that led Diana up the mountainside.
Run, they whispered, for this is what happens if you let your feet take root. But wasn’t that the life Diana’s sisters had chosen? Bound to one spot, safe but locked out of time, preparing for a war that might never come?
She rounded a bend and saw the crest of the peak before her, a small shrine near its apex, a Madonna surrounded by withered flowers and packages of sweets, small offerings. Diana somehow knew that there had always been shrines here, holy places where the gods’ names were spoken, where prayers were offered beneath the black and limitless sky.
She put on a spurt of speed, lengthened her stride, and gave a shout as she passed the shrine and reached the mountain’s highest peak, raising her arms in victory.
Jason padded up behind her, jogging the last few yards. His laugh was breathless as he bent double, hands on his knees. “Not nice to gloat,” he panted.
Diana grinned. “We should have made a wager.”
She gazed out over the valley to the peaks of the Taygetus far in the distance, a world painted in black and silver, the sky a dark vault of stars. It seemed to go on and on, unbounded by seas or barriers, a world that might take a hundred human lifetimes to explore. But when they reached the spring, she would have to leave all of these horizons behind.
“Well, I guess I’m no Agathon,” Jason said. “I barely kept up with you.”
She gave him a grudging nod. “You kept up fine.”
“Did I?” he asked, and somehow she knew that was not really the question he was asking. Starlight gilded the lines of his profile as he turned to her.
“Yes,” she said, the sound caught on a breath.
Jason leaned forward, and she felt her own weight shift as if snared by his gravity, by the shape of his lips, by the shift of muscle beneath his skin. His mouth met hers, warm and smooth, the first summer plum, ripe with promise, and hunger bloomed in her like an eager vine, its tendrils uncurling low in her stomach. He slid his hand into her hair, drawing her closer. But beneath his strength and speed, she could feel how very mortal he was, his life as fleeting as a kiss, a captured spark. He would not last. And so she let herself feel the fierce beat of his heart, the heat of his skin, the ferocity of a life that would shine for the barest moment, there and then gone.
Alia woke at dawn to birdsong—and a crescent moon visible on the horizon, a slender, perfect scythe. The reaping moon. Hekatombaion had begun. We’re almost there, she reminded herself. We just have to reach the spring before sunset.
Either binding Theo and Nim during the night had done the trick or the gods of battle had found some other group of people to harass because no one seemed to be screaming or trying to commit murder. Diana and Jason were already awake, the last of their food stores set out on a rock as they debated the merits of which route to take to Therapne and how they hoped to find the spring once they were there. They sat close together, their shoulders almost touching, the animosity that had hummed between them since that first meeting at the Good Night seemingly gone. Maybe it wasn’t animosity, she considered as she rolled her head, trying to work the crick out of her neck. Ugh. If Jason was making moves on her friends, she didn’t want to know about it. Though he could definitely do worse.
Alia left Nim still snoozing in the reclined driver’s seat and went to wash her face and hands in the upper pool of the falls. She heard Theo before she saw him, the happy whistle of some song she didn’t recognize floating around the bend in the path. Before she could turn and run, he was rounding the corner in his shiny, battered trousers and the stolen blue button-down that now seemed to be missing its sleeves. He was carrying the full water jug in front of him with both skinny arms and stopped dead when he saw her. His crop of locs looked more awake than he did.