Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(99)

It was neither city nor country, but eventually they passed through a small town, the patios of the little hotels on its main square pocked with fat palms. Clouds of orange trees hung over whitewashed walls, and the air was sweet with the smell of their fruit.

Then they were moving on, speeding through flat groves of olive trees bordered by metal fences, past a church capped in terracotta tiles and built of stone that glowed gold like the terraces of Themyscira, until the road was dappled by the shade of plane trees and quivering fronds of fern. The countryside became suburbs, and those gave way to a modern town, wide boulevards bracketed by apartment buildings, offices, open-air cafés set with plastic umbrellas, metal streetlamps marching steadily toward the town center.

“God, it feels so ordinary here,” said Nim.

It was all still too new to Diana to feel ordinary, but they were surrounded by traffic, people. It felt safe somehow, as if the modern world might beat back the terror of the old gods. Too soon they were jogging north and crossing the Eurotas.

As they passed over the river, Alia murmured, “We’re close, aren’t we?”

“Only a few miles left,” said Jason. He tapped a nervous rhythm on his thigh, every muscle in his body taut with worry. It was hard for Diana to believe he was the same boy who had run with her, laughing beneath the stars, who had kissed her on a mountain peak. She shook the thought from her head.

“Does it feel different to you here?” she asked Alia. The landscape had changed subtly once again, grown more lush. They passed gated quarries, and here the olive trees’ twisting gray trunks emerged from soft green grass. Even the color of the rock had changed from gray to a rich red.

Alia let her hand float outside of the window, riding the currents. “It feels familiar.”

Clouds scudded across the sky, and the air blew cool against Diana’s skin as the road began to climb through the low hills.

“No cars,” said Theo. “No tour buses. I guess we’ll have the tomb to ourselves.”

“They forgot her,” said Alia. “Everyone remembers Helen of Troy. But she was from Sparta; this was her home. The queen who lived and died here, they forgot.”

Nim’s pace had slowed to a crawl as she wended around the road’s wide, lazy curves. “Does it seem…I don’t know, too quiet to anyone?”

Alia shivered and rubbed her arms. “You mean like something’s going to go horribly wrong?”

“You know what they say,” said Theo. “Don’t shoot a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what they say,” said Nim.

Alia took a deep breath. “Everybody just…stay relaxed.”

Jason shifted uneasily in the passenger seat, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Diana knew they were all thinking the same thing. After the horrors of the pass, there should have been something worse waiting for them as they neared the spring, and yet there was no sign of trouble.

The road climbed steadily, surrounded on all sides by rocky pasture, more olive trees, the stark trunks of telephone poles. They passed through a small town that seemed to appear up against the hills for no reason and a large cemetery blooming around a church like a crop of white crosses.

As it turned out, the sign for the tomb was so small they had to double back twice before they found it—a dented metal rectangle tilting woozily on its metal pole, nearly hidden by yellow wildflowers. The words were written in Greek and English: Menelaion, Sanctuary of Menelaus and Helen.

“At least she made it onto the sign,” muttered Alia.

There was nowhere to hide the Fiat, so they had to park it up against the dirt shoulder of the road.

“It feels weird to just leave her out here in the open,” said Alia.

“It’s a girl?” said Theo.

“Sure. Isn’t it obvious?”

“This feels too easy,” Diana murmured to Jason, as they fell in step behind the others.

“It’s possible we lost whoever attacked us on the jet,” he replied, eyes scanning the surroundings. “They had no way of knowing we were headed to some obscure tomb.”

“Even so, where’s Eris? Where are the twins? They don’t need satellites to track us.”

“They could still make a showing,” he said.

They might. But another voice spoke inside Diana—what if it had all been a ruse? The Oracle had said the spring at Therapne, but what if Diana had somehow misunderstood. Maybe there was some other place sacred to Helen. Maybe Eris and her horrible nephews had just been a distraction, driving them on, making sure they were focused on the wrong target as the hours until Hekatombaion winnowed away.

“Diana,” said Jason, startling her from her thoughts. His hand brushed the back of hers, and she remembered how it had felt to kiss him beneath the night sky. “When this is over, will you go home?”

“Yes,” she said without thinking.

“Ah.” He trained his eyes on the ground. “For good?”

How could she explain the rules of the island? She supposed that, after all of this, even if they succeeded, she might be exiled. But time passed differently on Themyscira. While Diana was tried and sentenced, years would pass in the mortal world. And even if she could somehow find her way back to her friends, could that ever temper the pain of losing her home? Of never seeing her mother or her sisters again?