Chapter 2

Hope flickers up in me, just barely.

She's already at the side door. "Wait for me."

She's gone.

An hour. The gate splits open just enough for one long black snout to shove through the crack. Teeth close on the baby before any of us can move. The crying stops mid-breath, swallowed by wet sounds.

The woman slumps down on the stone. Her eyes go dead.

A shape stumbles back through the side door. It's Hera.

Everyone surges forward. "Where are the men? Are they coming?"

She's drenched red. One whole sleeve hangs empty — and so does the arm that was in it. "Block the gap. Now."

I catch her before she falls.

"Castor —" she spits his name like it burns her tongue, "had men on every path. Every one. He set them to stop anyone who'd ruin her rites."

Her eyes are red and furious.

The room goes quiet. My knees almost go. He planned for me. He thought past his own mother.

"No. We are not just sitting here to die."

I lift my head. "If the Phalanx won't come, we call somewhere else. Another polis. Anyone who'll hear me."

I'm already at the message-stone, pressing my palms to it, calling the name of every polis I know — Argos, Korinth, Megara, anyone.

Long silence on the other end. Then a cold voice.

"I'm sorry. We can't help you."

"An hour ago, King Castor sent word himself. He said your polis might send false omens tonight. He asked every other polis to turn a deaf ear to any cry from us until dawn."

He thought of that.

He sealed every road out before he ever struck the first spark for her.

Hera goes paper-white.

"I am his mother. I am asking —"

"Lady. The king was clear. Especially you. Unless you come and ask in person, no one is coming."

The stone goes cold.

In person. Through miles of Empusae. With one arm.

I grip her good shoulder. "I'm going with you."

I look at the smear of blood where the baby was.

"Everyone here dies if we wait. We go, there's a chance."

She holds my eyes, then nods once.

I half-carry her up the slope. Her left arm is gone clean to the shoulder. Whatever she's tied around it is already soaked through. She doesn't slow down.

"Over this ridge and we can see the temple lights."

Halfway up. The polis below us is a black shape with red bleeding through it. The high temple glows white-gold on the far peak.

That's when a streak of bronze comes screaming down out of the sky and slams into the rock ten paces in front of us. Stone shatters. The shockwave throws us both backward into the slope.