No mortal was to set foot on Themyscira. The law was clear. In Amazon history, only two women had dared to violate it. Kahina had brought a mortal child back from a mission, desperate to save her from death on the battlefield. She’d begged to be allowed to raise the girl on the island, but in the end they’d both been exiled to the World of Man. The second was Nessa, who had tried to secret her mortal lover aboard a ship when she returned to Themyscira.
As a child, Diana had asked to hear Nessa’s story again and again, wriggling in her bed, anticipating the horrible ending, the image of Nessa standing on the shore, stripped of her armor, as the earth shook and the winds howled, so angered was the island, so angered were the gods. Diana always remembered the final words of the story as told by the poet Evandre:
One by one, her sisters turned their backs as they must, and though they wept, their salt tears were as nothing to the sea. So Nessa passed from mercy into the mists, and to the lands beyond, where men breathe war as air, and life is as the wingbeat of a moth, barely seen, barely understood before it is gone. What can we say of her suffering, except that it was brief?
Diana had shuddered at the shrug in those words. She had watched the moths that gathered around the lanterns of her mother’s terrace and tried to fasten her gaze on the blur of their wings. There and gone. That fast. But now it was Evandre’s other words that she recalled with a terrible feeling of recognition: The earth shook and the winds howled, so angered was the island, so angered were the gods. When Diana had rescued Alia, she’d believed the risk she was taking was for herself alone, not for her sisters, not for Maeve.
Diana squeezed Maeve’s hand. “I’ll be back,” she whispered.
She hurried out the door and ran across the columned court that connected the dormitory to the palace.
“Tek!” she called, jogging to catch up with her.
As Tek turned, another tremor struck. Diana careened into a column, her shoulder striking the stone painfully. Tek barely checked her stride.
“Go back to your friend,” she said as Diana trailed her up the palace stairs to the queen’s quarters.
“Tek, what’s causing this?”
“I don’t know. Something is out of balance.”
Tek strode into the upper rooms of the royal quarters without hesitation. Hippolyta was at the long table, consulting with one of her runners, a fleet-footed girl named Sabaa.
Hippolyta looked up as they entered. “I know, Tek,” she said. “I sent for a runner as soon as the first earthquake hit.” She folded the message she’d penned, then sealed it with red wax, marking it with her ring. “Get to Bana-Mighdall as fast as you can, but be cautious. Something is wrong on the island.”
The runner vanished down the stairs.
“There have been at least three reports of illness,” said Tek.
“Are you sure that’s what it is?” Hippolyta asked.
“I saw one of the victims myself.”
“Maeve,” Diana added.
“It may be striking the younger Amazons first,” said Hippolyta.
“Not all of them,” muttered Tek, casting a sidelong look at Diana.
But Hippolyta’s gaze was focused on the western sea. She sighed and said, “We’ll have to consult the Oracle.”
Diana’s stomach clenched. The Oracle. There would be no hiding then.
Tek nodded, a look of resignation on her face. Visiting the Oracle was no small decision. It required a sacrifice, and if the Oracle found an Amazon’s tribute wanting, she could inflict any number of punishments.
“I’ll light the signal fires to gather the Council,” Tek said, and was gone without another word.
It was all happening too quickly. Diana followed Hippolyta into her chambers. “Mother—”
“If they ride hard, the Council should be here within the hour,” said Hippolyta. Some members of the Council lived at the Epheseum or Bana-Mighdall, but others preferred the more isolated parts of the island and would have to be summoned by the fires.
Hippolyta shucked off the comfortable riding clothes and silver circlet she’d worn at the arena, and emerged from her dressing room a moment later in silks the deep purple of late plums, her right shoulder covered by a golden spaulder and scales of gleaming mail. The armor was purely ornamental, the type of thing worn for affairs of state. Or emergency Council meetings.
“Help me bind my hair?” Hippolyta said. She seated herself before the large looking glass and selected a golden circlet studded with heavy chunks of raw amethyst from a velvet-lined case.
It seemed bizarre to Diana to stand there plaiting her mother’s ebony hair into braids when the world around them might be falling apart, but a queen never appeared as anything less than a queen to her people.
Diana summoned her courage. She needed to tell her mother about Alia. She couldn’t let her go into a Council meeting without that knowledge. Maybe it isn’t Alia. It could be a disturbance in the World of Man. Something. Anything. But Diana did not really believe that. When the Council consulted the Oracle, Alia would be discovered and Diana would be exiled. Her mother would look weak, indulgent. Not everyone loved Hippolyta as Tek did, and not everyone believed that a queen should rule the Amazons at all.
“Mother, today, during the race—”
Hippolyta met Diana’s eyes in the mirror and clasped her hand. “We’ll talk about it later. But there is no shame in the loss.”
That wasn’t remotely true, but Diana said, “It’s not that.”
Hippolyta set two more amethysts in her ears. “Diana, you cannot afford more losses like that. I didn’t think you would win—”
“You didn’t?” Diana hated the hurt that spread through her, the surprise she couldn’t keep from her voice.
“Of course not. You’re still young. You are not yet as strong as the others or as experienced. I hoped you might place or at least—”
“Or at least not humiliate you?”
Hippolyta lifted a brow. “It takes more than the loss of a little race to bring low a queen, Diana. But you were not ready, and it will mean you must work even harder to prove yourself in the future.”
Her mother’s assessment of her chances was the same as her measured embrace on the platform, just as practical, just as painful.
“I was ready,” Diana said stubbornly.
Hippolyta’s look was so gentle, so loving, and so full of pity that Diana wanted to scream. “The results speak for themselves. Your time will come.”
But it wouldn’t. Not if she was never given the opportunity. Not if even her mother didn’t think she could win a damned footrace. And Alia. Alia.
“Mother,” Diana tried again.
But Hippolyta was sweeping out of her chambers. Lamplight sparked off the gold in her armor. The earth shook, but somehow her steps did not falter, as if her very stride declared, “I am a queen and an Amazon; you are wise to tremble.”
In the mirror’s glass, Diana saw herself reflected—a dark-haired girl in disheveled clothes, her blue eyes troubled, teeth worrying her lower lip like some hand-wringing actor in a tragedy. She squared her shoulders, set her jaw. Diana might not be queen, but the Council members weren’t the only ones who could petition the Oracle. I am a princess of Themyscira, she told the girl in the mirror. I’ll find my own answers.
Diana hurried to her room to change clothes and fill a traveling pack with a blanket, rope, lantern and flint, and the rolled bindings she used for her hands when sparring—they would do for bandages in a pinch. Four hours had passed since Diana had left Alia in the cave. The girl must be terrified. Hera’s crown, what if she tries to climb down? Diana winced at the thought. Alia had all the substance of a bag of kindling. If she tried to get out of the cave, she’d only end up hurting herself. But there was no time to return to the cliffs. If Diana was going to fix this, she needed to speak to the Oracle before the Council did.