The Daughter of Zeus novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Hunt Maze

The maze was alive, and it did not like me.

The hedges were taller than a barn, thick with thorns, and they moved when I wasn't looking.

Every time I turned a corner the path behind me had changed.

The goddess of the hunt had explained the rules at the gate.

"Ring the bell. Leave the quarry whole."

The quarry was a boar made of black glass, with a small gold bell on its collar.

It had run into the hedge the moment the horn blew, and I'd been tracking it for an hour.

The Assembly sat in stands above the maze, watching through a ring of still water.

The queen sat in the front row, in her peacock cloak, smiling at me.

Alekos stood alone at the gate.

He was not allowed to go in.

"I'm your second, not your guard," he'd told me at dawn.

"I don't stop you doing things."

"Good."

"I only stand in the way of other people."

That had almost made me smile.

I was still thinking about it when I found the first tracks.

They weren't the boar's.

They were huge boot prints, pressed deep into the black soil, left by someone who weighed three hundred pounds.

Whoever he was, he'd been walking in my footsteps for twenty minutes.

I stopped moving.

Somewhere behind me, a branch cracked.

"Little thief," a voice rumbled.

"I can smell the hind on you."

I turned slowly.

The war god was standing at the end of the corridor with a spear on his shoulder.

He was nine feet tall, if he was an inch, with a red beard braided with copper rings and armor that didn't fit his gut.

He grinned at me.

"Mother says you're to die by the third dawn," he said.

"I thought we'd save everyone the trouble."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Daughter of Zeus from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.