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“Every child of Ares carries it.” Otrera’s gaze is steady on Kieran. “And every child of Ares has to learn that the war-blood is a tool and a trap, and the only thing that determines which one it becomes is the hand that wields it.”

Otrera lets the silence hold for a few seconds before she speaks again.

“Why are you here?” she finally asks.

“We need to find Ares,” Kieran says, and the directness of it is so completely him that I almost smile despite the dead animals on the ground around us.

Lampedo’s eyebrows rise. “You want an audience with our father.”

“I want to understand what I am from the god who made me this way.”

The eight queens exchange a look that circles the group in a fraction of a second, then quickly lands on Hippolyta.

Hippolyta nods and steps forward, and her hand drifts to her waist in a gesture that looks habitual, as if she’s reaching for a belt that’s no longer there. It’s like how Kieran kept reaching for his missing blades while we were walking through the forest.

“Thousands of years ago, Ares gave me a girdle,” she tells us. “A war-belt blessed by his own hand. It was a symbol of my authority as queen and a source of his divine power.” Her eyes are bright, and the bitterness behind them is old and personal. “Hercules stole it from me as his ninth labor. It was never returned.”

“The girdle passed out of the mortal realm entirely,” Otrera continues. “It ended up in the one place no Amazon can reach—the Plain of Endless War.”

Kieran’s thermal output spikes beside me.

Melanippe steps forward next, her broad shoulders tight.

“The Plain of Endless War is a battlefield deep in the mystical realm,” she says. “It’s sacred to Ares, and also cursed by him. On the Plain, the fallen rise again to fight forever, because our father feeds on their violence. The girdle hangs on a standard at the very center, and no living thing has touched it in a thousand years.”

“We’ve sent warriors to retrieve it.” Antiope’s face is grim. “They fell, or they reached the fighting and lost themselves in it. The Plain is built to feed the war-blood, and a child or grandchild of Ares who enters it risks everything they are.”

“Which is why we no longer attempt it.” Orithyia’s voice carries the weight of centuries. “The cost is too great.”

I’m assembling the trajectory of this conversation before Hippolyta says the words I can already see forming.

“Bring us the girdle.” Her gaze holds Kieran’s. “Then we’ll tell you how to find Ares.”

Kieran’s hand goes to his side, his fingers curling around a phantom hilt.

“We’ll do it,” he says, barely giving himself time to think about it.

My heart pounds, and I look at him, stunned about how quickly he made that decision—for both of us. As if my thoughts and opinions aren’t relevant at all.

No. Not acceptable. Not one bit.

I grab his arm and glare at him. “Can we have a moment?” I ask, even though it’s not a question.

He nods and lets me pull him three steps away from the queens, which isn’t far enough for real privacy given that they’re supernatural warriors with divine senses. But it’s far enough to pretend.

I take a deep breath, forcing myself to not lose my cool in front of eight Amazon queens and the demigod whose only reason for not succumbing to his inner violence has been me.

“You killed seven animals in a divine rage, and now you’re volunteering to walk onto a battlefield that’s designed to trigger the same rage on a permanent loop,” I say, since stating the facts is as good as any place to start.

“You watched me stop.” His hand finds my elbow, the warmth of his grip grounding. “That’s the data you need, isn’t it? That my humanity can win?”

“One data point isn’t a pattern.” I hold his gaze and don’t blink.

“Then collect more.” His voice stays level, but his thermal signature climbs a degree. “You’ll have an entire battlefield of opportunities.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.” He steps closer, and his eyes hold mine with the full weight of his focus. “You want a guarantee I can’t give you. But here’s the data—the war-blood is escalating on its own timeline whether I enter that place or not. The only lead we have on stopping it is on the other side of that plain. Which means the battlefield isn’t the risk. Waiting is.”