Warrior Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

them. There is nothing we can—” Abruptly Hera’s voice broke off. A look of shock passed over her lovely face and the goblet of ambrosia slid through her hand to shatter on the marble floor.
    â€œHera! What is it?” Venus cried as she and Athena rushed to her side.
    The goddess’s face had gone horribly white. “My priestesses! They are sobbing for me.”
    â€œHere, sit. Breathe deeply and tell us what has happened.” Venus guided Hera over to a soft chaise as Athena conjured a fresh goblet of ambrosia, which she held to Hera’s lips, but the goddess waved the drink away.
    â€œIt’s the Greeks. They are sacking my temple that rests just outside the westernmost wall of Troy.” She passed a shaky hand over her eyes as if to wipe the image from her mind. Hera looked up at the two goddesses. “I don’t understand this. My temples do not get sacked. I am Goddess of the Home and Hearth, Goddess of Marriage and Family, Queen of Olympians. There is no reason to defile me.” Hera weaved a little like she was going to faint. “I have to sit down.”
    â€œYou are sitting down,” Athena said.
    â€œWhat do I do?” Sweat broke out over the goddess’s too white face. “My priestesses are beseeching me!”
    â€œI don’t know!” Venus sat heavily on the bench next to Hera, took the ambrosia goblet from Athena and drained it in one gulp. “I’m Goddess of Love. People fornicate in my temples, which I don’t consider defilement. Once in a while a bereft lover—a slightly crazy one at that—will hurl himself on his sword, but that really can’t be helped.”
    â€œI know what to do.”
    Venus and Hera looked up to see Athena putting on the war helmet that had just materialized.
    â€œDo I need to remind you that I am Goddess of War?”
    Venus and Hera shook their heads in tandem.
    â€œThen let us go. No one defiles one of our temples and gets away with it.” Athena’s hard gray eyes narrowed. “Or you two could stay here. Zeus will probably be angry that I’ve become involved.”
    Slowly Hera stood. Her knees were clearly unsteady, but her voice was sharp as flint. “Zeus and his orders to stay out of it be damned! No one who attacks my priestesses will go unpunished.”
    Venus and Hera exchanged a glance. “We’re going with you,” said the Goddess of Love. “If Zeus is going to be angry, let him be angry at all of us.”
    â€œSo be it,” Athena said. “Stay close to me.”
    Before the three goddesses disappeared Venus waved her hand in the direction of her oracle and a shimmering circle appeared around it, holding the two spirit orbs safely within its shell.
    They materialized in the aftermath of destruction.
    â€œOh no!” Hera sobbed. Then she straightened her spine and pressed her lips tightly together. “These are my women. I cannot fail them,” the goddess said grimly before beginning to move toward the first of the crumpled bodies.
    â€œStay with her. I’ll deal with the butchers who are still here,” Athena told Venus before striding swiftly from the room toward the distant shrieks and muffled cries that were coming from the exterior of the temple.
    Feeling sick to her stomach, Venus joined Hera as she bent over a woman’s broken body. As were the rest of the women in this interior room of the temple, the dead mortal was wearing the sky blue linen robes of those who swear to the service of the Queen of Olympus. Venus thought that the fresh scarlet of her blood looked grotesque and a supreme defilement in this temple of Hera’s that was usually filled with the soothing colors of pastels, the lovely scent of sweet incense and the music of women’s laughing voices.
    â€œShe was one of my most elderly priestesses.” Hera’s voice was thick with tears. “She tended this temple for more than forty