Opening

We believe we know our history. We believe myths are just fantasy. We believe we are in charge of our own destiny. But only two things are certain. We all start as Pawns and we all die eventually. Iris McBurney is fleeing in panic from her home. She doesn’t stop to think, she simply runs. Turning to the only friend she has, Arion, a Greek shape-shifting god, whose guise is that of an impossibly fast horse that can change to a human male, she wonders for the umpteenth time if he is even real. Except for a brief encounter at the age of six, he has only ever visited her in her dreams. He taught her to fight and defend herself, and without that training it could have been her lying there dead instead of Ben, her aunt’s abusive boyfriend. Arion gives her a choice: come to the racing yard he’s at in Wales, where he can help her hide from the authorities. Or go it alone and try to avoid capture. Easy answer, she thinks, until Arion explains that if she does decide to join him then she must help him prepare for a race that starts a deadly game, a game in which she herself will most likely be entered: the Game of the Olympians. Despite this and after a revelation that turns her world upside down, Iris agrees and manages to get work at the stables. What happens in the run-up to the race and the friends she makes will change her life forever.