Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE Before the Storm THE WORLD DIDN’T know it was holding its breath. Not yet. Because in the 4th century BCE, the Greek world was still trying to piece itself back together after centuries of infighting, invasions, and philosophical overthinking. City-states squabbled over olive trees and honor, Persia loomed like a bored boss on the edge of Europe, and nobody, nobody, was paying much attention to the northern backwater of Macedonia. Which was their first mistake. Because Macedonia wasn’t just a kingdom, it was a war machine dressed like a barn. A rough, tribal, boar-hunting land where men learned to fight before they learned to read. The kind of place where the dinner table might...