by Sara Raasch
“And it hurt you somehow?” She touched the back of his head.
He shuddered. “I don’t know—”
“What. Did you bring. To my home?”
The voice was melodic even in its obvious fury.
Ash twisted in Madoc’s arms, unwilling to let him go just yet.
On the deck of their ship, amid the rocks Ash had summoned, was a woman who had to be the goddess of water. Behind her, Apuitian soldiers were climbing over the rail, dressed in glistening furs and skins, their arms wrapped in pulsing streams of water they could easily flick out in attack. And within that water, small particles glowed—some sort of algae, maybe? It gave off a subtle light that Ash’s igneia couldn’t touch, much like Geoxus’s phosphorescent stones.
Ash had seen the water goddess long ago in Ignitus’s palace. She had been only a face made of water then, as she’d been communicating with Ignitus from afar via her element, but Ash saw the same features in her now.
Hydra was tall and pale, with thin eyes that were narrowed in suspicion. She wore only a skintight layer of what looked to be sealskin around her torso and upper thighs, and her long black hair hung to her lower back, as shimmering and straight as an undisturbed pond. When the soldiers on Anathrasa’s ships called out another attack, she flicked a long, slender hand at them and Ash heard a splash of water, followed by a mingled chorus of coughing and shouts.
Her attention jerked back to the fight.
Ash whirled, her body tense. Could she risk attacking again?
His arm still around her waist, Madoc tugged her closer. “Don’t.” His voice was gruff.
Ash looked at him. In the Kulan firelight, he was gaunt and gray, his eyes bloodshot. He was upright and conscious, but only just barely, and when her eyes met his, he exhaled and let his forehead drop against her jaw.
He’d tried to take Anathrasa’s energeia—had she managed to take his instead?
Ash’s heart kicked with dread. “Sit.” She tried to lower him to the deck. “You should—”
“Hydra!” Anathrasa’s voice cut across the waves. “My daughter. I have missed you.”
Hydra went rigid and her glare cut to the Deiman ships. “Anathrasa?” Her lips barely moved.
“Surprise, darling,” the Mother Goddess returned. There was a warble in her tone, almost as though she was in pain. “My death was a fiction created to protect me as I regained my strength. The time has come, Hydra. Tell your brother—this barricade you and Florus created will not protect you.”
“From what?” Hydra scoffed, but Ash saw that the goddess’s skin had taken on a sickly hue. “Geoxus’s navy doesn’t scare—”
“Geoxus is dead. Ignitus, too. And you have your brothers’ murderers before you.”
Ash’s grip tightened on Madoc, protective, terrified. She would kill Anathrasa if she touched him again.
“Think carefully before you pick a side, daughter,” Anathrasa said. “I will give you and Florus one month to show yourselves in Deimos and surrender to me. I’ll even leave you these traitors—bring them with you when you return, or I will consider you complicit in their crimes.”
Ash eyed Anathrasa’s ship. Its sails snapped in the breeze, the wind curving the vessels around as Anathrasa limped across the deck.
She was leaving. Madoc had wounded her.
Any joy Ash might have felt dulled as Madoc’s weight dropped heavier against her. She eased him onto the wood planks.
A rock clinked. Hydra flicked a small particle of gravel from a boulder to the deck, her nose wrinkling in disgust. Around her, the Apuitian soldiers seethed with eagerness to attack.
“Anathrasa. Two gods dead. A mortal who can use both igneia and geoeia.” Hydra analyzed Tor, then a few Kulan sailors, before landing back on Ash.
Horror filled Ash’s body. It stoked both the igneia and geoeia in her soul, and she had to clamp her jaw shut, her muscles wound to suppress the roiling power.
“So let me ask again,” Hydra said. “What did you idiot mortals bring to my home?”
Three
MADOC
MADOC FELT AS if he’d been taken apart and roughly shoved back together. His body ached in a dozen different places—his head, his back, his knees and eyes. Ignoring the pain, he stood and focused on Ash’s hand centered between his shoulder blades, and on the goddess before them.
Hydra’s pale eyes assessed them as she picked her way around the boulders on the deck. Her face and dark clothing were lit a pale blue by the glowing algae in her warriors’ water. It was quiet enough to hear the soft groan of the wood beneath her steps, and the waves lapping over the ice that now cradled the ship.
“Speak!” she ordered, lifting a single finger. “But know that if any of you so much as thinks of using igneia, I’ll sink this ship to the bottom of the sea. Is that clear?”
Madoc dipped his chin, as did the others. But Ash was trembling as she withdrew her hand from his back. Was she hurt? He tried to reach for a sense of her emotions, but his anathreia was raw and beaten. Guilt sharpened the pounding in his head as he glanced over her for injuries but found only scrapes and bruises. If he could have stayed on his feet, he could have helped her. She’d needed him—they all had—and he’d been useless.
Her voice faded in Madoc’s ears, and he blinked back a wave of fatigue. He didn’t know what had happened when he’d attacked Anathrasa. One moment, he’d been reaching for her soul, intending to wrench it free the way he had Geoxus’s power. The next, anathreia had exploded inside him. Now he could barely keep upright.
“We came here to bring news of your brothers’ deaths, goddess,” Tor said, ignoring the wound that painted a thin, scarlet line across his tunic’s chest. “To tell you that Deimos has fallen, and Anathrasa intends to claim the six countries as her own. We didn’t anticipate her tracking us down before we reached you.” He knelt, his head bowed. “This ship’s crew and her passengers are not at fault for Anathrasa’s attack tonight. The blame for that rests with me alone.”
Ash opened her mouth to object, but Tor shot a glare her way, silencing her.
Tor would take the fall for all of them—for Madoc, though they’d known each other only a short time—in order to win Hydra’s favor. Tension sharpened the pressure at the root of Madoc’s neck. This man owed him nothing yet risked his life for him again and again.
Hydra stopped before him, one hand over her stomach. “How did my brothers die?”
“Geoxus killed Ignitus,” Tor said, intentionally vague. “He was siding with Anathrasa.”
Madoc’s eyes briefly closed as he recalled the throne room at the palace. The boulders falling from the ceiling. The screams of the centurions and Kulans as they’d battled.
The manic glee in Geoxus’s smile as he’d rammed a jagged shard of his throne through his brother’s heart.
“She made them mortal?” Hydra glided fluidly across the boards, closer to Tor. “She didn’t look very powerful to me just now.”
Tor’s jaw clenched. “I don’t—”
His words were cut off by a choking gargle as water began streaming from the corners of his mouth.
“Tor!” Taro dropped to his side, slapping his back, but the water was leaking out of his ears and nostrils now. Madoc’s heart kicked against his ribs.
“Please!” Ash lifted her open palms to the goddess. “We came to help you!”
“Then it would be a pity to drown on your lies now,” Hydra said.
“I did it.” The words scraped Madoc’s already-raw throat. He refused to let Tor die protecting him. Not when he’d pulled Madoc out of the palace, where’d he’d been tortured by Geoxus, Petros, and Anathrasa. Not when he’d trained Madoc on the ship.
Not after he’d tried to save Cassia from her indentured servitude in Petros’s villa.
It didn’t matter that Tor and Ash had failed, or that Cassia was dead. Few people had stood for Madoc when he needed them, and he would not lose one of them now.
Ash’s worried gaze m
et his, her hands fisted in the sleeves of her tunic.
Madoc sucked in a breath, hoping it would last if Hydra filled his lungs with water next.
Hydra stepped before him, her clear blue eyes aligning with his. After a moment, she blinked, and Tor gasped. He spread his hands over the boards as Taro ordered him to breathe.
Hydra assessed Madoc’s dark hair and square jaw. “Why is a Deiman on a Kulan ship?”
“Half Deiman.” Madoc squinted to focus on her flawless face as his vision wavered.
Hydra’s brow quirked. “You rendered my brothers mortal?”
“Yes,” said Madoc. “But Ignitus was an accident. I was aiming for Geoxus.”
She huffed, a cold laugh that Madoc was sure would end in his drowning. But there was no point in hiding the truth now. It was just a matter of time before she learned who he really was, and if she didn’t hear it now, from him, they would never earn her trust.
“And how did you do that?” she asked, amusement curling her lips. Around her, the Water Divine warriors shifted uneasily.
“Anathreia,” he said. “Soul energy.”
“Madoc,” Tor warned.
Hydra’s mouth flattened into a thin line.
“Madoc,” she said tightly. “Only a descendant of Anathrasa herself would have soul energeia.”
“She’s my mother,” Madoc explained. “We’re not exactly close.”
Hydra’s chin lowered. Her hands flexed. Madoc siphoned in another quick breath, unsure what she would do next.
“So she’s not just alive,” the goddess mused darkly. “But mother to a mortal son.”
Madoc nodded. “Geoxus had been feeding her human tithes in exchange for bearing a Soul Divine child—someone to help him take over the six countries. I was the only one who survived.”
Hydra lifted one hand, and a drop of water rose from her palm, gleaming in the dull light. It was a tiny thing, barely the size of his pinky—but he didn’t know what she intended to do with it, and that drove a spike of fear through his chest.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked. “If you can do what you say you can, you could destroy me right now.”
The drop of water floating above her hand swelled and narrowed to the shape of a spear tip aimed at Madoc’s eye.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Madoc said quickly.
“Why not?”
“You heard Anathrasa,” he said. “If you don’t surrender, she’ll call for war—not the kind with gladiators. With armies. If you’re going to fight her and win, you’ll need me.”
Hydra flinched, and the arrow spun in a glittering tornado into the shape of a clawed hand.
“Because you can defeat her?” Hydra huffed. “Then why didn’t you do that tonight?”
He spread his feet. Lifted his chest.
“You lie, Madoc. And I detest liars.” In a blink, the clawed hand had turned to an icy knife, which Hydra grabbed and held against Madoc’s throat.
He went still, the sharp, frozen point digging into the thin skin over his jugular. Beside him, Ash cried out in surprise, but he held her back with an extended hand.
Believe me, he willed Hydra. Trust me. But she was as much a wall as her blockade of ice was. Too strong for his weakened power.
In desperation, he reached for the next best thing. The nearest Water Divine warrior—a man in a sealskin hide and a fur hood.
Help, Madoc willed.
The warrior twitched, the icicle in his grip dropping lower.
Now, Madoc screamed wordlessly to him as Hydra’s knife nicked his throat.
The man shook his head. “Goddess . . . I think . . . I think he may be telling the truth.”
Hydra blinked back at him in surprise. “You do, do you?” Her voice was ice and challenge.
As the other man’s soul broke free from his hold, Madoc’s breath came in a hard rasp.
“I’m sorry, Goddess.” The warrior raised his weapon again, his eyes confused. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Hydra’s teeth clenched as realization hardened her features. “I’ve seen these tricks before.” She eased closer to Madoc until he could feel a trickle of blood sliding down his neck. “Maybe you are Anathrasa’s son. Maybe you can sway a mortal mind. But my brothers were gods. If you did what you said, you would have absorbed Geoxus’s geoeia, and Ignitus’s fire. You would be a gladiator fit to take down Anathrasa.”
He hesitated, unwilling to answer for fear of putting Ash in more danger, and in that moment, Hydra lunged.
“He gave them to me!” Ash cried, stalling Hydra’s advance. “Ignitus’s energeia. Geoxus’s as well.”
Hydra turned her glare on Ash.
“He gave them to you,” Hydra repeated. “What a nice gift.”
Ash wrung her hands before her. What was she doing? She had Ignitus’s fire, but the geoeia had dissipated. He couldn’t feel it in his blood anymore.
What had happened to it?
“I did this,” Ash said, motioning to the boulders on the ship. “Madoc only intended to give me back the energeia Anathrasa took from me. But he gave me Ignitus’s power. And he must have given me Geoxus’s power, too.”
Madoc eyed her carefully, wondering if this was the truth, fearing what it meant if it was.
With a forced swallow, Ash reached toward a boulder on the deck behind Hydra and shoved it away, knocking two men to the side as it tumbled off the broken side of the ship.
The icy knife at Madoc’s throat turned to water, splashing down his front. He drew in a quaking breath.
Hydra straightened, the wall of ice gleaming behind her. She glanced from Madoc to Ash.
“A conduit who possesses anathreia,” she said. “And a gladiator who can bear the power of gods.”
“We can help you,” Madoc said.
Hydra gave a thin laugh.
“Yes,” she said. “I think you can.”
She turned, and with a wave of her hand, the ice wall began to melt, a hole rising from the sea, growing broader and higher, until it made an arching waterfall large enough for a ship to pass through.
With a lurch and a loud crack, the ship began to move. Not just the ship, Madoc realized, but the entire block of ice it rested upon. The Apuitians lowered their hands and weapons, awaiting their goddess’s instructions as the ship moved forward through the falls, into the night beyond.
“Look,” Spark whispered, and Madoc glanced behind them, finding that the arch was already lowering into a solid sheet of ice again.
Madoc lifted his gaze to where a million tiny lights flickered in the distance. As they glided forward, the lights pulled into groups, and Madoc made out the vague shape of the mountains they outlined.
The Apuit Islands.
Soon they’d reached a dark dock, where a dozen more Water Divine soldiers waited in thick fur coats.
“Rest,” Hydra ordered without looking back. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
With that, she lifted a bridge of ice from the sea below and stepped off the side of the ship, into the darkness.
Madoc woke in a fur-lined hammock to the sound of footsteps creaking across the floor. He jolted upright, remembering his sore body and pounding head too late.
Biting back a groan, he whispered, “Who’s there?”
“Shh. It’s me.”
Ash’s soft voice eased his nerves, and he swung his legs off the side of the hammock, his last memories returning in a rush. The Apuitian guards had brought them down the dock to a wooden lodge scented by smoke and salted fish. There, they’d been given water and food, and then been escorted to a series of huts along the shore. Ash had joined Taro and Spark in one. Madoc, Tor, and a few of the sailors were sharing another.
They hadn’t had a chance to talk about what had happened with Hydra, or the fact that Ash appeared to have two energeias instead of one. Tor had probably wanted to wait until they were alone to discuss it.
“How’d you get in?” Madoc whispered. There had been guards posted outside
the doors.
He could barely see Ash’s silhouette creeping toward him, outlined by the moon’s glow through a skylight. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—a few hours at most. The sky outside was still dark, with no sign of the impending dawn.
“Window,” she said softly. He glanced across the room, past the hammocks hanging heavy with Tor and the other fur-clad sailors. They hadn’t been permitted a fire in the central hearth due to Hydra’s concern that the Fire Divine were hiding their true intentions, and though the cold bothered Madoc, he found it more manageable than the Kulans, who were used to scorching temperatures.
Her hand found his knee, sending a wave of heat up his thigh. He took her fingers, dragging her closer. He wished he had this hut to himself. If Tor woke up, he’d be lucky if he only tossed Madoc into the frigid ocean outside.
Tor still owed him for their training mishap earlier.
“Come with me,” she whispered, her breath a warm cloud on the side of his face.
He pushed quietly off the side of the hammock and followed her through the netted beds, toward a closed window. She lifted the hatch and, after a quick glance outside, pulled herself up and over the edge.
He followed, less gracefully.
“Quiet!” she whispered as he picked his beaten body up off the ground.
Hand in hand, they ran down the rocky path toward another hut, this one smaller and unguarded. She pushed through the sealskin flaps over the entrance, clearly having already scouted out their path.
“What is this place?” he asked as she lit a small bundle of sticks on the floor with a blue flame from her fingertips.
“Storage, I think.”
With the dim light flickering in the room, he could make out the stacks of furs and pelts and barrels of supplies lining the walls.
She stood, her teeth chattering despite her reed pants and extra tunics. Reaching for one of the furs, he wrapped it around her shoulders, then spread another on the ground in front of the fire. He sat on it and patted the space beside him.
With a grin, she sat, sliding close.
For a minute, they didn’t speak. She leaned against his side, and he pressed his cheek to her hair, reveling in the feel of her warm body against his, even through the fur. But as they watched the flames, he thought of what had happened with Anathrasa, and how he’d failed Ash in the fight.
