Rise Up from the Embers

by Sara Raasch

  He’d been training so that she could count on him—so all of them could. But he’d fallen apart, like always. He could barely manage his own energeia, while she was somehow hosting two.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, brown eyes sparkling. When her gaze dropped to his mouth, it took a moment to remember what he’d asked.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  “It doesn’t . . . hurt or anything?” He couldn’t help reaching for the silky ends of her hair and winding them around his finger.

  She shook her head.

  “How do you do it?” he asked. “When I had both Geoxus’s and Ignitus’s energeias in me, it felt like I was being ripped in half.”

  He could still feel his bones stretching, his blood too thick for his veins. He’d wanted to crawl out of his skin.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a small frown. “Maybe Hydra has some idea.”

  His teeth dug into his top lip. Maybe the goddess of water would know of something to help Ash. Or maybe she’d try to exploit her, like Geoxus and Anathrasa had done to him.

  “Do you trust her?” he asked. If Hydra had seen Ash fight with geoeia and igneia, then surely Anathrasa had as well. It wouldn’t be long before the Mother Goddess realized how Ash had become that way. A God Killer with god powers and a God Maker with soul energeia were even more of a threat than who’d they’d been before, and Madoc could not fathom what that might mean without Hydra’s protection.

  “I don’t know yet.” Ash shifted to look up at him. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt?”

  A scowl pulled his brows together. “Just my pride.”

  She chuckled.

  He smirked, but the lightness inside him grew heavy again. “I thought I could take Anathrasa. Pull out her energeia like I did with the other two.”

  “It took six gods to defeat her before.”

  “And?” he said.

  She smirked. “Good point. Why couldn’t you kill her?”

  He reached around and squeezed her side where he knew she was ticklish. He’d found that out last week, when they’d been sparring. It had been his favorite way to beat her ever since.

  “Enough!” she squealed. In her attempt to get away, her leg had slid up his thigh, and it didn’t matter how often they’d sparred, or kissed, or that he’d seen her nonstop for two straight weeks. Her leg made his mind go completely blank.

  “You have that look again,” she said.

  “What look?” He tried to keep his voice even, but her foot was brushing the inside of his calf and he was starting to think about a lot of things that Tor would murder him for even considering.

  “Like you like me.” She bit the corner of her lip.

  She had no idea what that was doing to him.

  “That’s strange, because I don’t,” he said.

  Her grin widened. “Too bad. I was going to suggest sharing this blanket.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, in that case, I like you very much.”

  With a snort, she pulled away, just enough to hand him the side of the fur, so he could wrap it around both of them. Inside that soft cocoon, he could feel her hand spread over his chest, her knee hiking dangerously high.

  Tor will kill you, he told himself.

  He lowered himself to his back, one arm behind his head. She curled up against him, her cheek on his chest, a perfect fit.

  Just a little while, he thought. Then he’d get her back to her bunk. Tor would never know.

  He willed the minutes to slow as he listened to her breathing, watching the rise and fall of her shoulder. She had to hear his heart thumping in his chest. His thoughts returned to the home Tor had told him about in training. The place he kept inside him to protect the things that mattered.

  He wanted to protect Ash, but he had failed today. She needed to be able to depend on him.

  He wasn’t worthy of her otherwise.

  With a frown, he pushed up to his elbow. He needed to get her back. Tomorrow would be a big day, and she’d need all her strength if she was going to prove her value to Hydra.

  She looked up at him, her eyes sleepy, her hair a mess. “Not yet.”

  Tor and the gods be damned. Madoc wasn’t going anywhere.

  As he settled back, she pressed her lips to his collarbone, and then the slope of his shoulder. She kissed his jaw, and his breathing grew unsteady. He pulled her closer, pressing his lips to hers, for once glad that his anathreia didn’t hunger for the power of her igneia, and that his own thirst wouldn’t pose her any harm.

  He kissed her slowly. An apology. A promise. His hands found her narrow waist and slid up her back, tracing each winged muscle over her shoulder blades. When his fingertips reached the nape of her neck, she gasped, and he had the sudden urge to kiss her there.

  So he did. But there was a place she liked more, right beneath her ear, and when his teeth grazed that spot her moan speared him to the core.

  Their pace quickened. Their hands grew more urgent. The past two weeks on the ship crashed through them—every stolen kiss, every knowing glance. The fear, the loss, the need, all overpowered by fighting, all coated with bruises. And then the chaos of the war was breaking through—gods and blood pushing them faster and faster, until her palms seared his side, and he could barely catch his breath.

  She whispered his name and he was done. Done with arenas and war and the constant, infernal rocking of ships. Done with energeia he didn’t understand. Done with everything but her.

  He knew in some small part of his brain that he needed to slow this down. To think. They’d kissed and shared a few frantic moments, but this was different. He could feel himself on a precipice—one he wasn’t sure she could see.

  She needed to know she was safe with him. Even if he couldn’t protect her in battle, he could make sure she felt safe now.

  He pulled back. Kissed the long lines of her throat, her jaw.

  “Is this all right?” he asked, his mouth on her collarbone.

  She nodded quickly.

  “And this?” His hand climbed the rise of her hip over her leggings, then down the lean muscled length of her thigh. Tracing the soft, warm skin beneath her knee, he pulled her leg over his hip.

  She pressed against him in answer, and when her dark, hooded gaze held his, he felt anchored for the first time in weeks.

  Another shift. Another question. “Yes,” she told him, again and again, until she was over him, reaching into her pocket for a small pouch, which she emptied into her hand.

  A dark-red powder spilled out, smelling vaguely of spice and earth.

  “Taro gave me this a while ago,” she said, her cheeks taking on the faintest blush. “It’s . . . um . . . sellenroot. For—”

  “I know what it’s for,” he said. Sellenroot was a contraceptive, meant to make a man temporarily infertile. Ilena had given some to him and Elias the day their voices had stopped cracking, along with a stern lecture about respect and not carrying on like cats in heat.

  He sat up, enjoying the way her calves curled around him. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. Smiled.

  His heart thudded in his chest.

  “Are you?” she asked.

  He wanted to tell her yes, but the word felt too small for all the feelings now raging inside him. He wanted to tell her he was honored she’d chosen him, and that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and that if she changed her mind and wanted to stop, that was all right because holding her was enough.

  He wanted to tell her that he’d be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that—as long as she’d have him. Because this wasn’t the kind of infatuation that softened with time. She had wrapped herself around his bones. She’d become part of his home.

  But he didn’t say any of it. Instead, he reached for her hand and licked the powder from her palm, swallowing the bitter root and every last doubt that he wasn’t good enough for her.

  Her lips
crashed against his, and soon the taste was on her tongue too. Their clothes were shed, their hands woven. And when the last barrier between them was past, he held her, shaking, and whispered all the things he’d been afraid to say before.

  But he knew that for her to believe them, really believe them, he’d have to prove himself to her.

  And somehow, starting tomorrow, he would.

  Four

  ASH

  ASH WOULD HAVE slept forever if not for the thin sliver of light that cut under the sealskin door. It flashed over her eyes on a brush of wind and she burrowed deeper under the fur blanket.

  Thoughts started to push through. Morning. She wasn’t in her hammock—

  Then the arm that was draped over her waist curled, dragging her closer to the cozy heat at her back, and rational thoughts drifted away.

  Ash grinned and wriggled under the blankets until she was face-to-face with Madoc. He was still asleep, one arm bent under his head, the other now loose around her hip. His lips parted in slow, steady breaths, his brow furrowed in a dream.

  Gods, he was beautiful.

  Ash pressed her thumb to the wrinkle between his eyebrows. It softened, and she trailed her hand over his ear, down his jaw, reveling in the fact that she could touch him here, and here, and here, as much as she wanted. The muscles in his neck that had gone corded with exertion last night. The soft black hairs across his chest. The lines of his abdomen—oh, he had a truly striking stomach, and even though she had already traced these muscles over and over, the feel of them still made her body seize. Her fingers trailed lower, to his navel above another line of hair—

  Ash looked back up at Madoc’s face now, and he was smiling.

  He cracked one eye open to peek at her.

  “Hello,” she said, as innocently as she could muster.

  Madoc sighed drowsily and rubbed his thumb against her back. “What time is it?”

  “Early.”

  He winced. “We should go back to our bunks.”

  But he made no move to get up, and neither did Ash.

  She kissed his chest. His neck. Nipped at his earlobe, sucking it between her teeth, and his throat rumbled with a moan. He rolled her onto her back, pinning her against the fur they’d made a bed of, the top blanket wrapping them in a cocoon of heat and sweat and Madoc’s mouth on hers, her arms around his torso, their legs knotted.

  Ash arched up against him, pressing her bare chest to his, utterly consumed—

  Just as a figure burst through the sealskin door.

  All pleasure died. Ash actually felt it drop dead on the ground around them.

  Instinct yanked her to her feet as she hastily held a blanket over her body.

  Tor stood in the doorway, the flap peeled wide. Behind him, Taro and Spark were breathless—frightened, even.

  She hadn’t been in her hammock, so they’d been out looking for her.

  Ash went immobile as she watched Tor take her in. She was holding the blanket up, but she was clearly naked—and Madoc was sitting behind her, pulling the bedding to cover himself.

  “What—” Tor’s mouth dropped open.

  Ash had never seen his pupils so wide, his face so purple. A matching panic rendered her mind blank.

  Tor waved his hands like he was trying to keep Ash from fumbling any explanation. “Get dressed,” he ordered, his voice like iron. “Hydra summoned us half an hour ago.”

  He spun on his heels and marched out into the morning light.

  Ash lowered to her knees, unable to support her own weight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Madoc fold forward, his face in his hands.

  “Even when I was at the mercy of Anathrasa, Geoxus, and Petros,” Madoc said into his palms, “I didn’t feel as close to death as I did just now.”

  Ash sputtered with laughter. Madoc looked at her and gave an exhausted grin.

  She pressed her eyes closed. “Get your clothes on before I build a stone wall around us and refuse to ever come out again.”

  Because apparently I can do that. Call stone as easily as fire.

  And Anathrasa saw me do both.

  Horror ripped a jagged hole in her joy.

  Ash started to stand again when Madoc’s fingers closed around her wrist.

  She stared down into his dark eyes, speechless at the raw way he always looked at her. As if he was baring himself to her and her alone. Like he’d tell her all his secrets if she only asked.

  “Whatever happens today, I’m with you,” he told her.

  She nodded. “And I’m with you.”

  Madoc kissed the inside of her wrist, then began searching through the furs for his clothes. Ash mirrored him, fighting hard to focus on the feel of his breath on her skin, but already the future was chipping away at her happiness.

  Only Taro was still outside by the time Ash and Madoc were decent. She motioned toward a long, curved boat on the shore. Two Apuitian sailors stood within it.

  “Tor left already,” Taro explained as they took seats on a bench against the side rail.

  Ash heaved a sigh of relief, instinctively reaching out to steady Madoc when the Water Divine flared their arms and the boat launched away from the shore.

  Taro smirked at her. “Just focus on this meeting with Hydra.”

  “I plan to.” But hesitation churned in her stomach. Doing so meant focusing on how she had both Ignitus’s and Geoxus’s energeias in her body. And on the fact that the last mortal who had had the power of gods inside them had been someone the six gods had united to create—and who they had used to combat the Mother Goddess.

  Had Tor made that connection yet? Had Anathrasa? Was Ash the only one who was horrified at the prospect of standing before Hydra, knowing what kind of weapon she herself now was? What would the water goddess do with both Madoc and Ash as threats?

  The boat followed the green-brown shoreline of the island where they’d spent the night. Huts littered the ground, not a tree in sight on the sloping rise of the otherwise barren hills. This was the northernmost island, closest to the ice-vine barricade, and from what Ash had found as she explored yesterday evening, not many Apuitians lived there. It seemed to be a docking place for outsiders, which until their arrival had only meant people from Florus’s country of Itza.

  Ash leaned into Madoc, half for his warmth, half just because she wanted to. As the boat turned south, she heard him gasp, and her eyes leaped to his face.

  A look of pure wonder overtook him. Ash shifted to follow his gaze.

  The waterway had opened up and was ushering them deeper into the Apuit Islands.

  Any details that had been lost in the darkness last night were vivid now in the morning sun. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of islands dotted the ocean off into the horizon, large and small, flat and mountainous, stark and lush. Ash had seen glimmers of fire and candlelight in the midnight shadows last night, but they had looked warped somehow, like flames encased in multifaceted lantern glass. Now she understood why.

  Unlike the visitors’ island, every structure, from the houses to the docks to the grand, arching bridges that connected the islands, was made of ice.

  Feathered ice arched to form a long tube-shaped house into which fishermen hauled crates of their catches. Walls of clouded ice made up clusters of villages, with smoke somehow puffing out of chimneys. Great ice spears vaulted up into the sky, holding delicate buttresses that supported bridges between the closer islands. Everywhere was green grass, brown earth and sand, and crystalline ivory-blue ice.

  “This is incredible,” Ash breathed.

  “Do you notice what’s missing?” Madoc asked. “Arenas.”

  She cut her gaze over the islands again. He was right. Not an arena in sight.

  That was more disconcerting than the relentless cold, just because of how unusual it was, but Ash reminded herself that it was good. She and Tor had entrusted Kula’s safety to Brand, another of Ignitus’s champions, until they took care of Anathrasa—but for a moment, Ash saw beyond the impending war. She saw t
he sort of future she wanted for Kula, for every country.

  Unease still grated against her heart, and she edged closer to Madoc.

  The lack of arenas wasn’t threatening—she knew Hydra and Florus were used to being peaceful. But in Kula, Deimos, Lakhu, and Cenhelm, fighting was ingrained in each person. What would those countries look like with no arenas, no outlet for that foundation of battle?

  Ash pressed her lips together. Honestly, she didn’t much care. Questions like that put the victims of this brutal world second, and that was what she and Madoc were truly undoing—stopping gods and bloodshed from taking precedence.

  So let the rest of the world burn their arenas to the ground. They would find peace in the embers.

  Hydra’s palace filled a whole island.

  Sheer columns of ice twisted into the air, showing people walking up and down ice steps within. Blue-white walls towered between clear ice balconies that must be alarming to actually stand on. Razor-sharp turrets gave subtle reminders that water could be wicked as well as lovely.

  Their boat docked and the Apuitians led them ashore. Ash stared up at the glittering palace, and even though she had the power of two gods in her body, she felt small.

  As they entered the towering halls she swallowed, steeling her expression. The air itself felt frozen, grating Ash’s throat with each breath, and the floor was thankfully lined with a fur runner to counter the slipperiness. She tried to dredge up confidence. She thought of her mother, walking into arenas with her head held high. She thought of how it felt to use igneia. She thought of—

  Madoc’s hand found hers.

  She clamped down on his fingers, both their hands frigid.

  The God Killer and the God Maker, she thought. What a doomed pair we make.

  The Apuitian guides led them through doors already open into a long, wide throne room. Either side of the ice floor was gone, showing lapping water. Courtiers gathered at the far end of the room around a throne sculpted of spears of ice every bit as deadly as Geoxus’s obsidian throne back in Deimos, the same one he had broken apart to murder Ignitus.