by Sara Raasch
But could she die?
Around him, the other centurions erupted in confused shouts. Those nearest Madoc threw him to the dock. He blinked up at the sky, blinded by the pale circle of the sun for a moment, before a swift kick caught his gut. The wind fled from his lungs. He curled into a ball, but his back was exposed to the whipping spear shafts that rained down.
“Stop!” Anathrasa screamed. Fury and desperation crackled through the air like lightning.
The beating ceased immediately, and when the crowd cleared, Madoc found his mother on her hands and knees before him. Three soldiers tried to pull her up to safety, but she shoved them back. Her breath came out in a wheeze, and one hand was wrapped over her stomach, right where he’d been kicked.
Their gazes met, and a new wave of horror shook him as his stare moved to her still-red cheek.
She could sense his pain, and his own anathreia recoiled in empathy, an echo of the night at the blockade, when his soul had felt like it shattered.
It took another breath to realize there was no separation between her pain and his. They were one and the same—every welt, every gathering bruise.
Somehow, she’d hurt herself by hurting him. He didn’t know what that meant, or how it was possible, only that this connection between them was very, very bad.
Ash was coming to kill the Mother Goddess. Would doing so kill him too?
Anathrasa grabbed a centurion’s leg, pulling herself up only to lean against his side.
“Bring him to the palace,” she snapped, her lips drawn back over her teeth. As he was dragged to his feet, her blue eyes seared with fury. “It appears he’ll get a second chance to prove his worth to me after all.”
She turned, with some effort, and was assisted off the dock, back toward land and the carriages that awaited.
In two weeks and four days, Madoc’s home city had changed completely.
Through the carriage windows, he followed the routes he’d walked all his life—streets that led to alleys that gave way to Market Square, where the great arena towered over the Temple of Geoxus.
Now the temple was in ruins, demolished in the violence that had ensued after Geoxus’s death while Madoc was fleeing the city with Ash and Tor. The golden statue that had once stood three stories high had been knocked on its side and pounded by boulders of all sizes. The walls of the sanctuary were painted with goat’s blood—signs saying the gods are dead, and goddess pigstock. Crude paintings of Geoxus crushed by a boulder, and Ignitus being defiled by a horse.
The market had once been filled with vendors and savory foods but now was empty except for a gathering of people all in white with chalk smeared across their mouths, chanting words Madoc couldn’t make out. The carriage had to carve a path around boulders and rocks that had been pulled from the surrounding shops and apartments, half of which were blackened by fire.
I don’t suppose you’re here for the festivities. Had that been a joke? There were no celebrations here. Riots had destroyed the city.
Madoc moved to the edge of his seat, his heels drumming against the wooden floor. He pressed his palm against his jaw, feeling the edges of a bruise, and forced himself to think of this strange tie to Anathrasa, and not what had become of Ilena, Elias, Danon, and Ava in these harsh streets.
It seemed impossible, but Anathrasa’s wounds had mirrored Madoc’s, and his pain and hers had braided together into a single cord. He hadn’t done this, at least not deliberately. But his anathreia had been acting strangely since returning to Deimos, or maybe since coming closer to her. For all he knew, he’d caused the mark on her face unconsciously.
She definitely hadn’t done it to herself.
His mind kept returning to that night on the ocean outside the blockade—the connection he’d felt to her just moments before his world erupted. Had something happened between them then? Whatever tied them didn’t seem to take effect until he’d come back to Deimos—until he’d tried to use anathreia again.
He wished he could talk to Ash about it.
But if he did, and Hydra found out, would they pull him out of Crixion? Think him a liability, too close to Anathrasa to do what he’d come to do?
His hands clasped together. Would he still be able to steal Aera’s and Biotus’s energeias now that he appeared to be linked to Anathrasa?
He’d have to find a way—he hadn’t come here to fail. It wasn’t just Ash depending on him, it was the entire world. If he didn’t get the other energeias to Ash, she could never stop Anathrasa from overtaking the world.
The carriage slowed, tearing him from his thoughts. He looked out through the window again and sucked in a tight breath at the sight of the palace before him. The towers that had reached into the sky had fallen now, but here, at least, the structure had been rebuilt. The rubble in the gardens had been cleared away. The high walls had been widened into graceful, sloping balconies of white marble. No longer did murals of Geoxus tower beside the entrance. Now there were twin likenesses of Anathrasa—an even younger version than he’d seen at the docks—naked, holding her hands in a circle over her head.
He thought of the people in the market with the chalk on their mouths, and of the legion of soldiers that had accompanied her to the docks, and got a very bad feeling.
Madoc had assumed he’d be taken to the jail, a festering block of wooden cells, impenetrable by the many Earth-divine prisoners, on the south side of Crixion. He didn’t know what she had in store for him here, and the uncertainty had his knuckles rapping against his thighs.
But when they reached the palace, he wasn’t brought to Anathrasa, or to any holding cell. Surrounded by guards, he was led to a wide, new stairway and brought to the eastern wing of the palace—a private courtyard, surrounded by lounging chairs and tables already topped with decadent food. The circular balcony above led to open rooms, and through the doorways, past the fine furniture and art, Madoc could see the hazy skyline of the city.
His stomach growled as he registered the scent of honey bread. For the last three days, he’d eaten little other than salted fish, dried kelp, and seal meat.
“Madoc? Madoc!”
For the second time that day, Madoc felt the wind knocked out of him.
“Ava?”
The five-year-old girl came charging through the courtyard, her dark hair and blue ankle-length gown rippling behind her. Her arms lifted a moment before Madoc fell to his knees, and when she collided into him, he breathed in the scent of lavender water, and dust, and home.
He swallowed the emotion gripping his throat. Four guards still stood around him, though they made no move to stop his younger sister.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently, suddenly fearing that she’d been brought here against her will, or worse, because Ilena was dead.
“Of course I’m all right,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you!”
“You’ve been . . .” He rose to his feet as a woman came running toward him, her black hair tied in a red wrap, her gown fine and expensive. Behind her was a younger boy of twelve, all limbs and awkward smiles.
“Ilena?” He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Danon?”
“I told you,” his adopted mother said, eyes glistening. “I told you we would meet again.” She pulled him into a hug that crushed his shoulder and likely cracked a few ribs, but he didn’t care. Tears streaked down his face. His heart felt too big for his chest.
“You did,” he managed. Questions began catching up with him—how they’d come here, and why they’d been given such nice things. Ava had said she’d been waiting for him, but Anathrasa hadn’t known he’d be coming.
Had she?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How did you get . . . Why are you . . . here?”
“We’re guests of the Mother Goddess,” Ilena told him, and he didn’t miss the tick of a small muscle in her neck as she said the words. “Seneca—I mean, Anathrasa, of course—she wanted to thank us for caring for you all those years.”
“I ce
rtainly emptied my fair share of her chamber pots,” Danon added, earning a slap on the arm from his mother.
“She’s letting us stay as long as we like,” Ilena said. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
It was wonderful that his family was alive and safe, at least for now. But Madoc knew Anathrasa, and she wasn’t grateful for anyone or anything. The only reason his family had been brought here was because she had some hidden purpose for them, and based on their lack of surprise at his arrival, they had surmised the same. Whatever his birth mother wanted would come at a heavy cost.
His elation was sinking like a stone when the guards stepped back and retreated, and a steady clap of footsteps stopped behind him.
“It’s about time you showed up.”
Madoc turned and came face-to-face with his brother.
“Elias.” The word was barely a breath, sanded down by fear and distance, and an anger he’d forced himself to swallow. The last time he’d seen his brother had been when Elias attacked Ash in the grand arena during the final fight of the war with Kula. He’d been unhinged, a tornado of grief and geoeia, ready to avenge their sister even if it meant losing his own life.
But those memories were overshadowed by others. The night they’d run from the centurions after cheating in a fight against Fentus in South Gate. Early mornings walking to work at the quarry. Late nights in their bunks in the quarter, laughing about something stupid that Danon had said.
The night they’d carried Cassia home from Petros’s villa.
Elias stood before him now, older looking, as if years had passed instead of weeks. He was thinner than before, and his dark hair was trimmed like a man’s instead of a boy’s. The tunic he wore was tied with a belt instead of a spare piece of rope, and there wasn’t a streak of mortar anywhere on it. Even his sandals were new, with silver circle buckles across the front of his shins.
He waited for Madoc to do more, looking uncertain, and that was all the apology Madoc needed.
He embraced Elias as he should have the night Cassia died. Maybe if he had, Elias would have known he wasn’t alone in his guilt, and things would have been different. They stood there for some time, chest to chest, arms locked around each other’s shoulders, while Ilena wept tears of joy, and Danon swung Ava onto his back and galloped around them.
But before Madoc drew back, Elias hooked one hand around the back of his neck and whispered, “Watch yourself, brother. The Mother Goddess sees all.”
Six
ASH
ASH HAULED HERSELF onto the raft, coughing frigid water across the salt-beaten wood. On her hands and knees, she glared across to where Hydra lounged on a wave she had morphed into something like a chaise, her head propped on one hand, her other arm draped over her curved hip.
“You’re still trying to use hydreia as you do igneia,” Hydra chastised in a singsong voice that Ash was really starting to hate. “But it isn’t igneia. It is, in fact, hydreia.”
“That doesn’t get any more helpful the more times you say it.”
Hydra lifted the arm from her hip. A separate wave rose behind her, a rippling sheet of blue and translucent white with an angry foam cap at the head.
Ash flew to her feet, hands out, body racking with an involuntary shudder. “Wait! Wait.”
What other way could she deflect the water? Last time Hydra had thrown a wave at her, Ash had tried to divert it with a sharp shove to the left, but the water had simply risen higher and barreled over her. For the sixth time that morning.
Ash shook out her hands by her sides, flicking water on her bare feet, and tried to think of some other hydreia deflection method. But gods, she was just tired of being thrown into the sea in the tight sealskin suit Hydra’s servants had given her. The material stopped midthigh and at Ash’s shoulders, hugging her body so closely that she felt half naked in the icy air.
Despite the cold, she wished she could see Madoc’s reaction to her in this outfit. She wished she could sneak into his room again wearing this, and pull him out of a groggy sleep back into the storage hut—
Heat climbed from Ash’s stomach, spreading out to each limb and warming her cheeks. She sighed involuntarily, just glad to feel warm for a change, and that warmth pulled up memories she relived more often than was healthy.
That night with Madoc had been tentative. Neither of them had truly known what they were doing—Ash only knew from her own fleeting, private moments where Madoc should touch her and what motions snatched the breath from her lungs; she had found some of his places too, mostly by accident.
Spark had warned it might hurt the first time. She, Char, and Taro had explained a great many things to Ash, but all of it had been to help her avoid getting pregnant so as not to give Ignitus another Nikau Fire Divine gladiator to use in his arenas.
They hadn’t told her how good it could be. Touches and kisses that Ash lost herself in like a dance. She moved, and Madoc followed; she swayed, and he bowed.
A water whip flicked Ash’s nose.
She shuddered and blinked at Hydra.
“You’re distracted,” Hydra said.
Ash scoffed. “What do I have to be distracted by? My looming fight with the Mother Goddess, the deterioration of the godless countries, our ships preparing to sail to Itza tomorrow, the fact that Madoc is alone in Crixion doing who knows what—”
“I checked on him two days ago! I saw him arrive in Crixion—Anathrasa didn’t see me, Madoc didn’t see me, he’s safe, everyone’s safe. He’s even back with his family. What more do you want?”
“I want—” Ash’s voice cut off sharply. I want to know how I’m supposed to do any of this, she wanted to say, but she bit her tongue hard, until calmer words formed. “You said I could use Ignitus’s or Geoxus’s powers to communicate and travel through their energeia like you do with hydreia—I want to learn that so I can communicate with Kula, and with Madoc, and even Tor, who is just on the other side of this island. Not this.” She waved at the sea around them, the water dripping off her hair.
Since Madoc had left five days ago, this was all Hydra had done. While Tor prepared the Kulans and some of Hydra’s people to travel to Itza tomorrow, Hydra would drag Ash out at dawn, get her set up on this raft, and pummel her with waves and water whips and ice shards, all while spouting truly unhelpful advice like Cold water feels pointy while warm water feels smooth.
Yes, Ash now could call water into her hands the same way she could call fire and stone. But she’d learned from the first day of Hydra’s training that she couldn’t do much with water once she summoned it. Just like she couldn’t do much with stones, either, but who on this earth could teach her how to be the god of geoeia? That was the only spurt of regret she’d ever felt about stabbing Geoxus—that her best chance of learning how to harness geoeia was dead.
Hydra talked in circles if she let her, never getting to the point, a whirlpool lazily spinning. Ash was cold and tired of trying to get slippery, uncooperative water to listen to her.
“Will I even need to control hydreia to defeat Anathrasa?” Ash pressed. She tried not to scream, but she wanted to—she wanted to rage. “Don’t I just need to combine all the energeias into one? Does it truly matter whether I can control each and every one?”
“And if you have to fight your way to Anathrasa?” The wave behind Hydra edged taller. Ash fought to ignore it and the dread that welled in her stomach. “The plan is to face her in Crixion. What if she has the whole of the city set against you, and our armies are falling, and all you have to fight with is igneia and unpredictable spurts of other energeias? What good will you be then?”
Ash glowered. “Well, none of this training will matter if I don’t obtain floreia too. Can’t you talk to your brother again? Have him travel here on floreia and just give me a piece of it, then he can go back to preparing Itza for war.”
Hydra flopped back into her water-chaise with a dramatic moan. The water enveloped her and she sank down, the wave splashing over her. The movement rocked Ash’s
raft, and she widened her stance for balance.
A flash of foam, and Hydra materialized on the raft in front of Ash. Her arms were folded, one eyebrow curved, her lips puckered.
“I believe in you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean Florus has to. If he’s going to give you a piece of his soul, the least you can do is travel to meet him on his own land to do it.”
Ash closed her eyes. She was being childish, but part of her was nothing but nervous energy, frail and shaking. “I know.” She whipped her eyes open. “But if you taught me how to travel through fire, you and I could go to Itza instantly.”
She was still pushing the matter, and the look on Hydra’s face was indignant.
“Mortals, always in such a rush.” Hydra rolled her eyes. “You need to sail there because you’ll want your people with you when you meet him. Never underestimate the importance of support. Besides, this delay isn’t just for us—Florus is making the same preparations I am, getting armies ready, yes, but also hiding those who can’t fight, rationing food, building defenses of Itzan cities. Try to understand, this is the first we’ve heard of Anathrasa being back—”
“No, it isn’t.” Ash frowned. An unexpected surge of defensiveness straightened her shoulders. “Ignitus told you that he suspected Anathrasa was back. You ignored him.”
Hydra jerked away with an exasperated snort. “Do you have siblings, Ash?”
She knew Ash didn’t. She’d already found out everything about their group.
Hydra faced the shore and the rear of her palace stretching up toward the cloudy gray sky. Off to the side, part of the harbor was in view; ships bobbed in it, people bustling around them and on the docks, readying to sail to Itza with the morning tide.
“Anathrasa created Geoxus first,” Hydra said to the distance. “Then me. Then Biotus and Ignitus, then Florus, and finally Aera. The dynamic of that—damn, Geoxus loved to taunt us about being oldest and strongest, as if that somehow earned him our loyalty. Biotus doesn’t have a single independent thought in his head, so he was always happy to trail where Geoxus led. Ignitus tried, I’ll give him that. He tried to make his own way, but one whiff of challenge from Geoxus or Biotus, and Ignitus couldn’t resist rising to it. Florus only half pays attention to anything going on, so he and I spent many decades watching those three raze each other’s countries and hurt each other’s mortals.”
