by Sara Raasch
“No,” came Madoc’s instant reply. His eyes shot to the bookshelves, then back to Aera, barely containing his nerves. “I wasn’t trying to use my powers on you, goddess. I would never dare to be so bold.”
Aera gave a stifled laugh. “No. You wouldn’t dare, because if you did, I’d suffocate you.”
She hurled another funnel of air at him. Madoc ducked and the force hit the books over his shoulder, parchment and scrolls bursting into the air.
Ash blinked, and Aera was gone, nothing but a twisting spiral of dust left in her wake.
“Wait!” Madoc got to his feet and stumbled into the center of the room. His black tunic was hanging half open, held together only by his own hands as he tripped on the hem.
Breath finally entered Ash’s lungs, though she knew she couldn’t blame it on Aera.
No reason came into her mind. Nothing but that image of Madoc on top of the air goddess. His tunic open. His mouth on hers, lips swollen.
“Ash?” Madoc’s voice was tentative. His eyes swam over the dark bookshelves. The candle Ash had originally spied through was on a table off to the side, the only light in here, the flame still burning even with Aera’s mad wind. “Ash—are you here?”
Half of Ash wanted to vanish in fire again. Go back to the Apuit Islands and wash her mind of what she had seen.
But she had just spent a week in Florus’s prison, hanging on to the image of seeing Madoc again, of getting to be with him, of having more than one night together.
So she stepped out of the darkness and into the ring of light. A snap of her fingers, and the chandelier over them burst to life, igneia raging strong and hard at her command.
Madoc jolted at the sight of her, or maybe at the swell of igneia—either way, he clumsily tied the belt across his tunic and took two lurching steps toward her.
She put up her hand, palm flat, staying him.
He stopped.
“What are you doing here?” The question cut up at the end, and his face convulsed. He ran a hand through his hair, looked around the empty library, and focused back on her with something that was almost a glare. “I—I almost had it. What are you doing here?”
He was mad at her?
A dry laugh burst out of Ash’s chest. “That’s what you have to say to me?”
She wanted her words to sound hard. She wanted to make him tremble for the crack he had put in her heart just now.
“No.” Madoc ran a hand over his face. “No. I—I’m glad to see you. I am.”
“Yes, you sound overjoyed.”
“Ash—”
“Don’t. Don’t talk.” But she couldn’t fill her own silence.
She realized, standing in this library, barefoot in a Deiman servant’s uniform, that maybe she had misunderstood Madoc’s attention to her. Maybe she was the only one who had dreamed of something more after this war, of a life together.
“I came to tell you”—her voice was thick, gasping—maybe Aera was back, because Ash was suffocating—“that Biotus took Florus. He’s probably here in Crixion. Anathrasa’s accelerating her plans. Hydra thought you should know.”
She should tell him that Florus had given her floreia, too, but could she trust him with that information? Even that question ached.
Madoc moved closer. He reached out for her. “Ash—”
She started shaking, and she couldn’t stop. She wanted to drop to her knees; she managed to stay upright, but she had to turn away from Madoc, arms around her chest, falling apart.
Falling apart from Florus’s abduction.
Falling apart from the fight with Biotus.
Everything in her was finally unraveling.
“Don’t touch me.”
Madoc stormed in front of her. “I was trying to get aereia. That was all.”
“Is that how you were planning to get Biotus’s energeia too?”
“Stop.”
“You managed to get igneia and geoeia without bedding Ignitus and Geoxus.”
“Ash—I was doing this for you!”
His words were fists to her gut. “So this is my fault?”
“No! That’s not—I don’t know what I’m doing! This was the first time I managed to get Aera with her guard down. You think I wanted this? You think I haven’t spent every night we’ve been apart thinking of you? And then you show up now, and—” He choked, and when Ash looked at him, she almost believed the sorrow on his face. “I’ve missed you. So much. I didn’t mean for that to happen; Aera means nothing to me. Tell me what I can do. Please, Ash.”
Ash wanted to believe him.
She wanted to leave. She wanted—
She couldn’t breathe. She saw stars; she saw darkness and fire, stone and water, and she just wanted to sleep.
She buckled, and Madoc caught her, strong hands on her arms keeping her upright.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t know when she had started crying; maybe she had been since she arrived. Everything was a dream—one long, unending, horrific dream.
“I want to leave.” The plea burst out of her, a heaving sob. “Madoc—we should leave. I can keep us safe. We can go somewhere Anathrasa would never find us and we can take your family, and mine, and we can just—we can—”
Ash bowed forward, head to Madoc’s chest, and wept. All the tears she had suppressed to survive in Itza; all the pain and fear she had ignored just to get by. She let it out here, now, in his arms, though she hated him and what he had done.
But he was still a soft place to fall, so fall she did.
When she was spent, they sat on the floor, her in his lap, Madoc with his arms around her and his head buried in her neck, her hair.
She leaned back, putting space between them, but Madoc’s grip on her tightened, not letting her get up.
His eyes were downcast. “What did he do to you? Florus. You said his name.”
Ash’s hands went limp on Madoc’s forearm. She was turned to the side, her legs draped over his, and she used that position to avoid having to look at him. “He gave me floreia,” she said. “After he killed me. Or failed to.”
Madoc stiffened. She felt his eyes on the side of her face. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. And then, “You’re immortal?”
She shrugged.
“You want to run,” he said, his voice low. “I’ll run. I’ll go wherever you want to go.”
Tears stung her eyes again. She closed them, but Madoc took her chin and pulled her face to his.
“Ash.” He said her name like a prayer, like a promise. “Look at me.”
She obeyed.
“I love you.” His eyes were all brown darkness in the library; her igneia in the chandelier was burning low now. “I love you, and I’ll go wherever you want to go. Just say the word, and we’ll leave.”
There it was. All she had to do was ask him again, and they could leave this war behind.
A breath quivered in her lungs. She was trembling, the aftershocks of her sorrow racking through her like a quake.
The words waited on her tongue. Let’s leave. Let’s take our families and hide.
She closed the space between them and kissed him. It wasn’t the gentle kiss she had dreamed of; it was bruising and punishing, a mix of her own heartache and how much she’d missed him and how grotesquely she hated this.
He met her force with a throaty groan, and his hands spasmed against the small of her back, dragging her closer. She rode the motion to straddle him, and she nipped at his lips, all satin tongue and gnashing teeth, her fingers clenching into a fist in his hair, which she used to wrench his head backward and suck along the tendon of his neck. He tasted of sweat and earthy dust, and a deeper sweetness, something like wine or perfume—
A woman’s perfume.
The thought kicked through her delirium and Ash stilled, her mouth against his bare collarbone, her heart thundering against her ribs.
“This war will break us,” she whispered into his skin.
Madoc was the one trembl
ing now. She felt him shake his head, and when she pulled up to look at him, his eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with tears.
“I won’t let it,” he told her. “I promise you. We will survive this. We might have to—” He swallowed, wincing. “We might become people we don’t recognize, but we’ll bring each other back. And I promise I won’t touch Aera again. It’s just you, Ash. It will always be just you.”
She silenced him by pressing her forehead to his. They breathed the same air, her legs twined around his waist, his arms enclosing her hips, and she could feel the charging of their pulses in time.
“I love you too,” she whispered, warm and soft and full of more life than any energeia she possessed.
Ash couldn’t stay.
Anathrasa’s party was still going; Aera was still raging somewhere, hurt by Madoc’s attempt at taking her aereia. Heart breaking even more, Ash left him in the library with another kiss, another promise.
They would bring each other back. No matter what this war turned them into. No matter what they had to do.
They would find each other at the end of this, and they would survive.
Ash let Ignitus’s fire overtake her and she vanished into the ether, focusing on her room in Hydra’s palace. There she landed, the room soaked in midnight, the doors to the balcony shut tight and a fire not yet made in the hearth.
No sooner had she gotten back than the room sloshed with water, and Hydra stood next to her, her eyes narrow and soft.
“Tor was worried you wouldn’t come back,” Hydra said, her voice level.
“He sent you to make sure I did?”
“He thought you’d see Madoc again and the two of you would run off.”
Ash sent a thought at the hearth and it raged with a fresh flame. “I almost did.”
“Can’t say I’d blame you.” Hydra dropped to sit in a chair by the fireplace, head in one hand. She still wore her battle clothes, still had the sunken grayness around her tired eyes and a few recently healed wounds on her body.
“It is kind of what you did, isn’t it?” Ash folded her arms over her chest. “Made this alliance with Florus. Blocked everyone else out.”
Hydra gave a dry laugh. “Not that. I meant—” Her eyes went to Ash, wide, and flicked away. “It’s not important. I’ll go let Tor know you’re here and ready to—”
“What did you mean?” Ash watched the water goddess, hesitant, but she needed to know. She’d felt this wall go up from Hydra before.
Silence fell. The hairs on Ash’s arms rose the longer it stretched.
Hydra let her head drop against the back of the chair. “Her name was Ciela.”
Ash blinked. “The first gladiator? Florus told me about her.”
“I suspected as much.” Hydra’s eyes were closed, but her lips curved in a sad smile. “You’re too much like her for your own good.”
Ash’s crossed arms unraveled. “How so?”
“Honorable. So damn honorable.”
Something in Hydra’s tone pulled Ash forward a step. “You knew her well,” she said, a question.
Hydra rubbed her closed eyes and nodded.
“Was she Water Divine?”
“She was born Air Divine.”
The mention of air divinity pierced Ash with the image of Aera lying beneath Madoc, and she had to forcefully shut her mind to it.
“There’s something you’re not telling me about her,” Ash guessed. “I felt it with Florus and Biotus, too. They know something about her. Something about you.”
Hydra mock gasped and finally opened her eyes again. “You mean I haven’t divulged all my secrets in the handful of days we’ve known each other? How rude of me. I have centuries of gossip and woe-is-me stories to tell you, so we’d best get started—”
“Hydra.” Ash’s brows furrowed. “The more I know about Ciela, the better prepared I can be to not make her mistakes.”
The water goddess looked exhausted, and she had lost the only sibling that mattered to her just hours before. But Ash was exhausted too, and she didn’t have the strength to relent.
The water goddess finally shrugged, helpless. “I fell in love with her.”
Ash’s eyebrows rose. “With a mortal?”
Hydra gave a sardonic look. “It does happen.”
“Not love.”
“What do you want me to say?” Hydra shot to her feet. “That I used her like my siblings do with mortals? That I was able to resist her kindness and loyalty, her selflessness, her strength? If I said anything like that, it would be a lie. Ciela was fearless. We killed her with no guarantee that we could bring her back or that our plan to defeat Anathrasa would work, and she went along with it, because she had that stupid look in her eyes”—Hydra pointed at Ash’s own eyes, tears wetting the goddess’s cheeks—“like it would never have occurred to her to refuse, because the world needed her. I had never seen such honor in a mortal or a god.”
Ash couldn’t breathe. Afraid to set Hydra off. Afraid to make her stop talking.
“What happened to Ciela?” she whispered.
Hydra punched her thigh, grief raw on her face. “After it was all done and we thought Anathrasa was gone, my siblings started to fear Ciela. Didn’t like the idea of her turning on them. I tried to protect her, but—she was still mortal. Unlike you, she’d only gotten small pieces of all the gods’ energeias, not any god’s whole energeia and all their powers. And Aera—” She wilted. “Aera didn’t fear Ciela so much as she just didn’t want anyone else to have something that had belonged to her, Ciela being originally Air Divine and all. So . . .” Hydra drew in a breath, and Ash wondered suddenly if this was the first time she had ever told this story out loud. “Aera lured me away, pretending to want to negotiate for Ciela’s return to Lakhu, while she had secretly coerced Biotus into killing Ciela in my absence.”
I’ve broken you once, Biotus had said as he took Florus.
A wash of regret nearly sent Ash to her knees. Biotus abducting Florus had been significant for Hydra in more than just losing her brother. And all the help Hydra had given Ash, the training and trust—all of it had been weighed down by this tragedy, but still, Hydra had welcomed her.
Hydra panted, chin to her chest, and Ash knew her suspicions about this being Hydra’s first telling of her most secret grief were correct.
“It’s terrifying,” Ash started, “to love someone who can be hurt.”
“Which is everyone. Even gods now.” Hydra blew out a breath and peeked up at Ash. “That mortal boy of yours. Madoc? I have half a mind to let the two of you just run away from all this. I would have, if I could go back. I’d take Ciela and just leave.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Ash’s throat was thick. “Just like I wouldn’t.”
Hydra laughed, head thrown back, but it was pained.
She wasn’t just some perfect divine creature, like Ash had once thought of all the gods. She was flawed, just as Ash was flawed, and that, Ash knew how to deal with.
She hooked her arm through Hydra’s, trying to take as much of the goddess’s weight as she could. “Where’s your room? You need rest.”
Hydra looked at her askance. “Rest. Sure. That’ll solve everything.”
“No, it won’t. But it’ll end this endless day.”
That earned a half-hearted chuckle. Hydra relented, leaning into Ash, even dropping her head to Ash’s shoulder.
Though they both could travel through energeia, they walked out of Ash’s room and took the long, twisting halls to Hydra’s chambers, silent and solemn together.
Fifteen
MADOC
WlTH ASH GONE, Madoc refocused on Aera.
He returned to the party, ready to make amends, to beg for her forgiveness if he had to. He needed to stop her before she went to Biotus and told him what she suspected Madoc had been doing. She and her brother had parted on bad terms in the library, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to warn him.
The last thing Madoc needed was the god of animals
attacking before he could draw the energeia from him.
But Aera was not at the party. And neither were Biotus nor Anathrasa.
He searched the throne room. Then the gardens. By the time he’d made it back to the celebration, he was frantic. The gods had to be together—it was too much of a coincidence that they’d all leave separately, after what had happened between him and Aera. He was heading toward a palace guard to ask if he’d seen anything when someone grabbed his arm.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Elias’s eyes were wide. Anxiety rolled off him in waves, heightening Madoc’s fear.
“I couldn’t do it,” Madoc said quickly. “Aera ran. I can’t find her, or Biotus or Anathrasa.”
“Forget the gods,” Elias said. “Mother’s missing.”
Cold sweat dripped down Madoc’s brow.
“What do you—”
Elias stepped closer, lowering his voice. “After Biotus left the party with Anathrasa, I went back to the room to check on her. She wasn’t there. Danon and Ava said they hadn’t seen her. I’ve looked all over. No one knows where she is.”
Madoc’s stomach twisted. He’d had a confrontation with Aera. Now the gods were missing, and Ilena as well.
Anathrasa had to have taken her. That’s why the Metaxas were here, after all. To keep Madoc in line.
But he’d been doing what Anathrasa had asked—taking the power from Aera.
Urgency whipped through his veins. He needed to find the Mother Goddess. To explain what had happened.
“Go back to your room,” he told Elias. “Stay with Danon and Ava. I’ll find Ilena.”
“But—” Elias began, but Madoc was already shoving his way through the crowd. Once he was in the empty hall, he reached out with his energeia, but he couldn’t distinguish Ilena’s consciousness from those of the hundreds of other people in the palace. He sensed no gods nearby, no spikes of power. Nothing to lead him in the right direction.
Fearing Ilena had tried to leave the grounds, he ran to the stables, but only a few guards were posted. He went to the baths beneath the garden but found them empty. He even tried the servant quarters, but there was no trace of them.
His panic was wrenching tighter by the minute.
