Rise Up from the Embers

by Sara Raasch

  He knew Jann—he could hear his taunts before their fight. Could see the gladiator curled into a ball, weeping, after they’d fought.

  “And afterward, Tor and I told you . . .”

  “Tor,” he whispered.

  The God Killer’s powers sizzled across his nerves.

  She nodded. “Yes. Tor. We told you we needed your help to take down the gods. And then we went to Petros’s villa . . .”

  He jerked his arm away from her throat.

  He could see Tor, lunging across a ship’s deck at him, knives and fire in his hands. The things that matter live inside us, and we protect them as we protect any other part of ourselves, with the power we’ve been given.

  Lies, screamed Anathrasa. End this!

  The shadows were climbing—the soldiers had nearly reached the top. One went over, but was seared by the flames on the way down, and with a stunted scream turned to ash.

  “You called me,” the God Killer managed. “You prayed to me through the stones to help you. To save Ilena and Elias.”

  He stopped pulling her energeia. His hands were shaking. The God Killer’s energeia inside him was too much. Her words were illusions.

  Don’t listen to her, Anathrasa screamed. She’s nothing. She is no one.

  “I came back for you,” the God Killer said. Her eyes were glassy, her fear thick. But there was more there. More he didn’t want to feel. Hope and grief and longing.

  Love.

  He looked into her eyes, and he remembered.

  The curl of her fingers over his on the ship’s rail. The feel of her smile against his lips. She’d once said his name sounded like a bird call.

  One memory returned at a time. One brick placed after another, and another.

  Ilena. His mother. Scolding him for growing too fast. Kissing his forehead before he fell asleep.

  Elias calling him brother.

  Cassia bringing him home.

  Him carrying Cassia home.

  Brick by brick by brick, until he had a wall pushing back Anathrasa’s howling screams in his head. Until he could breathe.

  He was still there. He was still Madoc.

  “Ash?” he whispered.

  Tears spilled from Ash’s eyes. Her nose scrunched as she gave a watery laugh. “Yes.”

  He gritted his teeth, more memories pouring back.

  Home is here, Tor had told him, his hand on Madoc’s chest.

  Madoc forced his trembling hand off Ash’s wrists and to his own damp chest. Screams from outside punched through the flames. He couldn’t see Aera, but a burst of her power blew the flames in a sudden slant, singeing his skin. They went out in a hiss on one side, but before the wave of bodies, charred and burned, could press into the circle, he held out his hand and whispered, “No.”

  The soldiers went still. Watching. Waiting.

  You disobey me? Anathrasa roared. You are nothing without me.

  You’re wrong, his own voice echoed inside his head, stronger than he’d expected. He was Madoc Aurelius, born of a goddess and a monster, survivor of the streets of Crixion, loved by a family whom he loved in return.

  One brick followed another.

  He was a champion of war, a gladiator trained in trickery and anathreia. A brother. A defender. A healer.

  The walls rose until they became a fortress. He pushed himself back to his knees, holding Ash’s stare as she rose on her elbows.

  He loved her.

  He couldn’t remember the moment it had happened. All he knew was that he’d tripped when he’d first seen her in this arena, and after that nothing had been the same. She’d opened his eyes to the treachery of the gods, and the vastness of the world. She’d shown him the true meaning of bravery, and that honor could still exist, even in a city torn apart by greed and power.

  “Ash,” he said again. The name was familiar on his tongue.

  Crawling to her knees, she took his face in her hands and kissed him. Her lips were soft but unforgiving, punishing him for forgetting, making him pay for every second they’d been apart.

  He took it all. Her anger. Her fear. Her love. He breathed her in and remembered what it was like to be home.

  Enough, growled Anathrasa. She wrenched Madoc’s arm back like a puppet’s, ready to drive his fist through Ash’s chest like a spear.

  No.

  Madoc caught Anathrasa before she could follow through. His hand stopped, trembling over Ash’s rib cage. He focused all his efforts on holding it there, forbidding his muscles from driving their full strength into her.

  Anathrasa’s scream filled the arena—not just in his head, but outside it.

  The Mother Goddess was here.

  “Go,” he muttered to Ash. His arm was shaking. He wasn’t sure he could hold Anathrasa off much longer, and he didn’t want to hurt Ash.

  She shook her head, rising to her knees. “No. You can fight her off. I’m not leaving.”

  She placed her hands on Madoc’s chest, and his breath ripped free in a staggered gasp. The warmth of her fingers bled through his sweat-drenched tunic. His heart thundered against his ribs.

  “Fight her off,” Ash demanded again, a fierceness in her gaze that he’d come to know well.

  Madoc closed his eyes, trying to drown out the fighting around him, trying to swallow the screaming voice in his own head.

  He had a source of anathreia to pull from. He didn’t need to tithe to use it—the well inside him was already full.

  Don’t be afraid, Tor whispered in his memories.

  They were running out of time. Anathrasa was here—he could feel her consciousness punching through the synchronized pulse of the army she’d created.

  The hunger inside him warred with the charge of the energeia he’d already taken from Ash. His anathreia was desperate, roiling like a shaken jar of wine. But the fortress he’d built around his soul held steady.

  He opened his eyes and turned the hunger in on himself, giving it a source on which to feed: Anathrasa.

  Do not—she began, but her demand broke off into a cry of panic.

  His energeia swallowed her screams in his head, scraped her out of every crevice she’d lodged into—the gaps between his bones, the hollow of his throat, the spaces between his thoughts. It fed and fed, and it roared in satisfaction when she cried.

  And when she was gone, before his hunger turned on the energeia he’d stolen from Ash, he pressed his hand to her stomach and forced it back into her body. Hot tendrils of fire. The solid strength of earth. Water slipping through her veins and the rootedness of living plants.

  She gulped a breath, her head tilting skyward.

  Then she fell into him.

  He caught her, holding her tight. His chin dipped into the crook of her neck and he breathed in the warm, familiar scent of her skin.

  “Are you . . . ,” he started.

  “Yes.” She pushed back, wonder in her eyes. “You’re back.”

  Her lips curled into a smirk as he pulled her up.

  Again, the ground began to quake, and they braced against each other as a deafening hiss filled the air. The soldiers Madoc had stilled with anathreia were suddenly knocked aside by a slithering flash of red. A snake, as thick as the pillar holding up the palace roof and covered with glittering scales, circled them, strangling the flames Ash had raised beneath its massive body. It lifted its head, a black tongue darting out as milky poison dripped from two fangs the size of Madoc’s arms.

  A rumbling hiss echoed from its throat. “Traitors.”

  “Biotus,” Madoc realized, horror flooding his veins as the snake’s body coiled tighter, scraping over the sand. Before he or Ash could defend themselves, they were caught in the vise of his body, crushed together with a crack of bones and a gasp of breath.

  With a scream of frustration, Ash tried to use her power, but was smothered by another rope of scales. Madoc struggled to move his arms, push them free with his legs, but his ribs were popping under the pressure.

  His vision compre
ssed. In the black smoke that rose around them, Anathrasa’s army suddenly appeared, slack-jawed and single-minded. They stumbled toward Madoc and Ash, climbing over Biotus’s coils, sending a new bolt of panic down Madoc’s spine.

  He couldn’t breathe. Ash’s knees dug into his thighs, her arms locked against his cracking ribs. They couldn’t move.

  His gaze lifted through the smoke to the stands, where a goddess in white stared down at him.

  Anathrasa.

  Fury rose inside him, hotter than Ash’s flames and twice as potent. Anathrasa had done this—made this army, caused this war. Killed his sister and taken his mother.

  He would not let her take anyone else.

  He closed his eyes, drowning out the wind and screams and hisses, quieting even Ash’s voice as she whimpered his name. Madoc drew on his strength again, on the power that made him him, and reached through the snake’s thick skin with cool spikes of anathreia. Biotus’s energeia was raw and bitter, and the taste of blood in Madoc’s mouth made him gag, but he didn’t stop.

  The coils loosened, but he didn’t stop.

  Ash broke free, fighting off the army, but still, Madoc drank.

  The snake shriveled. Writhed. It broke into the form of a human. Biotus’s skin lost its luster. His muscles thinned. His mouth fell slack. He begged—We can help each other, set me free.

  Madoc didn’t listen.

  Only when his power was completely gone did Madoc release his hold.

  He staggered to one knee as Biotus crawled away through the waves of soldiers that were still pressing in. Madoc’s vision was blurred by the thick, wild power inside him. He blinked, forcing his pounding head to focus, and frantically looked up to the box.

  Anathrasa was gone.

  “Madoc?” Ash helped him up. Touched his face. Blood was smeared across her cheeks. She cradled her left arm against her chest.

  They were surrounded by a wall of rapidly crumbling stone—a fortress of Ash’s creation. Already soldiers were knocking down the stones in a spray of dust.

  He didn’t have to ask if she was ready; she’d been born for this.

  Trembling, he pushed Biotus’s energeia into her the way he had Florus’s power into Anathrasa. He sensed no resistance in her, only a welcoming warmth. She took it all, lips parted and eyes open, and when he was done, her teeth set in a vicious smile.

  “One left,” she said. “We still need Aera’s power if we’re going to beat Anathrasa.”

  “We don’t have much time,” he managed. The Mother Goddess had to have seen what he’d done. If Aera didn’t know already, she would soon.

  The goddess of air wasn’t hard to spot. She had Hydra pinned at the top of the arena, throwing stones and sand at her with pummeling gales.

  “Once she figures out what I’m doing, we won’t have long,” Madoc said.

  Ash nodded. “I’ll be ready.”

  “If you can hold her, I can drain her.”

  “We need to catch her by surprise,” Ash said.

  “No problem.”

  Madoc spun to find Elias. Dust coated the side of his brother’s face, and his shoulder was weeping blood down his chest.

  Madoc threw his arms around him, pulling him close. He’d never been so happy to see him in all his life.

  When Elias pulled back, he was grinning.

  “Did you know I can throw a dust wave across this entire arena?” Elias asked.

  “Unfortunately, I did,” Ash answered, making him cringe. He turned to Madoc.

  “You know the sign,” he said.

  Madoc huffed. “You’d better be ready.”

  “I’m always ready.” With a smirk, Elias grabbed Ash’s forearm and dragged her away. They fought their way through the soldiers coming through the stones, leaving Madoc alone, clinging to hope.

  He sprinted toward the side of the arena, pushing back those closest with a wave of soul energeia. He shoved off two of Aera’s guards and one of Anathrasa’s soldiers who attacked with a severed hand. When Madoc was close enough for a clear view of the goddess of air, he ducked low.

  He focused on the strength inside him, and his anathreia surged and struck out toward Aera. Silver slivers of light cut across the gold sand. Her power darted away from him, the same uncontainable wind he remembered from the palace library.

  She spun, fury painting her face. “Madoc!” she screamed. With a punch of her hand, she sent Hydra flying toward the far side of the stands, where she fell in a heap and did not rise.

  Madoc aimed his anathreia at her again, but she spun, the wind whipping her a spear’s throw to the left. He adjusted, tried again, but she was gone.

  He heard her laughter behind him and twisted just in time for a breeze to cut beneath his knees and knock him to his back.

  “Sweet Madoc,” she cooed. “Did you really think it would be so easy?”

  He scrambled up, and she jabbed a hand toward him. The air fled from his lungs in a hard cough, leaving him wide-eyed and gasping.

  “It’s a pity,” she mocked, striding close enough that he could see the dark veins branching out like lightning beneath her eyes, and the jutting bones of her cheeks and bare shoulders. “I would have enjoyed playing with you for a few decades.”

  He tapped his fingers against his thigh.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” he rasped.

  The ground shook, and twin waves of gravel three times his height rose on either side of Aera. They slammed into her with the force of two galloping horses, drawing a surprised scream from her throat.

  “Now!” Ash cried from his left. To his right, Elias threw another wave of sand against the goddess of air.

  Madoc couldn’t see Aera in the cloud of dust, but he could feel the hum of her aereia, and struck out for it. With her power focused on Elias and Ash’s attack, she couldn’t siphon the air from his lungs or play her games. Cool fingers of anathreia locked her in place. Once he’d trapped her soul, he inhaled her energeia in gulps, the rise of wind rushing through his blood, raising the hair on his arms.

  In a whirlwind, she broke free, forcing back the waves of dust that Ash and Elias struggled to throw at her. But before she could turn her attack to Madoc, she was lifted off the ground in a funnel of water, spinning and twisting against the self-contained current.

  “Hold still, sister,” Hydra growled, standing below her.

  “Madoc, now!” Ash screamed.

  He didn’t delay. He pulled and pulled, teeth bared, feeling as though his skin would rip from the mounting pressure beneath. He drained Aera until she writhed in her prison of water. He drained her until her aereia was his, and her beating heart sounded no different than any other mortal’s.

  “That’s enough,” a woman ordered.

  He fell to his hands and knees, dizzy with power. When his chin lifted, he saw Anathrasa standing beside him. Behind her stretched a wall of emerald vines, peppered with white flowers and bodies.

  Ilena’s body. Ava’s. Danon’s. Anathrasa had even managed to pull Elias away from the fight with Ash. They were held so tightly they couldn’t even struggle.

  Terror coursed through him.

  Lunging forward, Ash struck out toward the wall with a burst of her own floreia—twisting ivy that shot toward Madoc’s family. But before it reached them, the plants withered and ripped free from their roots in Ash’s hands. With a shout of pain she staggered to one knee.

  “You may know a few tricks,” Anathrasa snapped at her, waving aside Ash’s rescue attempt. “But you are not the goddess of plants.”

  “Finish this!” Elias shouted at Madoc, just before a vine twisted around his mouth to silence him.

  “Give me the aereia, Madoc,” Anathrasa said, carefully making her way toward him. “Give it to me, and they’ll live. Drain the God Killer and give me the rest, and your family goes free.”

  He glanced at Ash, who was staring at Anathrasa, uncertainty in her eyes. At Hydra, who’d dropped the quivering form of her sister and turned her focus to the hord
e still closing in around them.

  “The aereia,” Anathrasa snapped. “Or Ilena is the first to die.”

  The vines pushed Ilena’s body forward, revealing a thorned tendril that wrapped around her slender neck. She stared blankly ahead, still under Anathrasa’s power, the white chalk on her mouth making her lips look pale and sickly.

  Madoc quaked from aereia. From the terror twisting his soul. He could not lose Ilena. He couldn’t lose any of them.

  But he would if Anathrasa lived. She’d never let his family be free. As long as he was a threat, they would be used against him. He glanced to Hydra, fighting off the people still under Anathrasa’s control. All of them had families too. All the world would suffer as long as she lived.

  She would destroy the Divine and crush the Undivine into submission.

  His gaze found Elias’s, steady and knowing.

  “I’m sorry,” Madoc muttered. He tore himself away from Elias. From his mother, and sister, and brother, who he could no longer protect—who he never had been able to save.

  He stumbled toward Ash. The last hope for his family. For Deimos. For them all.

  “I love you,” he said, and kissed her.

  Twenty-Four

  ASH

  ASH GRIPPED MADOC’S shoulders. The kiss was more pain than pleasure, his lips rough and insistent, bruising her mouth. Power poured from him into her, a whipping, violent tornado that thrashed from Ash’s head down to her toes and sucked the air from her lungs. Air only surged back in as Madoc pulled away, transferring his breath to her.

  He trembled, gasping, and Ash held him up as she felt him start to droop. His hooded eyes lifted to hers and he gave her a sad, aching smile.

  “The last type of energeia,” he said. His face darkened. “Get her.”

  Ash eased him to the sand. He knelt at her feet, one knee up and his forearm across it like he was bowing in reverence to her, not falling in exhaustion.

  Ash looked down at him, shaking, her lips still hot from his. Her fingers splayed in front of her and she stared at them as though they would be different, some instructions scrawled across her skin as to what she should do now.

  Aereia was the last piece. It fought for room in her body, churning winds and wild gales that were tempestuous and ever changing and never satisfied.