Set Fire to the Gods

by Sara Raasch

  Which was why he couldn’t tell her that Petros had claimed him as his son. She was more of a parent than his real father had ever been.

  “Or maybe you should keep fighting,” Seneca clucked, prodding the muscles in Madoc’s arms.

  “Seneca, please,” said Ilena.

  “The boy’s a gladiator now,” Seneca said. “If you’d stop coddling him, we can see what he’s truly capable of.”

  Her words grated on Madoc’s nerves. The old woman knew as well as any of them that Madoc was Undivine. It was as if she wanted him to fight for her own entertainment—an experiment that could only last so long.

  A commotion came from the entrance to the arena. Three figures crammed into the narrow corridor, seeming to trip over each other in an attempt to get off the yellow sand. It wasn’t until they’d crossed the threshold that Madoc registered the silver gleam of the two helmets and breastplates and the broken reed patches of Kulan armor.

  Two centurions were dragging a gladiator out of the arena.

  Not just any gladiator—Ash.

  She thrashed between them, loosening the last pieces of her armor, which fell to the floor in a heap. Now all that remained were the thin binding wraps around her chest, her tattered reed skirt, and the black soot that dusted her legs and smeared over her arms. One of the centurions stepped on her armor as he tried to pull her toward them, but he slipped and crashed to his knees.

  With a wail, she lunged at him, but not before the other centurion landed a kick to her gut.

  Ash toppled with a dry gasp. The other soldier rose and grabbed her hair. Madoc stepped forward, unsure what he planned to do or say. He could still see her eyes, burning up at him from the ground in hate and fear. He could see her on her knees bowing to her god. It didn’t matter why she was fighting now, or if she’d won or lost. She was hurting, and he could feel it searing through his skin like hot coals.

  “Let go of her.”

  Madoc turned. Ilena was standing just behind him, her hands twitching at her sides.

  “Stay out of this!” snapped one of the soldiers. “This one’s liable to burn you to the ground if she gets near an open flame.”

  “She’s just a girl,” Ilena argued weakly.

  “She’s not your girl,” said Seneca, and Madoc’s panic rose higher in his throat.

  Ilena’s face tightened.

  “I’ll meet you at the carriage,” Madoc said, passing Elias the bag of gold.

  “Madoc,” Elias warned.

  Madoc knew staying behind was unwise; he didn’t need Elias to tell him so.

  A scowling Elias took Ilena by the elbow and turned her toward the exit. “Come on, Seneca,” he said when the old woman made no motion to follow.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Madoc told her. The old woman grunted, then followed the other two toward the door.

  Madoc turned back to Ash and the two centurions.

  He needed to leave. Get in the carriage with the others. Drive away from this place and focus on bringing Cassia home. He was already risking trouble in too many ways.

  But it didn’t make sense that Ash was being escorted by Deiman centurions. The Kulans were supposed to enter and leave through the east gate.

  Ash cried out again, a guttural howl that shook him to the bones, and the centurion jerked her upright. Before she could react, two spears were pointed at her throat.

  Madoc’s hesitation evaporated. His vision tinged red.

  “What’s all this about?” he asked, trying to play calm.

  “Stay back,” one centurion said. “This is arena business.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Madoc. “Getting a look at the competition. What happened?”

  “She wouldn’t clear the sand for the next match,” said the far centurion between hard breaths. “Wouldn’t let go of the body.”

  Madoc’s stomach sank. She’d killed her opponent in a trial? They weren’t meant to be to the death, but that didn’t mean fights couldn’t sometimes go too far.

  He needed to back away. If they were restraining Ash, they must have had good reason.

  But there was something off about her. A slippery, hot pain sliding across the space between them like a vat of spilled oil. He could feel it wash over his feet and slide up his legs. It coated his chest and throat.

  For as long as he could remember, he’d been able to sense what others felt. He hadn’t realized it was odd until he’d come to live with the Metaxas, and Elias had caught on to it. Pigstock geoeia, he’d called it—a sense that wasn’t ordinary but could hardly be called earth divinity. Madoc had assumed he was right. People were different, after all, and sometimes divinity manifested in strange ways. A healer in Kyphus claimed he could hear the ore in a Divine person’s blood. One of the priests at the temple could move only sandstone with his geoeia. Madoc’s ability was odd, but his father was Earth Divine, and variations in power were not unheard of.

  Besides, pigstock geoeia had its uses. Madoc could read the mood of the baker at the market. If he was feeling generous, Elias would beg for the honey cakes that hadn’t sold at the end of the day. If he wasn’t, they would steal them.

  He knew when Ilena had had a good day and when to tread lightly. How to quiet Ava when she had a bad dream. How to sense another fighter’s weakness.

  But Ash’s pain was stronger than anything he’d felt before. He’d never sensed the emotions of someone who wasn’t Deiman—that must be why. Whatever the case, he didn’t like it.

  “Geoxus asked you to escort the victor of the match back to her people?” Madoc scratched his chin, feeling the rough stubble beneath his fingertips.

  “Better than her own god, that’s for certain.” The nearest guard laughed nervously. “You won’t see Geoxus burn up his own fighter, I know that much.”

  Ignitus had killed her opponent? Madoc met Ash’s gaze again, and now that oily slickness of her pain was pressing through his pores, weighing heavy in his blood. She blinked rapidly, but it didn’t stop the tears. They rolled down her cheeks, carving new tracks in the dust on her skin.

  Ash twisted, breaking free. She lunged toward the arena. In a flash, the centurion had snatched a stone from the ground with geoeia and was swinging it toward the back of her head.

  “Stop.” Madoc’s voice echoed in the tunnel. Outside, the shouts of the crowds, already demanding the next match, dropped away.

  The centurion lowered the stone.

  “Leave her.” Lightning raced through Madoc’s limbs. “I’ll make sure she gets back to her people.”

  The soldiers both lowered their spears.

  “She’s calm now,” said the closest one. “He’ll take it from here.”

  Madoc could hardly believe the change that had fallen over them.

  “You should go now,” he said.

  The second centurion nodded. “We need to leave.”

  They departed without another word.

  A strange curiosity had him frowning after them. Talking to those guards had felt easy, more so than it should have. They were centurions, and even if he was a gladiator, he should have been more cautious. But they’d listened to him as though he was the captain of the legion.

  He had bigger concerns. He was within striking distance of a Kulan gladiator. An enemy of Deimos. A woman he’d bested less than a day before.

  Maybe sending the centurions away hadn’t been such a great idea after all.

  But she didn’t attack. Instead, she slumped against the wall, blowing out a shaky breath.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her chin lifted, dark eyes a sickle of gold and brown in the dim light that came through the front entrance. Madoc deliberately relaxed his arms and hands, hoping she didn’t see too much, and focused elsewhere. Her wild spirals of black hair that had broken free from their binding. The thin cloth wrap around her chest that she wore beneath her armor. The slope of her waist, and the small indentation of her navel.

  His gaze shot back to her face, and he
swallowed dryly.

  “I’m sure your people are waiting at the eastern exit. There’s a tunnel that runs beneath the stands. It should take you there.”

  He motioned to the corridor near the arena exit, a cave with a low, arched ceiling. Phosphorescent stones flickered around the bend, bringing a sharp, guilt-coated relief. There were no flames to draw from here. If there were, those guards would be dead. Maybe he would be too.

  She pushed off the wall and took an unsteady step toward him, her sandaled feet crunching over the gravel. Her eyes remained on his.

  He tried to read her intent, but all he could feel was her wary curiosity, a heavy mantle over his shoulders, and the bitterness of her pain in the back of his jaw.

  Her chin lowered slightly—an invitation? She couldn’t have meant for him to go with her.

  Unless she planned to kill him and cut out her competition. Or maybe she didn’t trust that it was safe. She thought it was an ambush of some kind—that he’d orchestrated the centurions to leave so that she could disappear without witnesses.

  He stepped into the hallway, telling himself he was doing what any respectable Deiman citizen would do. It was better than acknowledging the small spark of curiosity that lit inside him.

  She hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Deiman. But it would be unwise for you to corner me alone. I told you before, you won’t beat me again.”

  “I know,” he said, giving a small and, he hoped, encouraging smile. “I just want to help you get back to your people.”

  “Why?”

  Because I embarrassed you yesterday in the arena. Because if I don’t, more guards will come and find you.

  Because you’re scared, and I can feel it.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going this way. Come if you want.”

  He walked away, and was ten steps in before he heard her following. Soon, she’d come beside him, her wary gaze flicking from his face to his hands.

  This space was tighter than the previous corridor, and without the sunlight from outside, it felt too private. Every footstep crackled off the walls. Every creak of his leather armor sounded like the groan of an unoiled hinge. He was as acutely aware of all the places he was covered—his chest, back, thighs, and feet—and all the places she wasn’t. There was so much bare skin, he couldn’t not look. His gaze flicked from the points of her shoulder blades to the cut muscles of her upper arms. It bounced from her tight belly, which disappeared beneath a tattered reed skirt, to her long thighs and calves and the lean tendons of her ankles.

  She reminded him of the women painted on the walls of Geoxus’s temple—the ones with ample curves and a lack of clothing that Elias and he used to gawk at when they were young. But Ash’s back was straighter than the women in those paintings. Her chin was lifted. She might have been wearing a silk gown with a crown of onyx and opals atop her head.

  She carried herself like a goddess.

  He bumped into the wall. Her stare snapped to his, suspicious as ever.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Are you fighting soon?”

  “I won already, actually.” He sent her a small grin. “Didn’t you hear?”

  She gave a quick shake of her head. Of course she hadn’t heard. She was busy fighting her own match.

  He cleared his throat. “Stavos didn’t show.”

  She paused, her burst of anger like a fist pumping around his lungs. “What do you mean?”

  He remembered what she’d said in their fight—that Stavos had poisoned her mother—and he wondered grimly if she had been hoping to face him in the arena.

  Madoc shrugged. “No one’s seen him. I guess I scared him away.”

  “I doubt that,” she said, making him wince. “Where would he have gone?”

  “Back under the rock he came from? I don’t know. We weren’t exactly close.”

  The pain he’d felt in her receded, replaced again by wariness. They began walking again.

  “What do you want, Madoc?”

  It didn’t surprise him that she knew his name—she’d probably learned it when they’d fought before—but he was caught off guard by the thrill that came when she said it.

  He shoved it down. “Nothing.” His shoulder blades knotted as they neared one of the glowing stones set in the wall. “Did Ignitus really kill your opponent?”

  He regretted the words instantly. She stopped. Her small intake of breath was like a dagger to his side, laced with bright pain reflected in the pinch of the corners of her eyes.

  She wouldn’t let go of the body.

  Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin quivered the tiniest bit. She seemed suddenly breakable, like a rock wall pressured with just enough geoeia.

  Turn back, he told himself. But his feet didn’t listen. Instead, his arm lifted, and before he knew what he was doing, his hand was hovering over her shoulder. She didn’t see; her face was downcast. He could have pulled away, and she would have been none the wiser. But he didn’t.

  She was hurting. He could feel the white sparks of pain crackling in the space between their skin. Deep, like a gash in her soul. He didn’t know how she still managed to stand, how it didn’t topple her over.

  It reminded him of the day Ilena had learned her husband had died in the arena. How she’d curled up in a ball on the floor beside the bed, unable to climb onto the mattress. There’s a hole in my chest. That’s what she’d told them. And Madoc had prayed for Geoxus to fill it, the way he’d prayed for help and Cassia had found him on the temple steps.

  Now he felt that same hole inside Ash. It pulled at him, and it didn’t matter if she was a killer or an enemy or if they were at war. He’d lost Cassia, but this one, small thing he could fix.

  Geoxus, he prayed, as he’d prayed all those years ago for Ilena. Please help her.

  “What are you . . .” Ash sucked in a hard breath.

  His gaze snapped to hers. He didn’t move. She didn’t move. His hand still hovered over her shoulder, fingers curled slightly like he could grab her grief and pull it out of her. Cool breath stretched his lungs. He felt lighter. Stronger. Geoxus had heard him—Madoc could feel his power gliding over his muscles. More, it whispered, and he complied. His fingers inched closer, hungry now for her grief, for her pain, for the hate that she must have felt for all of Deimos . . .

  “Madoc.”

  He drew back sharply, his hand falling like lead to his side. They were both breathing hard, shoulders heaving. He didn’t know what had come over him; this didn’t feel like any prayer Geoxus had answered before. Her pain had felt purer than any emotion he’d sensed in the past. It was clear, and potent, and he’d been compelled to do something to ease it.

  Something was definitely wrong with him.

  “What was that? What did you do?” she snapped.

  He needed to get away from her before he made things worse.

  “Wait,” said Ash as he turned.

  He hesitated.

  “How . . .” She gave a startled laugh. “How did you do that? I feel . . . different.” He turned back to find her shaking her head. “Those guards. You did something to them. They were taking me, but you changed their minds. You made them leave.” She heaved out a breath; even her uncertainty buzzed in his veins.

  He looked down at his hand, the one that had hovered over Ash’s shoulder, as if expecting to see some kind of mark, but there was none.

  “I asked for help,” he said.

  “From who?”

  He swallowed, the taste of her pain still fresh on his tongue, and glanced to the stones in the walls around them. “Who else?”

  “Your god?” She scoffed. “You asked Geoxus to help me, an enemy gladiator, and he listened? I don’t think so.”

  Panic raced up his spine. He’d felt Geoxus’s strength working through him, just as he had all those years ago with Ilena. It couldn’t have been anything else.

  “What are you?” she asked. It took him a moment to register that the light in he
r eyes wasn’t fear but wonder. “You don’t use geoeia like an Earth Divine. You don’t fight like a gladiator. Are you even Deiman?”

  “Of course I am,” he said.

  “Your gift isn’t a Deiman gift.”

  It wasn’t a gift at all, except when he and Elias were stealing bread or fighting. It was pigstock geoeia, some strange manifestation of the Father God’s power, but that didn’t explain what he’d just done. He wished now that someone could tell him what was wrong with him, but only his family knew of his intuition. He’d never seen a healer for it—Ilena had made it clear that talking about it would put him in danger. When you were Undivine, people saw you as one thing only—pigstock—and acting as if you were anything else made those with real power very upset.

  Still, he bristled. Ash called him out as easily as his family, though she’d known him less than a day. “There’s sand everywhere. Tiny pieces of gravel you can’t even see. I used geoeia.”

  He wished the arena would fall in on them both, ending this quickly.

  “Gravel didn’t change the minds of those soldiers, or make me . . .” Her gaze lifted to his, then flicked away. “You used something else. Air energy? Are you from Lakhu?”

  “No. I’m not. And no, I didn’t.” She wanted to argue like children? Fine. He had four siblings. He could do this all day.

  “Then do it again,” she taunted. “Show me your geoeia.”

  His cheeks flamed. Warning bells began to ring in his mind. He couldn’t risk another prayer now. She had a point—why would Geoxus want him to help their competition?

  What if she was right and it wasn’t Geoxus answering his prayers at all?

  “Sorry. I don’t perform on command.”

  She snorted. “Isn’t that why we’re here? Because we perform on command?”

  He did not like where this was going.

  A frown tugged at the corner of her lips. “It’s against the rules of war for a god to use another country’s Divine.”

  Doubt tingled at the base of Madoc’s brain. Geoxus had never seen Madoc fight before he’d been chosen for the Honored Eight. Even when they’d stood face-to-face, he couldn’t see Petros’s lies, or that Madoc didn’t have geoeia.