Set Fire to the Gods

by Sara Raasch

  Now Madoc did laugh, a strangled sound without humor. “I don’t know what my father’s told you, but I can’t take energeia from a person, much less a god.”

  “Yet,” Geoxus said. “You will with practice. It’s what you were made to do.”

  “Make you the god of fire?” Madoc shook his head. “What’s next? Air? Water?” Grim realization settled into his bones as he imagined feeding on gods the way Ash had said Seneca fed on Cassia. “Just because I healed someone doesn’t mean I can give energeia.”

  “Why not?” Seneca asked.

  Madoc’s gaze shot to the old woman.

  “It is what the Mother Goddess did, after all,” she finished, her lips curled into a cold grin. “Pushed energeia into the gods. At least what she used to do before her children diminished her powers.” Her gaze narrowed, briefly, on Geoxus before returning to Madoc.

  He thought of her words in the preparation chamber after his fight with Jann and shuddered. The Mother Goddess had made the six gods by pushing pieces of her soul into them, and in turn, they had destroyed her.

  “You want me to make you Soul Divine,” he realized, focusing on Geoxus. “You want to have the power of six gods.”

  Geoxus smiled, somber now. “I want you to think of a world without weakness or war. Kula, Cenhelm, Lakhu—every country will fly the flag of Deimos and live in peace.”

  “And what if Kula objects?” Ash asked.

  Geoxus inhaled. “Then you will be crushed within the fist of your new god.”

  Behind Madoc, Ash shivered. This wasn’t just Ignitus losing their land or trade routes. This was the utter destruction of her people.

  Madoc grasped for reason through the roar of defiance in his blood. “What’s to stop me from keeping the gods’ energeia for myself?”

  Geoxus offered a condescending chuckle. “Mortal bodies are weak. It would destroy you.”

  Beside him, Seneca’s arm slid free. She approached Madoc, her hand cold and dry as she slid her fingers around his wrist.

  “Strangle your doubt,” she said. “It has no place in the heart of a weapon.”

  Her words resonated through him, their true intent slicing his confusion. What was she doing here? Last week she’d been their neighbor, an old woman who gave too much advice and stole people’s clothing off the line, yet she was Soul Divine, and keeping company with a god and his trusted adviser.

  As he grasped for understanding, all he could think of were times he and Elias had caught her spying from her upstairs balcony, or coming over for meals without an invitation, or prodding his arms with her spindly fingers and asking where his energeia was.

  She’d been around the Metaxas as long as he could remember.

  Not around the Metaxas. Around him.

  He jerked his hand free from Seneca’s grasp. “Get away from me.”

  Petros jabbed one finger toward Madoc.

  “You’ll treat your mother with respect,” he warned.

  Madoc laughed coldly. “My mother?” Seneca had to be at least thirty years older than Petros. How did they know each other? Madoc tried to imagine their meeting during a routine tax collection, and the thought of their courtship was less than comforting.

  But the anger pulsing off his father was lightened by something softer that Madoc couldn’t immediately recognize.

  Love.

  Petros was in love with Seneca.

  For a brief moment, he wished Elias could hear this. Another time, they would have laughed about it for days.

  “My mother is dead,” Madoc said, but before the words were out of his mouth, anger tore through him. When he’d been a child, he’d wanted a mother—someone to protect him from Petros. Where was she when Petros had beaten him? When he’d thrown Madoc to the streets?

  No, this wasn’t his mother. Ilena was his mother.

  Even if she’d never forgive him for Cassia, he wouldn’t let another fill her place.

  “You were too young to know the truth,” Petros said. “And undeserving anyway. Had you shown earlier signs of energeia, I might have been more inclined to share, but you appeared to be pigstock. I knew she’d never come back to me if you were worthless.”

  Hatred scoured Madoc’s insides. Petros had taken Cassia. He was responsible for her death. And now he admitted to withholding news of Madoc’s mother just because he’d assumed Madoc was Undivine?

  But when Seneca patted Petros’s shoulder, Madoc saw how eager to please his father had become. It was as if all the beatings, all the times he had torn Madoc down for showing no sign of energeia, had been done by a different man.

  “My Petros is so impatient.” Seneca’s proud gaze turned cold and unfamiliar. “And yet look at what Madoc has become. A marvel. A living tribute, carved in my likeness.”

  Madoc froze.

  “He’s the offspring of a goddess, not a god himself,” Geoxus reminded her. “You bred him by mating with one of my Deimans. That makes him mine to use.”

  The god’s words stabbed into Madoc’s brain.

  Offspring of a goddess.

  Bred him.

  Mine to use.

  Madoc would have laughed if the situation had not been so dire. “So now I’m the son of a goddess? Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Madoc,” Ash hissed, and when he glanced her way, he watched her lips form a single word. “Anathrasa.”

  Seneca cackled, and cold shivered down Madoc’s limbs. She looked like the old woman he’d known all his life, but there was something different about her now. It was as if her top layer had been shed like the skin of a snake, revealing the slick and poisonous soul beneath.

  “I told you,” Petros said quietly to Seneca. “You are not forgotten, Goddess.”

  Madoc raked his fingers over his skull. “Anathrasa is dead. The other gods killed her hundreds of years ago.”

  “There are many ways to die.” Seneca’s hard gaze flicked to Geoxus. “And there are many ways to live. When stripped of most of one’s powers, one has to become resourceful.”

  “Come now,” Geoxus told her, annoyance dragging at his tone. “Pity looks poor, even on you. I give you tithes. I feed you for your services.”

  Beside him, Ash flinched. “He feeds you?”

  “Gladiators, dear.” Seneca’s lips tilted in a wicked smile. “They are quite sustaining. Stronger than your average Divine. Stavos was particularly hearty.”

  She took it from me.

  Ash fell back with a wince. Her fear slashed against Madoc, hot and uncontained.

  “I saw a record that said some of Geoxus’s top gladiators had been ‘tithed’ before their deaths,” Ash said. Her gaze flicked to Petros. “And I heard him talking about how he’d had to cover up Stavos’s escape. It was all because of you.” She pointed to Seneca, new horror dropping her voice. “You’ve been taking the energeia from gladiators. Stavos. How many others?”

  “It’s hard to say,” said Seneca, her brow scrunched. “Dozens? Hundreds?”

  “People thought I killed Stavos to advance,” Madoc said. He trembled, remembering the arrows in Stavos’s back. Remembering his last, strained breaths.

  “We did it for you,” Petros said. He turned to Seneca. “I told you he was ungrateful.”

  Seneca chuckled.

  Madoc glanced to Geoxus, remembering the god’s despair over his champion’s murder. Now there was only self-righteous greed.

  His grief, his love for Stavos, had only been an act.

  “It’s a pity the Kulan champions travel in packs,” Seneca continued. “I would have liked some time alone with your mother, Ash. I hear she was very powerful.”

  Ash jerked forward, but Madoc blocked her path. Seneca was baiting her.

  He stared at the fragile old woman. The seventh goddess—Anathrasa. She could harness the power of souls and had tried to cleanse the world of anyone, god or mortal, who she couldn’t control—or had, before her god-children had risen against her and drained her power. But before that, could s
he do the same things as Madoc? Convince Jann to surrender. Draw out Ash’s grief.

  What else could she do?

  Push energeia into gods.

  He shuddered as this understanding worked its way into his bones. As much as he didn’t want it to be true, he thirsted for more. Something was cracking inside him, tearing open. Questions he’d suffocated long ago.

  Who am I? What am I?

  Anathrasa had answers.

  “You’re fortunate, you know,” Geoxus said, smiling a little. “She might have killed you. Broken open your soul and emptied it, like she did with so many before you.”

  Like draining the milk from a coconut. That’s what Seneca had said in the preparation room.

  “It is all I seem to be able to do now,” Anathrasa said tightly.

  “There are others like me?” Madoc’s stare locked on Anathrasa, hope surging through him at the prospect of not carrying this burden alone.

  “There were, in the past.” She batted a hand at him. “I could not put all my hope in one fragile mortal. They crack like eggs. One slip, and their skull is broken. Weak bones are truly the flaw of human design. Weak bones and saggy skin.” She pinched the wobbling flesh beneath one arm. “Soul energy is not so easily released. It matures over time. It builds by feeding on emotions.”

  Madoc’s stomach turned as he recalled the beatings he’d taken in his childhood—how Petros had tried to force the power out of him at a young age. Pain or not, there was a strange satisfaction in knowing his father had been wrong.

  “Some died as their powers came to be. Weak constitutions,” Anathrasa continued. “I used to think absorbing the soul energy of the stronger ones would bring my powers back, but alas. They, too, eventually faded. But you, Madoc, have matured nicely. You will be a true champion.”

  “You killed your own children,” Ash breathed, horrified.

  Madoc could see why the gods had turned against the Mother Goddess in the old stories. She was a monster.

  But so was Geoxus.

  He didn’t want Madoc to make Deimos equal. He wanted to build an indestructible country.

  Geoxus. Petros. Anathrasa. They all wanted the same thing: power.

  Ash’s words returned, streamlining the chaos in his brain into one singular thought.

  Seneca was there. She took Cassia’s divinity.

  Cassia was dead because of Anathrasa.

  Pain wrenched Madoc’s muscles around his bones. He saw Cassia lying in the indentation of earth, the boulder beside her. Had she been trying to lift it when it had fallen? Had it been flung her way by Petros, or one of his guards, and she’d found herself unable to stop it?

  Anathrasa had made her powerless, but Petros and Geoxus were just as guilty of her death.

  Madoc stalked forward, fury raking through him, but was stopped by Ash. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her chest drew flush against his back.

  Her anger flooded him, potent and scalding and edged with ferocity.

  She meant to protect him. He could feel her intention, truer than any words. He grasped it with all he had, his anchor in the storm.

  “Enough of this!” Geoxus growled, still driven by a frantic energy that scraped Madoc’s paper-thin resolve. “Take Ignitus’s gladiator to the jail—we may find use for her in the future. The rest of us will return to the palace. There’s much to do, Madoc. Much we must prepare.”

  “No.”

  Geoxus, heading toward the door, froze. He turned toward Madoc. Behind him, Petros’s face was red with fury.

  “No?” Geoxus asked.

  Madoc felt as if his bones would shake apart. His breath came in rapid pulls. Fear burst inside him, hotter than his anger, more desperate than his will to survive.

  He might be the son of Anathrasa, but he would not be a weapon. He would not tear souls away like she had done to Cassia and Stavos. He would not fill gods with energeia just so they would turn and invade countries like Ash’s.

  Determination quieted the raging of his soul. For the first time since Cassia had been taken, he knew what he had to do.

  He had to fight for Deimos. Not Geoxus’s power-hungry ideal. Not Petros’s corrupt reality. The Deimos that had raised him, that pressed gemstones into its doorways, and always smelled of olives and fresh earth, and stained his clothes with gray mortar and his heart with laughter.

  The Deimos that had given him the Metaxas.

  “No?” Geoxus asked again, incredulous. “Perhaps you have misunderstood, Madoc. This isn’t a choice. You are my champion. You belong to me.”

  The floor began to shake with Geoxus’s temper. Sand sifted from the ceiling above.

  Ash released Madoc. He glanced her way, and when her stare met his, hard and ready, he felt a piece of his soul slide into the palm of her hand.

  There was no igneia here, but she would fight with only her bare hands, like the first time they had met. And if they died, they would die together.

  “No,” Madoc said. “I don’t.”

  Geoxus raised his arm, and Madoc braced for the onslaught of stone that was sure to come. He raised his hands before him, unsure what he would do, only knowing that a great storm of energeia was swirling inside him, begging to be unleashed.

  “Guards!” Geoxus called. “Take my gladiator to the palace!”

  In an instant, a swarm of silver and black shoved through the broken door, weapons drawn. They cut across the room, knocking over benches and chairs in their path.

  Ash lowered to a crouch, hands outstretched. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her ferocity fed him. Soothed him. Silenced his fear.

  He inhaled, slowing his heart, and wrapped his mind around a single word.

  Stop.

  The guards at the front of the attack froze, those behind tripping over them.

  Stop.

  Those on the floor scrambled up, confusion on their faces. They looked at the weapons in their hands as if they couldn’t remember why they’d drawn them.

  Power pulsed in Madoc. Finally, it whispered over Geoxus’s howl of anger.

  But to his left, out of the corner of his vision, he caught movement. The subtle flick of Anathrasa’s wrist.

  He realized, one moment too late, what she intended to do.

  Dropping his hold on the guards, Madoc yanked Ash toward him, pivoting to place himself between her and Anathrasa, but it was too late. Ash bucked in his arms, her spine bowed taut, her head thrown back. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

  “Stop!” he shouted at Anathrasa, gripping Ash tighter. “Leave her alone!”

  “I will not play these games,” the Mother Goddess hissed. “When I’m done, there will be nothing for you to bring back, Madoc.”

  Ash’s teeth began to chatter. “Madoc?” Her voice was strained.

  Her fear pumped into him, and he took it, transforming it into his own usable power supply. He would make the guards destroy Anathrasa—he didn’t care who she was. He’d turn the entire city on Geoxus and Petros.

  Madoc spun, still holding Ash against his side. The glow of the stones in the walls was too bright. The scent of the food was too rich and turned his stomach. His anathreia roared, hungry. He lifted his hand, but Ash screamed and slumped against his side.

  “Get them!” Geoxus shouted. “Take them both!”

  The guards were on him before he could react. One struck him in the side, the sharp jab of pain thrusting the breath from his lungs. His knees were swiped out from behind, and he fell hard to the ground. He grabbed at Ash’s arms as a kick landed against his side, but they slid through his hold, cold and limp.

  “Ash!” Panic seared him. He scrambled across the floor toward her, but they were already dragging her away.

  “Don’t listen to them!” she screamed, her voice thin with pain.

  The metal hilt of a knife came down hard on the back of his head, making the room go dim and black around the edges. All sounds muffled as if he were underwater. He blinked, but Ash was gone. There was only Geoxus, standin
g over him, and the silver glint of centurion metal wavering on the edge of his focus.

  “If you fight me, I will kill her myself,” the god thundered.

  Rage roared through Madoc’s blood. He would get Ash back. If she was hurt, he would heal her again. Then they would stop Anathrasa, Petros, and Geoxus, even if he had to pry their souls from the cold shells of their bodies.

  But if he and Ash were going to fight, they had to survive.

  He thrust one shaking hand into the air as gladiators did in the arena, and surrendered.

  Twenty-Two

  Ash

  IN THE CENTER of Igna, there was a well.

  Char would sometimes stop at it, take a coin out of her pocket, and pluck handfuls of the short, spiky grass that grew at the well’s base.

  “Make a wish,” she would say as she wove the grass around the coin. A flick of her fingers, and she set the grass aflame. “If the fire stays lit all the way to the water, your wish will come true.”

  Ash had laid out her wishes carefully when she was very small. Creamy custard-filled pastries from the market; a hoop and stick game she had seen other children playing.

  But there was one day, when she had been about eleven or twelve years old, that Char had wrapped the coin and lit it on fire and held it out over the well.

  A week earlier, Ash had watched her mother spend three days fighting Ignitus’s new recruits in training exercises. It was routine, but this particular round of exercises had come when Char had been so ill she’d spent every break heaving in the corner. What should have been quick training matches turned to bloody scrambles as the new recruits saw the opening to dethrone Ignitus’s champion.

  But Char had bested them all, and afterward, Tor had had to carry her out of the training arena. Delirious with fever and pain, Char had mumbled into Tor’s shoulder, “But she’s safe. Ash is safe? Don’t let him fight her—”

  Ash had been next to Tor. She’d heard her mother’s question, seen the wince in Tor’s eyes.

  At the well, Ash had stared at the flaming coin in her mother’s palm. “I wish,” Ash started, “I wish I wasn’t Fire Divine.”

  Char had cocked her head.

  “I wish I was ordinary,” Ash whispered. “So you wouldn’t have to worry about me, Mama.”