by Sara Raasch
There was no time left. The palace would be destroyed, and when it was, Madoc would die, and no one would be able to stop Geoxus.
Wiping the film of dust from his eyes, he rushed forward, shoving two fighters out of his way. He lifted his arms, calling on the pain inside him, demanding it feed on the figure in black standing in the center of the room.
It began like a whisper. A soft breath against his neck.
Then it took hold like a hurricane.
His body jerked, a puppet on strings. He pulled and pulled on Geoxus’s soul, unable to stop each huge gulp that filled him. His bones pressed outward. His skin stretched to the point of tearing. In his head, he could hear his pulse like the galloping of a monstrous horse. He could feel the cold chafe of sand against his heart.
It was going to kill him. Taking the soul of a god would tear him apart.
Still, he thirsted.
“No!” Geoxus’s scream filled the room. Filled Madoc’s head. Burst in his ears.
He squeezed his eyes closed in concentration. He wound his fingers around the invisible threads of the god’s soul and pulled harder.
But something inside him twisted, shuddered. Heated. This was wrong. There were no more rough edges. No heavy weight on his bones. The soul energy had changed. It was lighter now, harder to hold on to.
It burned.
He couldn’t let go. He sucked air through his clenched jaw, trying to control it, to release the reins, but the god’s soul had wrapped its tendrils around his limbs, his chest, his throat. He couldn’t peel free.
He gasped, his heart pumping harder, at the point of overflowing.
“Madoc, stop!”
He heard Ash’s voice to his left. But his gaze locked on Ignitus, standing before him. The god’s head was thrown back, his mouth gaping. His arms hung loosely at his sides.
Behind him, holding his brother’s body as a shield, was Geoxus.
It took Madoc a moment to make sense of the image.
Ignitus and Geoxus had switched places.
Madoc had drained Ignitus’s power, not Geoxus’s.
The god of earth tore his gaze from Madoc’s shocked face and reached toward his onyx throne. A crack resounded off the walls as one of the spikes on the back broke free and hurtled through the air toward his waiting hand.
He twisted and rammed the pointed end into Ignitus’s chest.
Beside Madoc, Ash screamed.
Twenty-Four
Ash
EVEN IN ASH’S most twisted imaginings of Ignitus’s death, she had never dreamed she would feel pain.
The missing outer wall of the room threw late-afternoon light over the scene before her. The onyx spike from Geoxus’s throne sparkled in the glow, the polished black edges glinting with blood.
Ignitus’s blood.
The gods did bleed, but they always recovered—they were immortal. He would heal. He would turn and rage at Geoxus for being so stupid as to—
Geoxus twisted the onyx and Ignitus bucked, his mouth agape in desperate shock. A push, and Ignitus crashed to his knees, his gaze falling to the stone protruding from his gut, open hands hovering around it like he could rip it from his chest.
But he pitched to the side, slumping to the marble floor.
Ash shrieked, fingertips to her mouth, only half aware of what she was feeling, watching him lie on the floor before her.
Ignitus had been willing to save Kula. When they got back home, their god was going to work with them to improve their country. No more living in terror. No more senseless death. No more hatred and corruption.
All that hope drained out of Ash when Ignitus didn’t rise from the ground.
“Kula, Ignitus is dead!” Geoxus bellowed. He opened his arms in triumph. “Bow to your new god!”
Ash slipped to the floor and crawled across the ground. The fight resumed around her, Deiman centurions demanding Kulan guards submit; the Kulans refusing in washes of flame.
She grabbed Ignitus’s shoulder. Shook him.
“Ash!” Madoc dropped beside her. His eyes were wide with apology. “I didn’t mean to—I thought he was—” He stopped, swallowed, and touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
He was the one who looked far from all right. His body twitched and rocked as though he had taken a lightning bolt straight to the heart.
“You took Ignitus’s energeia.” Awe socked Ash in the gut. Awe—and horror.
Madoc’s face paled. “I was trying to take Geoxus’s.”
Ash cupped Madoc’s jaw in her palm. He shuddered, and she swore she could feel the igneia churning in him, the energy of a god now trapped in his body.
“Can you do it again?” she whispered.
Madoc’s lips parted. He nodded.
Ash looked past him.
They were kneeling in a battlefield, bodies strewn around them, blood smearing the smoke-gray marble floor. A spike of rock suddenly jutted up from the floor to her right, spraying gravel across her torn gladiator armor. Geoxus stood in the epicenter of the chaos, yanking boulders from the ceiling and lifting shards of rock from the floor.
“Submit, Kula!” he demanded. “There is no victory for you now!”
Something in Geoxus’s own words struck him, and he whipped toward Ash and Madoc, kneeling over Ignitus’s body.
All the stones he had pulled free swiveled with him, aimed at Madoc. “You, traitor,” Geoxus said, “give me my brother’s igneia.”
Madoc braced an arm in front of Ash, as though he might be able to take the brunt of the projectiles aimed their way.
Crouched behind him, Ash slowly pulled a knife from her thigh sheath, determination heating her from her head to her toes. It wasn’t igneia, but it was powerful all the same, and she used Ignitus’s corpse to push herself to stand.
Geoxus flinched. The stones he had raised reared back, poised to strike.
Ash took a step forward, hiding the knife by her hip.
“Nikau. My brother’s champion.” He grinned. “Stand aside and I might let you live once I am the god of fire as well as earth.”
Madoc rose slowly beside Ash. She could feel the tension in him, half from Ignitus’s energeia, half from his own trepidation.
Ash stepped over Ignitus, putting more space between herself and Madoc. Geoxus’s smile tightened, his stones poised and ready, waiting for her to submit. With every step, she was pulling his attention away from Madoc, who panted, eyes flicking from her to his crazed god.
Ash stopped when Geoxus had to turn away from Madoc to see her. Beyond, Kulans still warred with centurions; she heard Tor cry her name from somewhere in the fray.
But she held Geoxus’s eyes. “Kula is not yours. We will never bow to you.”
“Careful, Nikau.” Geoxus’s arms drew up. The wave of rocks swelled behind him, chunks of marble peeling from the floor to grow the threat. “Remember how easily your mother died. One poison-tipped blade, and she snuffed out like a flame.”
Ash’s eyes widened.
Geoxus beamed. “I had my gladiator poison his knife to bring down Ignitus’s champion—she cost me far too many fighters. But I have no reason to kill you, Nikau. Bow to me.”
My god told me your mother would be an easy kill, Stavos had taunted her during the opening ceremony.
Ash had guessed that Geoxus had ordered Stavos to poison Char. Hearing it confirmed from Geoxus himself cracked her concentration, a fragment of shock slipping through.
Geoxus had had Stavos cheat in his fight with Char just to get her out of the way. Because Geoxus had known his fighters could never best her, not in war or any other fight, and he’d never be able to thoroughly weaken Ignitus with Char at his side.
Unexpected pride flooded Ash’s being. Pride in her mother, who had threatened a god just by living.
“Bow, Nikau,” Geoxus ordered, “before you do something foolish. Mortals die all too easily.”
Ash tightened her fingers on the hilt of her knife. Her body was still weak and battered, but
she had never felt more certain of her abilities.
She was a gladiator. She was Char’s daughter.
And she had always known that, one day, she would fight a god.
Geoxus thrust his arms toward her—but froze. The rocks behind him hesitated, stuck in the air.
They clattered harmlessly to the floor.
He frowned, eyes going from Ash to his own body to Madoc.
Who stood next to him, fingers splayed, chest heaving with exertion.
Geoxus realized his mistake and Ash’s trick.
“No!” he boomed. “No!”
Ash moved.
She dived at Geoxus and thrust her knife forward and up, planting it under his rib cage. It sank home, and he gave a wheezing, husky grunt of pain.
“Gods die as easily as mortals now,” Ash whispered to him.
She yanked the blade free. Blood surged down Geoxus’s black silk robes. His hands went to the wound, mouth bobbing open in helpless shock.
He looked at Ash, fuming. “You—you can’t—”
He lunged at her but only succeeded in slamming to the floor. There, he writhed once, body jerking, before he went limp at Ash’s feet.
The whole of the palace trembled, ceiling and floor and stories upon stories of rooms.
Geoxus had been holding this room in place. With his geoeia gone, the stone supports were too brittle, the foundation too shredded, for it to hold.
Deiman centurions, aghast at the sight of their dead god, began screaming mixes of threats for revenge and pleas to run.
Ash dropped the knife on the marble floor. Her hand was sticky with Geoxus’s blood, and she stared at it as dust rained down on her.
She had killed a god.
A wild, wicked laugh cracked from the side of the room. Ash looked up, her vision throbbing, and spotted Anathrasa, smiling at her beside the gaping exterior wall.
People streamed past them, centurions and Kulans alike, all clawing for the safety of the terrace outside.
Ash blinked, and Anathrasa was gone, pulled into the chaos.
“We need to go!” Tor was upon her, grabbing her wrist. “The room is collapsing!”
Ash spun, reaching—but Madoc was on the ground, his shoulders heaving.
She bent over him and put her hands on his back. Just that touch, and she could feel the tension winding through his body; she was half shocked that sparks didn’t leap off his skin and ignite the air around him.
“Tor!” she shouted. “He can’t walk.”
Ash looped one of Madoc’s arms around her neck. Tor did the same, and when they stood together, Ash teetered, dizzy with her own lack of strength.
But they would get out of that throne room.
Taro shot ahead of them, fending off any centurions who chose to attack rather than escape. Step after hobbled step, they made their way across the marble, dodging spikes of rock and falling chunks of debris that shot stones like arrows.
The broken wall showed the terrace beyond, its beckoning marble columns and twisted stone fountains and benches that had once been for easy lounging.
Ash pushed on and on, gasping in the dusty air.
A grating screech chased them across the room. It rose to a crescendo, and Ash dared a look back to see the far end of the throne room cave in with a mighty crash. A billow of dirt plumed into the air.
Ash shot back around and redoubled her efforts, tongue rough with grit.
They burst out of the throne room and dived behind a short stone wall seconds before the dust cloud rolled behind them. The thunderous roar of the ceiling collapsing deafened Ash to any other sounds, bringing the situation to her through sight alone. Even with the deaths of Geoxus and Ignitus, their energeias endured: Deiman centurions were using geoeia to keep the destruction contained to the throne room; Kulan guards were hunched behind this wall and another, sending fire blasts at other centurions, who returned with stones.
Ash and Tor dropped farther behind the wall, with Madoc slumping to the ground next to them. Ahead, Spark was tending to the wounded. Taro fell on her with a relieved cry.
Behind their hiding area, the edge of the terrace revealed the palace’s outbuildings, far below. To the left, a staircase opened, and Kulans were racing down it, fire flaring as they fought off the centurions on lower levels.
Across the terrace, over the short wall, a voice bleated. “Return Geoxus’s champion!” Anathrasa demanded. “The Kulans stole him and murdered Great Geoxus! Thieves! God killers!”
A fresh wave of stones hailed down. Ash cupped her arms over her head, bending into Madoc to shield him too.
“What are we supposed to do now?” barked a Kulan guard. Brand.
Ash shot him a glare.
Ignitus had told his guards most of what awaited them before the attack on the palace. That Geoxus intended to invade. That he had a weapon capable of decimating Kula. That Anathrasa had returned, and her survival could mean the destruction of the world.
They didn’t know what Madoc could do. Who he really was, or what had truly caused two gods to die.
“We get to the ships,” Tor told Brand. “We return to Kula. We need to rally our people now more than ever.”
“Without our god?” Brand’s face pinched. Ash hadn’t thought him capable of looking so forlorn. “What chance do we have of holding off the mother of the gods?”
“I can stop her,” Madoc wheezed.
Brand frowned at him in confusion.
“Not now, you can’t,” Ash told him and took his hand, half holding him down, half trying to plead with him to stay quiet. Even if Madoc was at his full strength, the moment he tried to take Anathrasa’s energeia, she would do the same to him, as she had drained her other mortal offspring.
The thought cored Ash. She wouldn’t watch Madoc go through that. She wouldn’t let his mother strip him to nothing.
“We need help,” Ash started. “Now that both Geoxus and Ignitus are dead, all Anathrasa has to do is tell her other god-children that we are the threat to them. We need to get to the other gods before she does.”
“We can’t just abandon Kula!” Brand shot back. “Deimos will attack out of revenge, gods or no gods.”
Ash sank against Madoc. Her gaze went to Tor, whose lips twisted. She knew that look, that conviction in the wrinkles around his mouth, the spark of intention in his eyes.
Stones continued to fly. Guards returned with fire.
Back up the terrace’s staircase, a Kulan shot out. “The exit is clear!”
“You go to Kula,” Tor told Brand. “Take the other champions, the guards. Rally an army. We’ll go to the other gods, tell them what’s happened”—he nodded at Ash—“and gain allies.”
Brand’s face went utterly white. He thought for a moment, his focus drifting back to the collapsed throne room, to Ignitus’s body now crushed by rubble.
“For Kula,” Ash said.
Brand looked at her. “For Kula. We’ll be waiting for you.”
Some guards were helping the injured shamble for the exit. Others, still holding off the centurions with fire and flame, shouted at them to go, run.
Tor seized Ash’s arm and included Madoc with a glance. “Make for the docks. Stop for nothing.”
They nodded. Ash helped Madoc stand. He waved off Tor’s offer to help support him again, and when he tried to do the same to Ash, she wedged herself under his shoulder, her arm around his waist.
“You’re stuck with me,” she told him.
Madoc’s lips pulsed. “I can accept that fate,” he whispered.
Ash managed a weak smile as he leaned into her, and the two of them hobbled toward the stairs, Tor behind, Taro and Spark ahead.
Down they went, the sounds of fighting echoing from above and shuffling bodies from below. The stairs gave a view of Crixion, the city nestled in the setting sun’s vibrancy, its citizens unaware that their world had forever changed.
The staircase deposited them onto the palace’s main road. People clogged it from every
angle, servants and centurions and palace inhabitants fleeing for safety. Most would have no idea what had happened, merely that a room had collapsed—which likely meant Geoxus was in danger.
Ash panted in the chill air, clinging to Madoc—or maybe Madoc clung to her now, she couldn’t tell—and focused every muscle on pure movement as they crossed the bridge over the Nien River.
Ignitus was dead. And though the hope she had felt at his alliance had flickered, a new hope flared strong again, driven by Brand’s support. By Tor and Taro and Spark and how they would convince the other gods of what Ignitus could not: that Anathrasa was back and out for revenge.
Ash should have been terrified. And she was; she was exhausted and sore and still harrowingly empty from her lack of igneia. But there were no secrets in her world anymore. No hiding thoughts of revolution from her murderous god. Her goal was laid out for all to see, her dreams unmasked and raw.
That realization felt like it honored Char more than Ignitus’s death had. Freedom over vengeance.
Ash began to recognize the area Taro and Spark led them through. The grand arena was on the left; Market Square to the right. And ahead was the temple, its high columns and wide marble floor showing worshippers within, like normal. News hadn’t reached them yet.
Ash tripped along, willing her body to keep moving. Taro took the stairs two at a time, cutting across the temple floor, her face set with determination. The fastest way to the docks was down the road ahead.
Madoc tightened his hold on Ash, and when she looked at him, her heart quaked. He was barely holding himself together, his brow furrowed in intense pain, his eyes lifted to the temple’s roof.
He looked like he was saying goodbye to it.
“Madoc!” A voice broke Ash’s concentration. Again it cried his name, frantic, “Madoc!”
He went rigid. Recognition struck him, and his lips parted in an exhale of disbelief. “Ilena!”
Twenty-Five
Madoc
THE WORLD FLASHED by in fractured moments. The soot on Ash’s skin. The slick blood on her hand as it slid beneath his arm. Slices of roaring sound and intolerable brightness that gave way to black.
