“Damn it—get her up!”
One of her arms dropped free as the guard bent to grab her waist—and she moved.
Ash grabbed his sword’s hilt, drew it, and swung it back. It sliced into the man’s thigh and he shrieked.
Orders flew. Armor clanged, stones jostled into the air, but Ash lost her body to momentum. She deflected a centurion’s raised stones with her blade. She ducked under his lifted arm and hurled the sword with all her remaining strength. The blade twisted through the air and caught another soldier in the arm, eliciting a sharp yell that riled the now manic horses.
An arched doorway stood at the rear of the stables—it would lead back into the arena. Ash scrambled for it.
Her knees gave out. She slammed forward, head jarring as her chin struck the stone floor.
It took a full breath before she felt the heaviness of stones encasing her ankles, holding her down.
“Put her in the gods-damned carriage!” The lead centurion’s furious yelp rattled the walls.
“That’s strange,” another voice said. “I don’t remember damning a carriage.”
Ash knew that voice. Why did she know it? Her body spasmed, involuntarily curling in on itself but for her trapped legs. She was fading, darkness, ebbing into a void—
Flame swelled into the stables, rising higher, stronger, brighter.
The centurions screamed. Horses bleated—in fear, not in pain, Ash noted dazedly—and hooves clapped the stone as the beasts fled. The fire must have freed them of their restraints.
Another surge of fire; another screech of men in pain.
And then Ash waswarm.
Something scorching encased her from head to toe. She inhaled as though she hadn’t managed a full breath in hours. Her muscles relaxed; her fingers unclenched.
She looked up.
Ignitus knelt next to her on the stable’s floor. Scarlet robes wrapped around his body and rippled over the straw. A braid holding his hair back had come loose, but his mind was clearly roiling with thoughts, a simmering rage twisting his face into a scowl.
One of his hands was out over her, washing fire just above Ash’s body. It wasn’t close enough to burn her skin but it disintegrated the stone imprisoning her ankles and warmed every frozen crevice, trapping heat under her fireproof Kulan reed armor.
He looked down when he felt her watching him.
“You didn’t fight them,” he noted with a scowl. “Not with igneia. And you’re shivering.”
Ash didn’t speak. That was her explanation, her wail of agony—just silence.
The scowl stayed on Ignitus’s face, and Ash realized that he wasn’t angry at her, butforher.
He dropped his hand and the fire went out. She still didn’t feel whole, and numbness fogged her thoughts, but she was no longer unbearably cold.
She managed to push herself upright.
Only the stone floor, walls, and ceiling remained. All the wooden dividing walls and storage closets were burned away, and a pile of cinders that must have been the carriage lay in the middle of the room—next to four bodies.
“You killed the centurions.” Ash’s voice was gravelly.
Ignitus huffed but said nothing.
She looked at her god. He sat with his hands limp on his thighs, jaw working and eyes distant in a way that said he was calculating.
Even weak and spent, she found that she no longer feared him. Maybe because there was nothing left that he could take, and far worse creatures than him had shattered her.
Ignitus didn’t look at her. “Anathrasa did this to you.” It was a question she didn’t have to answer. “I can’t give your igneia back to you,” he continued. “Putting energeia straight into a mortal could kill you.”
