“What are you talking about?”
Her mouth warped into a severe smile. “It’s time to do what you were made for.”
He shook his head. Jerked out of her hold. “I won’t help Geoxus.”
Not if it meant more of this.
“No—we have to stop him. Otherwise, he’ll destroy everything.” Anathrasa kept her gaze on Geoxus as he spouted orders to his guards. “I can’t take the energy from other gods after what they did to me—he was right about this, at least. You can.”
Her words took a beat to sink in.
“You want me to drain Geoxus.” His gaze flicked back to Petros. She seemed as unaffected by his death as she would be a spider she’d accidently crushed beneath her sandal.
She nodded.
“He thinks he’s humoring me, tossing me these gladiators to feed on in exchange for a Soul Divine heir. A child who can use anathreia at his master’s bidding. He thinks that I believe him when he says I’ll stay at his side as we march on the other countries. But he forgets that I’m the one who made him, and I see that all he truly wants is power.” Her fingers dug into Madoc’s wrist, her yellowed nails pressing into his skin. “Unless you want the death and destruction he craves, we must take his energeia now and make him mortal.”
We.
Madoc was trembling. There would never be awebetween him and Anathrasa.
But the truth punctured through his defiance. Now that Geoxus had seen what Madoc could do, he would use him to bring destruction to the world. Petros was only the beginning. Madoc would be forced to use hundreds more as tithes, and eventually give others energeia. Deimos was in danger. Kula would be next, and then there would be no stopping Geoxus.
Anathrasa was right. He had to end this.
And then, if he still breathed, he would end her too.
Madoc’s stare landed on Geoxus. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to take a god’s energeia, just as he didn’t know what it would do to him if he was able to complete the task.
A god’s power did not belong in his body.
It would kill him.
But if it saved a thousand more families like the Metaxas, he had to try.
With Petros’s slippery energeia still sloshing through him, Madoc reopened the void, the pain tearing up his throat as he focused on Geoxus’s back. He reached for Cassia, an image of her to hold in his mind, but landed on Ash instead. She was walking beside him in the hallway alongside the arena, just after Ignitus had killed her opponent. Grief was falling off her in waves, but still she’d walked tall, as though even death would not bend her spine.
He grasped that strength now.
But before he could act on the hunger in his soul, another crash came from the corridor. Guards swooped through the door, shoving Madoc out of the way in their drive to surround Geoxus. Anathrasa howled in anger as she was pushed behind a row of centurions.
“... a fire in the atrium!” someone was shouting.
“Kulan gladiators with him...” came another voice.
Madoc could barely distinguish their words over the grind and clap of metal armor, too loud in his ears, and the slice of anxiety through the air. Had the Kulans come for Ash? If they had, he would make sure Geoxus did not stand between them.
He grabbed the nearest centurion by the shoulder, shoving himaside. Another turned, but Madoc only shook his head, and the man scrambled away with a cry. He peeled the guards back, like layers of an onion, but still ten centurions blocked his path to Geoxus.
A great rumble shook the ground, and Madoc’s gaze shot to the throne room door, where the ground punched up through the stones, a quaking wall of gravel rising to seal the exit of the room.
“They’re here!” a woman screamed.Anathrasa.
A knot twisted in Madoc’s throat as he searched for the old woman among the centurions. The last he’d seen her was near Petros, but his father’s body was now hidden by a sea of armor.
The exit barrier was turning black, and then red in the center. The temperature of the room shot up, raising panic in the air. What were the Kulans doing here?
The wall gave a crack and burst inward, splinters of rock flying toward the hive of centurions with the speed of loosed arrows. Debris pinged off metal armor and shields. Gargling screams echoed off the ceiling.
