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 workwiththem 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?”
Hewas 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.
