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 wasstill 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.
