“Mama—no,” Ash had managed. She had been fifteen at the time, and when would she have had time to? On Ignitus’s crowded ships or in rooms she shared with Char in foreign arenas?
The few private moments Ash got, when she had a room to herself or a lock on the washroom door, her fingers had trailed over velvet-soft skin that made her flush with a heat not unlike igneia. But shehad never met anyone she cared tobewith. Any conversations she had with people her own age ended in Ash abruptly leaving, distraught by how devoted they were to their god or goddess. The only time she felt anything like connection was in dancing, but even in Ash’s limited experience, she knew a relationship built on physical movement wasn’t worthwhile.
Char had looked unconvinced. She pulled her into a hug, shoulder digging into Ash’s throat. “Youmustbe careful. You’re the last of the Nikau line. Our blood is a burden.”
Had Char been any other mother, Ash might have heard that asYou are a burden. But she had never once doubted Char’s love for her.
Now the captain of this Kulan ship hammered a bell above deck. Everyone onboard had waited three long days to hear that signal—they were entering Crixion’s main port. The lighthouse would be just beyond the wall Ash was staring at, the one hung with a round mirror.
“This is madness,” Tor said for what had to be the hundredth time. He was sitting on a chair, letting Taro style his hair for the welcoming ceremony. “You can’t fight in a war.”
Tor’s distant lineage from Ignitus hadn’t stopped the fire god from naming Tor one of his other war champions, hoping that his grief at losing Char would fuel him like it fueled Ash.
“It’s the least I can do, isn’t it?” Ash used her pinky to clear a smudge of golden paint under her eye. She was shaking; the gold smeared. “I caused it.”
“You did not.” Tor’s tone was cutting. “We all saw Stavos cheat. You reacted, but you didnotcause this, Ash. Don’t let me hear you say that again.”
Ash dropped her eyes. Guilt rubbed her soul, but she tried to believe what Tor said. This was Stavos’s fault. It was Geoxus’s fault, Ignitus’s. This war, the impending bloodshed, wasn’t her burden to bear.
The structure of gladiator wars was meant to be distractingly opulent. Prizes like land and resources deserved fanfare, and the glory drove most people into a frenzy of love for their god.
At the start, each god selected eight champions. Those champions fought among themselves in nonlethal elimination trials, with the winners of each round earning gold and prestige. Between rounds, the hosting god threw lavish dinners, theatrical performances, fireworks displays—whatever best showed off their wealth and power. The war ended when each god’s remaining champion fought in a to-the-death match. The victorious god received riches and resources from the losing god—as well as incomparable bragging rights.
Though the elimination rounds were nonlethal, that did not always mean they were harmless. The two weeks of a war flowed with opulence and blood in equal measure.
One of Ignitus’s other champions was also in this ship’s lower-deck room: Rook, a distant great-grandson of Ignitus. Rook had once been a loyal fighter, but the birth of his Undivine son, Lynx, had altered how he viewed Kula, and Undivine, and Ignitus himself. Rook now hated being a gladiator more than Char ever had.
“I think she’s got a good plan to press Ignitus for weakness,” Rook told Tor. He held his arms lifted while Spark, Taro’s wife and a healer, an Undivine woman with nimble hands and endless patience, painted golden sunbursts on his bare chest. “About time someone took a stand.”
“She’s a child,” Tor snapped.
“She’s eighteen. Ignitus doesn’t let any of our children get to be children. You need any help”—he nodded at Ash, his black curls shifting—“you let me know.”
Rook’s fighting schedule often left Lynx alone. He was seven now, cared for mostly by the servants in Rook’s Igna villa. But Lynx had fallen gravely ill while Rook was traveling two weeks ago. Lynx’s mother had run off years back and Rook had no other family—and Ignitus had denied Rook’s requests to stay with his Undivine son.
Ash bowed her head at Rook and inadvertently eyed the lantern Taro had put out earlier, as though the flame might still spring to life and Ignitus would overhear them all.
“Don’t encourage her,” Tor snapped. “Trying to kill a god is folly. Remember Wolfsbane.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a battle cry, a warning, an omen.Remember Wolfsbane.
More than thirty years ago, a gladiator named Wolfsbane had come undone. Too many fights, too much death, too much loss. At a postfight celebration, Wolfsbane had taken a knife from the dining set, walked up to Ignitus, and stabbed him in the heart.
A mortal would have died. But a god retaliated.
Ignitus put Wolfsbane on display so everyone would know what happened to Kulans who turned on their god. Only Ignitus’s fire could burn a live Kulan. He seared Wolfsbane’s mouth shut, and he had Wolfsbane’s limbs removed in increments. He cauterized the wounds himself.
Wolfsbane had stayed alive for eight days.
Ash swallowed a kick of revulsion. “I won’t end up like Wolfsbane.Ignitus thinks my mother’s loss rallied me to his side, and he is proud enough that he believes I am fightingforhim, seeking justice from Deimos. I’ll get close to him and figure out what it was that killed the Mother Goddess so I can kill him the same way. I can’t stand aside anymore. I shouldn’t have hidden while Mama—”
Ash stopped, her voice wavering. She braced her hands on either side of the mirror, her sparkling reflection staring back at her in the light of the porthole window.
“Char loved watching you dance, using igneia to create beauty,” Tor tried. “She didn’t want this life for you.”
“Well, I didn’t want to watch my mother die. Rook doesn’t want to be away from his son. You don’t want to have to worry about me dying, too, and Taro and Spark want more out of life than playing our nursemaids. Show me even one person in this room who got what they wanted.”
Tor went silent. Taro, putting oil in his curls, watched Ash in the mirror with a pained gaze, the same she knew Rook and Spark were giving her.
