He was here. Of course he’d come down from the black stage to watch the fight. But he wasclose, and he was staring straight at her, one eyebrow arching as his lip lifted in a sneer.
She knew Tor and Rook were across the ring, but she couldn’tspot them when she flipped her back to Stavos. She tried to focus on Madoc, who chucked his shirt aside.
Her vision wavered, her hands shaking so hard she knew everyone could see.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to burn us all up here and now,” Stavos continued. “But don’t worry, Madoc. At the end of it, she isn’t really a gladiator—she’s a dancer. Give us a twirl there, sweetheart.” He clicked his tongue at her.
The fighters closest to him laughed. The sound echoed through Ash’s mind, a ricochet of disgust.
Madoc, crouched in a defensive stance, didn’t attack. He looked at her anew. “You’re the girl who interfered in the fight,” he said. “You caused this war.”
“I didnotcause this war,” Ash shot back, tapping into her anger and smothering the grief that writhed in her stomach. “Stavos poisoned my mother. He used an illegal move.”
She needed to attack. She should go for Madoc’s middle again. Maybe—
“Go ahead and keep saying that,” Stavos said, chuckling. But there was a tension to it, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him elbow the men near him, egging them on to boisterous, supportive laughter. “Won’t matter. Soon, Geoxus’ll make sure everyone gets what they deserve, even your lying god.”
Ash winced. Stavos’s taunt drove into her chest.
Two voices overlapped. One, Ash recognized as Tor’s—somewhere to her left, he started to shout Stavos’s name.
But the other voice overpowered him.
“If I need your help, Stavos,” Madoc bit out, “I’ll ask for it.”
Ash felt a wash of surprise—and the smallest, most toxic wave of gratitude.
She glared at Madoc. “I don’t need a Deiman to defend me.”
She charged, bringing a true overhead strike down on Madoc. He blocked. Her wrist slammed onto his forearm, jarring all the way to her gut.
Stavos pierced the air with a whistle. “There’s that Kulan heat!”
The ring of fighters was manic now. They jostled each other and cackled wildly, shouting requests of Ash, the dancer. Ash, Ignitus’s pretty flame girl.
She fought to ignore them. She threw another punch, but Madoc blocked that too. Stavos’s face merged with Madoc’s, and she struck, hard; again, harder. Madoc blocked her attacks, his arms a blur.
One of his hands landed on her shoulder and spun her away from him. Careening, Ash fumbled to stay upright—and stopped in front of Stavos.
He bent closer to her but made sure not to enter the ring, not making the same mistake she had. “You want to know the real reason I won in Kula?” he asked, words low and fast, the stench of his breath like onions and garlic. “My god told me your mother would be an easy kill. And she was. She was weak and lazy, and you’ll die just like her.”
No one else heard him. Even the fighters closest to him were still drunk on their cheers, so only Ash felt the world tip at the spark in Stavos’s eyes, the way he slid his tongue over his teeth.
She lost her senses. She saw Char, dead. Her mother’s bloodspreading across the sand, over the arena, darkening all of Igna.
A blur descended on her. Fingers clamped her arm and jerked her, spinning the ring in a wash of faces before Madoc had her knotted against him.
Panic and regret surged through Ash. Stupid,stupid—Stavos had been a distraction. Had he and Madoc planned this?
Madoc’s grip was unyielding, like being encased in stone. Ash’s shoulders scratched on the bristly hairs across his chest, but she couldn’t think of any moves to break free. He was probably glad to have her squirming, his arms restraining her against the sharp-cut steel of his muscles, and if she could feel every tendon of his, she knew he could feel the same of her.
“Are Deimans making it part of their training to fight dishonorably now?” Ash growled.
She tried to hook Madoc’s leg with her foot, but he bent backward, tilting her. As she kicked wildly, the crowd bellowed.
She couldn’t see Madoc’s face, but she heard him huff and felt his arms readjust around her. “I wouldn’t know,” he panted. “I’ve never trained.”
Ash spotted Tor. She almost cried out with relief, but he mimed throwing his head backward.
