Because I embarrassed you yesterday in the arena. Because if I don’t, more guards will come and find you.
Because you’re scared, and I can feel it.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going this way. Come if you want.”
He walked away, and was ten steps in before he heard her following. Soon, she’d come beside him, her wary gaze flicking from his face to his hands.
This space was tighter than the previous corridor, and without the sunlight from outside, it felt too private. Every footstep crackled off the walls. Every creak of his leather armor sounded like the groan of an unoiled hinge. He was as acutely aware of all the places he was covered—his chest, back, thighs, and feet—and all the places she wasn’t. There was so much bare skin, he couldn’tnotlook. His gaze flicked from the points of her shoulder blades to the cut muscles of her upper arms. It bounced from her tight belly, which disappeared beneath a tattered reed skirt, to her long thighs and calves and the lean tendons of her ankles.
She reminded him of the women painted on the walls of Geoxus’s temple—the ones with ample curves and a lack of clothing that Elias and he used to gawk at when they were young. But Ash’s back wasstraighter than the women in those paintings. Her chin was lifted. She might have been wearing a silk gown with a crown of onyx and opals atop her head.
She carried herself like a goddess.
He bumped into the wall. Her stare snapped to his, suspicious as ever.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Are you fighting soon?”
“I won already, actually.” He sent her a small grin. “Didn’t you hear?”
She gave a quick shake of her head. Of course she hadn’t heard. She was busy fighting her own match.
He cleared his throat. “Stavos didn’t show.”
She paused, her burst of anger like a fist pumping around his lungs. “What do you mean?”
He remembered what she’d said in their fight—that Stavos had poisoned her mother—and he wondered grimly if she had been hoping to face him in the arena.
Madoc shrugged. “No one’s seen him. I guess I scared him away.”
“I doubt that,” she said, making him wince. “Where would he have gone?”
“Back under the rock he came from? I don’t know. We weren’t exactly close.”
The pain he’d felt in her receded, replaced again by wariness. They began walking again.
“What do you want, Madoc?”
It didn’t surprise him that she knew his name—she’d probablylearned it when they’d fought before—but he was caught off guard by the thrill that came when she said it.
He shoved it down. “Nothing.” His shoulder blades knotted as they neared one of the glowing stones set in the wall. “Did Ignitus really kill your opponent?”
He regretted the words instantly. She stopped. Her small intake of breath was like a dagger to his side, laced with bright pain reflected in the pinch of the corners of her eyes.
She wouldn’t let go of the body.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin quivered the tiniest bit. She seemed suddenly breakable, like a rock wall pressured with just enough geoeia.
Turn back, he told himself. But his feet didn’t listen. Instead, his arm lifted, and before he knew what he was doing, his hand was hovering over her shoulder. She didn’t see; her face was downcast. He could have pulled away, and she would have been none the wiser. But he didn’t.
She was hurting. He could feel the white sparks of pain crackling in the space between their skin. Deep, like a gash in her soul. He didn’t know how she still managed to stand, how it didn’t topple her over.
It reminded him of the day Ilena had learned her husband had died in the arena. How she’d curled up in a ball on the floor beside the bed, unable to climb onto the mattress.There’s a hole in my chest.That’s what she’d told them. And Madoc had prayed for Geoxus to fill it, the way he’d prayed for help and Cassia had found him on the temple steps.
Now he felt that same hole inside Ash. It pulled at him, and itdidn’t matter if she was a killer or an enemy or if they were at war. He’d lost Cassia, but this one, small thing he could fix.
Geoxus, he prayed, as he’d prayed all those years ago for Ilena.Please help her.
“What are you...” Ash sucked in a hard breath.
