Char bowed forward and the flame dropped torturously slowly, sweat beading down her face with effort as the crowd hooted. Shewould drive the fire into Stavos’s chest. How long had this fight lasted? Not even five minutes? A new record, surely.
Stavos squirmed in the dirt at Char’s feet. The fingers of his left hand slipped to his thigh—finding a holster hidden under his pleated skirt.
“Wait!” Ash screamed. “Mama—”
A knife flashed in Stavos’s palm. He swatted his hand up, looking as though he was batting at Char’s legs. But the blade sliced Char’s ankle, and she buckled enough that her igneia wavered.
Stavos wriggled free, launching himself to his feet and scrambling for his broadsword. His chest was a red-black mess of fresh burns.
Ash’s lungs screamed from lack of breath as Char stumbled away from Stavos.
“Char!” Tor bellowed. “Get to the weapons rack! Go for long range—the spear!”
A single thin line of blood welled on Char’s leg where Stavos had cut her. It wasn’t deep, but Char teetered as though dizzy. She lost hold of her igneia, the fire sizzling out into nothingness, and there was no fire left in the braziers. She would have to fight without igneia now.
“Something’s not right,” Ash managed, unease prickling down her arms. “She looks—ill.”
One of Tor’s hands balled against the stone wall. “Not ill. Drugged.”
Ash flicked a look at Tor. Drugged?
It connected. Stavos’s knife had been tipped with poison. An illegal move.
“We have to tell Ignitus.” Ash whirled on the flickering sconces. “We have to—”
But Stavos swung his sword, and Ash realized that Tor had been right before. She didn’t have a choice when it came to her fate—but not in the way he’d meant.
Even if she’d wanted to stay in this hall with Tor, she wouldn’t have been able to.
She refused to let her mother die like this.
Ash moved as though music was forcing her into a dance.
She grabbed for the igneia in the sconces and sprinted into the fighting pit. The sand was unsteady under her feet. Tor screamed for her from behind, but she pressed on, pooling igneia into her palms, forming it into a whip like the one she had made in the dance.
Ahead, Char shook her head, her fingers pushing into her temples. She blinked, registered Stavos’s coming sword, and shot to the side to dodge the blow. The momentum caught her wrong and she faltered, sprawling on the dust.
The sand was red. Had it been red before?
Ash gasped, sweat pouring down her back. The tone of the crowd’s cheering shifted, but their incessant noise dulled to a hum as she ran, her fire whip lengthening, lengthening—
Char heaved herself backward, then back again, leaving a trail of maroon in her wake.
Stavos dragged the tip of his sword through the sand. He noted Ash coming with a wicked sneer.
Char followed his gaze, her lips moving. Maybe,Ash, no!Maybe,My fuel and flame.
Stavos lifted his sword and hurled it through the air.
Ash reared, her fire whip snapping to fill the circumference of thefighting pit as it had during the dance. She tightened it until the flames knotted around Stavos and hefted him above the sand. He shouted, thrashing, and she tossed him across the pit, as far away as she could.
She swung around, eyes scrambling for Char.
Mama, don’t do this, please.She had been eight, begging Char to stop. She had been eleven. She had been eighteen, this morning,Mama, please stop, he’ll kill you—
Stavos’s broadsword pinned Char to the sand. Her body lay sprawled and delicate like the dancers depicting the vanquished gods, only she didn’t rise for a finishing bow.
The world blurred. The blue sky, the heaving crowd—and movement in the viewing box.
