Movement pulsed from the door. A woman stepped out of the shadows, the moonlight caressing her small, bent frame.
Ash blinked. Squinted.
Cassia gave a cry of recognition. “Seneca!”
Hope tangled with horror. What was Seneca doing here? Had Petros captured her too? If she was here, was Madoc?Where was he?
Take her, Petros’s plea echoed in Ash’s ears, jarring loose a memory.
She took it from me, Stavos had wept before he died at Madoc’s feet.
Seneca smiled, stretched out her hands, and pulled.
Cassia bucked from her head to her toes. She dropped to her knees, gaping at her palms.
“What—” She flared her hands. Nothing budged, no stones or rocks or dust. The boulder over her head remained, only held by Petros now, who grinned wickedly.
“It’s gone.” Cassia launched herself to her feet, teetered, and went back down in a weak topple. “My geoeia—it’s gone. Seneca,what didyou do?”
“Stop!” Ash begged. Tears rushed down her cheeks. “Stop it! Petros—let her go!”
He ignored Ash’s cries, Tor’s snarling curses, Cassia’s look of terror and brokenness.
“Keeping you imprisoned didn’t get through to Madoc,” Petros snarled. “Maybe this will.”
He dropped his arms with a savage grin.
The boulder, hovering over Cassia, crashed down on her.
“NO!” Ash screamed. “No—Cassia!Cassia!”
Sorrow cracked her chest. Only Cassia’s arm could be seen reaching out from beneath the boulder, motionless.
Petros walked into Ash’s line of sight, blocking the ivory moonlight. He lifted another stone, smaller but sharp and pointed at her skull.
“Ignitus will kill you,” she snarled through her tears. “He’ll kill you for murdering his champions, and Geoxus will have to let him.”
Petros hesitated. But he dropped the stone, and it smacked the dirt next to Ash’s head.
“Your god has no idea what’s coming for him,” Petros told her. To his centurions, “Bind them in my atrium and summon the Father God.”
The soldiers moved. Petros retreated to the now-empty steps of his villa.
Seneca was gone, as though she had never been there at all.
Nineteen
Madoc
BEFORE HE CROSSED the Nien River in a carriage borrowed from Geoxus’s palace, Madoc could see the smoke rising in plumes from Petros’s villa.
When news had come of the attack, Geoxus had gone still, placing one hand on the fitted stones of the wall. His head had tilted slightly, his eyes closing as his fingers spread and grew white at the knuckles.
I must go, he’d said quietly.Kulans have attacked the house of Petros.
Madoc, raw and still trying to make sense of Geoxus’s knowledge of his anathreia and Petros’s corruption, did not have time to ask what had happened, or if Cassia was all right, because before his eyes, Geoxus changed. The pale color of the stones seeped into Geoxus’s hand, over his skin, and even his robes, until his chest matched the sandstone sculptures in the courtyard. The color climbed his throat, painting his face and even his dark eyes.
Then Geoxus, a moving, breathing statue, stepped into the wall and was gone.
