She wanted to add, Let me help. I can fight some of these battles for you. You can’t trust other gladiators to always win, but you can trust me—you’ve taught me how to fight.
Char walked into every arena and dispatched Ignitus’s enemies precisely so Ash could stay out of those arenas. It was one of Ignitus’s few mercies—as long as Char had his favor, Ash was unwanted. Char had only taken over for her own mother once she had been killed.
For now, Ash was a dancer. She used igneia as an accessory and prop. Not as a weapon.
“Ash,” Char sighed. She put her fingers around Ash’s wrist and squeezed.
“Fighting on behalf of Deimos is a great-great-great-grandnephew of Geoxus—Stavos of Xiphos!” the announcer bellowed.
The mostly Kulan crowd met the introduction with boos and hisses.
Behind Ash, Tor huffed. “Remember what we talked about, Char. Stavos is a brute, but he’s overconfident and slow. Use that.”
Char started to stand when Ash tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. Her heart stuck in her throat as the flames in the sconces behind them pulsed, yellow and hot.
No flame was ever just a flame. Each god could spy through their energeia—fire was an eye, an extension of the god Ignitus himself.
Ash had asked Char and Tor once why no one stopped Ignitus. He could choose not to declare fights against his siblings. He could dole out food and money equally if he wanted. Kula’s sufferings were his fault.
Char had smacked her hand over Ash’s mouth and cast a horrified look at the fire in their cottage’s hearth. “Ignitus could be listening,” she had said as Tor snuffed out the fire. “You must never speak of harming him.”
“But why?” Ash had pressed.
Char’s eyes had teared, so Tor had answered, his own eyes shadowed in the absence of flames. “He is a god. Mortals cannot defeat him. But we have moments like these”—he motioned at Char, Ash, himself—“alive and together. Obeying him is a small price to pay for that.”
So Ash held her tongue when Char’s leg snapped in a match. She silently scrubbed blood out of Char’s clothes and braided her mother’s hair over her bruises. She choked down the food she was given freely as a gladiator’s daughter while people begged along the streets.
But Ash knew, through every soft moment, she was waiting for her mother to die.
“Mama,” Ash whispered now. Agony cut into her, visceral and searing. She tried not to ask this often. “Let me take your place. Ignitus may let you retire. You could have a life, you and Tor. I’m younger; I can buy us time until Ignitus finds a new line to favor—”
Color drew across Char’s brown skin, chasing away the paleness that had become too normal. “Stop.” Her tone was rigid, but she touched Ash’s cheek. “I’m fine. I won’t lose. How could I, when I have the strongest fuel and the brightest flame cheering for me?”
Ash bit her lip. Char sacrificed everything to bring resources to Kula. The least Ash could do was not make things harder on her.
But silence was killing Ash. Silence with Char. Silence with the other fire dancers. Silence with Ignitus. She wanted to race into the arena and scream her hatred at him.
She wanted to stop having to hide everything.
“Fighting on behalf of Kula,” the announcer began, “is Char Nikau, granddaughter of Ignitus, beloved of the fire god.”
Ash braced at her mother’s title. Though every mortal, Divine or Undivine, was descended from the gods, the Divine with the closest connection to their god were thought to be the most powerful. It was absurd, of course—Tor was just as skilled with igneia as Char, and he was so far removed from Ignitus’s direct descendants that he couldn’t trace the relatives.
Char covered Ash’s fingers with her own and squeezed. “After the fight, we’ll practice making fire orbs. You could do wondrous things with them in the Great Defeat dance, I bet.”
Ash managed a brittle smile. If she had been more selfish, she would have begged Char to run. But there was nowhere to go—Ignitus and his immortal god-siblings ruled each of the six countries and wouldn’t risk offering asylum to Kula’s best gladiator.
This was their fate. This choking monotony of blood.
Ash let Char stand, her hand falling limply to her lap as her mother walked toward the wide, waiting glitter of sand.
The moment Char passed into the sunlight, the crowd howled with excitement.
Tor was already at the edge of the pit, just within the hall’s shadow. Ash joined him there, her body vibrating.
“She’ll be fine,” Tor assured her. He gave a firm nod, but his eyes were tense.
“She’d listen to you,” Ash whispered, “if you told her to let me fight.”
Tor frowned. “What makes you think I want to see you in an arena any more than I want to see her out there?”
“What you want; what she wants. I don’t get a choice at all?” The question cut Ash’s tongue. She knew the helpless answer.
“No,” Tor told her, bittersweet affection in his eyes. “Not when it means risking your life.”
Ash turned away, knowing it was childish to sulk, but what else could she do?
Her own father had been an arena worker from Lakhu—not an uncommon thing, for people from two different gods to be together. If they were both Undivine, where they lived was of little consequence—but if they were Divine, that caused more difficulty, as both gods had claim to their powers. The only reason Ignitus had allowed Char to keep Ash was that her father had been Undivine, so there was little chance of her being Air Divine or even Undivine, with Char as her mother. But her father had died long ago, before she had even gotten to know him, and she couldn’t remember a time when Tor hadn’t been in her life.
“To the glory of the gods,” the announcer shouted. “To the death. Fight!”
At the proclamation, Stavos stepped in front of the rock pile that had been provided for him. He was tall and bare chested—a bold choice to sacrifice protection just to show off his muscles—and his shaved head made his large eyes appear feral. He stretched out a hand over the rocks and they shriveled into a great puff of dust. All of them, gone.
Ash hissed through her teeth. Some gladiators chose to harness their energeias externally—Animal Divine could control creatures; Earth Divine could move stones and rocks. Others chose to absorb energeia into their bodies, letting it add speed, strength, and endurance to their physiology. Though the arena boasted other sources of stone, the gods’ firm rules limited each gladiator to what energeia sources had been provided. Stavos had taken all his geoeia at once.
A wash of nausea pinched Ash’s stomach. She had seen gladiators infused with smaller amounts of geoeia cleave through stacks of logs with a single blow. She imagined that fighting one powered on so much of it would be like fighting a landslide.
A firepit sat opposite the former rock pile, near a weapons rack. Char stood before it, eyes closed. It sharpens my other senses, Char had said, but seeing her mother defenseless froze Ash’s lungs.
The crowd roared encouragement. Stavos drew a broadsword from the weapons rack that sat near his tunnel and took a step forward. Char still didn’t move.
“Come on,” Ash whispered.
Tor was rigid beside her. “Patience,” he said tersely.