Stavos took off at a sprint. The arena was large enough for him to be winded by the time he reached Char, which had to be her intention. His broadsword was aloft, glinting in the sunlight.
Ash’s attention went to Ignitus. He gripped the box’s railing, his lips quirked. He knew Char would turn the fight. He knew she wouldn’t fail him.
The broadsword came down over Char, and finally, finally, she moved.
The firepit sputtered as she pulled on igneia. She cartwheeled to avoid the broadsword and got in a solid kick to Stavos’s jaw before her feet planted back on the ground. Stavos reeled, his sword thundering against the earth and giving Char another opening: she chopped her leg against his hands, dislodging his grip. She kept going, pulling more igneia—but this time the fire came in a hypnotic arc of gilded scarlet, swooping through the air on Char’s command. She twisted, and the ribbon washed into Stavos, slamming him onto his back as he gave a bark of pain. The fire knotted into a ball to sit heavy and hot on his chest, keeping him down, pinned, as the bare skin on his sternum began to crackle and burn.
Stavos shrieked.
Ignitus pulled back, arms crossed, grinning. Geoxus’s senator shouted something at his gladiator that Ash couldn’t hear. Her eyes, her focus, her soul, were fixed on her mother.
Char bowed forward and the flame dropped torturously slowly, sweat beading down her face with effort as the crowd hooted. She would 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 the fighting 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.
Ashi’s own grating breath deafened her as she looked up, numb.
Each god could spy through their energeia. Try as Ignitus did to limit his siblings’ access, he couldn’t get rid of all other energeias—which meant the earth god had been able to watch this fight.
And he was here, now, standing in the viewing box next to Ignitus.
Geoxus’s body was half dust and dirt, a product of traveling through stone, as all the gods could do with their elements. He formed as he rose over Ignitus, rock yielding to flesh and blood. He was his brother’s opposite in all but their black hair and brown skin; where Ignitus was long and slender, Geoxus was all chiseled solidity and muscle.
He spoke, breaking into Ash’s shock with a searing crack as his voice came from every pebble and rock and particle of sand in the arena: “Your mortal interfered, brother. You cheated. I declare war on Kula.”
Three
Madoc
“CAN YOU BELIEVE it?” Elias huffed, a wild light in his eyes as they raced down the narrow street. Madoc had seen the same excitement in half the faces they’d passed since the foreman at the quarry had dismissed them early from work, and felt the rush of anticipation buzzing from the crowds that had gathered on the street corners.
War was coming to Deimos. The fire god, Ignitus, was bringing his best Kulan gladiators to battle the fiercest of Geoxus’s champions in the arena. For two weeks and four strenuous rounds, the competitors would battle their fellow fighters for a chance to advance and represent their country in the final match to the death. People would swarm to see their favorites attack with earth and fire. Parades would jam the streets and parties would last until dawn.
There was nothing the people of Deimos liked better than blood soaking its golden sand.
“That we’re at war with Kula? Or that we got a half day off work?” Madoc asked. They’d been creating the foundation for a new bathhouse near the market for the last two weeks. When news of war had hit the streets, the foreman had been in such a hurry to join the thousands signing up for gladiator tryouts that he’d tripped over a bale of straw.
Madoc didn’t blame him. Those lucky enough to become trainees made one hundred gold coins a week. Those good enough to make Geoxus’s prized Honored Eight—the finalists who would compete for the chance to fight in the final match—made a thousand coins for each level they advanced. It was rumored that several spots had opened, too, on account of some illness running through the gladiator barracks. Three of the champions from the last war ten months ago against Cenhelm had died of it, and their positions could be anyone’s.