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.
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.