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.
Madoc had seen Geoxus move this way during the last party, when they’d found Stavos outside, but he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. In shock, he stumbled toward the moving room, and soon was in the carriage, cursing the slow pace of the galloping horses as they crossed the Nien River into the Olantin District where Petros lived.
As he reached his father’s villa, Madoc fought off a punch of unwelcome nostalgia. In the thirteen years since he’d been turned away from these doors, the memories he’d earned within had become tainted, and then so marred by hate that he’d had to stuff them deep inside. Stored there, they could seem not to exist, as if he had been born a stonemason and lived with Elias his entire life. But now Madoc remembered every night he had dreamed of coming back to this place and burning it to the ground.
His gaze lifted from the crowd that had gathered in the street. The stone walls that surrounded the estate stretched twice as high as he remembered in his youth. It was a protective measure, but though the outside seemed unharmed, that could only mean that the real trouble was locked within. Fear throbbed as his eyes lifted to the smear of gray smoke across the black sky.
Ash and Tor couldn’t be responsible. He’d told them he wanted no part of any plan.
Telling himself this did not ease the tension between his temples.
“Make way!” a centurion trumpeted as the palace carriage approached the opening gate. Inside, Madoc could make out a courtyard four times the size of the Metaxas’ house, lined with potted plants and orange and fig trees, and the stone fountain of Geoxus, water pouring from his outstretched hands, that Madoc had once dipped his feet in on hot days. It was broken now, into chunks of marble strewn across the charred grass.
Questions and shrieks of surprise sliced through the cool night air.
“What happened here?”
“Is Petros dead?”
Through the shouting, Madoc heard a familiar voice.
“Madoc! Madoc.”
He searched the crowd, spotting Elias behind the row of centurions as the carriage entered the villa grounds.
“Elias!” Relief flooded Madoc but froze before it reached his heart. Elias should have been at Lucius’s villa with the other attendants. Even if word had traveled quickly to the training barracks, it would have taken Elias a half hour by carriage to get here.
“Wait!” Madoc called to the driver, but they were already inside.
By the time Madoc stumbled out, the front gates were sealing with a screech of metal and rock. The crowd outside was muffled, and Madoc couldn’t tell if it was due to the partition between them or the sudden rise of energeia in his blood. It swirled like an angry tempest, needling the back of his skull with dread.
Slowly, he turned, gaping. The front wall of the house was still aflame, attended to by half a dozen servants carrying buckets of water. A team of soldiers were dismounting outside the stables, where silver mosaics of twin horses rearing up on either side of the barn entrance glimmered through the smoke.
A warning throbbed in Madoc’s temples. Too many conflicting emotions waited inside the