of sweat darted down his face. “It always should’ve been me. I hid behind him and let him take the hits—” He hiccuped and scrubbed the back of his hand across his nose, giving his head a jerky shake.
The crowd started to boo. They wanted blood. They wanted Madoc to charge out and destroy the Kulan gladiator.
Back in Elias’s tunnel, centurions were talking ferociously, giving orders, shouting. They sprinted into the darkness, no doubt searching for Madoc.
“Where is he?” Ash tried again. “He can’t want you to do this.”
“He never showed.” Elias gave a shrug, calm despite the tears in his eyes. “I told the centurions he just didn’t want to be disturbed, but truth is, I haven’t seen him since last night. This isn’t his fight anymore.”
Madoc had left?
Guilt piled on guilt, regret clacked atop regret, until Ash couldn’t pull in a breath for all the agony clogging her body.
“Elias—”
“I failed Madoc,” he whimpered, eyes on the sand. “I failed Cassia. I was going to take her home and our family was going to leave the city and they would’ve been safe—”
Elias’s eyes shot up to meet Ash’s.
And she buckled, faltering back a step under the raw fury that punctuated his glare.
“But now she’s dead,” Elias snarled. “She’s dead because I trusted you.”
He clenched one of his hands and the boulder pile next to him shifted. One rock rose above the others, and Ash dropped into a defensive stance.
“Elias—Elias, stop!” She held a hand out to him, one toward the rock. “I’m sorry.” Anguish pinched her words. “I’m so sorry about Cassia.”
His face turned scarlet, then purple. “Don’t say her name. Don’t even talk about her.”
The rock flew.
Ash flattened to the ground a beat too late. The rock tore across her shoulder.
Pushing the pain to the back of her mind, she twisted to her feet, pulling igneia to fill her palms with open flames.
Elias circled her, slow, meticulous steps, his eyes watchful and intense.
Around them, the crowd had resumed their cheers as though Elias was, in fact, Madoc. But surely the gods were still fuming. Surely Ignitus was crying foul on this breach of war rules. Surely someone would stop this.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to fix this!” Ash straightened, snapping the flames into her heart. “I don’t want to fight. I won’t.”
Elias stopped. Sand mounded around his ankles. “I will.”
More rocks flew at her. Ash batted away the first one, but the second caught her in the temple and she hit the ground, sand spraying in her face. She spat it out, but the world spun and flickers of light played over her eyes.
“You were supposed to save her.”
Rocks clacked, shifting in the pile, and though Ash couldn’t see them, she scrambled forward, elbows dragging through the unstable grit.
A stone crashed into the back of Ash’s head. She rolled over, clutching the spot, pain like white lightning shooting down her spine.
Madoc or Elias—it didn’t matter who was attacking her. She couldn’t fight either of them. She wouldn’t.
She had gotten their sister killed.
Just like she had gotten Rook killed.
She had failed in so many ways, and this felt like that reckoning, all of her mistakes come to demand recompense here, now.
Ash sobbed and shifted upright, one hand braced behind her, the other holding her blood-dampened head. “Elias,” she begged. “Stop—please—”
“Stop? Stop?” Elias bent double, the remainder of the rock pile rising behind him like a wave of death. “You have no right to ask me for anything!”
He flung out his hands.
Dizzy, Ash managed to get to her feet.
The crowd was wild with bloodlust. Jeers of Kill the Kulan! echoed across the stands. Ash wanted to look at the viewing box for some burst of support, but the images beyond the fighting pit were a blend of color and shape, movement and fog.
She ran. She ran and ran, and when she tripped, she hit the ground with a jolt of memory.
Char, looking at her across the arena’s pit in Igna.
Mama, don’t do this. Mama, he’ll kill you.
Rook, his body smashing into the fighting pit.
Please, Rook, hold on—
Shadows speckled the sand around Ash. She stiffened and looked up.
A dozen stones hovered over her, poking holes in the morning sunlight.
The crowd bleated. “Kill her! Kill her!”
The first stone dropped with a jarring thud onto her spine. Something cracked in her chest, and she cried out—behind her, Elias pushed the rock deeper, harder. It twisted, cutting into skin and muscle.
Ash screamed. She tried to claw her way out, but the rock