Everything she cared about. Everything she loved. Everything that made her her—it was all gone. What was left if she wasn’t Fire Divine? This shell of a girl, sobbing on the dusty stone floor.
The lanterns heaved at the blurred edges of her vision. The only thing remaining in her was something she had never done. Something she had shied from, feared, hated.
She looked at a lantern flame. Willed her vision to focus.
Ignitus.
Would he hear her if she prayed? She wasn’t Divine anymore. She was nothing.
“Ignitus,” she said out loud. “Ignitus, help me—”
A centurion hauled back and kicked her in the stomach. “Shut up! You, there—get a move on, will you? Gotta get this one locked up. Geoxus’s orders.”
Wheels rumbled across the stone, sending vibrations up Ash’s body. She twisted, coughing blood down her chin, and saw a windowless, boxed carriage harnessed to two horses.
Her teeth chattered. Numbness prickled over her fingers, her toes, and her mind was starting to spiral. She was cold and tired—but she could not get into that carriage.
Ash drew in a breath and held it against the shivers that tried to break her apart.
“Get her up!” a centurion ordered.
Rough hands grabbed her arms. Ash went limp between the guards, her eyes on the transport, its open door showing a black abyss within.
If she got in there, she would never come out of the darkness. And she needed to be out.
Purpose surged through her, a thin rope she grabbed onto and held squirming to her chest.
She would stay out of that carriage. She would focus on nothing else.
The centurions dragged her forward a step.
There were four guards in these stables with her. It was likely that all of them were Earth Divine.
Ash’s head dipped between her shoulders and she saw a short sword at one centurion’s hip.
She let her body weight, what little remained, fall heavily.
The guards cursed. “What’d the Father God do to her?”
“Damn it—get her up!”
One of her arms dropped free as the guard bent to grab her waist—and she moved.
Ash grabbed his sword’s hilt, drew it, and swung it back. It sliced into the man’s thigh and he shrieked.
Orders flew. Armor clanged, stones jostled into the air, but Ash lost her body to momentum. She deflected a centurion’s raised stones with her blade. She ducked under his lifted arm and hurled the sword with all her remaining strength. The blade twisted through the air and caught another soldier in the arm, eliciting a sharp yell that riled the now manic horses.
An arched doorway stood at the rear of the stables—it would lead back into the arena. Ash scrambled for it.
Her knees gave out. She slammed forward, head jarring as her chin struck the stone floor.
It took a full breath before she felt the heaviness of stones encasing her ankles, holding her down.
“Put her in the gods-damned carriage!” The lead centurion’s furious yelp rattled the walls.
“That’s strange,” another voice said. “I don’t remember damning a carriage.”
Ash knew that voice. Why did she know it? Her body spasmed, involuntarily curling in on itself but for her trapped legs. She was fading, darkness, ebbing into a void—
Flame swelled into the stables, rising higher, stronger, brighter.
The centurions screamed. Horses bleated—in fear, not in pain, Ash noted dazedly—and hooves clapped the stone as the beasts fled. The fire must have freed them of their restraints.
Another surge of fire; another screech of men in pain.
And then Ash was warm.
Something scorching encased her from head to toe. She inhaled as though she hadn’t managed a full breath in hours. Her muscles relaxed; her fingers unclenched.
She looked up.
Ignitus knelt next to her on the stable’s floor. Scarlet robes wrapped around his body and rippled over the straw. A braid holding his hair back had come loose, but his mind was clearly roiling with thoughts, a simmering rage twisting his face into a scowl.
One of his hands was out over her, washing fire just above Ash’s body. It wasn’t close enough to burn her skin but it disintegrated the stone imprisoning her ankles and warmed every frozen crevice, trapping heat under her fireproof Kulan reed armor.
He looked down when he felt her watching him.
“You didn’t fight them,” he noted with a scowl. “Not with igneia. And you’re shivering.”
Ash didn’t speak. That was her explanation, her wail of agony—just silence.
The scowl stayed on Ignitus’s face, and Ash realized that he wasn’t angry at her, but for her.
He dropped his hand and the fire went out. She still didn’t feel whole,