blood.
The gods did bleed, but they always recovered—they were immortal. He would heal. He would turn and rage at Geoxus for being so stupid as to—
Geoxus twisted the onyx and Ignitus bucked, his mouth agape in desperate shock. A push, and Ignitus crashed to his knees, his gaze falling to the stone protruding from his gut, open hands hovering around it like he could rip it from his chest.
But he pitched to the side, slumping to the marble floor.
Ash shrieked, fingertips to her mouth, only half aware of what she was feeling, watching him lie on the floor before her.
Ignitus had been willing to save Kula. When they got back home, their god was going to work with them to improve their country. No more living in terror. No more senseless death. No more hatred and corruption.
All that hope drained out of Ash when Ignitus didn’t rise from the ground.
“Kula, Ignitus is dead!” Geoxus bellowed. He opened his arms in triumph. “Bow to your new god!”
Ash slipped to the floor and crawled across the ground. The fight resumed around her, Deiman centurions demanding Kulan guards submit; the Kulans refusing in washes of flame.
She grabbed Ignitus’s shoulder. Shook him.
“Ash!” Madoc dropped beside her. His eyes were wide with apology. “I didn’t mean to—I thought he was—” He stopped, swallowed, and touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
He was the one who looked far from all right. His body twitched and rocked as though he had taken a lightning bolt straight to the heart.
“You took Ignitus’s energeia.” Awe socked Ash in the gut. Awe—and horror.
Madoc’s face paled. “I was trying to take Geoxus’s.”
Ash cupped Madoc’s jaw in her palm. He shuddered, and she swore she could feel the igneia churning in him, the energy of a god now trapped in his body.
“Can you do it again?” she whispered.
Madoc’s lips parted. He nodded.
Ash looked past him.
They were kneeling in a battlefield, bodies strewn around them, blood smearing the smoke-gray marble floor. A spike of rock suddenly jutted up from the floor to her right, spraying gravel across her torn gladiator armor. Geoxus stood in the epicenter of the chaos, yanking boulders from the ceiling and lifting shards of rock from the floor.
“Submit, Kula!” he demanded. “There is no victory for you now!”
Something in Geoxus’s own words struck him, and he whipped toward Ash and Madoc, kneeling over Ignitus’s body.
All the stones he had pulled free swiveled with him, aimed at Madoc. “You, traitor,” Geoxus said, “give me my brother’s igneia.”
Madoc braced an arm in front of Ash, as though he might be able to take the brunt of the projectiles aimed their way.
Crouched behind him, Ash slowly pulled a knife from her thigh sheath, determination heating her from her head to her toes. It wasn’t igneia, but it was powerful all the same, and she used Ignitus’s corpse to push herself to stand.
Geoxus flinched. The stones he had raised reared back, poised to strike.
Ash took a step forward, hiding the knife by her hip.
“Nikau. My brother’s champion.” He grinned. “Stand aside and I might let you live once I am the god of fire as well as earth.”
Madoc rose slowly beside Ash. She could feel the tension in him, half from Ignitus’s energeia, half from his own trepidation.
Ash stepped over Ignitus, putting more space between herself and Madoc. Geoxus’s smile tightened, his stones poised and ready, waiting for her to submit. With every step, she was pulling his attention away from Madoc, who panted, eyes flicking from her to his crazed god.
Ash stopped when Geoxus had to turn away from Madoc to see her. Beyond, Kulans still warred with centurions; she heard Tor cry her name from somewhere in the fray.
But she held Geoxus’s eyes. “Kula is not yours. We will never bow to you.”
“Careful, Nikau.” Geoxus’s arms drew up. The wave of rocks swelled behind him, chunks of marble peeling from the floor to grow the threat. “Remember how easily your mother died. One poison-tipped blade, and she snuffed out like a flame.”
Ash’s eyes widened.
Geoxus beamed. “I had my gladiator poison his knife to bring down Ignitus’s champion—she cost me far too many fighters. But I have no reason to kill you, Nikau. Bow to me.”
My god told me your mother would be an easy kill, Stavos had taunted her during the opening ceremony.
Ash had guessed that Geoxus had ordered Stavos to poison Char. Hearing it confirmed from Geoxus himself cracked her concentration, a fragment of shock slipping through.
Geoxus had had Stavos