cheat in his fight with Char just to get her out of the way. Because Geoxus had known his fighters could never best her, not in war or any other fight, and he’d never be able to thoroughly weaken Ignitus with Char at his side.
Unexpected pride flooded Ash’s being. Pride in her mother, who had threatened a god just by living.
“Bow, Nikau,” Geoxus ordered, “before you do something foolish. Mortals die all too easily.”
Ash tightened her fingers on the hilt of her knife. Her body was still weak and battered, but she had never felt more certain of her abilities.
She was a gladiator. She was Char’s daughter.
And she had always known that, one day, she would fight a god.
Geoxus thrust his arms toward her—but froze. The rocks behind him hesitated, stuck in the air.
They clattered harmlessly to the floor.
He frowned, eyes going from Ash to his own body to Madoc.
Who stood next to him, fingers splayed, chest heaving with exertion.
Geoxus realized his mistake and Ash’s trick.
“No!” he boomed. “No!”
Ash moved.
She dived at Geoxus and thrust her knife forward and up, planting it under his rib cage. It sank home, and he gave a wheezing, husky grunt of pain.
“Gods die as easily as mortals now,” Ash whispered to him.
She yanked the blade free. Blood surged down Geoxus’s black silk robes. His hands went to the wound, mouth bobbing open in helpless shock.
He looked at Ash, fuming. “You—you can’t—”
He lunged at her but only succeeded in slamming to the floor. There, he writhed once, body jerking, before he went limp at Ash’s feet.
The whole of the palace trembled, ceiling and floor and stories upon stories of rooms.
Geoxus had been holding this room in place. With his geoeia gone, the stone supports were too brittle, the foundation too shredded, for it to hold.
Deiman centurions, aghast at the sight of their dead god, began screaming mixes of threats for revenge and pleas to run.
Ash dropped the knife on the marble floor. Her hand was sticky with Geoxus’s blood, and she stared at it as dust rained down on her.
She had killed a god.
A wild, wicked laugh cracked from the side of the room. Ash looked up, her vision throbbing, and spotted Anathrasa, smiling at her beside the gaping exterior wall.
People streamed past them, centurions and Kulans alike, all clawing for the safety of the terrace outside.
Ash blinked, and Anathrasa was gone, pulled into the chaos.
“We need to go!” Tor was upon her, grabbing her wrist. “The room is collapsing!”
Ash spun, reaching—but Madoc was on the ground, his shoulders heaving.
She bent over him and put her hands on his back. Just that touch, and she could feel the tension winding through his body; she was half shocked that sparks didn’t leap off his skin and ignite the air around him.
“Tor!” she shouted. “He can’t walk.”
Ash looped one of Madoc’s arms around her neck. Tor did the same, and when they stood together, Ash teetered, dizzy with her own lack of strength.
But they would get out of that throne room.
Taro shot ahead of them, fending off any centurions who chose to attack rather than escape. Step after hobbled step, they made their way across the marble, dodging spikes of rock and falling chunks of debris that shot stones like arrows.
The broken wall showed the terrace beyond, its beckoning marble columns and twisted stone fountains and benches that had once been for easy lounging.
Ash pushed on and on, gasping in the dusty air.
A grating screech chased them across the room. It rose to a crescendo, and Ash dared a look back to see the far end of the throne room cave in with a mighty crash. A billow of dirt plumed into the air.
Ash shot back around and redoubled her efforts, tongue rough with grit.
They burst out of the throne room and dived behind a short stone wall seconds before the dust cloud rolled behind them. The thunderous roar of the ceiling collapsing deafened Ash to any other sounds, bringing the situation to her through sight alone. Even with the deaths of Geoxus and Ignitus, their energeias endured: Deiman centurions were using geoeia to keep the destruction contained to the throne room; Kulan guards were hunched behind this wall and another, sending fire blasts at other centurions, who returned with stones.
Ash and Tor dropped farther behind the wall, with Madoc slumping to the ground next to them. Ahead, Spark was tending to the wounded. Taro fell on her with a relieved cry.
Behind their hiding area, the edge