of the terrace revealed the palace’s outbuildings, far below. To the left, a staircase opened, and Kulans were racing down it, fire flaring as they fought off the centurions on lower levels.
Across the terrace, over the short wall, a voice bleated. “Return Geoxus’s champion!” Anathrasa demanded. “The Kulans stole him and murdered Great Geoxus! Thieves! God killers!”
A fresh wave of stones hailed down. Ash cupped her arms over her head, bending into Madoc to shield him too.
“What are we supposed to do now?” barked a Kulan guard. Brand.
Ash shot him a glare.
Ignitus had told his guards most of what awaited them before the attack on the palace. That Geoxus intended to invade. That he had a weapon capable of decimating Kula. That Anathrasa had returned, and her survival could mean the destruction of the world.
They didn’t know what Madoc could do. Who he really was, or what had truly caused two gods to die.
“We get to the ships,” Tor told Brand. “We return to Kula. We need to rally our people now more than ever.”
“Without our god?” Brand’s face pinched. Ash hadn’t thought him capable of looking so forlorn. “What chance do we have of holding off the mother of the gods?”
“I can stop her,” Madoc wheezed.
Brand frowned at him in confusion.
“Not now, you can’t,” Ash told him and took his hand, half holding him down, half trying to plead with him to stay quiet. Even if Madoc was at his full strength, the moment he tried to take Anathrasa’s energeia, she would do the same to him, as she had drained her other mortal offspring.
The thought cored Ash. She wouldn’t watch Madoc go through that. She wouldn’t let his mother strip him to nothing.
“We need help,” Ash started. “Now that both Geoxus and Ignitus are dead, all Anathrasa has to do is tell her other god-children that we are the threat to them. We need to get to the other gods before she does.”
“We can’t just abandon Kula!” Brand shot back. “Deimos will attack out of revenge, gods or no gods.”
Ash sank against Madoc. Her gaze went to Tor, whose lips twisted. She knew that look, that conviction in the wrinkles around his mouth, the spark of intention in his eyes.
Stones continued to fly. Guards returned with fire.
Back up the terrace’s staircase, a Kulan shot out. “The exit is clear!”
“You go to Kula,” Tor told Brand. “Take the other champions, the guards. Rally an army. We’ll go to the other gods, tell them what’s happened”—he nodded at Ash—“and gain allies.”
Brand’s face went utterly white. He thought for a moment, his focus drifting back to the collapsed throne room, to Ignitus’s body now crushed by rubble.
“For Kula,” Ash said.
Brand looked at her. “For Kula. We’ll be waiting for you.”
Some guards were helping the injured shamble for the exit. Others, still holding off the centurions with fire and flame, shouted at them to go, run.
Tor seized Ash’s arm and included Madoc with a glance. “Make for the docks. Stop for nothing.”
They nodded. Ash helped Madoc stand. He waved off Tor’s offer to help support him again, and when he tried to do the same to Ash, she wedged herself under his shoulder, her arm around his waist.
“You’re stuck with me,” she told him.
Madoc’s lips pulsed. “I can accept that fate,” he whispered.
Ash managed a weak smile as he leaned into her, and the two of them hobbled toward the stairs, Tor behind, Taro and Spark ahead.
Down they went, the sounds of fighting echoing from above and shuffling bodies from below. The stairs gave a view of Crixion, the city nestled in the setting sun’s vibrancy, its citizens unaware that their world had forever changed.
The staircase deposited them onto the palace’s main road. People clogged it from every angle, servants and centurions and palace inhabitants fleeing for safety. Most would have no idea what had happened, merely that a room had collapsed—which likely meant Geoxus was in danger.
Ash panted in the chill air, clinging to Madoc—or maybe Madoc clung to her now, she couldn’t tell—and focused every muscle on pure movement as they crossed the bridge over the Nien River.
Ignitus was dead. And though the hope she had felt at his alliance had flickered, a new hope flared strong again, driven by Brand’s support. By Tor and Taro and Spark and how they would convince the other gods of what Ignitus could not: that Anathrasa was back and out for revenge.
Ash should have been terrified. And she was; she was exhausted and