wasn’t as sure as she was, but he remembered the force that had driven him toward her broken body. He hadn’t thought of what he would do in that moment. He’d only wanted her to be alive and unhurt.
When Petros had died, Madoc hadn’t thought to kill him; he’d only wanted to protect himself. When he’d stopped from taking his father as a tithe, it had been because of Ash’s face in his mind.
Intention is power, Madoc, whether it be a storm of rage or a whisper of regret.
He understood now what Anathrasa had meant. If the soul was the will of the heart, then he could never do Ash harm, because even with this strange, dangerous power, his heart belonged to her.
He leaned closer, and when her hands skimmed past his ears and traced lines down the back of his neck, he knew, finally, what he had to do.
“Can I kiss you?” he murmured.
Her lips parted. She nodded.
He lifted his hands, no longer shaking. His fingertips brushed her cheeks. As her eyes closed, a new power took hold inside him. He would not break this trust she laid out before him. He would honor it, and her, however he could. However she would let him.
Her pulse fluttered beneath her skin, beating like the wings of a butterfly, and his tunic pulled tighter across his back as she fisted her hands in the hem at his waist. She might have had her energeia taken, but she had more power over him than any mortal or god.
He closed the small space between them. His mouth found hers, a gentle sweep from side to side, the barest pressure. A question she answered with a sigh and a curve of her shoulder.
He leaned closer, finally moving that stray hair behind her ear, and kissed her, taking her full lower lip between his. As their knees brushed, the scent of honey water invaded his senses. His heart was pounding, but as his anathreia spread across his body, his mind quieted, and he could feel the different strands of energeia braiding together inside him.
The breath of aereia from air divinity. The strength in his muscles and bones—bioseia and geoeia, he now knew. Hydreia flowed through him like water in his blood. Growth, floreia, came from plant divinity.
And finally, he found the warm pulsing glow of igneia.
He summoned the heat in his veins, drawing it behind the paper walls of his ribs. He parted Ash’s lips, and the sweet taste of her brought a rush back to his ears. He pulled her closer, his hand trailing down her back, to the side of her waist. He kissed her more deeply, with everything he had. Every speck of fear. Every drop of joy. He kissed her until Deimos disappeared, and the arenas were empty, and the pain gave way to that steady ache of fire. She gasped for breath, and his mouth found her neck, a spot just below her ear that made her shudder and dig her fingers into his shoulder blades.
And then he let go of his control.
The energeia swirled through him, warm now, a soft pulsing glow. It pushed through his hands and his fingers and his lips. Through his breath. Through her skin.
What does your heart want?
You.
Her hands were warm against his back, leaving trails of heat straight to his bones. Then she was kissing him with a fevered passion, sliding onto his lap, her hot thighs bracketing his hips. Her fingertips heating through his shirt.
Burning.
She gave a staggered gasp, and he stopped at once, unsure what the sound meant. She jerked back, and he caught her around the waist before she fell, so intently trying to read the wonder in her round eyes that he missed the blue flames flickering from the palms of her hands.
“Look!” she cried. “Madoc, look!”
He was looking. He was grinning. The light from the candle was out now—it was inside her, dancing in the palms of her hands.
“You did this,” she said in wonder.
It is as simple as breathing. In and out. That is the way of energeia.
He’d given a piece of his soul to Ash, and in doing so returned her powers.
He wanted to shout in excitement, and weep, and punch a hole through the black night sky. He wanted to kiss her mindless and rush home to save his family. He wanted to sail on and find allies in the other gods and unite the world.
He gave a small shrug.
In an instant, she had him