no longer from the fight but from this new wave of humiliation. Slipping into the nearest line, he forced his chin up and tried to pretend the whistles from the stands weren’t directed at him as he marched with the others out of the arena.
He’d no sooner crossed beneath the tunnel’s arched entrance than he was pulled aside by a broad, foreboding man in white silk.
“Come with me, Madoc of Crixion.” Lucius Pompino’s voice ground over Madoc’s name, as if the sound of it irritated him. “Geoxus wants to congratulate you in front of Ignitus.”
Madoc’s stomach dropped. “Now?” He swiped at the dried blood beneath his nostrils with the back of his hand. How could he face his god? He didn’t even have a shirt on.
Lucius’s glare narrowed. “Yes, now. Where is your attendant?”
“Here, dominus,” said Elias, sprinting past the exiting trainees behind Madoc. He’d managed to retrieve Madoc’s armor from whoever had taken it out of the arena and was now holding it against his side over one bent arm.
“Clean him up,” Lucius snapped, clearly not used to having to explain himself. “Get the blood off his face and put him back in armor. Geoxus will not be kept waiting.”
“Yes, dominus,” said Elias.
Lucius turned to Madoc. They were matched for height, but equal in no other way. Lucius’s shoulders stretched with lean, hard muscle that made Madoc look young and boyish in comparison. The sponsor’s face had been chiseled from stone—a polished jaw met a thin, serious mouth, and his slate-colored eyes dared defiance. Even his white toga dripped with affluence.
Madoc could see why he was Geoxus’s favorite, and how Petros would never measure up.
“That was pathetic,” he told Madoc as Elias shoved a tunic in his direction. “You’re a champion now, and champions strike first and strike hard. If I ever see you hesitate again, you’ll be slop for the pigs that feed real fighters.”
Madoc swallowed and pulled the tunic over his head. “Yes, dominus.”
Lucius turned to spout off orders at Arkos, giving Madoc a moment to clean up.
“Better hurry,” Elias said. “If this is what happens when you win, I don’t want to see what Lucius does when you’re late.”
Madoc dipped down to check his reflection in the pounded metal of his chest plate, still over Elias’s arm. Blood was smeared over his upper lip. Sweat glistened on his forehead, highlighting the tips of his hair. With a grunt of pain, he pressed his fingertips gently to the bridge of his nose, trying to feel if it was broken.
“Get me a cloth,” he said.
“Get your own cloth—this is heavier than Geoxus’s throne.” Elias adjusted the armor to his other arm.
“It’s dipped in gold.”
“Oh, is that why?” Elias asked flatly.
Madoc grabbed the folds of Elias’s tunic to clean off his jaw. His teeth were stained orange with blood, and he ran his tongue along the fronts of them, tasting the copper remains of an earlier wound.
“He made you a war champion,” Elias said.
“I know. I was there.”
“I thought the Kulan was going to win.”
“You’re not supposed to tell me that,” Madoc said, but Elias was right. Madoc had been thrown into a match with their enemy—a gladiator who, by some stroke of fortune, hadn’t been permitted to use energeia.
Suddenly, he wasn’t sure how he was alive at all.
“At least you’re making more coin,” Elias said with weak smile. “If you can take a few more beatings like that, we’ll have Cassia home before the war’s over.”
But the fights to come would be nothing like that, and they both knew it. Madoc wouldn’t just be training, he’d be competing against Deiman gladiators for the chance to fight Kula’s best champion. The Honored Eight were the most ruthless, skilled killers in the entire country.
In grim silence, Elias helped lift the armor over Madoc’s head and then buckled the sides to hold it in place.
“Ready?” Elias asked, his knuckles bumping Madoc’s side as he straightened the breastplate.
Nerves trembled through him. He was going to meet Geoxus. In front of Ignitus, Lucius had said. Was this a strategy to shame the fire god? Dig the knife of his loss in a bit deeper?
He didn’t care as long as it brought Cassia home.
Nerves burned in his stomach as he and Elias hurried toward the line of trainees. There, Lucius and Arkos were lit a pale green beneath the glowing, phosphorescent stones that peppered the ceiling like stars. Geoxus had long ago figured out that the best way to limit the Kulans’ energeia was