draw from here. If there were, those guards would be dead. Maybe he would be too.
She pushed off the wall and took an unsteady step toward him, her sandaled feet crunching over the gravel. Her eyes remained on his.
He tried to read her intent, but all he could feel was her wary curiosity, a heavy mantle over his shoulders, and the bitterness of her pain in the back of his jaw.
Her chin lowered slightly—an invitation? She couldn’t have meant for him to go with her.
Unless she planned to kill him and cut out her competition. Or maybe she didn’t trust that it was safe. She thought it was an ambush of some kind—that he’d orchestrated the centurions to leave so that she could disappear without witnesses.
He stepped into the hallway, telling himself he was doing what any respectable Deiman citizen would do. It was better than acknowledging the small spark of curiosity that lit inside him.
She hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Deiman. But it would be unwise for you to corner me alone. I told you before, you won’t beat me again.”
“I know,” he said, giving a small and, he hoped, encouraging smile. “I just want to help you get back to your people.”
“Why?”
Because I embarrassed you yesterday in the arena. Because if I don’t, more guards will come and find you.
Because you’re scared, and I can feel it.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going this way. Come if you want.”
He walked away, and was ten steps in before he heard her following. Soon, she’d come beside him, her wary gaze flicking from his face to his hands.
This space was tighter than the previous corridor, and without the sunlight from outside, it felt too private. Every footstep crackled off the walls. Every creak of his leather armor sounded like the groan of an unoiled hinge. He was as acutely aware of all the places he was covered—his chest, back, thighs, and feet—and all the places she wasn’t. There was so much bare skin, he couldn’t not look. His gaze flicked from the points of her shoulder blades to the cut muscles of her upper arms. It bounced from her tight belly, which disappeared beneath a tattered reed skirt, to her long thighs and calves and the lean tendons of her ankles.
She reminded him of the women painted on the walls of Geoxus’s temple—the ones with ample curves and a lack of clothing that Elias and he used to gawk at when they were young. But Ash’s back was straighter than the women in those paintings. Her chin was lifted. She might have been wearing a silk gown with a crown of onyx and opals atop her head.
She carried herself like a goddess.
He bumped into the wall. Her stare snapped to his, suspicious as ever.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Are you fighting soon?”
“I won already, actually.” He sent her a small grin. “Didn’t you hear?”
She gave a quick shake of her head. Of course she hadn’t heard. She was busy fighting her own match.
He cleared his throat. “Stavos didn’t show.”
She paused, her burst of anger like a fist pumping around his lungs. “What do you mean?”
He remembered what she’d said in their fight—that Stavos had poisoned her mother—and he wondered grimly if she had been hoping to face him in the arena.
Madoc shrugged. “No one’s seen him. I guess I scared him away.”
“I doubt that,” she said, making him wince. “Where would he have gone?”
“Back under the rock he came from? I don’t know. We weren’t exactly close.”
The pain he’d felt in her receded, replaced again by wariness. They began walking again.
“What do you want, Madoc?”
It didn’t surprise him that she knew his name—she’d probably learned it when they’d fought before—but he was caught off guard by the thrill that came when she said it.
He shoved it down. “Nothing.” His shoulder blades knotted as they neared one of the glowing stones set in the wall. “Did Ignitus really kill your opponent?”
He regretted the words instantly. She stopped. Her small intake of breath was like a dagger to his side, laced with bright pain reflected in the pinch of the corners of her eyes.
She wouldn’t let go of the body.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin quivered the tiniest bit. She seemed suddenly breakable, like a rock wall pressured with just enough geoeia.
Turn back, he told himself. But his feet didn’t listen. Instead, his arm lifted, and before he knew what he was doing, his hand was