gaze lifted to his, then flicked away. “You used something else. Air energy? Are you from Lakhu?”
“No. I’m not. And no, I didn’t.” She wanted to argue like children? Fine. He had four siblings. He could do this all day.
“Then do it again,” she taunted. “Show me your geoeia.”
His cheeks flamed. Warning bells began to ring in his mind. He couldn’t risk another prayer now. She had a point—why would Geoxus want him to help their competition?
What if she was right and it wasn’t Geoxus answering his prayers at all?
“Sorry. I don’t perform on command.”
She snorted. “Isn’t that why we’re here? Because we perform on command?”
He did not like where this was going.
A frown tugged at the corner of her lips. “It’s against the rules of war for a god to use another country’s Divine.”
Doubt tingled at the base of Madoc’s brain. Geoxus had never seen Madoc fight before he’d been chosen for the Honored Eight. Even when they’d stood face-to-face, he couldn’t see Petros’s lies, or that Madoc didn’t have geoeia.
Madoc shook the thoughts from his mind.
He needed to laugh. To regain the upper hand.
Instead he stood stone still, speechless, feeling the blood drain from his face.
She moved closer. His back came flush against the wall, but she did not stop her approach. She didn’t just look like a god—she was one. Proud and terrifying and pulsing with power.
It was no good lying now. She knew he didn’t have geoeia. Maybe she hadn’t pieced together the rest yet, but she would soon enough. He was done. He and Elias needed to break Cassia out of Petros’s villa and get as far away from Crixion as possible.
Move.
He couldn’t. He was captured by her curiosity. The fear of what she would say next.
“Ash? Ash!” A woman came careening down the tunnel. She was tall and broad and bore a strong resemblance to one of the champions Madoc had seen with Ash yesterday.
When she saw them, she stopped.
Ash took a quick step back.
“Please,” Madoc whispered. You can’t tell anyone. He couldn’t speak the words aloud.
“We’ll talk again soon,” she said quietly.
It was as much a threat as a promise. Who would she tell what had happened here? Ignitus? Geoxus? Madoc spun away, walking quickly. He left the warped corridor and entered the long hall exiting the arena. He shoved his way through the crowd outside and headed straight into the waiting carriage, where he told his family the Kulan girl was with her people, and then stared out the window, hoping they couldn’t sense his panic.
Ash had him by the throat. How long before Geoxus learned the truth about him? If he ran, he would be hunted and punished for lying to his god. Cassia would never be free. Elias would be charged with helping him. Ilena, Danon, and Ava would all be in danger.
We’ll talk again soon.
What did she want? He needed to figure out the price of this secret, and pay, whatever the cost. His family—his life—depended on it.
What are you?
He was Deiman. A good Deiman, whose prayers were answered by his god. But as much as he told himself this, he knew what had happened in the hallway with Ash had been different. More intense than it ever had been in the past. When he’d asked for help for Ilena, it hadn’t been like this. When he’d made requests of others, they hadn’t reacted like those guards.
A quake started at the base of his spine, traveling through his clenched muscles.
If his ability to sense others’ fear and pain, to draw it out of them like poison, was not pigstock geoeia, and not the work of his god, then how did he do it?
What was he?
Ten
Ash
ASH GOT TWO gold bricks for winning against Rook.
She stuffed the money into the corner of her room and threw up on the balcony.
The day after, Ignitus was occupied with his other champions, so Tor told the Kulan guards watching them that he and Ash were running drills. They cloistered themselves into the long, narrow training room below Ignitus’s wing of the palace, and Taro and Spark snuck in to join them. There, with as much privacy as Ignitus ever gave, they mourned Rook.
And Char. Ash hadn’t been allowed to truly mourn her mother.
On the stone floor of the training room, Spark lit three candles. Traditionally, Kulan dead were honored by letting fire reclaim their corpses—once souls had left, their physical bodies were no longer fireproof. But this was as close to a memorial as