dangerous a line she was walking, but she was trapped on a stampeding horse of her own driving, helpless not to ride it as far as she could. “We are your gladiators. If something’s going on, we should fight for you. Let us help.”
“My job is to protect Kula,” Ignitus said, “which includes protecting myself. I can’t have a gladiator involved again—”
“Again?” The word tasted sweeter than the finest honey.
Ignitus glowered at her. “This is the last you will speak of this.”
He turned, cutting a path through the dancing crowd without another word.
Tor swung in front of Ash to stop her from running after Ignitus. A dozen questions waited in her throat, things she wanted to scream, but she could only look up at Tor and say, “A gladiator? A gladiator is part of what he fears?”
Tor shook his head, fingers pinched on her arm in thought. His eyes went to the front doors. “Taro and Spark just arrived. I’ll get them, and we’ll discuss it. Wait here.”
He left, shaking out his hands as he walked away. Ash felt the same energy coursing through her body—she wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted to move, if only to surge blood into her limbs and out of her chest, where it felt like all of it had gathered, hot and heavy.
A gladiator was part of what Ignitus feared. Could it be a gladiator and not the other gods that was a threat to Ignitus? How so?
Ash’s mind seized.
If Stavos’s threat had legitimately worried Ignitus, and a gladiator was who he feared . . . then had Ignitus gotten rid of Stavos?
She imagined Stavos burning to death in Ignitus’s flames and she trembled with an unfamiliar burst of satisfaction. The image felt like justice.
With a shake of her head, she pushed the idea away. She needed more details. She needed fact, truth, no more of this guessing and patchy information.
Tor intercepted Taro and Spark by the terrace’s main doors. Not far from them, a movement drew Ash’s eye—and her body flared with heat though there was no igneia anywhere nearby.
Madoc was here now. He stood with a boy about his age, and they whispered to each other, pointing at a girl a few paces to their left. She was with a man who was clearly a government official. Madoc noticeably tensed when the man grabbed the girl’s arm and barked an order. The girl gave a look that would make the fieriest Kulan proud and reluctantly poured the man a drink.
Madoc’s jaw worked, and he shook his head—in doing so, his eyes landed on Ash.
Ash froze, her hands at her sides. For a moment, the music played, and the crowd danced, and Madoc just stared at her, expressionless, calm.
Before she could take a step, he started walking toward her.
The other boy hissed his name, but Madoc ignored him.
He wore ceremonial armor, silver-plated Deiman metal over a pleated leather skirt with sandals that wrapped high up his muscled legs. The breastplate left his arms bare, showing how the muscles bunched as he clenched his hands, and Ash had an odd, disconnected thought: If he didn’t train with gladiators, how did his arms get so big?
Burn it all, what was wrong with her?
Madoc stopped before Ash. His mouth opened. Shut again.
Ash regained herself. She was in control of their interactions from now on. She had gotten information out of Ignitus; she would find out how Madoc’s energeia was part of this.
Ash folded her arms under her chest. “I was just on my way over to you.”
It threw him off. Madoc cleared his throat. “What?”
She tipped her head, looking up through her lashes with a soft grin. “You helped me after my fight. Not many gladiators would have done that.” She touched his breastplate, pretending to clear away a streak. “I never got a chance to thank you.”
Before he could protest or explain his true reason for coming over, Ash hooked her fingers in the collar of his armor and pulled him onto the dance floor. He wobbled after her, shock making him look years younger and sweet, and Ash had to fight down a laugh.
With the reluctance she had seen from him during their fight and his eagerness to help her after Rook’s death, she again found it difficult to believe that this man was part of a conspiracy of gods. He was so . . . genuine.
Ash stopped. Madoc’s surprise made him stumble, and he steadied himself on her hips. Before