the palace. She had finally confessed how Madoc had affected her grief in the arena’s tunnel, that she thought maybe he’d used air divinity to fill her lungs, soothe her tension—but that whatever he’d used, it hadn’t been geoeia. She told them how she’d blackmailed Madoc into getting her to his sponsor’s records, which was where they had been going when—
The memory of Stavos’s corpse still hovered at the edge of Ash’s mind. He had been shot in the back. He had been shot running away.
Days ago, Ash would have reveled in that. But now, reality overshadowed any satisfaction.
The official investigation into Stavos’s murder had turned up empty so far, and most people seemed to have shrugged off the incident as a cost of war. But Stavos’s words echoed in Ash’s mind, his dead eyes watching her, his chapped lips moving. She took it from me.
He had said that Ignitus hadn’t done this to him. Could Ignitus have paid someone else to do it, though? He would have been smart to stay out of it himself, and get rid of the gladiator through someone else. Someone like the mystery she.
Who could it be? Was it someone Ash didn’t know, an assassin Ignitus had hired to dispose of Stavos? Or was it someone larger—maybe Aera, the goddess of air from Lakhu, who was one of the warmongering gods who Hydra had mentioned in her message to Ignitus?
But what had this mystery woman taken from Stavos?
At least Ash knew that Madoc wasn’t involved. He’d been so sincere about everything, not just Stavos—the only thing linking him to any of this was her own assumption. Whatever Madoc was, he wasn’t involved with a gladiator who Ignitus feared or with the other gods poised against Kula. He was just trying to free his sister.
Ash’s chest warmed. It was such an honorable goal to have. There was far too little honor in these wars.
Taro slammed a fist onto the tabletop. Ash jumped.
“You’re distracted,” Taro snapped. “Get your head straight. Tor hasn’t been able to talk to you about it, he’s been so distraught, but he’s been hard on you because you left the terrace to go out, alone, with an enemy gladiator. And then another champion turns up dead? Do you know how easily that could have been you? Do you have any idea what that gladiator could have done to you, and none of us would have been there to help?”
Ash’s mouth dropped open. Taro had never snapped at her before. She was usually the one who winked at Ash when Tor or Char reprimanded her.
But she knew Tor had been furious with her. He hadn’t let her out of his sight for the past two days. Mornings of drills in the training room, afternoons running laps through Geoxus’s gardens.
“When you fight Brand,” Tor had told her, “you must be ready. You won’t get lucky again.”
Brand was the only other champion to outrank Ash in blood. He was young, and virile, and brutishly confident, with a reputation for only being satisfied with a win if it ended in death.
You won’t get lucky again.
Tor hadn’t meant her fight with Rook and how she had won because he got himself killed; Tor would never speak ill of Rook like that. He had been talking about Madoc.
“Madoc wouldn’t hurt me,” Ash fumbled now. The statement burst out of her, so obvious that she didn’t hear its stupidity until Taro’s eyebrows went up.
“Ash.” Taro’s voice was heavy with exasperation. “Every move that fighter makes in this war, he does at the behest of his god. We don’t even know what god that is, do we? Maybe Aera. Maybe someone different entirely. We don’t know what kind of energeia he used on you. And we have no idea who killed Stavos. That’s exactly the point—we don’t know. We’re in this together, the lot of us, and you’re young, but I’d have thought you’d learned not do something so stupid as to get tangled up with an enemy.”
Ash shot closer to Taro. “I am not tangled up with him.”
Taro’s face went red, but she straightened, her broad shoulders stretching. “Take a second to center yourself. You can’t go into a fight like this.”
She stomped across the room, threw open the door, and slammed it behind her.
Ash stood in Taro’s wake, her mind thudding. She knew Taro was right—she wasn’t in this alone. Each day she felt the weight of guilt of this war, the chafing horror that she had caused