even as he wished it would go on forever, just so he wouldn’t have to face Jann.
He spotted Ash immediately. Her armor was charred on her left hip and her long hair was slicked back with sweat. She’d lost her sword in the sand and her hands were open, pulsing with deadly balls of orange flames. With another cry, she launched herself across the arena toward Brand—a young, thick-shouldered gladiator carrying a shield and a spear. Fire hurtled from Ash’s hands, barely blocked by Brand’s shield. Just before she reached him, she dropped to the ground, kicking out his feet in a spray of sand.
Madoc’s pulse tripped as Brand fell to his knees. The spear landed just out of reach, and as Brand stretched for it, Ash pounced on his back.
“Good,” Madoc whispered.
Brand rolled, releasing his shield. Ash straddled his chest, hands curling around his throat. Her face and arms glistened with sweat. Even from outside the fighting pit, Madoc could see the hard planes of her shoulders.
Brand shoved at her forearms, but Ash didn’t falter.
“You have him,” Madoc muttered. Now that he was watching, he wanted Ash to win. She was more skilled. Faster. She deserved this victory.
“Having a good time?” Elias asked beside him. Madoc had been so consumed with the fight that he hadn’t noticed his brother approaching. “If it’s not too much trouble, maybe you could stop drooling and get your head in your own match.”
He wasn’t drooling—he was a fighter watching another fighter, that was all. But when the announcer called Ash’s name, Madoc’s fist pumped against his side, and his lips curled into a small smile.
Elias pulled sharply on the breastplate belt, and Madoc’s breath exhaled in a huff. He turned away from the window as Ash raised her hands in victory.
He had bigger things to worry about than Ignitus’s gladiators.
“Jann’s got it in for you,” Elias said, returning his focus to the match. “He, Stavos, and Raclin were close. They’ve trained together for ten years.”
Ten years ago, Elias and Madoc were eight. While they’d been nothing more than skinny boys catching lizards and playing pranks on Cassia using Elias’s geoeia, Jann had been learning to kill.
“He thinks you had something to do with Stavos’s death,” Elias said.
Madoc’s jaw flexed. It didn’t matter if he shouted from the top of the palace that he was innocent, the other gladiators believed what they wanted—that Madoc, untrained and unheard of before this war, had rigged the fight to advance.
“All this helpful information wouldn’t be coming from Narris’s attendant, would it?” Madoc snorted. “Remi.”
Madoc had seen the two of them together around the barracks and in the dining hall during meals. Maybe others hadn’t noticed the way Elias perked up when Remi entered a room, but Madoc had.
Pink blossomed on Elias’s cheeks. “All I do, I do for our cause.”
“I’m sure.”
But the tilt of Elias’s head revealed the edge of a bruise along his temple, previously hidden by his hair. When he saw Madoc looking, he combed it down over the mark.
“Who did that?” Madoc asked quietly, grateful for the anger sliding over his queasy stomach.
“No one,” Elias muttered. “Doesn’t matter.”
It didn’t. That was the problem. Madoc might have taken his blows during the day, but at night the champions had their own rooms at the barracks. The attendants slept in a community room near the kitchen, and Madoc’s lack of popularity had bled through to his brother.
“You’ll stay in my room tonight,” Madoc said.
Elias glared at him. “Why don’t you focus on Cassia instead of on me?”
“I am,” Madoc said, throwing a glare Elias’s direction. “It’s all I’m focused on.” Cassia. Elias. Ava. Danon. Ilena. All of them.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“What is . . .”
Madoc bit back his retort as two Deiman arena workers raced down the hall, their arms filled with blackened torches. Outside, the arena was being cleared and prepared for the next fight.
It was almost time.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Madoc muttered once the workers were gone.
Elias spun away from the window and kicked a wave of sand against the far wall. “It means this was supposed to be about getting the money and getting out. The past two days you’ve been different. Waking up before dawn to practice. Studying records in Lucius’s library. The way you gave that speech to those donors Lucius brought you to see yesterday—about your ‘humble beginnings in the stonemasons’ quarter’ . . . I almost bought it myself.”
“Because it’s true.” Maybe he embellished a little, but it