face turned pink. She was looking at Madoc, but the old woman spoke up.
“She isn’t his mother.”
Ilena threw a glare at her. “Seneca—”
“Not by blood, anyway.” Seneca pulled herself shakily to her feet. “Doesn’t know his birth mother.”
Tor held for a beat. He shifted back to Madoc. “You don’t know your birth mother,” he echoed. “So you truly don’t know what your energeia is?”
Madoc hesitated, his eyes flicking, once, to Ilena. He shook his head.
Tor looked up at Ash from the bench, a tangle of annoyance and doubt on his face. So far, what she had told him about Madoc had proven true, and she could see Tor’s options dwindling. He couldn’t approach this conversation sternly, as he might have intended, through coercion or blackmail—not if Madoc wasn’t involved with a plot against Ignitus, as Ash had said.
But he was something. Something different.
“It is rare, but not unheard of, for people with other divinities to live and grow under different gods,” Tor said. “The gods and their retinues travel. Children happen. But the odds of one being made a champion in a war are . . . impossible. The gods choose their war champions with more care than they show about anything else.”
Ilena bristled. “It sounds like you are accusing Madoc of something. It sounds like you are accusing Geoxus of something.” She waved at the stone walls.
“If your god is listening,” Tor said, picking up on her implications, “then I would be glad to have him make his presence known, to explain this to us. Because making someone from another god one of his war champions breaks every war law the gods hold most dear—and Geoxus has been quite protective of those laws recently.”
Tor didn’t look at Ash, but she felt his meaning: that her involvement in Char’s fight had broken the holy laws and given Geoxus fodder for this war.
My fault, her guilt trilled. All of this, my fault.
The room paused, everyone waiting for Geoxus to respond to Tor. No god who heard such an obvious dig at their pride would have stood by without confrontation.
So when a long moment passed and Geoxus didn’t appear, Ash exhaled. She heard a few other held breaths release too.
Tor looked back at Madoc. “What did it feel like? When you fought Jann. Did you feel the blood pumping through his veins? Did you feel the air grating in his lungs? Was there a plant poison?”
The muscles in Madoc’s arms bulged. Ash thought he wouldn’t respond until his lip curled. “It felt like I feel talking to you—angry.” But a muscle in his face twitched. Was that relief? Maybe he was glad to be talking about this. To not be lying. “I felt Jann’s anger,” Madoc clarified, less defensive. “His fear. Pain.”
“And with Ash.” Tor’s voice noticeably hitched. “What did that feel like?”
“Sorrow.” Madoc’s eyes slid back to Ash. He didn’t glare or sneer or anything she expected. He looked tired. “It felt like . . . a breaking heart.”
“You felt their emotions?” Tor pressed.
“Emotions?” pressed Seneca. “Or their souls?”
“Souls?” Ilena huffed. “That’s absurd. No one can control souls.”
But Tor looked up at Ilena, his eyes tight. “That’s not entirely true, though. Or it wasn’t always.”
“What?” Ash pressed. “What is—”
But she couldn’t finish her question. Souls. Soul energeia.
Tor rose, brushing his hands on his tunic, and Ash realized he was nervous. Scared, even. “The first goddess. The Mother Goddess, Anathrasa, was the goddess of souls.”
The silence that fell over the preparation chamber was thick with sweat, sand, and iron.
Ash went slack. “You’re saying he used energeia from the goddess who the other gods killed?” She was overcome with the desire to smooth away the anxiety that had turned Madoc’s face gray. She could see his chest fluttering, his brow pinched, his lips twisted in confused disgust.
“I’m not listening to this. I have to find my brother.” Madoc took a step forward.
“Some gods say Anathrasa endured.” Seneca clucked her tongue and grinned. “A horror story the gods tell each other. She survived! Shudder in fear!”
Her words hit Ash, flashing unavoidable light over the shadowed pieces she had been fumbling to connect for weeks.
Hydra’s message to Ignitus. I have heard no similar rumors. Stop worrying.
She took it from me, Stavos had said with his dying breath.
“The message. The person Ignitus fears. A mystery woman,” Ash said, her head ringing like a struck gong. She looked at Tor through a blur of wonder.
A god who had helped kill Anathrasa would be right to fear her.
He