shapes into view. Tor, his towering form making his head brush the ceiling, stood with his shoulders bent protectively around Char, who sat on a bench against the wall. She had her head tipped back, eyes closed, black hair in a sleek braid. Her armor, made to be as a second skin, rose and fell with her steady breaths.
“Mama.” Ash darted forward.
Tor looked up at her approach. “She’s fine. Just preparing.”
He wasn’t much older than Char, but gray peppered his black hair and a few wrinkles cut through a crescent-moon scar around his eye. Those wrinkles deepened when he gave Ash a look that said Don’t push her. Not now.
“As decreed by the gods, this conflict warrants a single match,” the announcer was saying. “The winner shall be declared based on the surviving gladiator, and the losing god will forfeit the fishing grounds and pay twenty gold bricks.”
Char gaped up at Tor. “This fight is for gold and fishing rights?”
Tor shrugged, but what could he say? The gods determined the prizes, and mortals suffered their losses.
Ash lowered herself to her knees on the rocky floor. “You brought home ten gold bricks from your win against the air goddess last week. That will help.”
Char dug her knuckles into her temples. “It doesn’t make up for the thirty gold bricks he lost to Biotus while I was gone. More than most Undivine see in a lifetime of work. And three full years of wheat harvest when he’s barely able to keep his Divine fed as is. He keeps gambling away resources in multiple arena matches at once instead of just waiting for me to be ready—”
Char blinked down at Ash, startled, seeming to realize who she was talking to. “Ash. Sweetheart. I—I get carried away.” She batted her hand, but it trembled. “Don’t let my ramblings worry you. Your dance was lovely. The new lip paint was a striking addition.”
Ash gave a weak smile. They had bought the blue paint yesterday in the market. She and Char had tried yellow first, and cried laughing at how it made them look ill.
She warred with making light of it by mentioning those awful masks in the stands and how Char should paint her mouth too so people would make the masks even more ridiculous with wild lip colors. But Ash’s voice came out soft. “Kula’s suffering isn’t your fault, Mama.”
She wanted to add, Let me help. I can fight some of these battles for you. You can’t trust other gladiators to always win, but you can trust me—you’ve taught me how to fight.
Char walked into every arena and dispatched Ignitus’s enemies precisely so Ash could stay out of those arenas. It was one of Ignitus’s few mercies—as long as Char had his favor, Ash was unwanted. Char had only taken over for her own mother once she had been killed.
For now, Ash was a dancer. She used igneia as an accessory and prop. Not as a weapon.
“Ash,” Char sighed. She put her fingers around Ash’s wrist and squeezed.
“Fighting on behalf of Deimos is a great-great-great-grandnephew of Geoxus—Stavos of Xiphos!” the announcer bellowed.
The mostly Kulan crowd met the introduction with boos and hisses.
Behind Ash, Tor huffed. “Remember what we talked about, Char. Stavos is a brute, but he’s overconfident and slow. Use that.”
Char started to stand when Ash tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. Her heart stuck in her throat as the flames in the sconces behind them pulsed, yellow and hot.
No flame was ever just a flame. Each god could spy through their energeia—fire was an eye, an extension of the god Ignitus himself.
Ash had asked Char and Tor once why no one stopped Ignitus. He could choose not to declare fights against his siblings. He could dole out food and money equally if he wanted. Kula’s sufferings were his fault.
Char had smacked her hand over Ash’s mouth and cast a horrified look at the fire in their cottage’s hearth. “Ignitus could be listening,” she had said as Tor snuffed out the fire. “You must never speak of harming him.”
“But why?” Ash had pressed.
Char’s eyes had teared, so Tor had answered, his own eyes shadowed in the absence of flames. “He is a god. Mortals cannot defeat him. But we have moments like these”—he motioned at Char, Ash, himself—“alive and together. Obeying him is a small price to pay for that.”
So Ash held her tongue when Char’s leg snapped in a match. She silently scrubbed blood out of Char’s clothes and braided her