prayed since this war had begun. It was different now, harder. Seeing Geoxus up close had made him real in a way Madoc hadn’t previously been able to fathom. And the Father God’s blindness to Petros’s deceit had been a bitter disappointment. It had made the god of earth seem almost human, and if Madoc had learned anything from Petros, it was not to worship mortals. Sooner or later they would always let you down.
Not that it mattered anymore. Geoxus might not even be his god.
People milled about inside the atrium, lighting incense and placing their hands on the sacred stones in the walls. Some carted baskets from Market Square, on the west side of the temple. Others begged for food or coin, shooed away by the centurions posted at each corner. But it was movement near the three-story statue of Geoxus that caught Madoc’s attention. A woman stood near a pillar, her long cloak dark against the stark white marble. He should have kept walking to the offering box—the purse was heavy on his belt, and it was foolish to think he wouldn’t be recognized if he stayed too long. But when she stepped forward, the light slanting through the open atrium caught her face and a wild curl that escaped her cloak’s hood.
A knot formed in his throat, but he swallowed it down, searching for the Kulan guards who surely would be nearby. He didn’t see them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close.
“Do you want to be alone?” Ash asked as he finished climbing the steps to meet her under the shelter.
Yes. No.
“Did you follow me all this way to ask me that?” His tone was gruffer than he’d intended. As he moved closer, he gripped the satchel of coins against his side to keep it from jingling. Again, he looked for her guards, but either they were well disguised among the other patrons or she’d lost them between here and the arena.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d snuck away unattended.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He laughed dryly. He’d just been told he wasn’t fully Deiman, but instead might belong to the dead seventh goddess who’d been killed by her six children hundreds of years ago. Seneca thought that he could drain souls like a coconut. And his own brother was convinced he’d die before the war was over.
“I’m great.”
Her lips pulled to the side, as if trying to hide a smile, and when she knotted her fists in the long fabric of her cloak, she looked younger, more girl than gladiator.
“Me too,” she said, her gaze flicking to the nearest centurion, standing on the steps that led to the market. She turned her back to him, and Madoc did the same.
“Are you here to pray?” she asked. The breeze teased a loose strand of hair across her forehead. He waited for her to tuck it inside her hood, behind the half-heart-shaped shell of her ear, but she didn’t.
He shrugged. Could he pray here if Geoxus wasn’t his god? He didn’t know where to start to pray to Anathrasa. “To think. Maybe to hide.”
“Good luck with that,” she said, scowling up at the giant statue before them. “What are you going to do? About Cassia, I mean. Are you really going to try to win this war?”
Her questions filled the space between them, filled his lungs until he felt like he would choke.
He didn’t know how to answer. He’d barely known how he beat Jann; he had no idea how he was supposed to face a seasoned opponent trying to kill him with fire.
Especially if his opponent was her.
“I can’t help you,” he said instead. If she’d come here to change his mind, she’d made a needless trip. “I don’t know how I do what I do . . . it just happens.”
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
“My mother . . .” She hesitated. “My mother used to say energeia listens to the heart, not the mind.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, but he knew power didn’t come from will alone—if it did, it would have manifested when Petros had tried to force it out of him as a child.
As it had in the tunnel, her grief misted around her, palpable and familiar. This time, though, he did not try to take it. Instead, he pictured Stavos and Ash’s mother in the arena—him cheating, Ash rushing to help—and rage spiked on her behalf. Madoc would have interfered in that fight too if Ilena, or Cassia—any of