was gaunt, and it only intensified when Ash glanced behind him.
Madoc wasn’t here.
“He never came to the carriage at the arena,” Elias said. He bounced on the balls of his feet, sticking his hands deep into the pockets of his knee-length tunic. “He didn’t come to Lucius’s villa, either. I waited around for him as long as I could, but—what if Petros got to him first?”
Ash blew a fast breath out her nose. Guilt and panic squeezed her throat. “Petros knows we’re coming. He’s prepared.”
She refused to let herself think beyond that. But the image of Stavos flashed through her mind. The arrows in his back. His look of horror.
If Petros had Madoc, and was doing to him whatever he’d done to make Stavos afraid . . .
The world tilted. Ash balled her hands, grounding herself.
Elias looked just as rattled, but also determined. “We need to do this anyway.”
Tor rubbed his jaw, scratching the rough bristles. His eyes were distant on the walls of the villa. “We’ll scout the villa first. See what’s waiting for us.” He looked at Elias. “Can you lift a section of the outer wall for us to slip inside? Something small, discreet.”
Elias exhaled a hard grunt. “Yes. Am I coming in too?”
Tor considered. Elias still bounced from foot to foot. His nerves were as untamable as Madoc’s—neither of them had been bred for fighting, and Ash realized Elias was weaponless. She almost called him on it—how much use would he be with only his geoeia?—but she realized he likely hadn’t brought weapons because he couldn’t get any without arousing suspicion.
She lifted a knife out of her sheath and extended it to him, handle first, keeping the blade hidden under her arm and out of sight of any passersby.
Elias eyed her, then the blade. He took it, scrubbing the back of his other hand across his nose. “Thanks. I—” He dug into his pocket again and handed something to her.
Two small stones and a knuckle-sized knot of downy fibers.
“We use those rocks to start fires, and the fiber as a tinder,” he explained. “I thought you’d need igneia, but I realized halfway here just how much fire we already have in this city. You Kulans could burn us all to the ground, couldn’t you?”
The tension in Ash’s chest alleviated at Elias’s gesture.
No Deiman worried about having igneia out in the city, not so far from an arena. It was ripe for the picking, torches lighting streets, lanterns hanging outside doorways.
She tucked the fire starter into her pocket. “To be fair, rocks are all over Kula too. You could just as easily decimate our country.”
Elias grinned. Ash felt a tightening of cameraderie.
“The knife is only for desperate situations,” Tor said. “Without Madoc, the situation has changed. I don’t like being short a fighter. Elias—Ash and I will scout the villa for Madoc and Cassia first. The two of us will be less to worry about than three. If we find them, we’ll get them out. You stay out here and hold the wall open in case we need to make a quick getaway.”
Elias looked noticeably relieved. “Yes. Of course. Whatever you need me to do to get this done as fast as possible. My family’s packed and waiting.”
Ash’s chest bucked. “You’re leaving?”
Elias shook his head. “Just them. Madoc and I are staying.” His face solidified. “We have to make sure Petros can’t use our family against us anymore.”
“Let’s go,” Tor interrupted, and he started off, drawing them closer to Petros’s villa.
Ash tripped along behind him, her nerves easing back up. Walls towered three stories over her head. Beyond them, firelight speckled the night with orange here, there. Voices lifted—guards giving orders, servants out of sight calling commands to one another as they settled the villa for the night.
Tor angled Ash and Elias to the right, keeping to the shadows that crowded the wall’s edge. Ahead of them, the villa’s wall bent to run along the eastern side of Petros’s complex.
Ash reached out, senses scrambling until she found igneia pulsing in a nearby lantern. Whoever had lit it would think the wind had blown it out as she pulled, the entirety of the fire soaking into her like water into a sponge. She pulled another lantern, a flickering candle; more and more, until she was saturated, her body scalding.
“Good luck,” Elias whispered.
Ash gave a small smile.
A moment passed. The earth under their feet trembled, rocks skittering around their sandals before the rough wall scraped against their shoulders. Ash