by Sara Raasch
Ash swallowed, unable to feel her hand in Madoc’s anymore.
The moment they entered the room, Tor and Spark met them from the side. They wore the same layered tunics and furs as Ash and Madoc, desperately trying to stay warm while still having a range of motion. Tor adjusted and readjusted a cloak over his chest, refusing to look at Madoc.
The crowd around the throne parted. Hydra was seated on it, her hands on the armrests, her back straight. She pushed herself up to stand, showing the gown she now wore, a long, trailing cascade of blue silk lined with fur at the wrists, throat, and hem. Her black hair lay in a series of braids around her shoulders, a crown of ice atop her head.
She crossed the room halfway before stopping, her hands loose at her sides, her sparkling blue eyes going from Ash to Madoc to their clasped hands.
They both jerked apart at the same time. Too late, Ash realized they should have kept their relationship hidden.
“Goddess.” Tor stepped up. “We didn’t introduce ourselves properly last night, nor thank you for your interference with Anathrasa. I am Tor Tsea from Kula. This is my—”
“You talk too much.” Hydra lifted her hand. Tor clamped his mouth shut, likely remembering the way she’d filled his lungs with water with only a glance.
Ash shot forward a step, panic welling. “Wait. Goddess, I’m Ash Nikau, of—”
Hydra flipped her hand in a circle. “Of Kula, daughter of Char Nikau, great-granddaughter of Ignitus, and so on and so on, and did you really think I wouldn’t already have found all this out? Madoc, Anathrasa’s son, also the adopted son of a poor stonemason family in Deimos; Taro and Spark, married, Undivine; a whole contingent of Kulan sailors with unimpressive histories but who are still being watched closely by my soldiers. And another of Ignitus’s gladiators is in Kula trying to assert order in the chaos of Ignitus’s absence—which I’m hoping is something you know about, and not another problem?” She waited only long enough for Tor to nod and mumble Brand’s name. “Good. See how easy that was? Damn you mortals, for creatures with such short lives you sure do like to waste time with pleasantries.”
Ash’s mouth dropped open. “Well. All right.”
Hydra whirled, banishing the courtiers. “The topics we’re about to discuss aren’t exactly common knowledge,” she explained when they were gone. “Mustn’t panic mortals when it can be avoided.”
“With all due respect,” Taro said from behind Ash, “the mortals are already panicked in the rest of the world.”
Hydra ignored her and swept her gaze over their group. “The Mother Goddess is back. She’s taken over Deimos, and soon enough Kula, you say? If Ignitus is dead.”
Ash tried to object, to tell her that they had sent Brand to ready Kula’s defenses to stop that very thing, but Hydra talked as quickly as water tumbling over a cliff.
“And I think it’s a safe assumption that Aera and Biotus are either tied up in her plot, or soon to fall themselves? They always were predictable. Glory! Bloodshed! Riches! Boring. Now, what is your plan to defeat Anathrasa?”
Madoc pulled back his shoulders. “I’m her son. Soul Divine. I’ve been training to steal the rest of her anathreia. I—” He swallowed. How badly Ash wanted to take his hand again. “I tried to last night. I think I injured her—or something happened, at least. We were hoping—”
Hydra frowned. “Why would you try to attack Anathrasa?”
Madoc’s mouth dropped open. “To take her anathreia. To defeat her?” It came out as a question.
Hydra looked from Madoc to Ash and back again. “You have anathreia the same way all my Water Divine children have hydreia. They can control water, but their control of it poses no threat to me. Even in Anathrasa’s weakened state, you could never actually kill her. You, born of her, will always be inferior to her as far as energeia goes. You can manipulate souls, which puts your power slightly”—she paused for emphasis—“above those of the six gods. But you are not equal to Anathrasa’s power.” Hydra pointed at Ash. “She is.”
Painful silence gripped the throne room.
Ash’s eyes peeled wide. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. “I’m sorry,” she managed, her throat dry, “what did you say?”
Hydra squinted at Ash, then at each confused, gawking mortal face in turn. “Wait an ice-cold minute.” She smiled. Chuckled. “You mean to tell me you don’t realize what she—Ash, is it?—what she is? You didn’t do this to her on purpose?”
“Do what to her?” Tor growled the question.
“Do you know the full story of how we brought down Anathrasa the first time?” Hydra arched one thin eyebrow.
Ash’s heart was tight in her chest. “Ignitus told us about the gladiator that the six gods used to defeat Anathrasa.” Her mouth was still bone-dry; it hurt to talk. “By transferring pieces of their energeias into her.”
“The same way Madoc transferred my brothers’ energeias into you,” Hydra finished.
Ash felt the blood drain from her face. She’d suspected it on her own, but hearing a goddess confirm it nearly pushed her unconscious, black spots dancing across her vision.
“What?” Tor frowned. “No. No, that isn’t what—”
But his voice trailed off. Ash could feel everyone around her putting together these same realizations, their silence shifting to stunned horror.
“Do you think Anathrasa knows?” Ash whispered. Her whole body was numb.
“Of course she knows,” Hydra threw out. “Why do you think she had her ships flee? I’m terrifying, yes, but I wouldn’t have put up much of a fight to save you if they’d kept attacking. Not my battle—well, it wasn’t at the time. No, Anathrasa ran because Madoc here must have surprised her with that anathreia attack—maybe she underestimates him?—and then you, Ash, rattled her while she was unexpectedly weakened. But I doubt that will last for long.”
“How?” Madoc gasped the question. “I didn’t turn Ash into anything!”
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill her.” Hydra leveled a stare at Madoc. “When my siblings and I united to stop Anathrasa, we went through forty-seven mortals before we figured out how they can tolerate god powers. The rest—” She made a choking noise, her tongue out, eyes bulging.
Horror pinned Ash in place. Ignitus hadn’t told her they’d had to murder people to find one who could handle their powers. And it made the fact that Ash hadn’t died the moment Madoc gave them to her that much heavier.
“How am I alive?” Ash managed.
“Because you died,” Hydra said matter-of-factly, “but someone brought you back.”
“I think I’d remember dying and being resurrected.”
“When we did it the first time, we were able to resurrect the gladiator through her connection to energeia. Did Ignitus rip you back from death after an arena fight?”
Ash spun a look at Madoc, and she knew he was thinking the same thing.
Elias had pummeled her with geoeia on the arena sands in Crixion just after Cassia’s death. Ash had refused to fight him, even as he strengthened his attack. But Madoc had saved her.
“You didn’t die, though,” Madoc said, his voice thin. “You weren’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
He faltered, and Ash choked. Neither of them really understood what he had done to save her.
Had Madoc really brought Ash back from death?
Hydra smiled. “And then, either after or before, your energeia was taken? Figuring out that part was a complete fluke—when we practiced it on our gladiator, her goddess brought her back to life through their connection to the same energeia. It was tricky and terrible and damn near killed them both—but when it worked, the gladiator had no energeia at all. Which actually made her the perfect vessel for pieces of all energeias.”
Tor huffed—whether in disbelief or fear, Ash couldn’t tell. “You’re saying that being brought back from death and drained of energeia is all it takes for a mortal body to hold a god’s power?”
Hydra nodded, her hair flipping around her
cheeks. “Yes. It blurs the lines between gods and mortals. Ash should be dead, but she’s alive; she was made for energeia, but it was taken—you are exactly what we need to kill Anathrasa. Which I should be thanking you for, for not making me scramble to find some other way to avoid her war. In only a month! We’ll need pieces of all the energeias. But for now, you’re willing to fight her?”
Ash started. Was Hydra asking her? Could she actually say no?
She wouldn’t, though.
She saw the future spiral out from this moment, one where she would need to embody not just fire and earth, but also water, plants, air, and animals. A future where she would become Soul Divine. Not like Madoc, who could control anathreia but couldn’t hold other divinities in himself. No—Ash would have pieces of the six gods’ energeias, Soul Divine like Anathrasa herself.
She would become the Mother Goddess to defeat the Mother Goddess.
“Yes,” Ash heard herself say. It burst out of her from somewhere dark and wounded.
Yes, she wanted that. To know that she was more powerful than this cast-off Mother Goddess. Ash had seen what Anathrasa was capable of firsthand—she had watched her drain the geoeia out of Cassia’s body in Petros’s villa. She had sucked the energeia out of gladiators tithed to her by Geoxus. She had taken Ash’s own igneia with a flick of her hand.
Ash wanted to watch Anathrasa cower and die for all the suffering she had inflicted. She wanted to know that Kula would be safe. Tor, Taro, Spark, everyone she loved—safe.
And Madoc wouldn’t be the one to stand before his mother and deal the fatal blow.
“Yes,” Ash said again.
Hydra faced Ash completely, her eyes piercing into the depths of Ash’s soul. “Good. Then I want to try something. This might hurt.”
She shoved her palm flat against Ash’s chest.
A bolt of ice shot into Ash’s body, freezing her inside out. She gave a startled gasp as the whole world crystallized into ice.
“What are you doing to her?” Madoc shouted. Distantly, Ash was aware of his hand on her arm, and him jerking back with a sharp yelp of pain.
All she could see was Hydra’s face, blurring into a circle of color as her vision narrowed, a window clouding over with crawling tendrils of frost.
Hydra pulled back, her grin not dimming, even as Tor stood by with flames in his hands and Taro had a knife drawn. Tor must have pulled igneia from one of the fires they’d passed on the islands, arming himself. As if he could fight a goddess.
Ash’s attention dropped to Hydra’s hand. Age spots speckled her skin, and as Ash watched, more climbed her wrist, maturing her otherwise immortal flesh.
The same way Ignitus had had gray hair, and Geoxus had had wrinkles around his eyes.
Each time they gave pieces of their energeia, it drew the gods a little closer to mortality. And Hydra had freely given some of hers to Ash.
It instantly softened what remaining distrust Ash had toward her.
“You gave me hydreia?” Ash whispered.
“Ash, look at me.” Madoc grabbed her arm. His other hand was at his side, clenching and unclenching against the fur lining of his tunic. The tips of his fingers were white with frost.
“What happened?” she managed.
Madoc shook his head. The frost was already dripping off his fingers.
He might have said something else, but Ash looked down at her own hands.
Water.
She splayed her fingers, and liquid spurted into the air before splashing against the icy floor.
No one responded. Madoc didn’t let her go, and she felt his muscles tense, shocked fear radiating out of him.
“Three down,” Hydra declared. “Three to go.”
Impossibly, Ash felt her lips lift in a grin that matched Hydra’s.
She had hydreia. She had never, in her wildest dreams, thought of controlling water.
In one hand, she pulled the heat from her chest and palmed a small blue flame. In the other, she focused on the chill in the air, on the ice beneath her feet, and an orb of water formed.
Oh, this would be fun.
Tor, fire still raging up his arms, stomped toward Hydra. “You have no right to put this on her. What will happen to Ash once she’s as powerful as Anathrasa and has drained Anathrasa of her powers? Can a mortal—even one who can hold a god’s power—endure all that anathreia? This could kill her. Or worse.”
With a snap, Ash got rid of both the fire and water. “Whatever this might do to me, it’s a risk we have to take. What’s the alternative? Our plan to have Madoc face her wouldn’t have worked.”
Tor whirled on her. But after a moment of silence, he closed his mouth, resignation on his face as he put out the flames on his arms.
He shook his head, and Ash could see the strain on his face. “Florus may help us,” Tor said softly, “but Aera and Biotus will side with Anathrasa if they haven’t already. They won’t willingly give Ash pieces of their energeias. What you did to her was unnecessarily—”
“I can get them.”
Ash’s heart jolted as Madoc stepped forward.
“I can get aereia and bioseia the same way I took Ignitus’s and Geoxus’s powers,” he continued, confidence strengthening his voice. “If Anathrasa wants the energeia from all the gods, she’ll probably be trying to get Aera and Biotus to Crixion too. Odds are good they’ll both be there, so I can go back to Deimos and get aereia and bioseia”—he interlocked his fingers with Ash’s—“and bring it to you, and you can . . . you can face Anathrasa.”
“Smart,” Hydra agreed. “That might work.”
“No!” Ash shouted. She lowered her voice. “No—Madoc, you aren’t going back to Crixion. Anathrasa has to know by now that you gave me igneia and geoeia. She saw me fight on the ship. It isn’t safe for you to go to her—she’ll kill you for betraying her.”
Madoc licked his lips. “What if I’m the one who was betrayed? I’ll tell her you tricked me into giving you Ignitus’s and Geoxus’s powers. I’ll tell her that you and Hydra came up with this plan to defeat her, and once I heard it, I realized my error and ran back to her.”
Ash blanched. “Madoc—”
“No, listen.” He pushed closer to her, lightness in his lifted eyebrows, his half smile. “If I surrender to her and tell her I’ve rethought betraying her, I’ll be at the center of her plans. I can get information, and I’ll know exactly where Aera and Biotus are. Better than sneaking around Deimos—if I get caught doing that, there’s no lie that will save me.”
Ash hated this. She hated all of this.
“We’ll get you on the first ship to Crixion,” Hydra announced. “I’ll have some of my Water Divine give you fast sailing waters. We can get you there in a few days.”
“Wonderful,” Madoc said, his teeth clenched, likely at the thought of being on a ship again.
“Won’t Anathrasa be suspicious of how he got back so fast?” Ash tried.
“Tell Anathrasa you escaped when I sided with the Kulans,” Hydra said. “Tell her you manipulated the anathreia in my Apuitians to get them to help you travel faster. Gods can’t sense their people when they’re being controlled by anathreia.”
She spoke from experience, no doubt when Anathrasa had first tried to destroy the world.
“She’ll still come for us in a month,” Tor added. “We need to set up a meeting with Florus to get him on our side—how quickly can we get to Itza, or get Florus to come here?”
“Better that we go to him,” Hydra said. “I’ll tell him everything that’s happened, but he’ll want to stay in Itza and get his people ready. Not that I’m in any hurry to leave my own people, but I’ll escort you to Itza, then pop back here as I need.”
Tor looked doubtful, but he nodded. “We’ll get Florus to add his floreia to our cause. Gather our armies and confront Anathrasa—all within her timeline of a month.”
His eyes went to Ash. She noted how he’d said get Florus to add his floreia to our cause and not get Florus t
o give his floreia to Ash.
This scared him. It scared her, too.
Madoc nodded. “And I’ll get aereia and bioseia in that time, too.”
“We can aim to meet you in Crixion,” Tor continued, his warrior side taking over. “You can—transfer over the energeias. Then Ash can—” He swallowed, his jaw tensing. “We can defeat Anathrasa.”
Ash’s lungs clenched tighter, tighter, driven by Tor’s unease, by Madoc’s odd confidence. She had never heard him sound so sure of himself, and it was about stealing energeias from gods for her.
“But—how will we know you’re all right?” she asked Madoc, her voice small in her own ears. “When you’re in Crixion, how will we know if something happens?”
Hydra waggled her fingers. Standing before them, her body changed from her solid human form into a translucent, rippling sculpture of water. “Goddess, remember?” A blink, and she was herself again. “I can pop in on him from time to time. And you have Ignitus’s and Geoxus’s powers too, so it’s likely you can do the same—communicate and travel through fire and stone. I’ll teach you. Are we decided, then? Good. I’ll get a ship ready.”
She spun away. Tor chased after her, arguing some other point Ash couldn’t make herself care about. Taro and Spark, still lingering, were smart enough to give Ash and Madoc space.
They had barely had any time together. Running for their lives in Crixion, two weeks on a crowded ship, one stolen night in a storage tent. It wasn’t enough, and as Ash turned into Madoc’s arms, she felt a familiar sensation wriggle up her chest and heat her body with shame: loneliness.
She didn’t want Madoc to go. She had Tor, Taro, and Spark, but none of them was the person she wanted to hold her when she was afraid or the one she trusted to always take her side. She had spent so much of her life secluded from other people out of fear of them discovering her disloyalty to Ignitus that she wasn’t ready to let go of this. To let go of Madoc.
Ash shoved herself up onto her toes, locking her lips with his. She needed to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on the small of her back, arching her against his chest. She needed to remember this sensation in the coming days when war loomed and fear crept in and she woke up without him.