Rise Up from the Embers

by Sara Raasch

  She looked back at Ash. “So you’ll have to forgive me for not acting on Ignitus’s plea that I step in, because—and this was his message—Geoxus is planning something with our mother. Geoxus was always poking at Ignitus because he knew he could rile him up. And Anathrasa?” She snorted. “It sounded like empty nonsense. We’d sacrificed too much for her not to be dead.”

  Ash swallowed, rocking with the gentle waves. She could see why Hydra had ignored her brother’s cry for help. Ash hadn’t taken Ignitus seriously until the end, either.

  “What about Aera?” Ash asked. “You didn’t say how the air goddess fits into everything.”

  Something dark passed over Hydra’s face, a shadow drifting across the surface of a deep-blue pond. “She’s a pest. A mosquito who flits around Geoxus, Biotus, and Ignitus, pitting them against each other, darting away if they swat at her. She’s a nuisance, and I should have told Madoc not to just take a piece of her aereia, but to drain her completely.”

  The rage that had built in Hydra’s voice sent Ash teetering back a step. More than that, the sea around them had started to churn as though the water itself were boiling.

  Ash eyed it, then turned back to Hydra, who had closed her eyes and dragged in a few slow, deep breaths.

  “You know what?” Hydra rubbed a hand over her face. “I think I’ve been employing the wrong training methods.”

  Ash had to stop herself from making a sarcastic quip.

  Hydra gave her a cruel smile. “You want to learn how to travel through fire? You want to learn how to listen to Kula? Focus on fire. Stretch your mind. Meditate. The sun’s going down—maybe the extra cold will motivate you to get off this raft.”

  With a jolt of panic Ash realized what Hydra meant to do.

  “Wait—”

  But Hydra vanished, a cascade of water and foam, leaving Ash stranded on the bobbing raft.

  “Damn you,” Ash grumbled.

  Ash spent an hour sitting on the raft, employing Hydra’s vague suggestions.

  Stretch your mind. Meditate. Focus on fire.

  Traveling through fire proved far too difficult—the setting sun and falling temperature had Ash’s teeth clacking together, and it was all she could do to pull a flame into her hand to keep herself from turning into an ice cube. It was easier to focus on the palmful of fire she called—something small yet intense.

  Maybe Tor was near a fire, and she could talk to him, ask him to get a boat and come save her. Only she didn’t need saving—didn’t want to be saved—but she closed her eyes and hunched over the flame in her hand, giving herself a moment just to breathe in the smoke.

  The smoke smelled like Igna. How long had it been since she’d been home? What was happening there now—surely Brand had spread the word about Ignitus’s death? Were people mourning or rejoicing? In the palace, was—

  She saw fires. Candle flames and lanterns spotted across a city. No—she knew that city.

  Igna.

  Her body surged into each flame, rebounding from one into another. A candle on a table in a kitchen; a lantern on a street post; a fire in a stove; a torch burning in someone’s hand.

  Stunned to silence, Ash let the fires pull her, afraid if she reacted too much or not enough this connection would break.

  She was in Igna . . . in a way, her eyes and ears now each flame, a soul untethered yet bound to this flickering, feasting burning.

  A bonfire drew her most strongly. It burned in the center of the city, a raging spurt of flame controlled by a ring of Kulan Fire Divine. People crowded the area around the fire, some holding hands, others weeping softly.

  At the edge of the fire, someone started playing a harp. Lutes followed, and then voices swept in, and Ash’s heart kicked with recognition—this was the song of the Great Defeat, the song she had danced to on the sands of Igna’s arena so many weeks ago.

  It had been Ignitus’s favorite song and dance.

  This was a memorial for him.

  The shock yanked Ash from the fire. Her soul slithered out of the candle flames and torches, gathering back on itself and flooding into her body, where it sat, shivering, on the raft in the middle of the sea.

  Gasping, Ash hugged her arms to herself. The people of Igna were mourning their dead god. Their cruel, bloodthirsty god, who had put so many of them in arenas, who had whittled away Kula’s resources to the point of starvation, who had gotten Char killed—

  And who had been willing to try to fix things in Kula. Who had admitted he was wrong and wanted to try again.

  Tears fell. They instantly dried on Ash’s cheeks and she scrubbed them away.

  She wasn’t crying for the loss of Ignitus, she told herself. She was crying for the loss of potential, for the memorial that should have been for her mother. For the wrongness of so much about their world’s current situation and how she was supposed to fix it even though she couldn’t get off this stupid raft.

  The sun set fully, throwing Ash into darkness, and she wept into her empty palms, embracing the cold.

  By the time Ash got back to the island, she was nearly frozen. As she finally collapsed on the frigid, rock-strewn shore, her muscles wailed in relief. She’d given up traveling through igneia and opted to move her raft using hydreia—which hadn’t been any easier. But she’d caught an errant current for the last bit of the trip, otherwise she’d still be drifting aimlessly in the bay—she suspected Hydra had gotten tired of watching her painfully slow progress.

  But even so, Ash had made progress. She’d gotten in a few solid, swift pushes with hydreia once she’d forced herself to sit and analyze why the water wasn’t listening to her. Something Hydra had said kept coming back to her—It isn’t igneia. It’s hydreia.

  Hydra never moved as Ash did, or as Ignitus had, all harsh jabs and forceful punches. Hydra’s moves were subtle—flicks of her wrists, twitches of her fingers.

  So Ash had done that. Embraced subtlety and softness. And she had moved the water.

  She chuckled to herself on the rocky shore, utterly spent. Water and sweat mingled, trickling down her face, wetting the sand in the moon- and starlit darkness.

  She needed to find Tor. She needed to tell him she’d been able to see Igna, that they were safe—for now—and she might be able to communicate with Brand and the other leaders there—

  She felt a presence beyond her closed eyelids. Hydra.

  “If you’ve come to gloat about how your methods worked,” Ash started, smirking, “don’t think I’ll ever admit that you’re the reason I finally got hydreia to listen to me. I don’t—”

  “I do not gloat.”

  Ash’s eyes flew open and in an instant she was on her feet, the tide lapping at her bare ankles. The voice was thin and high, almost childlike, so she didn’t instantly drop to the defense.

  The moon shone light on a figure standing just back from her on the sands, a boy of no more than twelve or thirteen, thin but tall, with a soft face, wide green-brown eyes, and a feathery flop of brown hair. Twigs and leaves poked out of his hair and vines wrapped around his limbs—only Ash noted with a jolt that these plants were actually poking out of his skin. Tiny sprouts peppered his arms; one was growing out of his cheek.

  “Florus?” Ash wheezed the name.

  He tipped his head, an impish smile playing across his lips. “Ash Nikau.”

  Ash glanced up and down the shore. “You came. Did you talk to Hydra? Where is—”

  “I understand you are hoping to meet with me. My sister wants me to give you floreia.” His smile held.

  There was a long moment of silence as he just stared at her on the empty beach.

  “Yes.” Ash drew out the response. Still, he was quiet, and she remembered what Hydra had said—if he was going to give her a piece of his soul, she needed to be worthy of it, to treat it with the respect such an act deserved.

  She bowed her head at him, not sure if that was the right thing to do or not.

  Florus’s deep-green eyes didn’t stray from her
face. He was more youthful than the other gods Ash had seen, but now that she knew to look, there was the same agelessness in his eyes that she had feared so long in Ignitus—that irascible power that could level cities and snap mortal necks.

  A prickle of unease started at the base of Ash’s neck. “We are preparing to go to Itza—why are you here? Does Hydra know—”

  “Centuries ago, we trusted Ciela, and she still failed.”

  “Ciela?”

  “The first gladiator who fought Anathrasa. The one before you.

  You don’t even know your own history—how are you supposed to step into her place?”

  Florus’s words took up too much space in Ash’s chest.

  He was right—she hadn’t heard the gladiator’s name before. It had been easier when that person had been the gladiator who fought Anathrasa, some vague and distant mythical character. But she’d had a name, like Ash. She’d had a family. She’d had a life.

  “I don’t know,” Ash admitted. “I’m trying. I want to face Anathrasa. I want to be ready to fight her—”

  Florus shook his head, lips twisting. “Wrong answer. The correct answer is: it doesn’t matter if you will step into her place. We were wrong about Ciela.” His voice was worn with centuries of regret. “I don’t want to be wrong again.”

  A splash made Ash turn.

  Instinct clawed at her to get out of the way as a thick green vine shot up from the sea. But the vine still caught her, slamming into her chest and knocking her back into one of the tall boulders on the rocky shore. The angry, violent snake of writhing green wriggled and squirmed against her sealskin suit.

  The impact sucked the air from her lungs. Too late, she realized she should pray to Hydra; too late, she got a grip on the vine and started to peel it off her chest—

  But a flower grew from the top of it, close to her face. Bloodred petals peeled back to show a yellow core surrounded by an obsidian ring.

  The flower convulsed and a burst of pollen clouded Ash’s face.

  “Florus!” Ash coughed. “What—what are you . . .”

  The sea rippled. The sky went from black to pink to a swirl of yellow-red, and in that sky, she saw the god of plants, his youthful face set in a glare.

  “We won’t be wrong again,” he told her, and the world fell into darkness.

  Seven

  MADOC

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN the palace was quiet, Madoc snuck out.

  A tray of food had been delivered earlier—crunchy bread and charred lamb—and though the aroma alone had been enough to make his mouth water and his stomach clench in hunger, he’d barely touched it. His mind was still churning with all that had happened at the dock—and the handprint that had appeared on Anathrasa’s face when she’d struck him.

  He could have imagined it—a shadow, or a blush in her cheek from the heat. But when he’d been attacked by the guards, she’d doubled over in pain, as if she’d been hurt alongside him.

  There was something very strange going on, and he needed to find out what.

  Lifting the tray with one hand, he pulled open the door of his quarters—a lavish room, with a bed twice the size of any he’d slept in before. Two guards waited outside, and at the sound, they turned, bracing their weapons before them.

  Their tension moved over his skin like the legs of an insect. The need rose inside him to pull on it, to feed, but he held back. These soldiers were loyal to Anathrasa, and if she sensed he’d used soul energeia on them, what would she do to his family? To him?

  He needed to be very careful. To only use enough anathreia to sway their thoughts.

  “I can’t eat this.” The guards jumped back as he shoved the tray at them. “It’s rotten.”

  The knife he’d been given with his meal was tucked into his pocket. He didn’t want to use it, but knowing it was there made him feel slightly better.

  The younger guard, a woman with a scar on her jaw, looked to her gray-bearded partner and grimaced.

  “It looks fine to me,” she said.

  Madoc inhaled the smallest bit of their geoeia, hiding his sigh when it buzzed in his veins.

  Just a little. Just enough so that they would let him leave. Breathing in their energeia made it easier to use his own power, a give and take, an ebb and flow. His thoughts shot to the ship, to Tor telling him to reach inside himself and use his own soul for fuel, but he couldn’t focus on training exercises now. He had to figure out what was going on between himself and the Mother Goddess. And he needed to find Aera and Biotus so he could siphon off enough of their power to give to Ash.

  “Look at it.” He stepped closer, finding the man’s thoughts guarded by a hard layer of skepticism. The woman was easier to reach—her curiosity made her vulnerable, and he pressed an image into her mind.

  “Maggots!” She jolted back, cupping her hand to her nose. “They’re all over the meat!”

  “A trick.” The man examined the plate as Madoc’s hand slid subtly over the knife. If this guard attacked him, he would have to defend himself. “Anathrasa said he might try something. I don’t see any—”

  “Look closer.” Madoc pushed through the guard’s uncertainty to the senses beneath. His own anathreia swelled, soothing and hungry for more. The man blinked, then grimaced.

  “We’ll take this back to the kitchen,” the guard said. “Apologies, dominus. Our mistake.”

  Madoc nodded. He felt more in control than he had at the dock, when his anathreia had swirled inside him like a tempest. Maybe he’d been wrong to think he could tithe on his own soul to use his power. Maybe this was the way it had to be.

  He pushed the thought from his head as the two guards walked away.

  Keeping his steps quiet, he hurried down the breezeway in the opposite direction, staying close to the stone wall beneath the flickering sconces. The railing on his other side blocked a three-story fall to the courtyard below, where he’d been reunited earlier with his family. He hadn’t seen where they’d been taken, but he had a good guess it was to the rooms on the second floor, where two other guards now stood watch.

  He considered convincing them to abandon their post so he could have a word with Elias and Ilena, but he didn’t want to draw unneeded attention their way.

  Heart pounding, he made his way toward the stairs, jogging down the steps, then hiding in a shadow at the bottom as another guard walked by on his nightly rounds.

  Anathrasa was keeping them well contained in this wing of the palace. Still, she would have known what Madoc was capable of. He couldn’t help wondering if the ease of his escape was something she’d anticipated, even counted on.

  Maybe this was a test Anathrasa had set up to see if he’d run—to see if she could trust him. For all he knew, she could sense that he’d left just as she’d felt that slap across her cheek.

  He needed to find her and learn exactly what this connection between them entailed, but setting an intentional meeting would give her an opportunity to lie. If he could spy on her without alerting her to his presence, he might be able to gain valuable information for Ash and Hydra.

  Geoxus’s chambers had been in the northern wing of the palace, a tower that had fallen when he and Ignitus had fought. None of the rooms in this wing were grand enough for a goddess, and he didn’t see any servants, so she had to be in one of the chambers above the throne room.

  But as he set a course in that direction, he felt pulled another way, as if an invisible hook had caught his spine and was dragging him outside. Giving in to the strange sensation, he crept down a corridor lined with marble statues, remembering, with a chill, the way Geoxus had traveled through them. Now that Ash had his abilities, could she peer through stones the way he had? Could she come here, to Deimos, through the earth?

  The thought of seeing her now, even for a moment, made his burden of fear feel lighter.

  The hall opened to a marble staircase that descended into the palace gardens. From behind him came the scuffle of sandals—another guard, most likely—and Ma
doc rushed down the steps, ducking behind the stone railing. The pull was stronger now, unwieldy. His anathreia was responding to another call—coming to life without his bidding.

  He was certain it meant the Mother Goddess was close.

  When all was quiet, he continued on.

  The gardens were as peaceful as they were haunting. Crickets chirped in flower beds, while carriage-sized boulders that had fallen from the towers during the battle lay half embedded in the scorched earth. He stepped through a vine-laced trellis, through trees toppled, their roots ripped from the ground and now reaching toward the half-moon. Everywhere he looked was a reminder of the power that had been, and the power that had destroyed it.

  “Come closer, dear.”

  He froze at the woman’s voice, hair prickling on the back of his neck. Ahead, he could see two figures. He recognized Anathrasa immediately, dressed in a fine white gown, standing beside a white marble fountain. She was motioning to a servant, a girl no more than fifteen, who complied with her goddess’s will and knelt at her feet.

  Realizing with some relief that he hadn’t been seen, Madoc ducked behind a boulder, flattening himself against the cold, jagged stone. Dread sank into his chest, the only anchor to his anathreia, which continued to whirl inside in a strange, unsettling way—like a power he’d taken from someone else and was holding in his body.

  Anathrasa threw her head back, face turned toward the sky. She hadn’t looked his way. For all Madoc knew, she didn’t see him, but he could feel something happening. The quickening of blood in his veins. The rise of strength in his muscles.

  Soul energeia.

  She was tithing, and he could feel it.