by Sara Raasch
He knew what would come next. The girl’s power would be sucked out of her body. She would die, like Cassia had died. Like so many others must have for Anathrasa to look as youthful and strong as she did now.
Horror raked through him. He felt the urge to call out a warning, to tell her to run. But if he did, Anathrasa would know he wasn’t loyal. The Metaxas might be punished. He wouldn’t be able to get close to Aera or Biotus.
Anathrasa wasn’t the woman Madoc had lived below in the stonemason’s quarter. She was already stronger, which meant she was a threat to Ash, even with the gods’ energeias.
Every moment, his mother was growing more dangerous.
In a new wave of panic, a cold sweat dripped between his shoulder blades. If he could feel Anathrasa tithing on a Deiman woman, she would very likely feel him taking the power from a god.
He couldn’t think of that now. He only knew he had to stop this.
Think.
He needed to create a distraction. To turn the girl’s mind or alert a guard to interrupt. But his anathreia was still rising, whipping through him, and he couldn’t direct it anywhere.
He couldn’t stop her.
But he might be able to hurt her.
Silently, he slid the knife free from his belt and sliced a clean line across the palm of his hand. The sudden rush of pain had him gritting his teeth. Had his power roaring in his veins.
A shrill cry filled the night. As Madoc watched, Anathrasa stumbled into the edge of the fountain. She gripped her hand against her chest, a blossom of red staining the front of her gown.
It had worked.
Somehow, he and Anathrasa were connected. She’d bled when he cut himself. He’d found a way to hurt her.
Had he found a way to kill her?
The girl leaped up, forcing the dark thought from his mind. Sliding the knife back into his belt, Madoc locked his bleeding fist against his thigh. His heartbeat pounded in his temples. He hadn’t thought of what would happen after he’d distracted Anathrasa, only that stopping her might save the girl.
But her fate had been sealed as soon as she’d stepped into this courtyard. To Anathrasa, mortals were only fuel. All he’d done was delay the inevitable.
“Goddess, are you all right?” The girl was terrified—more so than before. Her hands were clasped before her.
Anathrasa didn’t respond. She rushed toward the palace, the girl on her heels begging for forgiveness.
Madoc jumped as a hand closed around his shoulder. He spun to find Elias crouched behind him, one finger pressed to his lips in an order to be silent.
Madoc’s muscles tensed. What was Elias doing here? It wasn’t safe. The Mother Goddess might try to tithe on him next.
Elias motioned toward the palace, and Madoc followed him in silence. He thought Elias meant to go back inside, but he skirted around the outside of the building, running to the back of the stables, where Madoc had once taken Ash after the ball so that they could sneak away.
They’d never made it past the gates.
Elias stopped and, breathing hard, leaned against the back of the barn, sinking into the shadows on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Madoc asked when his heart finally settled.
“Following you,” Elias said. “You’re not the only one who can sneak around this place.”
Madoc didn’t like this. It was one thing for him to risk Anathrasa’s wrath. Another for Elias, who hadn’t signed up for any of this.
“I made a hole in the floor of our room,” Elias continued. “Now. You want to tell me what that was all about?”
He didn’t know if Elias was referring to his spying or to the cut on his hand. It occurred to him that Elias didn’t even know what Anathrasa had been attempting to do.
“She’s tithing,” Madoc said. “Feeding on energeia. It’s making her stronger.”
“I noticed. The old bat pulled me out of prison and said you were coming. That if we so much as tried to run you would suffer. She looked . . . healthy.” He said the word like a curse. “I wasn’t talking about that part,” he added.
Anger spilled through Madoc’s veins, mingling with the realization of what Elias meant.
He unfurled his palm, showing the already-scabbed line where he’d cut himself.
“Somehow, we’re connected,” he said. “When I get hurt, she gets hurt.”
Elias’s eyes widened. “What happens if she gets hurt?”
Madoc shrugged. He supposed the same principle worked in reverse, and it worried him to think that at any moment he might start bleeding as a result of her own experimentation.
“And if you die?” Elias pressed, his voice raw.
Madoc grasped his hands tightly. He didn’t know the answer. If he could end the world’s suffering with his own sacrifice—if he could save Ash’s life by trading his—he had no choice but to do it. But he didn’t know for certain that their connection went that deep. Anathrasa was still a goddess, after all, and had lived thousands of years. If he died and she survived, he would be of no help to Ash or their cause.
“I’m still trying to figure out how it works,” he said.
“That’s why you’re here? To figure this out?” Elias didn’t sound pleased with this plan.
“No. The connection—that’s new,” Madoc said. “I’m here because we found a way to beat her. I just need to get Aera’s and Biotus’s energeias first. Have you seen them?”
“They’re here for the newest round of bloodshed,” Elias said. “Aera eats men like us for breakfast. And good luck with Biotus. His arms are as thick as your chest.”
Madoc scowled. He’d seen the god of animals from afar during wars between Deimos and Cenhelm and recalled thinking he was formidable. If there was a way to draw the energeia from him without a physical confrontation, that would be ideal.
“You’re serious,” Elias said, as if he’d been waiting for the punch line of a joke. “I heard rumors in prison about what had happened at the palace. I thought they were just stories.”
Quickly, Madoc explained everything that had happened since they’d parted. The battle with Geoxus and Ignitus, how Ash had killed a god. The run through the city and the fight outside the ice blockade at the Apuit Islands. Their plan to make Ash strong enough to defeat Anathrasa.
“She can hold the powers of the gods within her.” He pictured her standing in Hydra’s throne room, water pouring from her hands. “She’s going to use them to beat Anathrasa.”
Elias considered this for a long minute, the crickets chirping in the grass around them.
“So . . .” Elias pulled a long piece of grass from the ground and wound it around his finger. “You came all the way back here for a girl?”
Madoc jabbed him in the ribs. “I came back to save the world, you idiot.”
“Well,” said Elias. “You’re in deep.”
Madoc was quiet, remembering the feel of Ash’s skin, and the hitch of her sigh. The taste of sellenroot that had wound into their kiss.
The way he’d failed her on the ship with Anathrasa. The way he’d accidentally bound himself to his mother, making him unsure if he could even help Ash now without Anathrasa knowing.
Doubt weighed on him, slick and heavy.
He shook it off, changing the subject.
“Where’s Cassia?” Her name brought a tension to his chest, and a heaviness between them.
“Anathrasa let me take her to the fields outside the city,” Elias said. “Near an orange tree.”
She’d always liked oranges.
“I put a stone on her grave for you. A big, ugly one, because it reminded me of you.”
Madoc gave a watery chuckle. “Thanks for that.”
Elias sighed, then rested his forehead on Madoc’s shoulder. “I missed you, brother.”
Madoc only nodded, because a knot in his throat made it impossible to speak.
Elias lifted his head, then pushed off the ground. He extended a hand toward Madoc and helped him up.
>
“Anathrasa’s not taking any more of my family,” he said, like a man twice his age. “If draining two more gods is how we take her down, you can count on my help.”
Madoc stood, his lungs too big within his ribs.
But as they headed back toward the palace, he couldn’t help thinking of his strange connection with the Mother Goddess and the unscratchable itch on his soul that told him that Anathrasa had not survived hundreds of years on tithes alone without considering just how she would exact her revenge.
They had to be ready for anything.
Madoc woke to a breeze blowing across his skin. It carried a soft, clean scent, like freshly laundered clothes, and behind his closed eyes, he saw the rocky western outlet of the Nien River, where everyone in the quarter went to wash their dusty tunics and robes. He sighed, thinking of how he had once carried the heavy, waterlogged basket home for Ilena, and how, after she’d hung the pieces to dry on the line, he and Elias would fling stones at them for target practice.
A high giggle made his eyes pop open.
There was a woman sitting on his bed.
Startled, he scrambled to the head of the mattress, dragging the covers over his naked chest.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said with a smile. “You had sweet dreams, I trust?”
She was as small as Ilena, with delicate curves and long hair like spun sunshine. Her dress—if that was what it was called—was pale blue, a single braid of fabric over her left shoulder that spread to a thin sheath over her breasts and ended just below the crux of her thighs.
His eyes widened involuntarily, and then his brain caught up with him.
The woman before him wasn’t a woman at all, but a goddess whose likeness he had seen in a painting during the last war Deimos had had with Lakhu.
Aera.
Instantly, the power in him swelled, all gnashing teeth and sharp hunger—a response to the raw, god energeia surrounding her. His anathreia was reckless and primal, everything Tor had tried to teach him to control, and stole Madoc’s breath. His gaze flicked to the three guards behind her, in the same small, wispy skirts. They were whispering to each other and ogling him in a way that made him very uncomfortable.
“So you’re him,” she said, her voice breathy and high, her pink lips parting around the words. His eyes lowered, but there was nowhere to look that he couldn’t see skin. Bare shoulders, and wrists, and fingers, and legs. “The mortal son I’ve heard so much about.”
He thought of Ash’s legs, wrapped around his. Her hands splaying on his chest.
“Madoc,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. “Can I help you with something, goddess?”
“I can think of one or two things,” said one of her guards with a quirk of her brow.
Madoc cleared his throat.
Aera leaned closer, her hand brushing Madoc’s bare shoulder, teasing the swell of muscle. He had the distinct impression that he was being measured in some way. Evaluated.
“Anathrasa thinks you can help us,” Aera said. “I hope, for your sake, she isn’t wrong.”
He nearly choked. Anathrasa didn’t trust him. He’d been met on the docks by half the legion. His room was guarded, however lightly. His own family was being held prisoner.
But the glimmer in her eyes was filled with promise.
If he betrayed them, she would kill him.
His mind reeled. He could take some of Aera’s power—if he was subtle, she might not even notice. He could hold it inside him until he took Biotus’s energeia, then he’d find the Apuitian sailors and speed back to the islands.
This was what he’d come to do. This was what they needed to defeat Anathrasa.
But he thought of the cut on his hand and the blood that had risen on hers. Even if Aera couldn’t sense what he was doing, would Anathrasa know? Would she feel it?
His family would be held accountable for his treason. Drained like Cassia. Killed.
But if he couldn’t take Aera’s and Biotus’s power and give it to Ash, what good was he?
Panic pressed his teeth together as Aera slid closer on the mattress. The breeze that he’d felt before had come with her, a movement of the still air, threatening to calm his ragged senses.
“I came to wake you,” she said, glancing out the window, to the gray sky now growing bright with dawn. “We’re leaving soon.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
She rose and strode toward the door, her bare feet making no sound against the floor.
“To the arena,” she called. “The gladiator games are about to begin.”
She disappeared out the door, leaving him gaping in her wake.
Half an hour later, a carriage took him from the palace into the heart of the city, where people were already gathering on street corners and heading toward the arena. With a lurch, he remembered how fans had painted his name on their bodies when the gladiators had rolled through town. How girls had offered to meet him after a match. It was a game to them, just as it was a game to the gods.
Anathrasa’s words echoed through his head: I don’t suppose you’re here for the festivities. Had she been talking about this? Elias had said the gods were here for the newest round of bloodshed, but Madoc had thought he’d meant the attack from Hydra and Florus, not gladiator fights.
He was almost glad his family had been left behind at the palace. Still, he didn’t like being separated from them. The fact that they hadn’t been invited today made him worry what was happening to them in his absence.
Sick with anticipation, Madoc leaned toward the window, breathing in a city that still reeked of smoke. It was better than inhaling whatever intoxicating scent floated around Aera.
He stole a glance at her, laughing at something one of the guards on her right had said. They fit together like woven strands. Two women on her left, another on her right. Geoxus’s guards had always been solemn and cold, but these warriors clung close to their goddess, as if to make a shield with their bodies.
Madoc couldn’t pick her energeia out from the rest if he tried.
“Who will be participating in these games? Hydra and Florus haven’t sent anyone to fight, have they?” He tried to keep his voice steady, but nerves were cresting inside him.
Was Ash here? He wasn’t ready. He’d been in Crixion for a night.
He wasn’t even sure that Aera hadn’t drawn him away from the palace to murder him.
“Don’t you think you’d notice if Hydra and Florus had arrived?” she said, laughing at something another guard whispered. They all looked at Madoc in a way that made him feel very awkward, as if he were wearing a lot less than the fine white toga that had been delivered to his room just after Aera’s departure this morning. It reminded him of Anathrasa’s gown last night, and he hoped that had been a deliberate choice the Mother Goddess had made. Whether she knew he’d been responsible for the cut on her hand or not, he hoped she still wanted him close.
The carriage slowed, then turned onto a narrow path that led to the gladiator entrance beneath the stands. Madoc had once ridden with Lucius and Elias here before he’d fought Jann, and before that, when he’d first met Ash face-to-face. That all seemed a lifetime ago now.
“Then which gladiators are fighting?” he asked, frustrated by her vague answers. “Earth Divine? Your Air Divine?”
His gut twisted at the thought that he might be made to fight. Was that what she’d meant when she’d said that Anathrasa had thought he could help them?
In that moment, he wished he’d never come home.
Aera registered his tone and met his gaze, her sky-blue eyes bright with amusement.
“Deimos. Lakhu. Cenhelm. We’ll hardly stand a chance against Hydra’s fleet next month with the city in shambles and half its people moping around, crying for their beloved god of earth.” She walked her fingers over the bare knee of one of her guards as the carriage pulled under the archway, into the dusty belly of the massive stone structure. “We needed to raise an army. And wha
t better way to determine the best fighters than by a trial on the sands of my brother’s grand arena? Imagine it! No more elite gladiators—any Divine citizen can join the games, man, woman, child. We’ll let them all fight, won’t that be wonderful? And with a force made of the strongest mortals to subdue the rest, the world will be ours.”
Horror rippled through him as the carriage pulled to a stop. Anathrasa was sending Deimans into the arena—children included—to determine the strongest fighters for her army in the coming war against Hydra and Florus. These weren’t gladiators, they were common citizens. They would die, and if he tried to stop it, Anathrasa would punish him, and he wouldn’t be able to do what he needed to in order to help Ash defeat her.
As he got out, the thunder of footsteps echoed from the seats above them, scratching Madoc’s raw nerves. He could already hear the familiar cheers from the audience within.
He stuffed down his revulsion. He had to keep to the plan.
Aera. Biotus. Ash.
He needed to make Ash powerful enough to destroy the Mother Goddess, and to do that he needed to get close to the gods Anathrasa had sided with.
Bile rose in his throat as he and Aera were met by a team of centurions and led down a hallway. They traveled up a long, narrow flight of stairs lit by the phosphorescent green stones Geoxus had once installed instead of torches, to keep Ignitus’s gladiators from accessing igneia. At the top, they crossed a wide corridor and came to a brightly lit box, already brimming with people.
Madoc stumbled as he crossed the threshold. The last time he’d been here had been with his gladiator trainer, Lucius, when he’d wanted to beg Geoxus for Cassia’s freedom, and had instead been blocked by Petros.
He’d failed that day with Geoxus, but he was no longer a trembling boy who believed his god could save him. Mortals had no choice but to save themselves.
He spotted her, sitting on a white marble throne in the center of the box, surrounded by servants and fawning nobles. Her gown was white, like last night, and fastened around one shoulder by a silver circle.
If she noticed his arrival, she didn’t show it. She took a drink of wine from a goblet and continued her conversation. But he could feel the strange pull of power in his veins and wondered if she, too, could sense him drawing near.