by Sara Raasch
They descended the rest of the stairs in silence, and when they passed the guards in the main foyer, they met no resistance. Madoc’s body led Elias toward the back of the palace, to where the old throne room had once sat. The damage there had been cleared away, leaving another stairway to the floors beneath that had been unearthed in the battle.
Down they went, one twisting set of steps at a time, until the green glow of phosphorescent stones became a beacon in the dark, and the smell of piss and death made even his controlled body gag.
“What is this place?” Elias asked, his voice echoing off the stone walls. It was too silent. Eerie and cold.
Madoc’s voice answered, “The palace dungeon. Geoxus tithed his favorite gladiators here.”
“You mean the ones Anathrasa used to suck the energeia out of,” Elias muttered.
The stones lit two Deiman guards with a pale green. There was something wrong about their faces that shook Madoc within the confines of his own body. An unnatural paleness to their skin that highlighted the spiderweb of veins beneath. A blankness in their stare, as if they’d lived so long in the dark that they had lost the use of their eyes.
Behind them stretched a circular room, the walls lined with cells that were packed with people, all standing, all still. But Madoc’s gaze was drawn to the center of the floor, where, between an elaborate wooden stretching rack and simple human-sized well of sand, sat a glass sphere. It was the size of Madoc and Elias’s old bedroom in the quarter, and made of thick, marbled red glass. Two Air Divine guarded it on either side, watching carefully as Madoc approached.
Look inside, Anathrasa whispered. He could feel her excitement coursing through his veins.
Madoc leaned closer to the glass and found a boy inside, not much older than Danon. At first, he appeared to be sleeping on his back, but as Madoc shifted to a place where the glass was clearer, he was horrified to find that boy’s blue-tinted lips were parted, and his small chest was rising in quick, shallow breaths. Strange clothes covered his taut body, a fabric woven of yellowed reeds and dead leaves, and dry, brittle branches seemed to sprout from his open palms.
The boy couldn’t breathe, Madoc realized, revolted to the core despite his body’s apathy. The glass box prevented air from getting in, or maybe kept it out. He glanced at the Lak guards, sickened by their now smug expressions.
She had her eye on Florus from the beginning, Anathrasa told him. When they were young, she used to time how long he could stay awake while she siphoned all the breath from his body. See if he would faint when she thinned the air in the room. The case was her idea. There’s something about the weak ones that excites her.
Madoc did not have to ask the question to know who Anathrasa spoke of.
Aera.
She was not the flippant, carefree sister Biotus had abused. She was maniacal, creating a god-proof torture chamber for this boy—Florus—while she flirted and toyed with Madoc. She’d probably only targeted him because she had sensed the same weakness in him that she had seen in the plant god. The act in the library had been nothing more than a game.
He was disgusted. With Aera. With himself. A sudden rage burst in him at the thought that this small god had hurt Ash in Itza. He wanted to lift his own arms and shatter the glass cage.
He couldn’t.
“The Mother Goddess has ordered the prisoners be brought to her and the other gods at port so they can be loaded onto the ships,” one of the strange Deiman guards said. “Should we bring this one, too?”
Panic traced the edges of Madoc’s control. He turned to find the guard standing near Elias. The man’s posture was not threatening, but there was something terrifying about his detachment, and Madoc willed Elias not to do anything rash. Now that they were here, he didn’t want to let his brother out of his sight. Not with a god locked in an airtight box. Not when he didn’t know where these ships were going, or why these prisoners looked so strange.
You’ll find out soon enough, my son, Anathrasa told him.
His gaze turned to the cells, taking in the prisoners in their silent lines. They were dressed in plain tunics—the kind that he had once worn beneath his gladiator armor. Pale sand dusted their legs and sandals, and bloody scrapes marred their exposed skin.
Not even the closest turned their head to acknowledge him.
Madoc trembled in the void. He recognized a woman in the cell to their right—her short hair shaved up one side, her hands as big as a blacksmith’s. She’d been a champion in the celebration event. She was the one who had saved the boy who’d been shot in the shoulder.
These were all the winners from that event in the grand arena.
He didn’t have to count the bodies to know there were a hundred people down here. Not just Deimans, but some Laks and Cenhelmians too. Judging by their blank expressions, their minds had been turned like those of the servants upstairs, but there was something more unsettling about them that he couldn’t place. He longed to use his anathreia to reach out to their souls for answers, but it, too, was beyond his control.
“What is this?” Elias had regained his voice, and his tone was low and trembling. “Is she down here? Mother?” He pushed past the guard to Madoc’s side. “Ilena Metaxa!” The words bounced off the hard ceiling.
No one answered.
“Keep him here until tomorrow’s match,” Madoc told the guard, motioning to Elias. “There’s no time to turn him now, and we don’t want the people thinking that we’re fighting prisoners in the tournament.”
Turn him? Madoc clawed his own mind for answers. Where are these people going?
Elias spun toward Madoc, but just as he was raising his hands, Madoc breathed a quiet “No,” and Elias’s arms locked to his sides. He looked down at them, baffled at first, as Tor had been on the ship when Madoc had finally controlled his anathreia. In a breath, his confusion slid into terror.
“Don’t let Anathrasa do this,” Elias pleaded. “You can fight her. We need you to fight her!”
The guard gripped Elias by the shoulders and dragged him toward the cell.
“You can’t leave me here,” Elias said, his feet pedaling over the damp stone floor. “Brother, please!”
Madoc felt as if a foot were pressing down on his throat. He could barely breathe.
“Don’t worry,” Anathrasa said through his mouth. “You will not be here for long.”
Sixteen
ASH
DAYS AFTER ASH got back to the Apuit Islands, Hydra’s palace was awash in preparations, littered with weapons and armor.
Tor arranged for a messenger to go to Igna in order to summon Kulan allies to supplement their ranks. He did it without Ash knowing, and when she told him she could have traveled there on her own, he said only, “It’s done,” and walked away.
He hadn’t really spoken to her since the chamber in Florus’s palace. There was too much going on for Ash to wonder why he was upset—in the wake of Florus’s abduction, his Plant Divine army had converged on the islands too. Ash fought to ignore her kick of revulsion at having them here, but to the Itzans’ credit, none of them seemed to wish her any ill will. Perhaps none of them even knew Florus had had her imprisoned.
Or maybe they did, and they all feared her now.
Ash reveled in that thought.
Whatever the truth, three different types of Divine mortals—water, plant, and fire—were converging, and Hydra estimated they would be ready to attack Crixion within a week. The plan was that she would keep the Mother Goddess busy head-on while Ash, Tor, and a small group of Kulans infiltrated the city. There, they would find Madoc and hopefully get the aereia and bioseia Ash needed to complete her powers.
“What if Madoc hasn’t been able to get the other energeias? What if we can’t find him?” Tor stood at a table in the throne room with Taro, Spark, and a handful of Hydra’s closest advisers, now makeshift generals. He angled the question at them, but it was truly for Ash and Hydra across the room, training.
Again.
Ash had been doing little but training for the past five days, both with Hydra and with various Plant Divine soldiers, to learn how to use her floreia. Ash was now deflecting attacks with stones, water, and plants almost as efficiently as she used fire.
Ash panted as the most recent swell of water dissipated into the ice floor, her hands on her knees, sweat sticking her Kulan reed armor to her back. “We’ll find him,” she told Tor. “I’ll find him. I’ll spy through every flame in Crixion if I have to.”
“What if Anathrasa figures us out and hides him somewhere without flame or stone?” Taro added. “We know it’s possible now.”
The memory of Florus’s prison box slashed into Ash, raw and visceral, and she channeled it into a spike of vines—because she could. Because she was capable.
She formed a wall of writhing greenery to counter a wave that Hydra sent toward her, the two crashing in the middle of their makeshift training ground.
Ash hated that she couldn’t keep track of Madoc even now. Hydra had tried to check on him through a water bowl after Ash had gotten back, but Anathrasa had dumped it and it had been clear to Hydra that the Mother Goddess had sensed her presence.
They had to be careful. Cautious. They couldn’t fling their energeias around Crixion until they absolutely needed to.
Ash lost her hold on the vine wall. The stems snapped in half and Hydra’s water shot through, blasting Ash in the face with frigid spray and cutting beads of half-frozen salt water. She faltered backward and landed on her rear, sputtering in the shock of the water.
She wiped a hand down her face and eyed Hydra across the room. A sheen of sweat on the water goddess’s face was the only sign that she was working as hard as Ash, her dark hair hanging in tangles around her shoulders.
“Teach me to listen through fire more strongly,” Ash told Hydra. “I’ve done it a little, but if I can perfect it and listen through stones too, I can make sure no place in Crixion is out of my reach.”
“Ash.” Tor’s voice was low in warning. “Don’t stretch yourself too thin. I’m not sure I like the idea of you using these god powers more.”
“That’s not really your decision, is it?” Ash shot at him.
The room hung for a moment in tense silence.
Hydra squinted between Tor and Ash. “Maybe we’ve trained enough for today, huh?”
Only then did Ash note the fading sunlight and how a chandelier had flared to life with bioluminescent algae. None of these days of training had left her tired—she always felt like she could keep fighting, and learning, and growing. It was as if floreia had given her limitless being. Or maybe it was the god powers in the igneia and geoeia becoming more a part of her.
Making her more of a god.
A swell of frustration made Ash shoot to her feet.
She’d been suppressing these desires for days. She’d been training with Hydra in energeia over and over and over because she could see the tension in Tor, Taro, and Spark every time she mentioned what else she could do now.
“No. We haven’t done enough. We won’t have done enough until I’m a match for the Mother Goddess,” Ash said.
Something unfathomably dark overtook Tor’s face. Ash had seen pain like that from him before, just after Char had died, and Ash had become Ignitus’s champion, and her life had been upended.
He was afraid for her.
This was different, though, couldn’t he see that? She wasn’t vulnerable like Char had been.
She couldn’t die.
“All right,” Hydra said slowly. “We can start with listening through fire, since it’s more natural for you.”
“No,” Tor said.
Ash ignored him and faced Hydra. She eyed Ash, questioning, and when Ash prodded her along, Hydra rolled her eyes.
“Focus on any sources of igneia around you. Stretch your mind, shut off distractions, and open yourself up to it like when you travel. But it’s less active, and more—”
“Like praying,” Ash guessed. Like the times she’d prayed to Ignitus throughout her life, few though they were, or the times when her mother and Tor had frantically snuffed any candles to prevent Ignitus from hearing them. Praying was equal parts fear and reverence.
Hydra pursed her lips. “I suppose so. It makes sense, since that’s what the mortals are doing on their end.”
Ash was already closing her eyes in order to focus.
Fire. Fire like the ones that raged in temples to Ignitus, the orange flames flickering off the glass and obsidian buildings in Igna. The smell of the various fuels burning—sour, sweet, oil and wax and incense. She thought of the—
A scream seared through her mind.
She grabbed her temples, staggering, and felt Hydra’s hands on her arms.
Another scream overpowered the first. The words were tangled and begging:
“Help us! Ignitus, hear us!”
“God of fire, save us—”
“Help me!”
And then a voice, strong yet quaking, one she recognized, whispering under his breath as if he was praying in between bouts of giving orders: Brand.
“Ignitus, I know you aren’t here anymore. I don’t know what else to do—yes, yes, send reinforcements to the southern harbor. Fire god, see us here. Protect us in your homeland and—not those! There are full storehouses of explosives off the main road—”
More screams. More desperate prayers for aid.
“Ash!”
Coldness washed over her body.
Hydra was standing before her—she’d clearly done something to the hydreia in Ash’s blood to yank her out of the vision, and Ash came back to herself, gasping, nearly sobbing.
“Tor—Tor!” She whirled, but he wasn’t across the room anymore—he was next to her, and he grabbed her outstretched hands. “Kula. Someone’s attacking Kula.”
Tor’s face went gray. “What? Who?”
“Who else?”
Anathrasa. It had to be. That was why Ash and Tor had parted ways with Brand, so he could help restructure now-defenseless Kula. But clearly Anathrasa had wasted no time in staking her claim to Ignitus’s country, just like she’d wasted no time in trying to abduct Hydra and Florus.
They should have foreseen this. Of course Anathrasa would strike out at Kula, even if it had no god. Because it had no god. She would strip the world of anyone who opposed her or she would force them into submission.
With Kula’s Fire Divine warriors under her control, Anathrasa would have four of the six countries at her disposal. And Ash, Anathrasa’s only weakness, would be helpless not to do anything the Mother Goddess demanded if she had Kula at her mercy.
“I have to go.” Ash was already trying to refocus on traveling. “I have to—”
“Ash, wait!” Tor grabbed her arm. “You have to trust that Brand and the other Kulans can hold off any threat.”
She wrenched out of Tor’s grip. “What if they can’t? Igna isn’t equipped for all-out war. No city in this world is! They have no defense.”
Hydra’s eyes swam with concern. “Tor’s right, Ash,” she whispered, and Ash hated the sympathy in her voice. “Our armies move out in two days—you have to think of the bigger battle. But—” She glanced at Tor. “We could move out early. Go to Igna’s aid.”
“How long will that take?” Ash snapped. Her panic hadn’t diminished, even as Tor and Hydra seemed to be settling into this plan. “Days, at least? I can be there instantly!”
“Ash.” Tor lurched closer to her. He had rarely taken this voice with her, one of disapproval and command. “It’s decided. Too much is at stake.”
“I can fix this! I’m immortal.”
Saying it ached. Ash hated that it ached; she hated the fear that squirmed in her chest at the memory of Florus and his prison and his razor leaves.
And because of that fear, she would act. Goddesses weren’t afraid.
“Your mother thought she was invincible too,” Tor said.
Ash flinched, jarred out of her offense long
enough to wheeze a gasping breath. “This is different. You know this is different.”
“Is it?” Tor’s voice had taken on a brittle quality. Was he close to tears? “Ignitus pushed Char just as ferociously as you are pushing yourself. You don’t rest, Ash. You don’t slow down. You don’t let anyone help you.”
“You mean I don’t let you help me,” Ash shot back. She couldn’t acknowledge what Tor had said—was she just like Char? A plaything of the gods, trained to exhaustion, used as bait to foster bloodshed? “And what about you? You sent that messenger off to Kula without even consulting me. I’m supposed to save the world, but you still act like I’m a child who has to live with the decisions you make.”
“Someone has to look out for you,” Tor said through his teeth. His eyes shot to Hydra, accusing. “Someone has to make sure you take time to breathe.”
“I can’t afford to,” Ash managed, a whisper. “This is my fate now. I shouldn’t even be alive! Do you realize that? I should have died in that arena in Crixion. This life I’m living isn’t mine.”
That was where her fear was coming from. Her self-loathing. Her manic need to keep moving: her life, her body, her powers, weren’t hers.
Tor was right. She was just like Char, a vessel used by gods. She would push herself, push and push, until nothing was left and the world was saved.
She spun away, pressing the back of her hand to her lips. “If we fail to defeat Anathrasa, I can at least fail knowing that Kula is secure enough to fend her off. This isn’t—”
“Stop.” Tor barked the word. It echoed off the high, empty ceiling of the throne room, reverberating into silence when Ash just stood there, gaping at him.
“This is what I’m trying to prevent, Ash,” he told her. “This war we’re fighting will ask too much of you, but you don’t have to bleed yourself dry, because you aren’t the only one fighting it! Your mother never forgot that she had a team supporting her—you, and me, and Taro and Spark, and others who were there to catch her and let her rest. She would be ashamed of the way you’re behaving.”