Anathrasa had taken her igneia. She had taken Ash’s fire.
Her vision spun, seizing on the sandaled centurion feet standing nearby and—a lantern. Another. A third. Flickering and pulsingaround the stables, orange and red and hazy, delicate gold.
Ash shifted. Her fingers crawled across the straw, picking through stone and mud to reach for the igneia.
The lanterns didn’t heave toward her. The firelight didn’t waver.
Please.
She stretched, fingers bobbing.
Please. Mama.
A sob fell out of her mouth. It was as though her last, feeble memory of Char had snuffed out, plunging Ash into a desolate reality.
Her mother was gone.
Ashwas gone.
Everything she cared about. Everything she loved. Everything that made herher—it was all gone. What was left if she wasn’t Fire Divine? This shell of a girl, sobbing on the dusty stone floor.
The lanterns heaved at the blurred edges of her vision. The only thing remaining in her was something she had never done. Something she had shied from, feared, hated.
She looked at a lantern flame. Willed her vision to focus.
Ignitus.
Would he hear her if she prayed? She wasn’t Divine anymore. She was nothing.
“Ignitus,” she said out loud. “Ignitus, help me—”
A centurion hauled back and kicked her in the stomach. “Shut up! You, there—get a move on, will you? Gotta get this one locked up. Geoxus’s orders.”
Wheels rumbled across the stone, sending vibrations up Ash’sbody. She twisted, coughing blood down her chin, and saw a windowless, boxed carriage harnessed to two horses.
Her teeth chattered. Numbness prickled over her fingers, her toes, and her mind was starting to spiral. She was cold and tired—but she could not get into that carriage.
Ash drew in a breath and held it against the shivers that tried to break her apart.
“Get her up!” a centurion ordered.
Rough hands grabbed her arms. Ash went limp between the guards, her eyes on the transport, its open door showing a black abyss within.
If she got in there, she would never come out of the darkness. And she needed to beout.
Purpose surged through her, a thin rope she grabbed onto and held squirming to her chest.
She would stay out of that carriage. She would focus on nothing else.
The centurions dragged her forward a step.
There were four guards in these stables with her. It was likely that all of them were Earth Divine.
Ash’s head dipped between her shoulders and she saw a short sword at one centurion’s hip.
She let her body weight, what little remained, fall heavily.
The guards cursed. “What’d the Father God do to her?”
