At Petros, arms crossed, glaring at Madoc with the same smug superiority that had haunted Madoc all his life.
“Petros hurt you, didn’t he?” murmured Anathrasa. “He took your sister away.”
Madoc flinched. Petros hadn’t killed Cassia alone. Anathrasa had made it possible.
“He wanted to frighten you,” she said. “Great power comes from fear. He planned on taking the mother—he knew you were fond of her—but the girl got in the way. You remember... that day he came to ask about the street fights.”
Don’t listen, he told himself. But his anathreia was already swirling to life, and his throat was parched for a taste.
“He hurt her to incentivize you,” Anathrasa whispered. “She was begging for death in the end.”
Petros had taken Cassia because of him.
Petros had killed her because ofhim.
“What are you doing?” Petros now faced Anathrasa with his arms open, pleading. “Anathrasa, you condemn me? I have given you everything!”
Madoc’s hands were shaking. His jaw flexed. He could see Cassia’s face, twisted in pain.
A burning, poisonous anger raced down his limbs. His sister’s death demanded vengeance. Elias had known it. Elias had tried to act on it.
Now it came down to Madoc.
Petros’s arms dropped to his sides. A sneer curled his lips as he lifted his gaze from Anathrasa to Madoc.
Madoc tried to shove away the panic now blaring inside him, but memories were clawing to the surface. Things he didn’t speak about or even admit existed. He’d locked it all away, but it was spilling free now, like his anathreia, no longer able to be contained.
Madoc closed his eyes.
He was hungry. It was dark. He was in his bedroom, where his father had thrown him after he couldn’t lift a rock in the garden. He swept the dust and small bits of dirt into the center of the room with his hands and tried to move them. He tried and tried and tried, but he was still hungry, and it was still dark.
He was on the street. Starvation gnawed at his stomach, as if his belly button and spine were chafing together with nothing in between. He picked the pieces off fish bones that someone had thrown out. But a growling dog stole the carcass from him before he got enough.
Elias was at the table, spinning a clay bowl of broth lazily with the twist of his finger.You can have some if you can get it, he said. Madoc tried to pull the bowl his way with geoeia. He focused all his efforts. In the end, he slugged Elias in the shoulder, and the broth spilled on the floor, and they were both hungry.
Three brutes with rocks in their hands attacked him on his wayhome from the market.Pigstock, they called him. They stole the wheat he’d bought for Ilena. The beads he’d gotten for Cassia. They kicked him and pummeled him until his vision went dark. That night, he heard Ilena tell Elias never to leave Madoc alone again. He wasn’t strong like them. He wasn’t safe. And he was ashamed.
He lifted the heavy stones at the quarry. He hoisted them overhead again, and again, while Elias mixed the mortar. If he couldn’t have geoeia, he would be so strong that no one would challenge him. The other Undivine laughed.Don’t bother. You’ll never be enough.
But he’d tried anyway. He’d taken the beatings in the arena while Elias threw geoeia from the safety of the crowd. He’d done what he could to pay their debts, to protect the family.
In the end, they were right. It was never enough.
Hewas never enough.
But now he would be. Now he had anathreia—not a single energy, but six combined.
“There it is,” the Mother Goddess coaxed. “Now I want you to open your eyes and take what you need from Petros.”
Madoc’s eyes opened. Hunger surged inside him, teeth as sharp as knives. A buzzing filled his ears.
Behind the Mother Goddess, Petros paled. “He needs a tithe. Very well. We’ll find another. These guards will do fine.”
At the flick of Geoxus’s wrist, the centurions holding Petros back from Anathrasa stepped away. Not even Petros’s personal attendants were willing to cross the floor to assist him.
Petros stalked toward Geoxus. “I’m his father. This will never work!”
Madoc raised his hands. His anger had an appetite, and he was done starving.
