She did just that, her skull pummeling Madoc’s face. He let out a shockedoomphand his grip slipped, enough to give her room to free her arm, which she bent upward and slammed into his nose. Bone connected with a solid crunch, and Madoc’s grip released.
Ash was the one who held on to his arms now. She landed on the sand, dropped her weight, and heaved forward, propelling Madoc up,over, and down in a brutal, jarring flip. The effort left her breathless and sticky with sweat.
He slammed hard against the ground, grunting with the force. Ash doubled back to plan her next move—but Madoc whirled, kicking her feet out from under her.
Ash crashed down on top of him. For a moment, they were a tangle of limbs, too many arms, too many fingers. She scrambled, trying to aim a fist at his now-bloodied face, but he dodged it by grabbing her waist and flipping them both.
Madoc landed on top of her with his thighs pinning her arms to her sides.
Ash’s instincts screamed in fury and revolt. Sweat glossed Madoc’s short black curls to his temples, and blood poured from where she’d smashed her elbow into his nose. He lifted one fist back in the threat of a punch, the muscles bunching in his arms, his bare chest a sculpted illustration of Deiman might.
He looked like the gladiators depicted in mosaics and sculptures. Something a god would point at and tell his children,This is what you should aspire to be.
“Surrender,” Madoc ordered gruffly.
Ash’s eyes flicked up to where her god watched, but she couldn’t see him over the crowd. He was there, though. He was always there.
Stavos was there too. She could feel his eyes burning her skin.
“You’ll have to kill me,” she told Madoc. She would not lose unless she was incapacitated or dead. Ignitus would accept nothing less—he would barely accept that.
Madoc looked momentarily horrified at the line she had drawn:victory or death. He raised his arm higher, but there was a flash in his black eyes that might have been fear. His chest beat in and out in gasping breaths, skin glistening with exertion.
“Show the Kulan dancer her place!” Stavos called. The crowd answered with barks.
Madoc grimaced. He glared up at Stavos.
Ash might not have entirely understood Taro’s joke about the Port of Iov’s lighthouse looking like a man’slighthouse, but she knew that the most sensitive part of her opponent was now directly over her chest.
She bucked her hips to make room and spun onto her side, thrusting her shoulder up into Madoc’s crotch.
Seven
Madoc
MADOC REACTED BY instinct. His hand sliced down to the inside of the fighter’s shoulder, stopping her just before she hit the mark. The heat from her skin immediately scalded his palm and shot through his muscles and the small bones of his hand and wrist. Even without energeia, she was burning. If she had hit him where she’d intended, he’d just as soon be dead.
The girl bucked her hips, throwing his weight forward. His hands slapped against the sand on either side of her head, but his thighs gripped harder. Their faces were close now, close enough that he could feel her hot puff of breath on his jaw and see her smoldering eyes pinch with fury. His shadow cut across her shoulders and chest, highlighting the taut swells of muscle and the wells just above her collarbone. Blood from his lip dripped in a splash on her cheek, sliding down her jaw like a painted tear.
She was a trained warrior. She was better than him, faster than him. She moved like flames, even without the fire energy she so surelyloved. If they’d been allowed to use energeia, he never would have stood a chance. But without, their match had come down to physical size, and he had that, if nothing else, over her.
Desperation had her writhing beneath him, her arms flexing within the grip of his knees. It pulled at him like too much gravity. It warred with the roar of the crowd, and the demands ringing through his head.
Fight.
Win.
Do not shame your god.
He hadn’t anticipated being chosen for the Honored Eight, but now that he had been, he couldn’t waste this opportunity. If he made it to the first match—the firstrealmatch—and won, he would bring home a thousand gold pieces. Add that to the training money and they’d have most of what they needed to pay off Cassia’s indenture.
“Get up, Ash!” called a male voice from the edge of the fighting pit. “Getup!”
Ash.Was that her name? It must be, because the girl’s eyes rounded and her efforts renewed, every muscle jerking in a frenzied attempt to break free.
Madoc held fast, wrongness tearing through him as he dropped his forearm to the girl’s—Ash’s—throat, careful not to press down too hard. His jaw tightened as the heels of her sandals pushed through the sand behind him. In his mind, he heard Ilena telling him not to use his fists to hurt people, and he swallowed a new gulp of shame.
“Surrender,” he pleaded. “We can end this.”
