“If I had geoeia, I could build a staircase down the side of the palace,” Ash had told Char on a previous visit. She couldn’t remember how old she had been—young enough to still dream idly of escape. “We could run off into Crixion before Ignitus even knew we were gone!”
Char had been lying on her back under the silky sheets, and Ashhad watched her mother stare up at the canopy’s translucent drapes. “And where would we run to?” The question sounded broken at first, a sad reminder of the reality of their lives. But Char flipped onto her side and gave Ash a conspiratorial grin. “If we could live anywhere, where would you go, my love?”
“The Apuit Islands!” Ash snuggled closer, planting her head under Char’s chin and fixing her arms around her mother’s waist. “I want to see a country that’s more water than land.”
Char hummed, the noise vibrating in Ash’s ears. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to go to Itza? I heard they have a type of flower that’s the size of a cottage and smells worse than animal dung!”
Ash had gagged, and Char had laughed, and the two had fallen into silence, realizing that even if they could get out of Crixion, the blockade around Hydra’s Apuit Islands and Florus’s Itza wouldn’t let them pass. There was nowhere else to dream of going. There was nowhere that Ignatus could not find them.
Clouds shifted outside the window now, letting stronger moonlight illuminate the room. Ash kicked off her sheets and shrank into a ball, hands over her ears, heartbeat thudding fast.
There’s always more Ignitus can take from you, Rook had said.
She knew he was right. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like the worst had happened, so what more could Ignitus do? She had nothing left.
But she did. She wanted to run practice drills with Tor. She wanted to ask Rook if he’d heard from Lynx. She wanted to listen to Taro and Spark banter about which was sweeter, Deiman persimmons or Kulan grapes. But Ignitus had guards in the hall to prevent anyonefrom trying to leave—which was an unnecessary and annoying display of his power.
Ash groaned at the smoldering coals of fear in her belly. She would fight Rook, but it wouldn’t be like she was fighting an enemy. Not like Madoc, his bare shoulders heaving, his dark eyes fixed on her, glistening and afraid. He had had the upper hand; what could he have feared with his arm pressed to her throat?
Ash pushed deeper into the mattress, willing her heartbeats to slow and her mind to empty of thoughts of loneliness, of Ignitus’s worry, of Madoc’s dark eyes. That pulse of innocent terror.
She saw his mouth form her name.Ash.
He became Ignitus, crouched over her, eyes pinched in sympathetic worry.Ash.
Sleep pulled and ebbed, and she fell into it, down, down, her only escape.
Char was at the edge of the fighting ring. Dried blood was smeared across her chest and coated her once pristine armor.Ash, her lips formed.
In unison, Char at the edge, Madoc—Ignitus—close and heavy.Where would you go?
The next morning, after Ash had readied herself—dressed in utilitarian reed armor now—and choked down a handful of breadsticks for breakfast, Kulan guards corralled her into a carriage and out of the palace’s complex.
Other elimination fights would occur this week, on Ignitus’s side and on Geoxus’s, as well as dozens of lesser fights throughout the cityto keep the crowds amused. But the current odd number of Kulan champions meant one wouldn’t fight until the rest of Ignitus’s gladiators arrived from their fights abroad. Maybe Tor would be in the stands when she and Rook fought, cheering for her, and she would know he forgave her for acting impetuously yesterday.
The carriage crossed a narrow bridge. The Nien River glittered in the clear morning, diamonds in blue, before the western edge of Crixion swallowed her up.
Ash didn’t know the city well enough to identify its neighborhoods, but they wound through an area that was dirtier than the palace’s complex, with clumsy buildings sagging into one another and strands of laundry stretched window to window. People crowded the streets in a flurry of excitement, all heading in the same direction: to the grand arena. Children in faux gladiator outfits brandished wooden shields and retractable rocks on strings; men and women jostled one another good-naturedly, slathered in silver paint with names written on their skin.
JANNarched over one man’s brow. Another hadRACLINin script down his left arm.
And Ash saw more than one person withMADOCscrawled on their bodies.
When the Kulan carriage came into view, a few Deiman people even called out “Ash!” while others shouted “Rook!”
She swallowed hard, her hands in fists on her knees. She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Rook about their fight. She needed to win if she was to have any hope of earning Ignitus’s trust and uncovering more about whatever it was he feared. But would Rook agree? Sheneeded to beat him—but if he won, he would earn a fair amount of gold, money he could use to help Lynx.
Suddenly Ash regretted all the time she had wasted. She needed to talk with Rook.
A lurching left turn, and the carriage swung to a halt near Crixion’s largest arena. This area was clearly meant for gladiators, soldiers, and arena workers—it was shadowed and blocked off by a low stone wall. Beyond that wall, farther down the right side of the arena, Ash could see a line of Deiman citizens in stained togas and well-worn tunics.
Some whooped into the air. Another person cried “Bets! Place your official bets here!”
Ash’s eyes darted around the rest of the yard, but Rook wasn’t here. Maybe he would enter from another tunnel. Or maybe Ignitus had changed his mind and wouldn’t make her fight him.
Guards swarmed her when Ash descended onto the dusty road, and she let them usher her into the arena.
The passageway was unlit but for dawn’s rays in the entrance yard. It was a short chute of stone with a few closed doors and the golden sands of the arena’s fighting pit at the end.
