It felt like a frayed knot.
Ash bent closer to him, the light in her free hand stabbing into Stavos’s bloodshot eyes, widening his pupils. “Did Ignitus do this to you?” she demanded.
Stavos coughed. His eyes spun in their sockets. “No, no, not—” He coughed, blood splattering Ash’s knees. “She took it. She took it from me. Stop—”
And as more centurions came from the palace in a swell of noise and light and party guests, Stavos seized and went limp on the ground.
Eleven
Madoc
STAVOS OF CRIXION was dead.
Madoc stared at the body, his gaze darting from the arrows protruding out of Stavos’s broad back to the raised welts on his chest and face to his dull brown eyes, open and unblinking. The giant of a man who had threatened Madoc and taunted Ash only days before looked small now, incapable of the many victories he had accrued as a gladiator.
As the ground began to rumble, Madoc jolted upright. Stavos’s blood was slick on his arms and hands, and the more Madoc tried to wipe it away, the more it spread, smearing crimson across the bottom of the white tunic that peeked out beneath his armor. It reminded him of the time Ava had spilled honey—by the end of the day it had somehow transferred to Ilena’s hair, and Madoc’s and Danon’s clothes, and Cassia’s and Elias’s faces. The memory of that laughter was as foreign now as it was sharp, and Madoc hated himself for even thinking of it.
“Be still.”
Madoc turned to find Ash staring at a white marble statue near the gate. The figure’s chiseled form seemed to be twisting, the stone of his outstretched arms rippling, swelling, as if a hundred snakes were moving beneath stretched silk. The figure’s face became distorted, the jaw spreading while the mouth opened in a silent scream. The waist grew thick. The legs divided to make a monster with four sandaled feet.
Madoc fought the urge to scramble back; he’d never seen anything so horrible or exhilarating. His heart pounded with new terror. Around him, the guards had dropped to their knees; in fear or reverence, Madoc didn’t know.
Then, before he could draw another breath, the statue split, and Geoxus shed his marble skin, leaving the figure behind him as flawless as it had been moments before.
Madoc gaped. He’d heard that Geoxus could move through stones, but he’d never seen it for himself until tonight. He nearly forgot Stavos lying dead on the ground until the Father God veered toward Madoc and Ash, his black toga rippling in his wake.
“How did this happen?” Geoxus roared, his hands open with lethal intent, the thunder in his voice making the stone wall around the gate vibrate. He crouched beside the body. Behind him, a sea of guards rushed from the palace, the clap of metal and leather armor filling the night. They surrounded the area, blocking the guests who had come to see what had happened.
Madoc trembled, glancing back to the statue Geoxus had emerged from. The god of earth was every bit as powerful as the stories people told, and even though Madoc had had nothing to do with Stavos’sdeath, he felt a sharp bite of shame, as if he should have somehow saved the gladiator, or tried harder to deter Ash from her odd mission.
But he’d wanted to help her. She knew something about the plague that had killed the gladiators before the war—a pox, Remi had told Elias. She wanted Deiman gladiator records—not to use against them in the arena, or so she said. Whatever her true motives were, their goals could align. If he could help her prove Ignitus had something to do with the gladiators who’d fallen ill, surely Geoxus would want to know. He might be able to win the Father God’s favor and ask him to set Cassia free.
She was playing a dangerous game, and if nothing else, they had that in common.
He glanced in her direction and found her scowling through the line of soldiers now positioned between them and the body on the ground. He could feel the warmth coming from her, even more than the heat of her skin beneath his hands when they’d danced. Lit torches lined the perimeter walls, the paths, even the entrance to the stables. The phosphorescent stones from the palace did not extend to this area of the grounds—Geoxus must not have thought one of his brother’s gladiators would venture so far from the party.
Or that one of his own would have led her here.
They needed to get their story straight before someone asked.
“Honorable Father God!” A centurion, his belt lined with black onyx to denote his high rank, knelt at Geoxus’s feet. “Stavos was already wounded when he approached the gates. My centurions did not recognize him. If Madoc had not been here to identify—”
“Your centurions could not identify an honored son of Deimos?”Geoxus bellowed, nearly knocking the centurion sideways with only the strength of his voice. “One who had been missing forthree days?” Geoxus made a fist, and for one terrifying moment, Madoc thought he meant to pummel his own guard. Then his hand dropped, and the wrinkles around his eyes, which Ilena had claimed were from smiling too much, pinched with something close to regret. “His life was not meant to end this way.”
Madoc’s brows drew together. What would happen to Stavos now? Would he still be granted a champion’s funeral, his body returned to the earth to become geoeia?
She took it from me.
Stavos’s last words plagued Madoc’s mind. He didn’t know who Stavos could have meant. The warning just as easily might have been the ramblings of a man on the edge of death.
“Apologies, Honorable Geoxus,” the centurion said quickly, his forehead now pressed to the ground. “I will find those who denied him entry to the palace and see that their punishment matches the crime.”
A shiver crawled between Madoc’s shoulder blades. If the centurions were put to death for failing to protect Stavos, what would happen to his actual killer? He didn’t want to think of what that would mean for him and Ash, who had found Stavos in a place they had no right wandering off to by themselves.
A nearby guard narrowed his gaze to Ash’s hands, fisted at her sides. It suddenly occurred to Madoc that Ash might not have wanted to see Lucius’s records at all. She could have been trying to get him alone.
She might have done the same to Stavos before he’d been abducted.Her curiosity about him might have been a lie—if he’d killed her mother, she had a clear enough reason to want him dead.
