Two

Ash

THE GREAT DEFEAT dance was Ash’s favorite, but the story it told was a lie.

The dancers waiting with her on the sun-warmed arena sands wore costumes representing the six gods, with another dancer in white to symbolize the long-dead Mother Goddess. Around them, the largest arena in Kula hung as quiet as the windless noonday sky; the crowd’s enthusiasm had simmered down from boisterous to a tense, eager silence.

“They recognize what dance we’re going to do,” whispered the boy who was playing Biotus, the god of animal bioseia. He shifted in his costume of heavy furs, sweat beading along his brow, but he nodded at the watchful crowd. “Look at them—oh, this is going to be good.”

Ash could taste his—and the crowd’s—anticipation on the air. It tasted of salty sweat covered by one of the other dancers’ too-sweet tangerine perfume.

The god of fire always staged performances before arena matches—just not this dance, the extravagant costumes, the undeniable insult. This dance was typically reserved for the holiday marking the Mother Goddess’s defeat.

Ash rolled her eyes. “It’s a waste. Geoxus isn’t even here.”

Not that she wanted the earth god here. But his absence made this dance feel unnecessary.

The gods rarely traveled for anything less than gladiator wars, two-week affairs of pomp and arena matches that settled blatant offenses and gave the winning god huge prizes: ports, land, trade routes. The cause of this fight had only been Geoxus accusing the fire god of letting his people fish in Deiman territory—the fight after this dance would resolve that, and give a small reward to the winning god, a chest of gold or a season of harvest.

On Ash’s other side, the dancer representing Hydra, the water goddess, sighed, rippling her sheer blue veil. “I know,” she moaned. “Geoxus is nice to look at.”

Ash snapped a sharp look at her. “That is not what I meant.”

Music cut off their whispers. The dancer playing Hydra gave Ash a grin from behind her veil, clearly not believing her denial. The gods were all painfully beautiful.

Ash shot air out her nose and dropped her eyes to her bare feet. This was why she tried not to talk with the other fire dancers—most people saw the gods exactly as they wanted to be seen. Gorgeous and immortal, powerful and fair. Poverty wasn’t their fault; they always wanted the best for their children. Even when they were cruel, they were still merciful and avenging.

But those were all lies, too. Lies as potent as the Great Defeat dance. Lies that made Ash feel alone, though she was standing in the center of hundreds of people.

This self-pity was not helping. Ash bit down on her lower lip. She knew that all the lies were worthwhile. She would dance in a moment and get a reprieve in the music and movement; her mother would fight in the match that followed, and she would win. Then they’d get to walk out of this arena, together and alive.

She’d tell a thousand lies if it meant another day with her mother.

Her eyes lifted to the stands. The arena was an imposing structure of black granite, obsidian, and jagged spikes of lava rock built in the usual tradition, where audience seating ran tiered laps around the center fighting pit. People filled every bench, some clasping orange and red streamers while others held signs painted with CHAR NIKAU—the fire god’s best gladiator.

Ash noted a new addition with a startled flinch. A few people wore garish masks in Char’s likeness. One showed her sticking out her tongue, her eyes wide and cut with squirming red veins.

Ash wrinkled her nose. People saw the gods as beautiful, but they saw her mother as snarling?

The music swelled. Cymbals crashed, reverberating into silence.

“Here we go,” the dancer playing Biotus cooed.

Ash twitched to right herself, narrowing her mind to the performance.

A harp rippled, and the dance began.

Ash swayed her arms in practiced movements alongside the other dancers. For a moment, she felt a thrum of connection. She had nothing in common with these dancers, couldn’t even choke out a conversation with them for the lies she would have to tell, but in this dance, they were unified.

And Ash wasn’t alone.

The girl representing the goddess of air waved a flurry of streamers to symbolize air energy, or aereia. The Mother Goddess struck her down with a single elegant twirl.

Next went Biotus. He stomped, vicious and growling. The Mother Goddess hurtled into his arms and dispatched him with her limbs twining around his broad body.

Then came Hydra, with flapping cerulean silk to show the hydreia of water, and Florus, with vines for floreia.

When most of the dancers lay sprawled around the Mother Goddess in defeat—not death, but rather their energies merely spent, or so the story went—the second to last stepped forward: Geoxus, the earth god, played by a tall boy covered in dust and sand. He lifted one foot before the Mother Goddess spun on him, blowing him a lethal kiss, and he fell. The crowd roared with laughter.

The only performers left standing were the Mother Goddess and Ash—who played the lead role. She wore a tight bodice with silk pants that hung low on her hips, both in a wine red that made her brown skin gleam. Sheer orange fabric spooled down her shoulders, ending at the tips in bursts of vibrant blue, and her hair hung in thick black ringlets to midback. Kohl rimmed her eyes and blue paint coated her lips, giving a frosty edge to her smile.

She loved this dance for the outfit she wore, for the connection she felt, for the swell of rapture that bubbled up from the core of the earth itself and filled her with power. This dance was a love letter to igneia, fire energy in its most beautiful, enchanting form.

But she hated this dance for the role she played: Ignitus, the god of fire.

Ash had a few more beats before her cue. Her eyes leaped to the arena’s grandest viewing box. On the right were a half dozen centurions from the western country of Deimos; they wore silver breastplates and short pleated skirts, bags at their waists holding stones they could control with geoeia. On the left, Kulan guards wore armor made of dried reeds that, when treated, proved as strong as leather and, better, fireproof.

Divine soldiers like centurions and guards enforced laws among mortals; the immortal, unkillable gods technically didn’t need them for protection, but having them was a display of power.

The Deiman centurions stood behind a plump man who had been chosen as Geoxus’s proxy for this fight, one of his many senators. The Kulan guards stood behind Ignitus.

Ash’s earliest memory of her god was at a feast following Char’s first win. Ignitus gave Ash a candy in the shape of a sunburst, doting on the daughter of his next prodigy.

The candy had been bitter, and Ignitus’s smile had been sickly sweet.

It always struck Ash how normal her god looked in his ageless physical form. At will, Ignitus could become an inferno, or dissolve into a blue-white flare, or appear as a candle flame on a table. Now, he was dressed in baggy silks dyed orange and scarlet, his brown chest bare, his black hair adorned with gold baubles and scarlet garnets that caught the sunlight.

Each of the six gods was the manifestation of their respective energies, the result of the Mother Goddess pushing her own soul energeia into fire, earth, air, water, animals, and plants. All the gods Ash had seen looked like their mortal descendants—save for that expression. The one Ignitus wore as he gripped the edge of the viewing box and ran his tongue over his lips: bloodlust.

He didn’t care that with each match he fought against his god- siblings, he wagered gold, crops, or stakes in Kula’s exports, such as their glass. He didn’t care that he risked his gladiators’ lives, or that even if they won, they stockpiled memories of murder. He didn’t care that out beyond this packed arena, the capital city of Kula was a mess of poverty and starvation because so many harvests were lost to other countries, and resources were stripped to pay Ignitus’s debts.

He just stared down at Ash portraying him and demanded glory.

The music crashed, cymbals banging hard and fast. Ash’s heart lurched and her limbs took her into the movements from memory, the thrill of dancing driving all else from her mind.

Three braziers spaced around the fighting sands thrashed with orange flames. Fire would give constantly if igneia was taken in steady, unselfish sips, one of the first tricks Ash had learned. But for this dance, she needed a great deal of power quickly—she called on the igneia, and all three braziers snuffed out, the fire energy darting into her heart. There, she could channel it into her body, make herself move faster or heal quicker—or she could shoot it back out in powerful flames.

Ash kicked a leg high, and as she twisted under it, she shot fire at the Mother Goddess. This dancer was Fire Divine, so the flames wouldn’t hurt her. Even if an esteemed position could be given to someone Undivine, the simple fact that they were descended from the fire god made all Kulans resistant to flame, no matter if they couldn’t control it.

The Mother Goddess dipped backward to mimic being struck.

Ash fed igneia out slowly, growing a whip until it coiled around the entire fighting pit. She whirled, twisting it in a high funnel that rose above the crowd. Arcs of orange cut through the powdered turquoise sky, each loop alive with dozens of sharp, stabbing tongues.

This was the pinnacle of igneia: life and vibrancy and passion. This was proof that Ash’s power could do more than kill.

The crowd gasped at the tornado of fire. Voices cheered, “Ignitus! Ignitus!”

Ash yanked the funnel of scarlet fire down around the Mother Goddess. The dancer toppled with a piercing wail, her body limp alongside the prone bodies of the other gods, her children.

Only Ash still stood, the god of fire, now the savior of humanity.

This was the boldest lie. That, centuries ago, Ignitus had been solely responsible for defeating Anathrasa, the Mother Goddess who had created her six god-children at the beginning of time—then tried to kill them and their mortal descendants when she realized she couldn’t control them. She had nearly succeeded in wiping out all mortals, drenching the world in blood and war, before the gods stopped her. Ash had heard variations of that story in every country she had been to—each god claimed that they were responsible for that final assault. The truth of how Anathrasa had been defeated had been lost to the ages, buried under each god’s need to declare themselves a hero.

The stands thundered with whistles and applause. Only Geoxus’s representatives scowled.

The dancers peeled themselves off the sands and bowed, grinning at the fanfare. They had done well; Ignitus would heap gold on them, enough to forget that once it ran out, their bellies would be empty until he called them to dance again. Even so, it was a preferable life to being born Undivine. They were the rabble, the workers, the people who suffered first—and most—when resources were scarce. For every ten children born to a Divine, one was likely to be Undivine; but children born to only Undivine parents were always powerless—and ignored.

Ash didn’t stay to bow for the audience or risk getting pulled into another conversation with the dancers. Performing as Ignitus was one thing; she could use igneia beautifully, show its other sides. But she’d rather live out the rest of her days slowly freezing to death in the icy northern mountains than wave to the crowd and pretend she was proud of playing her god.

Besides, an announcer had begun to speak. The main event was starting.

“Most Merciful Ignitus, god of all igneia, stands accused of encroaching on the fishing grounds of Deimos by Powerful Geoxus, god of all geoeia.”

Ash turned toward one of the arena’s tunnels. Sand trickled over her bare feet as her pace quickened, faster and faster until she slid into the hall.

Her vision blackened in the shadows, but lit sconces brought shapes into view. Tor, his towering form making his head brush the ceiling, stood with his shoulders bent protectively around Char, who sat on a bench against the wall. She had her head tipped back, eyes closed, black hair in a sleek braid. Her armor, made to be as a second skin, rose and fell with her steady breaths.

“Mama.” Ash darted forward.

Tor looked up at her approach. “She’s fine. Just preparing.”

He wasn’t much older than Char, but gray peppered his black hair and a few wrinkles cut through a crescent-moon scar around his eye. Those wrinkles deepened when he gave Ash a look that said Don’t push her. Not now.

“As decreed by the gods, this conflict warrants a single match,” the announcer was saying. “The winner shall be declared based on the surviving gladiator, and the losing god will forfeit the fishing grounds and pay twenty gold bricks.”

Char gaped up at Tor. “This fight is for gold and fishing rights?”

Tor shrugged, but what could he say? The gods determined the prizes, and mortals suffered their losses.

Ash lowered herself to her knees on the rocky floor. “You brought home ten gold bricks from your win against the air goddess last week. That will help.”

Char dug her knuckles into her temples. “It doesn’t make up for the thirty gold bricks he lost to Biotus while I was gone. More than most Undivine see in a lifetime of work. And three full years of wheat harvest when he’s barely able to keep his Divine fed as is. He keeps gambling away resources in multiple arena matches at once instead of just waiting for me to be ready—”

Char blinked down at Ash, startled, seeming to realize who she was talking to. “Ash. Sweetheart. I—I get carried away.” She batted her hand, but it trembled. “Don’t let my ramblings worry you. Your dance was lovely. The new lip paint was a striking addition.”

Ash gave a weak smile. They had bought the blue paint yesterday in the market. She and Char had tried yellow first, and cried laughing at how it made them look ill.

She warred with making light of it by mentioning those awful masks in the stands and how Char should paint her mouth too so people would make the masks even more ridiculous with wild lip colors. But Ash’s voice came out soft. “Kula’s suffering isn’t your fault, Mama.”

She wanted to add, Let me help. I can fight some of these battles for you. You can’t trust other gladiators to always win, but you can trust me—you’ve taught me how to fight.

Char walked into every arena and dispatched Ignitus’s enemies precisely so Ash could stay out of those arenas. It was one of Ignitus’s few mercies—as long as Char had his favor, Ash was unwanted. Char had only taken over for her own mother once she had been killed.

For now, Ash was a dancer. She used igneia as an accessory and prop. Not as a weapon.

“Ash,” Char sighed. She put her fingers around Ash’s wrist and squeezed.

“Fighting on behalf of Deimos is a great-great-great-grandnephew of Geoxus—Stavos of Xiphos!” the announcer bellowed.

The mostly Kulan crowd met the introduction with boos and hisses.

Behind Ash, Tor huffed. “Remember what we talked about, Char. Stavos is a brute, but he’s overconfident and slow. Use that.”

Char started to stand when Ash tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. Her heart stuck in her throat as the flames in the sconces behind them pulsed, yellow and hot.

No flame was ever just a flame. Each god could spy through their energeia—fire was an eye, an extension of the god Ignitus himself.

Ash had asked Char and Tor once why no one stopped Ignitus. He could choose not to declare fights against his siblings. He could dole out food and money equally if he wanted. Kula’s sufferings were his fault.

Char had smacked her hand over Ash’s mouth and cast a horrified look at the fire in their cottage’s hearth. “Ignitus could be listening,” she had said as Tor snuffed out the fire. “You must never speak of harming him.”

“But why?” Ash had pressed.

Char’s eyes had teared, so Tor had answered, his own eyes shadowed in the absence of flames. “He is a god. Mortals cannot defeat him. But we have moments like these”—he motioned at Char, Ash, himself—“alive and together. Obeying him is a small price to pay for that.”

So Ash held her tongue when Char’s leg snapped in a match. She silently scrubbed blood out of Char’s clothes and braided her mother’s hair over her bruises. She choked down the food she was given freely as a gladiator’s daughter while people begged along the streets.

But Ash knew, through every soft moment, she was waiting for her mother to die.

“Mama,” Ash whispered now. Agony cut into her, visceral and searing. She tried not to ask this often. “Let me take your place. Ignitus may let you retire. You could have a life, you and Tor. I’m younger; I can buy us time until Ignitus finds a new line to favor—”

Color drew across Char’s brown skin, chasing away the paleness that had become too normal. “Stop.” Her tone was rigid, but she touched Ash’s cheek. “I’m fine. I won’t lose. How could I, when I have the strongest fuel and the brightest flame cheering for me?”

Ash bit her lip. Char sacrificed everything to bring resources to Kula. The least Ash could do was not make things harder on her.

But silence was killing Ash. Silence with Char. Silence with the other fire dancers. Silence with Ignitus. She wanted to race into the arena and scream her hatred at him.

She wanted to stop having to hide everything.

“Fighting on behalf of Kula,” the announcer began, “is Char Nikau, granddaughter of Ignitus, beloved of the fire god.”

Ash braced at her mother’s title. Though every mortal, Divine or Undivine, was descended from the gods, the Divine with the closest connection to their god were thought to be the most powerful. It was absurd, of course—Tor was just as skilled with igneia as Char, and he was so far removed from Ignitus’s direct descendants that he couldn’t trace the relatives.

Char covered Ash’s fingers with her own and squeezed. “After the fight, we’ll practice making fire orbs. You could do wondrous things with them in the Great Defeat dance, I bet.”

Ash managed a brittle smile. If she had been more selfish, she would have begged Char to run. But there was nowhere to go—Ignitus and his immortal god-siblings ruled each of the six countries and wouldn’t risk offering asylum to Kula’s best gladiator.

This was their fate. This choking monotony of blood.

Ash let Char stand, her hand falling limply to her lap as her mother walked toward the wide, waiting glitter of sand.

The moment Char passed into the sunlight, the crowd howled with excitement.

Tor was already at the edge of the pit, just within the hall’s shadow. Ash joined him there, her body vibrating.

“She’ll be fine,” Tor assured her. He gave a firm nod, but his eyes were tense.

“She’d listen to you,” Ash whispered, “if you told her to let me fight.”

Tor frowned. “What makes you think I want to see you in an arena any more than I want to see her out there?”

“What you want; what she wants. I don’t get a choice at all?” The question cut Ash’s tongue. She knew the helpless answer.

“No,” Tor told her, bittersweet affection in his eyes. “Not when it means risking your life.”

Ash turned away, knowing it was childish to sulk, but what else could she do?

Her own father had been an arena worker from Lakhu—not an uncommon thing, for people from two different gods to be together. If they were both Undivine, where they lived was of little consequence—but if they were Divine, that caused more difficulty, as both gods had claim to their powers. The only reason Ignitus had allowed Char to keep Ash was that her father had been Undivine, so there was little chance of her being Air Divine or even Undivine, with Char as her mother. But her father had died long ago, before she had even gotten to know him, and she couldn’t remember a time when Tor hadn’t been in her life.

“To the glory of the gods,” the announcer shouted. “To the death. Fight!”

At the proclamation, Stavos stepped in front of the rock pile that had been provided for him. He was tall and bare chested—a bold choice to sacrifice protection just to show off his muscles—and his shaved head made his large eyes appear feral. He stretched out a hand over the rocks and they shriveled into a great puff of dust. All of them, gone.

Ash hissed through her teeth. Some gladiators chose to harness their energeias externally—Animal Divine could control creatures; Earth Divine could move stones and rocks. Others chose to absorb energeia into their bodies, letting it add speed, strength, and endurance to their physiology. Though the arena boasted other sources of stone, the gods’ firm rules limited each gladiator to what energeia sources had been provided. Stavos had taken all his geoeia at once.

A wash of nausea pinched Ash’s stomach. She had seen gladiators infused with smaller amounts of geoeia cleave through stacks of logs with a single blow. She imagined that fighting one powered on so much of it would be like fighting a landslide.

A firepit sat opposite the former rock pile, near a weapons rack. Char stood before it, eyes closed. It sharpens my other senses, Char had said, but seeing her mother defenseless froze Ash’s lungs.

The crowd roared encouragement. Stavos drew a broadsword from the weapons rack that sat near his tunnel and took a step forward. Char still didn’t move.

“Come on,” Ash whispered.

Tor was rigid beside her. “Patience,” he said tersely.

Stavos took off at a sprint. The arena was large enough for him to be winded by the time he reached Char, which had to be her intention. His broadsword was aloft, glinting in the sunlight.

Ash’s attention went to Ignitus. He gripped the box’s railing, his lips quirked. He knew Char would turn the fight. He knew she wouldn’t fail him.

The broadsword came down over Char, and finally, finally, she moved.

The firepit sputtered as she pulled on igneia. She cartwheeled to avoid the broadsword and got in a solid kick to Stavos’s jaw before her feet planted back on the ground. Stavos reeled, his sword thundering against the earth and giving Char another opening: she chopped her leg against his hands, dislodging his grip. She kept going, pulling more igneia—but this time the fire came in a hypnotic arc of gilded scarlet, swooping through the air on Char’s command. She twisted, and the ribbon washed into Stavos, slamming him onto his back as he gave a bark of pain. The fire knotted into a ball to sit heavy and hot on his chest, keeping him down, pinned, as the bare skin on his sternum began to crackle and burn.

Stavos shrieked.

Ignitus pulled back, arms crossed, grinning. Geoxus’s senator shouted something at his gladiator that Ash couldn’t hear. Her eyes, her focus, her soul, were fixed on her mother.

Char bowed forward and the flame dropped torturously slowly, sweat beading down her face with effort as the crowd hooted. She would drive the fire into Stavos’s chest. How long had this fight lasted? Not even five minutes? A new record, surely.

Stavos squirmed in the dirt at Char’s feet. The fingers of his left hand slipped to his thigh—finding a holster hidden under his pleated skirt.

“Wait!” Ash screamed. “Mama—”

A knife flashed in Stavos’s palm. He swatted his hand up, looking as though he was batting at Char’s legs. But the blade sliced Char’s ankle, and she buckled enough that her igneia wavered.

Stavos wriggled free, launching himself to his feet and scrambling for his broadsword. His chest was a red-black mess of fresh burns.

Ash’s lungs screamed from lack of breath as Char stumbled away from Stavos.

“Char!” Tor bellowed. “Get to the weapons rack! Go for long range—the spear!”

A single thin line of blood welled on Char’s leg where Stavos had cut her. It wasn’t deep, but Char teetered as though dizzy. She lost hold of her igneia, the fire sizzling out into nothingness, and there was no fire left in the braziers. She would have to fight without igneia now.

“Something’s not right,” Ash managed, unease prickling down her arms. “She looks—ill.”

One of Tor’s hands balled against the stone wall. “Not ill. Drugged.”

Ash flicked a look at Tor. Drugged?

It connected. Stavos’s knife had been tipped with poison. An illegal move.

“We have to tell Ignitus.” Ash whirled on the flickering sconces. “We have to—”

But Stavos swung his sword, and Ash realized that Tor had been right before. She didn’t have a choice when it came to her fate—but not in the way he’d meant.

Even if she’d wanted to stay in this hall with Tor, she wouldn’t have been able to.

She refused to let her mother die like this.

Ash moved as though music was forcing her into a dance.

She grabbed for the igneia in the sconces and sprinted into the fighting pit. The sand was unsteady under her feet. Tor screamed for her from behind, but she pressed on, pooling igneia into her palms, forming it into a whip like the one she had made in the dance.

Ahead, Char shook her head, her fingers pushing into her temples. She blinked, registered Stavos’s coming sword, and shot to the side to dodge the blow. The momentum caught her wrong and she faltered, sprawling on the dust.

The sand was red. Had it been red before?

Ash gasped, sweat pouring down her back. The tone of the crowd’s cheering shifted, but their incessant noise dulled to a hum as she ran, her fire whip lengthening, lengthening—

Char heaved herself backward, then back again, leaving a trail of maroon in her wake.

Stavos dragged the tip of his sword through the sand. He noted Ash coming with a wicked sneer.

Char followed his gaze, her lips moving. Maybe, Ash, no! Maybe, My fuel and flame.

Stavos lifted his sword and hurled it through the air.

Ash reared, her fire whip snapping to fill the circumference of the fighting pit as it had during the dance. She tightened it until the flames knotted around Stavos and hefted him above the sand. He shouted, thrashing, and she tossed him across the pit, as far away as she could.

She swung around, eyes scrambling for Char.

Mama, don’t do this, please. She had been eight, begging Char to stop. She had been eleven. She had been eighteen, this morning, Mama, please stop, he’ll kill you—

Stavos’s broadsword pinned Char to the sand. Her body lay sprawled and delicate like the dancers depicting the vanquished gods, only she didn’t rise for a finishing bow.

The world blurred. The blue sky, the heaving crowd—and movement in the viewing box.

Ashi’s own grating breath deafened her as she looked up, numb.

Each god could spy through their energeia. Try as Ignitus did to limit his siblings’ access, he couldn’t get rid of all other energeias—which meant the earth god had been able to watch this fight.

And he was here, now, standing in the viewing box next to Ignitus.

Geoxus’s body was half dust and dirt, a product of traveling through stone, as all the gods could do with their elements. He formed as he rose over Ignitus, rock yielding to flesh and blood. He was his brother’s opposite in all but their black hair and brown skin; where Ignitus was long and slender, Geoxus was all chiseled solidity and muscle.

He spoke, breaking into Ash’s shock with a searing crack as his voice came from every pebble and rock and particle of sand in the arena: “Your mortal interfered, brother. You cheated. I declare war on Kula.”