Page 113 of Set Fire to the Gods
Geoxus smiled, somber now. “I want you to think of a world without weakness or war. Kula, Cenhelm, Lakhu—every country will fly the flag of Deimos and live in peace.”
“And what if Kula objects?” Ash asked.
Geoxus inhaled. “Then you will be crushed within the fist of your new god.”
Behind Madoc, Ash shivered. This wasn’t just Ignitus losing their land or trade routes. This was the utter destruction of her people.
Madoc grasped for reason through the roar of defiance in his blood. “What’s to stop me from keeping the gods’ energeia for myself?”
Geoxus offered a condescending chuckle. “Mortal bodies are weak. It would destroy you.”
Beside him, Seneca’s arm slid free. She approached Madoc, her hand cold and dry as she slid her fingers around his wrist.
“Strangle your doubt,” she said. “It has no place in the heart of a weapon.”
Her words resonated through him, their true intent slicing hisconfusion. What was she doing here? Last week she’d been their neighbor, an old woman who gave too much advice and stole people’s clothing off the line, yet she was Soul Divine, and keeping company with a god and his trusted adviser.
As he grasped for understanding, all he could think of were times he and Elias had caught her spying from her upstairs balcony, or coming over for meals without an invitation, or prodding his arms with her spindly fingers and asking where his energeia was.
She’d been around the Metaxas as long as he could remember.
Not around the Metaxas. Aroundhim.
He jerked his hand free from Seneca’s grasp. “Get away from me.”
Petros jabbed one finger toward Madoc.
“You’ll treat your mother with respect,” he warned.
Madoc laughed coldly. “My mother?” Seneca had to be at least thirty years older than Petros. How did they know each other? Madoc tried to imagine their meeting during a routine tax collection, and the thought of their courtship was less than comforting.
But the anger pulsing off his father was lightened by something softer that Madoc couldn’t immediately recognize.
Love.
Petros was in love with Seneca.
For a brief moment, he wished Elias could hear this. Another time, they would have laughed about it for days.
“My mother is dead,” Madoc said, but before the words were out of his mouth, anger tore through him. When he’d been a child, he’d wanted a mother—someone to protect him from Petros. Where wasshe when Petros had beaten him? When he’d thrown Madoc to the streets?
No, this wasn’t his mother. Ilena was his mother.
Even if she’d never forgive him for Cassia, he wouldn’t let another fill her place.
“You were too young to know the truth,” Petros said. “And undeserving anyway. Had you shown earlier signs of energeia, I might have been more inclined to share, but you appeared to be pigstock. I knew she’d never come back to me if you were worthless.”
Hatred scoured Madoc’s insides. Petros had taken Cassia. He was responsible for her death. And now he admitted to withholding news of Madoc’s mother just because he’d assumed Madoc was Undivine?
But when Seneca patted Petros’s shoulder, Madoc saw how eager to please his father had become. It was as if all the beatings, all the times he had torn Madoc down for showing no sign of energeia, had been done by a different man.
“My Petros is so impatient.” Seneca’s proud gaze turned cold and unfamiliar. “And yet look at what Madoc has become. A marvel. A living tribute, carved in my likeness.”
Madoc froze.
“He’s the offspring of a goddess, not a god himself,” Geoxus reminded her. “You bred him by mating with one of my Deimans. That makes him mine to use.”
The god’s words stabbed into Madoc’s brain.
