Page 114 of Set Fire to the Gods
Offspring of a goddess.
Bred him.
Mine to use.
Madoc would have laughed if the situation had not been so dire. “So now I’m the son of a goddess? Is there anything else I should know?”
“Madoc,” Ash hissed, and when he glanced her way, he watched her lips form a single word. “Anathrasa.”
Seneca cackled, and cold shivered down Madoc’s limbs. She looked like the old woman he’d known all his life, but there was something different about her now. It was as if her top layer had been shed like the skin of a snake, revealing the slick and poisonous soul beneath.
“I told you,” Petros said quietly to Seneca. “You are not forgotten, Goddess.”
Madoc raked his fingers over his skull. “Anathrasa is dead. The other gods killed her hundreds of years ago.”
“There are many ways to die.” Seneca’s hard gaze flicked to Geoxus. “And there are many ways to live. When stripped of most of one’s powers, one has to becomeresourceful.”
“Come now,” Geoxus told her, annoyance dragging at his tone. “Pity looks poor, even on you. I give you tithes. I feed you for your services.”
Beside him, Ash flinched. “He feeds you?”
“Gladiators, dear.” Seneca’s lips tilted in a wicked smile. “They are quite sustaining. Stronger than your average Divine. Stavos was particularly hearty.”
She took it from me.
Ash fell back with a wince. Her fear slashed against Madoc, hot and uncontained.
“I saw a record that said some of Geoxus’s top gladiators had been ‘tithed’ before their deaths,” Ash said. Her gaze flicked to Petros. “AndI heard him talking about how he’d had to cover up Stavos’s escape. It was all because of you.” She pointed to Seneca, new horror dropping her voice. “You’ve been taking the energeia from gladiators. Stavos. How many others?”
“It’s hard to say,” said Seneca, her brow scrunched. “Dozens? Hundreds?”
“People thought I killed Stavos to advance,” Madoc said. He trembled, remembering the arrows in Stavos’s back. Remembering his last, strained breaths.
“We did it for you,” Petros said. He turned to Seneca. “I told you he was ungrateful.”
Seneca chuckled.
Madoc glanced to Geoxus, remembering the god’s despair over his champion’s murder. Now there was only self-righteous greed.
His grief, his love for Stavos, had only been an act.
“It’s a pity the Kulan champions travel in packs,” Seneca continued. “I would have liked some time alone with your mother, Ash. I hear she was very powerful.”
Ash jerked forward, but Madoc blocked her path. Seneca was baiting her.
He stared at the fragile old woman. The seventh goddess—Anathrasa. She could harness the power of souls and had tried to cleanse the world of anyone, god or mortal, who she couldn’t control—or had, before her god-children had risen against her and drained her power. But before that, could she do the same things as Madoc? Convince Jann to surrender. Draw out Ash’s grief.
What else could she do?
Push energeia into gods.
He shuddered as this understanding worked its way into his bones. As much as he didn’t want it to be true, he thirsted for more. Something was cracking inside him, tearing open. Questions he’d suffocated long ago.
Who am I? What am I?
Anathrasa had answers.
“You’re fortunate, you know,” Geoxus said, smiling a little. “She might have killed you. Broken open your soul and emptied it, like she did with so many before you.”
