Page 52 of Set Fire to the Gods
Ignitus kept his gaze on Ash. “You are angry,” he guessed. “Angry that he failed to kill me?”
Ash gawked and Tor stiffened next to her.
The musicians’ volume rose. Couples took to the floor, whirls of colorful fabrics and jewelry that glinted in the phosphorescent stone light. Deiman music mimicked its god in its force; even the flutes assaulted Ash’s ears, and the moves she saw were all hard stomps and cutting lurches. The instruments caught up with each other and formed a rollicking melody that made Ash’s heart crackle like a forest fire. Her soul ached to sweep onto the floor, to join the dancers, to feel like a part of something, if only for a single song.
“Great Ignitus,” Tor started, “Ash is merely—”
“Angry,” she said. She stepped out of Tor’s arm, closer to Ignitus. “Yes, I’m angry.”
She could feel tension palpitating off Tor in waves. She could feel the heat on Ignitus’s skin rise, in his eye a gleam of challenge, waiting for her to make a fatal mistake.
“I’m angry at Rook’s betrayal. He turned his back on us all when he attacked you. I’m angry that I was unable to stop him before he got so far. And I’m most angry, Great Ignitus”—Ash dropped her voice low beside the party hum—“that this seems to be a pattern. First my mother is poisoned. Then Stavos threatens you. Now something drove Rook to attack you.”
Ignitus jerked back. Ash reveled in the surprise that graced his fine features. “I told you,” he said, his voice wavering slightly, “there is no threat.”
“It cannot be a coincidence.” She was pushing the god of fire—she knew how dangerous a line she was walking, but she was trapped on a stampeding horse of her own driving, helpless not to ride it as far as she could. “We are your gladiators. If something’s going on, we should fight for you. Let us help.”
“My job is to protect Kula,” Ignitus said, “which includes protecting myself. I can’t have a gladiator involved again—”
“Again?” The word tasted sweeter than the finest honey.
Ignitus glowered at her. “This is the last you will speak of this.”
He turned, cutting a path through the dancing crowd without another word.
Tor swung in front of Ash to stop her from running after Ignitus. A dozen questions waited in her throat, things she wanted to scream, but she could only look up at Tor and say, “A gladiator? A gladiator is part of what he fears?”
Tor shook his head, fingers pinched on her arm in thought. His eyes went to the front doors. “Taro and Spark just arrived. I’ll get them, and we’ll discuss it. Wait here.”
He left, shaking out his hands as he walked away. Ash felt the same energy coursing through her body—she wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted tomove, if only to surge blood into her limbs and out of her chest, where it felt like all of it had gathered, hot and heavy.
A gladiator was part of what Ignitus feared. Could it be a gladiator and not the other gods that was a threat to Ignitus? How so?
Ash’s mind seized.
If Stavos’s threat had legitimately worried Ignitus, and a gladiator was who he feared... then hadIgnitusgotten rid of Stavos?
She imagined Stavos burning to death in Ignitus’s flames and she trembled with an unfamiliar burst of satisfaction. The image felt like justice.
With a shake of her head, she pushed the idea away. She needed more details. She needed fact, truth, no more of this guessing and patchy information.
Tor intercepted Taro and Spark by the terrace’s main doors. Not far from them, a movement drew Ash’s eye—and her body flared with heat though there was no igneia anywhere nearby.
Madoc was here now. He stood with a boy about his age, and they whispered to each other, pointing at a girl a few paces to their left. She was with a man who was clearly a government official. Madoc noticeably tensed when the man grabbed the girl’s arm and barked an order. The girl gave a look that would make the fieriest Kulan proud and reluctantly poured the man a drink.
Madoc’s jaw worked, and he shook his head—in doing so, his eyes landed on Ash.
Ash froze, her hands at her sides. For a moment, the music played, and the crowd danced, and Madoc just stared at her, expressionless, calm.
Before she could take a step, he started walking toward her.
The other boy hissed his name, but Madoc ignored him.
He wore ceremonial armor, silver-plated Deiman metal over a pleated leather skirt with sandals that wrapped high up his muscledlegs. The breastplate left his arms bare, showing how the muscles bunched as he clenched his hands, and Ash had an odd, disconnected thought:If he didn’t train with gladiators,how did his arms get so big?
Burn it all, what was wrong with her?
Madoc stopped before Ash. His mouth opened. Shut again.
