Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 1, Part B

Valens's domus was a gilded cage. But at least it was a tall gilded cage and perfect for climbing.

Promenia hummed in Domi's ears as he scaled the arcaded facade above his second-floor bedchamber balcony. Eying his aedificans's stalking magical particles in distaste, he dug his fingers into marble and stretched one foot high to toe the third-story windowsill. The warding cloud that Valens had placed over him was intended to counter his erratic sorcery if it went awry again. He wondered if it would also tell his insufferable teacher that he was no longer inside the domus working on his writing assignment as Valens had instructed.

He tried to ignore the wavering, ringing distortion trailing behind him like some kind of paenula mantle waving in a breeze. It was a pity he couldn't shed the obnoxious magic hovering over him as easily as he'd ditched the useless flowing mantle.

Trying to tune out the promenia cloud's incessant ringing as much as he could, the boy resumed his climb. He levered himself up, pressing himself flat to the wall and reaching as high as his fingers could stretch for the edge of the balcony on the fourth story. As he pulled himself up onto the thin ledge behind the balcony rail, he grinned at the feeling of muscles engaging and strength coursing through his veins.

The modifications his recently unsuppressed prometus had made to his body were still a wonderful novelty despite the danger the magical particles within his blood posed to the world. Sick for most of his short life, he had never enjoyed the strength of even a normal, magicless Pyrrhaeus boy, let alone the augmented vitality of a Promethides sorcerer. That is, not until Arbita, Valens's betrothed and an aedilis-ranked lifeholder, had reversed Domi's lifelong suppression and given him back his magical birthright.

He could feel the newfound strength flowing through his body now, surging through the prometarium channels that carried magical prometus particles to every organ and bone within him. He felt the magic in the light, easy breaths he drew despite his strenuous climb, in the tensing and relaxing of his muscles, in the keenness of his eyes as he took in the trimming along the edge of the roof above him and spotted a good handhold, and in the coiling power in his legs as he crouched low and jumped, grasping onto the roof with sure fingers.

A heartbeat later he hauled himself up and stood, hands on his hips, grinning as he surveyed the courtyard from six stories up. Fountains bubbled amidst the snow, kept warm and flowing by the promenia in the freezing Germinating air as surely as the prometus in Domi's body kept his limbs warm despite the short, thin tunica he was wearing. Snow blossoms opened hardy blue petals to the icy yard. The trellis in the garden cradled crimson bunches of frost roses, and the golden light of the Trellis in the sky glimmered on the delicate crystals hanging from petal, thorn, and leaf.

And standing in the middle of the courtyard like garden statues, three of the nags now controlling every bloody moment of Domi's life scowled up at him with different expressions of concern, irritation, and exasperation.

Domi glared right back down at them. He was fifteen years old and he outranked them all now. Or at least he had outranked them now for the past two days since he had learned his true identity. Yet they treated him like a misbehaving child.

Under their disapproving gazes, six stories below him or not, he was suddenly very aware that he was standing on a roof in the middle of the chill Germinating season in nothing but a tiny tunica. And that he ought to have been studying inside.

"What?" he grumbled, crossing his arms as his cheeks heated. "Don't you all have a meeting you're supposed to be attending?"

"Basiluculus," Bellus Calthae said, his voice light, pleasant, and precise, "I must ask that you come down at once." The young man swept an elegant arm out to the side, indicating the spot in the snow where he no doubt wanted Domi to come to stand before him like a trained pup. The gold-banded sapphire laurel of an Empowered mindholder shimmered around his collarbones like waves in sunlight. "It is not proper or dignified for one of your station to be climbing about like some common ruffian."