Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 7, Final Part

White hot fury rose in Domi. "Don't call me that." He knew the Trellis was probably reacting but he didn't care. If they wanted him to do this stupid observance, they could deal with the consequences. "You're not my mother and you're not real."

The eidolon gazed at him, sorrow overtaking joy in her warm brown eyes. "You are angry," she said, her voice softer than he expected. She had always seemed so powerful in the weekly Cultus sermons, gentle only when talking about the Eternal Radiance's love and blessings. But now tenderness radiated from her golden face. "Of course you are."

"Why wouldn't I be? You left me." Belatedly, he realized his mistake. He needed to be Daedalus, even here. Who knew what this promenia creature might report? What it might tell the Trellis, or the Compendium, or the Eyes only knew what? "Left me by dying," he corrected himself. Dae would be mad about that, right? Domi would be mad if Merula took her own life.

She tilted her head. "Left you at birth, you mean."

His heart, already racing, felt like it was going to burst from his chest as fear surged. It knew? How did it know? Not even the Trellis knew who he really was. Maybe it was just guessing, trying to fish for information. Peritia said that the Trellis had a hard time telling him and Dae apart but had revised their ranks in the Compendium several times as it had gradually learned more about each of them. This promenia entity was a creature of the Caeles and connected to the Trellis. It didn't know anything, right? It was just trying to trick him, lure him into confirming its growing suspicions as it tried to sort out which twin was which. Right?

He was staring at it too long. He cleared his throat. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, unable to keep the nervous tremble from his voice. He sucked air through his nose and forced it down into his belly to calm himself, as Valens and Peritia both taught him every day, and Aix too when he wasn't lecturing about weird night-side customs, historical anecdotes, and bestia species. And grammar. Proper grammar, like Dae used. "Do you not know me, mother? I am your son, Daedalus. You reared me in the onyx palace. Surely you remember?"

"I remember everything." The eidolon looked faintly amused, though sadness still drew her promenia visage's face downward. It was disturbing how lifelike something made entirely of magic could look. She tilted her head. "Come, son. Let us not play this game. We have so little time together."

"I don't want any time with you."

The Princeps's eidolon sighed. He wondered if it could truly breathe. Did it need to breathe? He didn't like it; the temptation to use the one skill he was good at to dissolve it welled. "You're angry and afraid," she said.

He scoffed. He wondered if the real Princeps had been so insistent on stating the bloody obvious. "Yes, I am. But there's no use talking to you about it." He paused, catching himself, molding his words to sound more formal and stuffy like Dae. "You are not you. Her. You are not my mother. You are just a bunch of magic particles wearing her face."

She reminded him of his debutant portrait, a promenia painting with a bit of mindholder magic.

"I am more complex than the portrait Promerenti Bellus prepared for you."

He stared at her, trembling. "You... You can sense my thoughts?"

"Some of them. Some feelings." She looked thoughtful, nibbling her lip. "I am more like a person you visit in the Caeles. A dynamic projection of their thoughts and feelings. Only the map of my mind remains although my body has perished."

"I do not care," Domi snapped. "I do not want to talk to you."

Princeps Verita nodded. "Do you want your question and your tale, at least?"