Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 8, Final Part

It was almost supper time and Domi just wanted to spend a little more time with Sidus. Just one or two more hours before Fons enforced his pathetically early bedtime like he was a toddler instead of a man nearly grown.

But Daedalus kept trying to call him into the Caeles.

The fifth time Fons stepped politely into Domi's bedchamber, looking apologetic but now determined, it was clear the man wouldn't allow Domi to avoid his obnoxious brother anymore.

"Fine," he grumbled, flicking his last cattus pawn over onto its side atop the game board spread across the table. All of Sidus's mice had managed to escape the carved wooden cat-like creature anyway. Sidus had won five rounds--and a kiss each time--already.

Fons glanced at the starholder. "This conversation is marked confidential, Promerenti."

"He can stay," Domi said quickly.

The personal secretary just shook his head and crooked a finger at Sidus.

Domi frowned. Sometimes he thought his handlers were the real Principia. "Can he come back later? I want to say goodbye at least before Solitude starts tomorrow."

Fons sighed. "Of course, Basilicus." The Pyrrhaei flicked a stern look at Sidus. "If you arrive before his royal bedtime." His eyes narrowed behind his thin spectacles. "And leave promptly thereupon."

Sidus smirked in a way Domi knew was going to make the Trellis flare, and the younger boy quickly started breathing to calm himself. "Of course. The Princeps needs his rest, not overnight excitement and exercise." Golden light washed through the room, but at least it wasn't searing white. Still, Fons scowled and looked pointedly at the door and Sidus sauntered toward it with his hands raised. "I'm going, I'm going."

Fons watched the starholder pass with a frown, then smiled at Domi. "Do you need me to fetch Aedilis Valens to help you access the Caeles?" he asked, pitching his voice low enough Domi could hear but no passing Pyrrhaei servant could make out.

He shook his head. "No, Valens showed me how to do it." And congratulated him on learning a skill a ten-year-old Lightholder could manage.

The handler nodded. "By your leave, then?"

"Yes, you may go. Thank you, Erus."

Domi waited until the door was closed before he flopped down on his breathing rug and started his exercises. Settling himself with deep inhalations into his belly, he focused on the incessant ringing all around him. The bright roaring hymn of the Trellis above, like a distant sea of light. The deep rumbling of the earth below, where promenia helped control the shifts and tremors of the land. The hum of various small promenia artifacts in the onyx palace, like the lanterns illuminating his bedchamber.

Domi hadn't been able to sense so much before, but Valens said that it was because the Trellis magnified both his senses and his reach. He didn't know how to do it yet, but Valens said that as Princeps, Domi could hear promenia humming in a lantern in a deep night-side cave if he wanted to and dissolve it.

He didn't want to dissolve anything today though, or reach that far. It was actually harder for him to reach out and touch just a little promenia in his room than all the promenia in Vola Apertus, but he was getting better.

One of the lanterns in his room fizzled as he accidentally dissolved the magic inside it, and only Valens' ever-present promenia cloud saved the next lantern from suffering the same fate. But a moment later he managed to brush his awareness over the faint humming of tiny particles in the air. Ambient promenia, too scarce to see with the naked eye. But he only needed to sort of flick a couple of them with his mind while thinking hard about what he wanted.