Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 5, Part C

He did not get a chance to finish, as Merula moved forward with serpent-like grace and backhanded him in the mouth.

Arbita could only gape at the woman, feeling her heart plummet. Death. Assaulting a Lightholder, especially an Empowered, was punishable by death.

Valens cursed under his breath and glared at everyone as sizzles and sparks filled the wood, making everyone jump. "That didn't happen," he said through gritted teeth as he looked past Astricus's wide-eyed son to the man now dabbing blood from his lip. "Did it?"

The starholder looked ashamed. "Indeed, nothing happened." He spat blood and then looked at Merula, who stood before him shaking like a leaf, not in fear but fury. "I deserved that. You're the Princeps's Ma." It was not a question.

"If you ever touch him again, I will kill you and everyone who was in any way involved," Merula said through gritted teeth. "Do you hear me?"

"Ma, please," Domi said. Arbita glanced at the kid and bit her lip. He looked pale.

Merula swung to snap at her son, but then seemed to notice the same. She drew a deep breath, becoming as stone once more as she exhaled. She met the starholder's eyes, unflinching. "Let's go."

Arbita was not the only one to sigh in relief.

They followed the starholder into the cottage. The interior, strewn with cobwebs, dust, and debris looked every bit like the hut it appeared to be. But Astricus tugged on a mildewed cot and, instead of sliding aside, it pivoted on the ground, shifting ninety degrees to reveal a small opening in the pine floor.

"Watch your step, please," Astricus said. He glanced toward Valens. "We no longer have promenia lanterns to light our way."

Arbita followed her husband and puer to the edge of the hole, peering down. A set of steep stone stairs descended into blackness. She glanced at Astricus.

"The cellar below connects to a hewn tunnel leading into the Onyx Palace. It was built by your ancestors almost nine-hundred years ago, Basilicus," he told Domi, who nodded with an uneasy frown at the hole.

Built after the Pyrrhaei Rebellion had been quelled, he meant. Arbita grimaced. The entire Princeps Worldholder line had nearly been wiped out back then, not in a terrorist attack like fifteen years ago but the widespread uprising against Lightholder rule. Their magic had not been able to save them; indeed, if anything the failure of their magic was what had finely let them live and reinstated their rule.

Several days of dangerous and disturbing planetary phenomena as one after another Princeps Worldholder had been executed had finally convinced the Pyrrhaei that the Eternal Radiance was furious with their rebelliousness. The Trellis malfunctions had been widely interpreted as a sign of divine wrath and confirmation that Lightholders ruled by holy mandate.

A massive popular movement had risen then around the captive surviving Princeps, an eleven-year-old hailed as a savior. Within a year, she had been placed on the Throne of Solitude and crowned Keeper of Heaven and Earth, the first to bear the new title.

No wonder she had built her family a means to escape, just in case.

She was glad Domi likely did not know this history. The boy only looked weary, not afraid, as he said, "Well, let's go."

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Arbita didn't realize she was smiling until Merula, leaning against the ancient stone wall at her side, glanced at her.

She felt her cheeks heating, though she doubted the Pyrrhaeus could see it in the dim golden light of the promenia lantern they'd managed to light after Valens had summoned promenia to replace the particles he'd destroyed. "I'm sorry," she said, "I know this is very serious, but I just can't help it."