Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 7, Part C

He'd always wished he could ask his questions and request his story at an eidolon pillar. But now that he had his chance, it was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do.

A mindholder Empowered carrying some kind of lyre with ten strings led the procession, with Domi trailing behind in his heavy paenula. The thing was hard to walk in, but he had help. For this procession, and this one only, the Princeps Worldholder was allowed to lean heavily on an attendant. Expected to, in fact. He wasn't supposed to cry, because Comitas said that was childish and demeaning. But he should plod along in grim, self-controlled gravitas, the perfect picture of dignified grief. It was protocol.

Everything, it seemed, was protocol. Who could and couldn't wake him or have the honor of dressing him. Which morning prayers he said on which days. What foods he ate at different times of the month. The colors of the ribbons fastening his tri-braid, the words he was supposed to use to greet night-side versus day-side praetors, the forks he was expected to use. There was even a special protocol for how to use the chamber pot, a conversation he wished he could burn from his mind forever.

"You don't look very mournful, Basilicus," Radix whispered, grimacing at the lyre player. For some reason, they hated the man.

"Yeah, well, I don't feel very mournful," he grumbled under his breath, hissing a curse that had Comitas huffing a warning cough at him as he tripped over his black opal-crusted ceremonial paenula. She might be Pyrrhaei, but he swore the sharp-eared woman inherited her Promethidae parents' hearing.

Radix patted his hand as he leaned on them less out of a show of dignified grief and more out of a desire not to stumble and fall flat on his face. They were wearing all four colors of Domi's royal Penna Igneae curia, black and silver embroidered with fiery masculine copper and yellow wings. "Don't you want to honor her?"

"She does not deserve it."

Radix's heavy sigh told him they still didn't understand. But how could they? They were a law-orphan. They had lost their parents to a debtor's prison before they were old enough to form memories of their Ma and Pa. Of course they had no qualms about honoring people who'd done them no wrong.

The procession reached Arx Luminosa's remembrance odeon. The notes of the lyre faded into the hush of the small crowd that had accompanied their mourning ruler.

Fingers clenching around the bouquet of snow roses he carried, Domi glared at the domed observance building.

At least he got to go in by himself. Electi were already completing their sweep of the dark chamber, emerging out into the flickering Trellis light.

Sidus met his eyes, expression sober, and Domi sighed as the older boy stood at parade rest by the door, face filled with pain. At least someone grieved the deceased.

Grimacing and hoping it looked mournful, he strode into the chamber and cringed as the door closed behind him.

One hour.

The circular odeon was dark and vast. A small beam of golden light shone down from an opening in the black ceiling, the only illumination in the shadowed place. It cascaded over a pylon in the center of the chamber. Humming with promenia, the eidolon pillar glittered like black opal in the dark.

Gritting his teeth, he stalked up to the tall stone and tossed the thick-petaled blue snow roses at the thing's base. No one was around to see. Comitas assured him even his interaction with promenia here would not be recorded except by the eidolon itself.

"Well, you might as well come out," Domi snapped, crossing his arms.

The promenia's humming changed, sliding to a slower vibration and a lower pitch. A new lightsong, Radix had called it.

Domi braced himself as the pillar's surface wavered, like ripples passing over a black pool. The ripples brightened, a wash of gold in the opal, and then an image began to appear in the stone.

A silhouette, at first, of smoke and glitter. A woman's figure, tall and regal. The first hints of a face, jaw, and lips of warm, dark gold, hair of dark brown, pulled up in a tri-braid with unruly curls escaping.

The eidolon's brown eyes, warmer and brighter than his and Daedalus's own, opened and settled on his face. Heartbreak and joy alike warred in the smile she gave him, and a hot trembling settled deep into Domi's muscles as they looked at each other.

Hazy and indistinct, and yet far more solid than the dead had any right to be, the eidolon stepped from the stone.

"Hello, son," Princeps Verita Adurere said.