Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 11, Part A

Valens's golden eyes settled on Domi and tension leeched out of his frame. "You're alive. What--" Then the older worldholder's gaze settled on Domi's throat.

"I--" Domi tried, but horror choked the word, making it little more than a squeak. The Trellis was dark. Why didn't it go to Dae?

Golden eyes wide, Valens surged forward like a charging bull. "Where is your laurel?"

Domi ignored the question, unable to keep his eyes from the window long. Something like lightning rippled through the sky, sickly green, with a weird crackle like crumbling ice. Other than the eerie flash, he had never, ever seen the sky so dark. The sun looked furious, way bigger than it had ever seemed before now that there was no Trellis in front of it.

"I gave it back to him," he said thickly, his eyes refusing to come unglued from the window, the broken sky. "Why isn't he taking it?"

"Who? Daedalus? Did you--" Valens broke off and reached for him. The man's grip was like iron around his arm, and painful. The ache yanked Domi's attention away from the terrifying sight outside the window as Valens half-dragged him to the breathing rug. "Come here now. Rekindle your prometus. Hurry."

"I-I can't," Domi admitted. "I took something. A leaf."

For a long moment, Valens just stared at him, all color draining from the man's face. And then his aedificans was moving again, an unstoppable wave of force that swept Domi up and bore him to the door. Grip tight around Domi's arm, he pushed the boy ahead of him out into the hallway and snapped at the pair of Electi to follow.

"W-what's happening?" Domi asked, head reeling. His knees felt weak and his body shook. Why wasn't the Trellis brightening? Why wasn't Daedalus taking control of it? Eternal Radiance, was his brother alright?

"We have to get underground right away," Valens said grimly.

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"I need information, now!" Decus snapped.

The Regis Electi rushed him and his surviving three Principia down the hall toward the Ruby Palace's tepidarium. The warm underground bathhouse chamber's heat and water made it Arx Luminosa's best emergency shelter. He had summoned his Principa here to take cover.

The sky was about to fall. The Trellis. He could barely believe it.

"There is no information in the Caeles yet about what killed him, Augustus," Princeps Buccina said, her normally soothing voice grim. "And the Caeles itself is available for now but will begin to fragment when the Trellis--"

"And what about..." He trailed off, the glimmer of hope fading as the Princeps Mindholder gave a terse shake of her head. "How long?"

"My lifeholder says it will take twenty minutes," she said, breathless. Scared. "At the very least."

Decus squeezed into the bathhouse stairwell as the Electi practically shoved him ahead of them. He had never been manhandled by his security team like this in all his life. But his life had also never been in danger like this. Hurrying his steps, the elderly man craned to look over his shoulder at Collis, the Trellis expert on his royal staff. "How long do we have before the Trellis begins coming down?" It had already started, but those were feeble sparks of dissolving promenia. A quiet warning of far worse to come, strangely beautiful in the smoldering sky.

"Ten minutes, Augustus. Maybe fifteen. No more."

Not enough. That was not nearly enough. His body shook in fear and he nearly tripped over his own feet. His starholder reflexes caught him, reliable even in his fifteenth decade. He hoped he would live to see his sixteenth. He doubted it.