Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 13, Final Part

"I was Kaitlyn Byrd long ago," it said at last. "I will be again."

The woman gasped, liquid golden eyes widening. "You are an Ancient."

"Yes. Well, I was." It shrugged. "I am something new, now. More a child of the woman I once was than her. And who are you?"

She did not hesitate. Her mortal identity must still float close to the surface of her being. "Verita Adurere."

"Ah," it said simply. "I see why you returned." It did not particularly care about its descendants, at least not as such, but she was a very young eidolon. They tended to be sentimental and meddlesome creatures. No wonder she had fled destruction. Her children had been in danger. Now, one was dead--truly dead, unable to become an eidolon--and the other faced danger. It supposed she would be concerned about such matters. "My condolences."

"Thank you," she said softly and changed the subject. "And why did you return?"

"I didn't want to perish."

"We may still perish," she pointed out.

"Perhaps." It shrugged. "Perhaps not."

<>

Domi didn't know if he moved through a nightmare or a bizarre dream. Attendants dressed him for his coronation in the heavy ceremonial paenula, but he could barely feel their touches. He could barely feel anything at all. Their hands moved over his numb body, insubstantial as air, as they shifted his limbs this way and that.

He let them move him however they wanted and didn't bother to help. Helping took energy and besides, he felt disconnected from his limbs, as if they belonged to someone else. Just yesterday, his own body had been filled with pain, nausea, fever, and exhaustion. None of the sensations had belonged to him, not really, and they'd been unpleasant. But now they were gone, and he wanted them back.

He wanted Daedalus back. But his brother was dead. Domi's body knew it even though his mind couldn't quite grasp the shape of it.

Dead. Daedalus had been breathing. His lips had been moving. And then he was dead?

The door clicked. He looked up dully, hoping to see Valens or better yet, his ma. He needed her, but it wasn't her, and it wasn't his aedificans either.

Princeps Buccina stepped into the dressing chamber, her scarred face solemn. "Are you ready?"

What did that even mean? Everything had changed. What part of it was he supposed to be ready for?

After a moment he just said, "Yeah."

He half-expected to hear a cleared throat from the shadows. But Comitas wasn't here to nag him about grammar anymore. Comitas was dead.

Princeps Buccina didn't correct him, either. She didn't need to, after all. "I will be with you the whole way," the mindholder said. "It won't be loud, just a little whisper. All you have to do is repeat what I say."

He was to be like a puppet on a string, dangled before the masses in a parody of a coronation. Fine. It would be easier than memorizing anything. He could barely remember his name. Though maybe it was better that way. He wasn't supposed to use the name Merula gave him anymore.

Princeps Buccina rested a hand on the back of his neck, rubbing soothingly. "Let's go, Basilicus."

A double ring of Regis Electi surrounded him as he and a retinue of strangers processed from the staging point at the capital's marble walls down the city's grand central tree-lined Via Pomosus. Domi plucked winter apples from the branches and handed them out to the Pyrrhaei crowds. He passed a deer nibbling on the broad black odoratus leaves growing beneath the trees, something about the sight making him frown before Buccina urged him along. They entered Arx Luminosa and proceeded through the palace complex's winding corridors to the Western Odeon.