Valens's domus was a gilded cage. But at least it was a tall gilded cage and perfect for climbing.
Promenia hummed in Domi's ears as he scaled the arcaded facade above his second-floor bedchamber balcony. Eying his aedificans's stalking magical particles in distaste, he dug his fingers into marble and stretched one foot high to toe the third-story windowsill. The warding cloud that Valens had placed over him was intended to counter his erratic sorcery if it went awry again. He wondered if it would also tell his insufferable teacher that he was no longer inside the domus working on his writing assignment as Valens had instructed.
He tried to ignore the wavering, ringing distortion trailing behind him like some kind of paenula mantle waving in a breeze. It was a pity he couldn't shed the obnoxious magic hovering over him as easily as he'd ditched the useless flowing mantle.
Trying to tune out the promenia cloud's incessant ringing as much as he could, the boy resumed his climb. He levered himself up, pressing himself flat to the wall and reaching as high as his fingers could stretch for the edge of the balcony on the fourth story. As he pulled himself up onto the thin ledge behind the balcony rail, he grinned at the feeling of muscles engaging and strength coursing through his veins.
The modifications his recently unsuppressed prometus had made to his body were still a wonderful novelty despite the danger the magical particles within his blood posed to the world. Sick for most of his short life, he had never enjoyed the strength of even a normal, magicless Pyrrhaeus boy, let alone the augmented vitality of a Promethides sorcerer. That is, not until Arbita, Valens's betrothed and an aedilis-ranked lifeholder, had reversed Domi's lifelong suppression and given him back his magical birthright.
He could feel the newfound strength flowing through his body now, surging through the prometarium channels that carried magical prometus particles to every organ and bone within him. He felt the magic in the light, easy breaths he drew despite his strenuous climb, in the tensing and relaxing of his muscles, in the keenness of his eyes as he took in the trimming along the edge of the roof above him and spotted a good handhold, and in the coiling power in his legs as he crouched low and jumped, grasping onto the roof with sure fingers.
A heartbeat later he hauled himself up and stood, hands on his hips, grinning as he surveyed the courtyard from six stories up. Fountains bubbled amidst the snow, kept warm and flowing by the promenia in the freezing Germinating air as surely as the prometus in Domi's body kept his limbs warm despite the short, thin tunica he was wearing. Snow blossoms opened hardy blue petals to the icy yard. The trellis in the garden cradled crimson bunches of frost roses, and the golden light of the Trellis in the sky glimmered on the delicate crystals hanging from petal, thorn, and leaf.
And standing in the middle of the courtyard like garden statues, three of the nags now controlling every bloody moment of Domi's life scowled up at him with different expressions of concern, irritation, and exasperation.
Domi glared right back down at them. He was fifteen years old and he outranked them all now. Or at least he had outranked them now for the past two days since he had learned his true identity. Yet they treated him like a misbehaving child.
Under their disapproving gazes, six stories below him or not, he was suddenly very aware that he was standing on a roof in the middle of the chill Germinating season in nothing but a tiny tunica. And that he ought to have been studying inside.
"What?" he grumbled, crossing his arms as his cheeks heated. "Don't you all have a meeting you're supposed to be attending?"
"Basiluculus," Bellus Calthae said, his voice light, pleasant, and precise, "I must ask that you come down at once." The young man swept an elegant arm out to the side, indicating the spot in the snow where he no doubt wanted Domi to come to stand before him like a trained pup. The gold-banded sapphire laurel of an Empowered mindholder shimmered around his collarbones like waves in sunlight. "It is not proper or dignified for one of your station to be climbing about like some common ruffian."
Domi ignored his protocol handler and the obnoxious royal title that the mindholder had used to address him. He had only learned a few days ago that he'd been born Laetus Adurere Viarius, the younger twin brother and heir of Daedalus Adurere Viarius, the Princeps Worldholder. He saw no reason to start acting like some boring royal dunce just because a brother he didn't even know sat atop the Throne of Solitude and controlled the Trellis four thousand miles away in Vola Apertus, capital of the world.
He might be the Principis Heres Worldholder now, next in line for the throne. But he was also still himself. Domi. A Pullatus breaker, master of burglary, no matter his birth.
Besides, he knew that soon someone else would be born and take the unwanted title away from him. And good riddance. Eventually, Daedalus would marry and become a father, and his children would become his heirs. The Princeps planned to marry as soon as the Rex's eugenics program cleared one of his preferred matches. Soon, Domi would be free of this whole annoying Principis Heres Worldholder farce.
"Alumna, what do you think you're doing?"
Domi grimaced at Valens as the amber-eyed man glared up at him. He would be free of his royal title in a few months or a couple of years, but the same could not be said of his status as Valens Ornnithias's alumna. Even if he eventually became an aedilis master of his worldholding sorcery and became the aedificans of his own alumna, he would be stuck with Valens, his infuriating arse of an aedificans, for life.
The surly amber-eyed man was responsible right now for training and providing for Domi, but the bond of mutual obligation between an alumna and aedificans was legally binding and lifelong. And his aedificans was the worst, and not just because he gave stupid homework assignments or had even struck Domi down with lightning when they had first met one month ago. He was the most annoying person Domi had ever met.
"Dominulus Lodicis, you had best get your arse down here right now!"
He sighed, wilting, as he heard the full name his foster mother, Merula Nocticola, had given him when she'd taken him in after he'd been found, abandoned, on the steps of the comitii basilica governmental building.
If there was one person who he would not ignore or disobey, it was this stately bronze Pyrrhaei woman with a halo of thick black curls around her regal head.
Merula may not have birthed him, and she was no longer his guardian now that he was a Lightholder. And she was just about as far away from him in station as a person could be. But she was the woman who took him off the street after his royal parents had secretly abandoned him as a newborn for the crime of being a twin, and if anyone deserved respect, Merula did.
"Yes, Ma," he said, though not without a grumble.
He could feel every disapproving eye on him as he climbed his way down to the second-floor window ledge and then jumped the rest of the way down to land, crouched, in the snow.
The moment he straightened, he found himself peering up into his foster mother's stern face.
"What in the Eternal Radiance's sacred name did you think you were just doing, boy?" Her voice was, thankfully, more exasperated than truly angry. She was the one who had taught him to climb—and break into—buildings, after all. And most of his other skills as a thief. There was a reason she was known on the streets as the Rex Pullati
"Oh, you know, just getting a little morning exercise."
"Don't you sass me, Dominulus," she said, pulling the thick tunica Valens had given her closer to her body as a gust of frigid wind blew snow flurries across the courtyard. Unlike the three Promethidae in the garden, she did not have prometus to keep her warm.
"I'm not!" he sighed at her stern look. "Fine. Cercitis said if my body becomes different enough from my brother's, the resonance between us might stop. So I figure if I climb enough, my body might develop muscles and stuff like a man who climbs, right? I doubt that the Princeps scales palace walls in his spare time. We'll end up less identical."
Valens snorted. "That is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard."
Domi glowered at him. "It's not. Cercitis said—"
"Cercitis said that you needed to die to stop the resonance," Valens said, and next to him, Merula's face grayed and her hands clenched at her sides. "And when you stupidly went along with it, her idiotic plan killed your brother as well. You are both lucky that his death didn't destroy the Trellis and that you two could be resuscitated."
"It wasn't luck, Promerenti," Merula said, her voice firm. "The Eternal Radiance was watching over my boy."
Domi nodded, touching his bulla amulet and offering a silent prayer up to the Divine Light. Inside, though, he wondered if the Divine Light had anything to do with it. Didn't the Eternal Radiance want the Trellis protected? The Divine Light had placed the promenia artifact in the sky long ago and brought green life, golden light, humanity, and magic to Aquarius. But with each heartbeat, Domi threatened to destroy it all. How could the Eternal Radiance will such a thing?
Valens's lip curled in contempt at their piety, but he only narrowed his eyes at Domi. "Whether it was luck or miracle, I do not want to hear you parrot another word that idiot woman told you, Alumna. Put her from your mind."
"But—"
"What if you had fallen, Basiluculus?" Bellus asked. Genuine concern darkened the mindholder's deep brown eyes to nearly black.
"I've been climbing buildings all my life, Promerenti," Domi informed him with as much politeness as he could muster. "I've never fallen." Not badly, anyway. He was still alive, right?
"There is a first time for everything, Basiluculus." A snowflake landed atop the man's close-shorn black curls and he brushed it away with a graceful hand, pristine in appearance once more. Domi could only imagine how the elegant man, a master of etiquette and the endless rules governing a Promethides royal's life, felt about the short Pullati tunica Domi was wearing. "If you are injured, you know that your brother's prometus will react as though he were the one hurt. And if you die, he too could die."
"I know!" How could he ever forget? He had already gotten his royal brother killed once. And with his brother's death, however brief, he had almost caused a catastrophic Trellis failure. He'd put the lives of everyone on Aquarius at risk.
Not that he had to do anything to endanger everyone. With the resonance between him and his brother, he was a threat to Daedalus and thus to the world simply by breathing. By existing. He was toxic. Cercitis, the lifeholder physician who had delivered him and his brother into this world should have killed him in the womb to prevent their twin resonance from developing. Now it was too late.
His protocol handler nodded at Domi's sober expression. "I see that you understand the potential consequences of your actions, Basiluculus. I must ask that you always keep your royal brother's wellbeing in mind in all that you do. Even if he one day has other heirs, you two will likely remain connected for the rest of your lives if a solution to your resonance cannot be found. You must put his safety first, always. And that means keeping yourself safe."
"Alright," he sighed. "But I need to figure out some way to untangle us." He glared at Valens. "Not waste time practicing writing."
"No, you need to attend to your training," Valens said, amber eyes narrowed in frustration. Domi felt a small thrill of pleasure that he had managed to ruffle the normally stoic man's feathers. "Your brother has people looking into solutions for the resonance. You need to focus on your duties. You are years behind in your studies as a Lifeholder already, and now you need to learn to control the Trellis and rule if the need should ever arise."
"If something kills my brother without killing me too, you mean."
"Yes."
Domi tugged at his hair. "That is so unlikely that we shouldn't even bother. We need to figure out how to get rid of the resonance."
"We have our orders," Valens said, his voice unrelenting. "You have your orders, Alumna. You do not get to disobey a royal command just because the royal in question is kin. The Princeps wants you trained, and quickly. So come inside."
"And stay there, please, Basiluculus." Domi knew that Bellus was not asking. "For the good of the world, please stay indoors where you can't be seen," his protocol handler and chief of staff said. "And refrain from climbing anything taller than your head." Bellus pursed his lips in distaste. "Not only is it dangerous, but it is also undignified."
Domi wondered if his brother ever had to deal with this crap. If this was what being a Principis Heres was always going to be like, he'd rather go back to being a Pullatus.