An abandoned boy, a grieving prince, and a reclusive sorcerer find themselves caught in a web of peril and mystery...
Domi, a young thief abandoned on the street at birth, just wants to save his dying foster mother. But first, he must survive the m...
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Daedalus glared at the feast spread before him and tried to summon the will to eat.
He was not hungry. Not with shock, grief, and exhaustion making food the last thing on his mind. Yes, he understood the need for nourishment after a day full of Trellis practices, formal audiences, informal briefings, sacred offerings, and of course the funeral. Yet the mingled sweet and savory scents wafting from the table before him turned his belly.
Fidgeting with his fork, he eyed the platter of pork tarts a servant placed before him and grimaced.
"Epileus," Gemma hissed. "Hey, Epileus!"
Daedalus's oldest two foster siblings reclined on dining couches across from him. A low table piled with delicacies spanned between them.
Made undisciplined by fatigue, his gaze wandered from the meal to his whispering foster siblings and out to the spacious room beyond. The tricliniaria where they supped was one of several extravagant dining halls in Domus Iaspidis, the Rex's Jasper Palace in the Arx Luminosa palace complex. This particular tricliniaria held five secluded alcoves, one for the use of each of the four Princepses and of course the Rex himself. Royalty filled four; the Rex always liked to make a brief late appearance for this formal convivium dinner party before the New Year's Observance.
Daedalus studied his alcove's wall. Painted sky violet, it featured a sprawling black opal mosaic depicting scenes from the Holy Ovidiana scriptures of the Eternal Radiance's transformation of Aquarius. The other four alcoves likewise featured elaborate mosaics of red agate, lapis lazuli, jade, and purple jasper.
The boy yawned and wondered if he could get away with taking a nap here. He already reclined; it would be so easy to close his eyes and drift off.
"What if I use the wrong fork?" Gemma whispered.
"Who cares?" Epileus tipped his head back to toss a prosciutto-stuffed date into his mouth. He chewed, grinning. "No one can see."
"But what if someone passes by? And will you stop that? You look like a Pullatus."
Daedalus hid a smile at their antics. When his mother sat on the Throne of Solitude, the Rex never invited Epileus, Gemma, or their mother and father to this private function.
But their positions within the Compendium had improved with Daedalus's sudden ascension. They were his family, after all, more so in some ways than his own mother and father. Callide had always been busy with state functions and the work of Trellis maintenance, and Ausus had often been away on the night-side for his artifact research. Thus Daedalus, their only child, had been left in the care of his foster parents and a small army of tutors, handlers, and guards.
"If anyone notices, drop the fork on the floor, and pretend you sneezed."
The pair chortled at Epileus's idiotic suggestion, earning a stern glance from Cercitis, Daedalus's foster mother. The lifeholder shook her head at them, and they subsided. "Honestly, one would think you two were the younger and Daedalus the elder."
"That's Basilicus Daedalus to us now, Mother," Gemma said with a quirk of her lip.
"Basilicus Princeps Worldholder Daedalus Adurere Viarius," Epileus rattled off and added a flourishing twist of his wrist as he continued, "alta Cercitis Saltuosi Astricus Nitidus Penna Igneae Callide Adurere."
"Come now, no one says it that way," Daedalus protested. Their own full names were rather long-winded in the Compendium too, though they lacked political offices and foster parents to drag the things out to as absurd lengths as his own.
"They will say it just like that at your coronation," Gemma pointed out. "And twice as slow."
"And accompanied by trumpets and flutes," Epileus said.
The sad truth was, they were not wrong. In fact, the event would likely be far more extravagant than they imagined. None of them recalled what his mother's coronation had been like almost fifteen years before. Daedalus had only been a few weeks old at the time, and Gemma and Epileus but three and four, far too young to remember. The occasion would be a new experience for all three of them.
"Stop teasing him," Astricus—Daedalus's foster father—said. His voice, though soft, carried effortlessly.
The starholder stood guard at Daedalus's shoulder with two junior members of the Principis Armati at parade rest behind him. Astricus had served as Callide's chief of security for almost fifteen years and now served as Daedalus's own. He wore a crystal-blue paenula over a pale-gold tunica, and the fire-winged eagle of Penna Igneae—Daedalus's sorcerous curia—stretched over his heart in cyan, black, gray, and gold embroidery. At his throat, his crimson laurel burned in vivid warning, flanked—like the laurels of his wife and children—by the twin bands of glowing gold marking him as an Empowered slave.
Astricus often told him that fifteen years ago, people took it for granted that a Princeps Worldholder could protect themself. That ended when a terrorist attack killed everyone ahead of Callide in the line of succession. Just two brutal hours of fear and bloodshed, while the innocent frontier schoolgirl lay asleep in her dormitory bed, forever changed her life... and her friends' lives. Astricus and Cercitis went from being the Empowered best friends of a Trueborn to the high-ranking staff of a Princeps overnight. And Daedalus had gone from being an anonymous infant to the future Princeps Worldholder.
Had the trauma of all those deaths driven his mother to take her own life? She lost her whole family in the attack except for her husband and son. Her grandmother. Her aunt, uncle, and their families. Her mother and father. Her brother. Her niece. All murdered by a madman who insisted the Devouring Eyes wanted him to slaughter the Princeps Worldholder line and destroy the Trellis.
Everyone always said it was a miracle Callide and Daedalus had not been there with the others when the massive amphitheater collapsed. The Eternal Radiance must have protected them to ensure someone would survive and inherit the Trellis, thus preventing a global cataclysm. He wondered if his mother had felt that way.
A grape bounced off Daedalus's forehead, and he flinched, then glared at the culprit. Epileus grinned as he chewed.
"Will you behave yourself in public for once?" Astricus asked, leveling a stern glare at his son. "This is Arx Luminosa, not a frontier palace."
Daedalus drew a deep breath and pushed his troubled thoughts away. "It is all right, Altor, let him have his fun," he said, using the informal term for addressing one's foster father.
In the shadows, Comitas cleared her throat; protocol decreed that Daedalus should not acknowledge the relationship in public.
Irritation pricked within him. The private alcoves where the retinues of all four Princepses and the yet-absent Rex dined were too far apart for anyone to overhear. Well, unless a spy lurked nearby, but if so, what in the world would they report to their superiors? That Daedalus Adurere possessed a foster family, like so many other high-rank Promethidae with busy parents, and sometimes spoke in an informal manner to loved ones?
Let them tell the whole world. He would not be as distant from his kin as his mother had been.
