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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Valens took no pleasure in the execution. The Pyrrhaeus needed to die. Cerasus had been right about that. No one could be allowed to attack a Lightbearer, and this boy assaulted a mere child.
But the boy was as young as the girl he had attacked. If the crime had been anything else, such drastic retribution would have been unnecessary. The boy might still have had time to learn the error of his ways and turn his life around.
But the fact remained that the Pyrrhaeus assaulted a Lightbearer. And so it came to this.
The lightning bolt struck the Pyrrhaeus's head and discharged through his feet, throwing him and his nearby companion across the alley.
The red-haired Pullatus yelped and writhed for a moment in pain, but soon found their feet.
The raven-haired assailant did not rise. There was no way he survived a direct strike. Millions of volts of energy had passed through his body at a temperature twelve times hotter than the crimson sun burning behind the Trellis. He lay motionless, brown eyes fixed, unseeing, on the violet sky.
The execution complete, Valens turned to leave, trying to ignore the prick of regret in his heart. He killed a criminal. A violent one. He had done the world a favor.
Something, some small noise, made him pause. Turn.
The red haired Pullatus stood frozen in the alley, eyes wild, head darting back and forth, too terrified still to even flee. But it was not their shuddering and panting that drew Valens's attention.
On the ground, the dead Pyrrhaeus's eyes fell closed. One of the boy's fingers curled. Then he groaned.
What?
Valens strode back to the corpse. What he had thought was a corpse, anyway.
"Domi!" The red-haired youth staggered to their companion's side. Trembling fingers patted at his chest, his neck; they didn't seem to know how to check a pulse. There was no need, however. Their friend drew a shaky breath.
Impossible. Unless...
Valens pulled the lapis translationis out of his pocket. Red veins still ribboned the blue rock face. Cerasus had thought the blood came from a donor, but there was another possibility.
Eyes narrowing, Valens strode to the injured Pyrrhaeus's side and knelt at his shoulder. His companion cringed away, trembling. "Please, don't hurt us."
Valens ignored them and held the stone to the fallen boy's throat. To his utter shock, blood welled and beaded on the unconscious youth's skin, floated in the air in a small bubble of iridescent promenia, and flowed into the promenia artifact.
The redhead stared for a moment, wide-eyed, and then lost their mind. "What are you doing?" they shrieked and slapped Valens's hand. The stone clattered down the alley.
