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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When a servant summoned Arbita to her infirmary, she expected a patient, of course. Two newly-Empowered toddlers lay abed, after all, both struggling to adjust to the donated prometus they'd received a few days ago. But she did not expect to find a new patient, let alone one with injuries this grave.
"Sweet Eternal Radiance," she said with a gasp as she took in the bloodied child sprawled on one of the patient beds.
She recognized him, of course; the kid ran away from her less than an hour ago, after all, and took the lapis translationis with him. Still, she could not fathom how a Promethidae child ended up so injured. This was the Collegium, not the dangerous frontier wilds!
She frowned at Valens, her brother's obnoxious friend, and claimed all the promenia adrift in the surrounding air. "What happened?" she asked as she sent the humming particles into her three patients. She coaxed the feverish Empowered children to sleep—toddlers did not need to see so much blood—and then examined the older boy.
Valens's amber eyes narrowed down at the unconscious kid who lay, limp and pale, on the bed. "He stole the lapis translationis and then grabbed—"
"No." Arbita waved a hand as she nudged the promenia to begin staunching blood flow. "What happened to him?"
She didn't need help with the medical details, but the cause of the injuries remained another matter. Knowledge rose like steam within her in order of importance. Heart damage. Shock. Liver damage. Third-degree burns. Severe lacerations. Low blood cell counts. Empty prometarium.
She frowned at the last. His own body would offer little help, then. No wonder he bled so severely; he lacked prometus to control blood loss. What in the Eternal Radiance's name hurt this kid?
"Your niece opened him up," Valens said, crossing his arms over his bloodied paenula and then uncrossing them a moment later with a grimace. He wiped his hands on a clean spot on the fabric. "Then I struck him with lightning."
Arbita's head jerked up from her patient. "You struck—"
"Your brother ordered me to execute him, but the boy's prometus brought him back."
For a moment Arbita stared in speechless shock. Valens attacked a Promethides? And Cerasus ordered the death of a child? As Praetor, Cerasus could technically execute as many children as he wished, as long as those children were Pyrrhaei, but he had never done something so awful. And attacking a Promethides was a crime. A severe one. What drove the two men to do such a thing?
Then the worldholder's other words seeped into her stunned mind. "What prometus?"
She frowned and tightened her focus to check her patient again. A hazy green and gold outline formed in her mind's eye as the promenia she controlled painted the picture.
Her awareness rushed through a dark prometarium, searching along every twist and turn of the vessels. The channels were extremely underdeveloped, but such was normal for a feral.
She withdrew her promenia. "I sense no prometus."
"What?" Valens stepped forward with a frown. "The stone drew blood from him. I saw it."
Strange. Very strange. "Well, he doesn't have any prometus now." Arbita diverted a few of the promenia particles she controlled from knitting the boy's innermost injuries to instead inspect his bone marrow. Soon, deep within the gelatinous tissues, she found the culprit. Who would damage a child's progenitor cells like that? No wonder his body's production of prometus appeared so impaired. "Oh, I see. Looks like someone suppressed him, poor kid."
Valens scowled. "Poor kid? He attacked your niece."
Arbita gasped as her heart leaped into her throat. "What? Edera? Is she all right?"
"She's fine. She defended herself well." He waved a hand at the bloodied boy. "As you see."
"Why did he attack her?" She frowned at her patient as she shifted from mending the damaged tissues of his heart to weaving promenia together to patch his liver. Edera had used her own magic to inflict a surgically-clean cut, parting cell from neighboring cell in a straight line, and Arbita praised small mercies. The severed edges joined back together with ease, and she converted the woven promenia into tissues, arteries, and veins.
The worldholder shrugged. "He tried to steal her blood. Though what he wanted to use it for is beyond me."
Arbita sighed. "I imagine he hoped to Empower himself. Some feral Promethidae think they can pull the procedure off with a little blood and a prayer. They don't understand that their bodies need to be primed to receive a prometus donation. They think prometus alone makes one a Lightbearer." She shook her head. "Well, we won't find out what he was trying to do unless he survives. Hand me those scissors, will you?" She pointed. "I need to change him into a patient tunica."
Valens arched a brow. "I'm not one of your alumnas." Amber eyes fell to thin slits as she frowned at him. "Or some nursemaid."
"Valens," she said, striving for patience. "If—"
"You." The worldholder snapped his fingers and pointed at the corner. "Help the physician."
For a moment, Arbita could not imagine who he addressed. Then a filthy redhead rose from the floor, shaking as they twisted a green bandana in their bloodied hands. The boy's servant? "I, um," they said, their voice little more than a whisper. They stepped away from the wall, paled, and slumped against a dismayed Valens's side. "I-I—"
"Did you strike them with lightning, too?" Arbita asked with a gasp, sweeping promenia into the second kid.
"No." Valens frowned, grasping the Pullatus by the shoulders to hold them upright. "But they may have been too close."
In Arbita's head, the promenia particles sang to her of stress hormones and a mild heart arrhythmia, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The redhead did not appear to have suffered a direct lightning strike, unlike the other youth, but still, Valens was right that they had been too close.
She checked their heart again, stabilizing its rhythm. "Eternal Radiance," she said under her breath, "what did you do to these two children, Valens?"
"I did as command—"
She glared at the man. "On second thought, just be quiet." She turned away from the astonished worldholder and offered the street urchin a smile she hoped appeared soothing. "Kid, lie down over there while I tend your companion. You'll be alright, but you should rest a bit."
"What about Domi?" they asked, voice shaky as they stepped away from Valens and slumped onto the bed Arbita indicated.
"Domi will be fine." She scowled at Valens. "Scissors. Now."
He stepped toward the door with a snort. "I'll go fetch one of your alumnas."
"My alumnas are in their classes and—" She broke off, shaking her head. "Never mind, no, I'm done arguing with you. You messed him up, so you're going to help clean him up." She snapped her fingers the way he had done to the Pullatus and enjoyed the satisfaction of watching him grit his teeth in sour resignation. "Scissors. Now."
