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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She should never have allowed the child to live.
Cercitis walked around the hazy cloud of golden and black promenia hovering in the middle of her bedchamber. The magic shifted through countless vague images of an adolescent boy teetering at the edge of manhood. The windswept wavy black hair and dark-brown eyes were so familiar to her. He had his father's brows and nose, and his mother's lips and jaw.
"It is uncanny," Astricus said. Cercitis's husband sat on the bed, eyes fixed in astonished dismay on the boy. "He really is identical to Daedalus. I understood he would be, but seeing it is another thing entirely."
Cercitis nodded. Even the glittering black laurel, reminiscent of a leafy crown, was the same. But their foster son had never worn his hair shorter than his collarbones. Not when he, like many high-rank Promethidae, must wear the tri-braid for religious functions. This figure of shadow and light had shorn his hair to frame his brow. However, save for the hair and a slight difference in weight, the two boys were identical.
"Does the Compendium show anything yet?" she asked. Her hands would not cease sweating. She clenched and unclenched them, and dread filled the pit of her belly, cold and acidic.
Promenia thrummed as her husband accessed the Caeles. As Daedalus's chief of security, his credentials provided him with access to more detailed records than she could view. "Not yet," Astricus said. "But it is only a matter of time. Every particle of promenia he encounters might be the one to figure it out."
"And reveal him," Cercitis said, her throat tight. Any second, the Compendium might update and tell the world a royal twin lived. "We can't let that happen."
"Maybe the people will accept him if he's properly prepared. If—"
She shook her head. "Love, it's been more than eight hundred years since the Calamity of the Twins, but when was the last time you spotted a pair of twins wandering around? There is a reason there are so few."
He swallowed and his complexion grew sallow. She did not blame him; she shared the same fear. No one knew how many cities had been lost during the Calamity, how many lives. Vast blighted places still marred the night-side from the massive Trellis failure a pair of twin Princeps Worldholders caused centuries ago. Only a few nomadic night-side curias and the most courageous or foolish of explorers dared venture into the ruins even now.
"Do you think we're facing another Calamity?" Astricus tossed his cluden from hand to hand as stress often drove him to do. "Yesterday's damage in Provincia Sicarii is tame compared to some of the ruins Ausus told me about."
"I'm not sure, but can I risk it?" She chewed her lip.
"Lifeholder duty again?"
She looked away. Yes, lifeholders bore responsibility for preventing another such catastrophe from ever threatening the world again. It was easy—agonizing, but easy—for lifeholder physicians to snuff out the life of a second embryo upon discovery... or ensure one of a patient's babes emerged into the world stillborn. Sometimes the parents knew. Often it was kinder for them to stay in the dark.
