Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 13, Part C

Valens watched steaming quellwort tea slosh over the goblet's crystal rim as Daedalus guided the drink to his shaking twin's lips.

"It is all right," the older boy murmured, managing what Valens had failed twice to accomplish as he coaxed his sobbing twin to finally drink. The two prior attempts lay on the floor, the first goblet overturned and the second resting in shattered fragments by the wall where Domi had flung it. "You do not have to face this fate with me," Daedalus went on softly. "I do not want that. Drink."

Valens and Arbita hung back, watching in helpless sorrow as Domi hiccupped and sputtered through the dose.

An Electi had delivered a pitcher of the brew a half hour ago to keep the younger twin from perishing with his brother. Valens had tried to get him to drink, but Domi had refused, insisting first that the Rex would have to cancel the execution if he wasn't suppressed and then that he ought to die alongside his twin. The Electi who had delivered the third goblet had warned them that if Valens failed to get Domi to drink willingly, then the boy would be forced to drink under compulsion.

Valens could not help breathing a sigh of relief as his alumna's black laurel at last faded. Domi was safe.

Footsteps echoed in the dungeon corridor beyond the door. Daedalus stilled, face graying, and a tremble shook his small frame. Then he pulled his shoulders back and his expression stiffened and smoothed like polished glass. He cupped his brother's cheek with one hand. "Please do not watch."

"Of course I'm going to watch," Domi sobbed. "If you have to die because of me, the least I can do is watch. You won't be alone."

The doors opened with a soft creak and two Electi entered the prison suite. Four more gathered outside the door. A starholder woman cast Domi an assessing glance, her eyes lingering on his unmarked collarbones, and nodded, then turned to Daedalus. "It's time, Basilicus."

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The Caeles, shattered by the Trellis Descent, was harder to access now. Valens summoned it reluctantly for his alumna, and Vola Apertus's massive amphitheater expanded to fill the prison suite's central room.

Domi, forbidden to attend the royal execution in person lest he try to interfere, sat with his eyes pinned on the promenia scene painted in shimmering light around him.

Valens dreaded the minutes to come. "I don't want you to watch, Alumna," he said gently. Not for the first time, the temptation to dissolve the Caeles to protect his alumna from what was coming rose within him.

Domi did not look his way. He sat on the divan and stared fixedly ahead, clutching his arms about his middle like he felt sick or cold. Probably both.

Valens gritted his teeth, exchanging a look with Arbita, who sat on the boy's other side.

She wrapped a blanket around the kid's tense shoulders and swallowed hard. "I think he needs to do this, Valens," the lifeholder murmured. "For his own sake as much as Daedalus's."

Valens wasn't sure he agreed. Daedalus would end up just as dead whether Domi watched or not. But the execution would be seared into the younger twin's soul if Valens let him see it. Was that better or worse than the guilt the boy would feel for the rest of his life if he turned away? Valens didn't know.

"He's all alone," Domi whispered.

Valens sank down beside him on the divan and followed the boy's gaze to the amphitheater. Fury rose in him as he caught sight of the young Princeps.

No one had bothered using promenia to heal the condemned boy, yet someone had seen fit to waste it on growing Daedalus's hair back out. The black locks, pulled back and bound in the tri-braid for this mockery of a sacred civil observance, framed the bruises still spilling down his face.