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."

<>

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.

Worse, the handlers overseeing the Princeps's last public appearance had swathed him in cloth the shade of candlelit alabaster, the too-pale color for a child his age accentuating the flecks of violet prometus that glimmered within his black laurel. No paenula covered his simple linen penitent's tunica, just the draped off-white shroud of one condemned to death. The Rex meant to accentuate his impurity while deemphasizing his youth.

The Princeps stood, small and solemn, in the middle of a ring of Electi. Outwardly serene, he stood waiting in regal dignity surrounded by glaring crimson laurels.

Swaying behind him from a gilt scaffold, Comitas and Fons hung, lifeless, like common criminals.

Valens clenched his teeth so hard his molars crunched in his ears. The child sacrifice looked up at his dead servants, shoulders slumping, and bowed his head. He likely blamed their deaths on his "soiled soul" as well. If Valens could find the person who spoon-fed him such nonsense and strike them from this world, he would. Except he suspected those people were the very same ones swaying from the noose. It made him sick.

Not for the first time in recent days, he cursed under his breath at the idea that any divine power presided over the world. What loving and life-giving deity would demand a child sacrificed to appease its anger? No, there could be no Eternal Radiance. If the god even existed, it had abandoned them long before now for crimes infinitely more monstrous than any Daedalus could ever have committed.

"Princeps Daedalus Adurere," the Rex intoned, "come forward."

The Princeps approached, calm and unhesitant. He stood before the Throne of Regret and looked up at the Rex and Principia. On the dais, the black Throne of Solitude stood empty but for the onyx crown resting upon its cushion. The bloated crimson sun swelled behind it,

The Rex rose to his feet and the crowd, gathered one hundred strong in the amphitheater seating and stands, roared. He held up a hand and they fell quiet as one, no doubt silenced by the starholder's royal command.

"Basilicus Princeps Worldholder Daedalus Adurere Viarius," the Rex began, and next to Valens Domi choked out a sob, "Today, you stand condemned for gross negligence, dereliction of duty, and high treason after willfully and knowingly abdicating your most sacred duty and allowing calamity to befall us all. There is but one punishment suitable for the enormity of your crimes against the world, which is torture and death at the hands of the people you have wronged, those who bear the greatest impact of your actions."

"No," Domi gasped, lurching forward on the divan like his whole body had convulsed in pain.

Valens grabbed him, pulling him close. "He won't," he said soothingly. "Watch."

Fortunately, the monarch did not prove him a liar. "However," the Rex went on, "the Eternal Radiance and we who serve in its sacred name are merciful. Today your death shall be instant and painless and shall be given to the Eternal Radiance in recompense for your horrific crimes and all the ways humanity has failed to live out the Divine Light's purposes for us on this world."

The Rex paused and returned to his throne, gripping the armrests, and turned to his right. "Princeps Oliva, carry out the sentence. And may the Eternal Radiance accept this offering and restore well-being to the world."

"Domi," Valens murmured as the elderly woman descended from the dais to stand over the boy's twin, "you don't have to look."

But the younger twin's eyes remained locked on the scene. On Princeps Oliva's outstretched hand. On the cluden she received from a bowing Electi.

Faint violet and emerald light shivered in the air before her as she activated the promenia blade and, in a smooth, almost graceful motion, slashed it across Daedalus's chest.

Domi screamed and Arbita held him. "Shh, shh," she soothed. "It's only his prometus."

Valens shook his head. It was only his prometus for now.

In the Caeles, Daedalus shuddered as his black laurel's shimmering light began to fade. The boy pressed his palm to it even as the elderly Princeps Lightholder rested her own hand upon the top of his black tri-braid as though in benediction.

Daedalus bowed his head, his eyes closed, his lips moving in prayer. Then he looked up and offered a small nod. And collapsed.

"No no no," Domi sobbed as his twin sank to his knees on the marble amphitheater floor and then sprawled, unseeing eyes wide and bleak, at the old woman's feet.

Princeps Oliva brushed two fingers over his eyes, closing his lids, then touched his throat. After a moment, she glanced up at the Throne of Regret and nodded solemnly.

"It is done," the Rex intoned. "May the Eternal Radiance accept this offering and bestow mercy upon us all."

"You can turn away now, Alumna," Valens said gently.

It took Domi, white with shock, several seconds to respond to him. The boy stared at the Caeles scene, watching the Electi guide his twin's lifeless body onto a funerary cart lined with silver and black blossoms. And then at last the boy turned away, buried his head in his aedificans's shoulder, and wept.