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.

"You were fortunate before," her husband went on when the silence stretched too long. "You became royal physician and dodged that duty."

"Yes." Indeed, she had been lucky. Only once in her life had she been confronted with such a responsibility before her promotion to royal physician took such grim duties out of her hands. Other lifeholders were not so fortunate.

"Could you do it?" Astricus asked, putting the cluden down to study her. "You couldn't fifteen years ago."

"It is abhorrent." She shuddered. Memories of watching, cold with dread, as Callide's belly swelled wended through her mind. Dread, first, for what custom and common sense alike dictated she do. Then, when her friend and Ausus had begged her not to kill their child, the dread had hardened into a heavy, frozen stone in her stomach. For, as the months toward the birth passed, she and the parents had resolved to let the younger twin live and risk the consequences. "It remains one of the most awful things any lifeholder must ever do, but it is the proper course of action. I understand that now."

He grimaced. "Yes, the best practice, as you lifeholders call it." His jaw clenched. "Such a sterile term for something so monstrous."

He spoke the truth but forgot a greater truth. "It may be more monstrous to let them live. The risks of letting twins develop their magic have been proven again and again."

"You said suppression of his sorcery would be enough."

Cercitis sighed. "I also said it would affect no one but Callide's family." She swallowed and admitted in a small voice, "I was wrong."

Not for the first time, guilt surged within her. Guilt and regret. She had tried over the years to smother both. To justify her actions. She reminded herself, again and again, that no one could have predicted when the twins were born that the Throne of Solitude would pass to their mother weeks later. She tried to soothe her conscience by reassuring herself that she would have done the hard but necessary thing then. Despite her horror and her promises, she would have killed the younger twin, for his existence no longer threatened the two children alone but the whole world. She told herself it was not her fault that, by the time a terrorist attack vaulted Callide onto the throne, changing everything, she had left the younger twin suppressed in Urbs Hostiae.

She told herself many things over the years, but the guilt and regret always returned. She had intended her friends a kindness when she agreed to hide the younger twin in the city where she, Callide, and Ausus studied together at the Silvula Salutis conservatory. Instead, she had endangered the whole world.

"Could you do it now?" Astricus asked, his voice soft and icy with judgment. "He's not a babe in the womb anymore or an infant you can arrange to be stillborn."

Cercitis's hands clenched. "Don't—"

"Could you do it?" her husband asked, relentless. He met her gaze. "If you couldn't then?"

"I tried, Astricus," she snapped. "I tried to find him when Callide became Princeps and do what I should have done in the womb."

He blinked, leaning back a little in surprise. "I didn't know that."

She broke his gaze and turned to the promenia image floating in the middle of the bedchamber. Dark brown eyes, so like Daedalus's own—and Callide's—peered back at her. A smile tugged at the edge of the youth's lips. "I was ashamed. But I could not risk the chance the boy's prometus might develop. It is the same as Dae's, Astricus. Completely identical. Daedalus is in so much danger."

"You never said anything," Astricus said, and this time his soft voice was gentle. "Not to me. Not even to Callide."

She sighed, half sure her years numbered in the thousands instead of her true thirty-six. "How could I? She was my friend, as Ausus is yours. I made a vow. I promised her I would not harm him. But I needed to do what must be done, so I went to the comitii basilica to find out where the Pyrrhaei government sent him after I left him on the basilica steps. However, they possessed no records of finding a babe that day. He was gone."

"And now he's back, and Callide is the one no longer with us."

"Yes."

Astricus studied the boy floating in the room like dust motes given form. "They're all we have left of her, Cercitis."

She swallowed. "True, but only one of them is our foster son, and only one is our Princeps. What do you think we should do?"

He hesitated. For several seconds, he studied the image of Daedalus's twin. Then he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. "Daedalus's position around the world is precarious. These mishaps from his brother's magical interference..." He grimaced and opened his eyes again, but this time his gaze flitted away from the promenia portrait and the young face. "Well, I'm not sure how long we can continue explaining them away as grief and inexperience. People understand he's been trained since birth for his duties."

"That's not an answer," Cercitis pointed out gently.

"I know." His shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. "I don't have one for you. And I hate to consider this without at least talking to Ausus." He held up a hand as, heart leaping into her throat, she opened her mouth. "Don't worry, I won't tell him. I'm just saying." He drew a deep breath. "What about you? What do you want to do?"

She bit her lip. She dreaded to think what would happen if the people learned their Princeps Worldholder was a twin and another Calamity loomed over the planet.

"I don't know," she said with a heavy sigh. "But we need to figure something out, Astricus, and we need to do it soon."