With a frustrated growl, Domi tossed yet another book on the pile on the cedar floor next to his cot.

He had no idea what the heck he'd just read. Half the words remained unfamiliar even after he sounded them out with painstaking care, and though he had heard a few of the others before, he didn't have a clue what many meant.

Someone needed to write a book on promenia use for illiterate idiots. Not that Domi was illiterate—any longer—or an idiot. Still, the book made him feel stupid. What was the point of writing so many words if readers didn't understand them?

"Knock, knock."

Domi glanced up as the boy's voice drifted into his room. He possessed no door to open for a guest, just a few hanging screens providing patchwork privacy along the two sides of the room open to the garden. "Come in."

His heart beat faster when Sidus stepped between two of the pieces of long canvas fabric.

The handsome boy glanced from him to the mess of books strewn across the floor and back again with an arched brow. "Got enough reading material?"

"No, because I can't actually read most of it." Domi tilted his head. "Why are you here?"

Sidus plopped down next to him on the bed. "Can't I come visit a friend?"

"Are we friends?" Domi asked, unsure whether he liked or disliked the boy's closeness. Heat flooded his body, leaving him flushed as though with fever.

"Oh, do you want to be more?"

Domi should have expected the response, but as he had every time today, the starholder took him by surprise.

"I met you this morning."

"That was forever ago." Sidus leaned back on his hands. "We're ready for the next stage in our relationship."

"How can you say things like that with a straight face?" Domi asked. His cheeks flamed, but at least no promenia sparked, so that was progress.

Sidus chuckled. "Sorry, I just can't behave myself, as Gemma always reminds me. Though she's why I'm here. She and Epileus." He shook his head. "I wanted to apologize for their behavior earlier. They were really rude."

"They didn't seem to be my biggest admirers, that's for sure."

Sidus sighed. "We talked a bit at dinner. They said it wasn't you. Just... Well, they reminded me I'm betrothed. The wedding won't be for two years, but..."

"Oh." Domi peered down at his hands. He wasn't sure what he felt. Relief that these embarrassing exchanges might stop? Disappointment too, for the same reason?

Sidus nodded. "So I will need to talk to my betrothed first, before making my move." He winked as Domi's head jerked up. "What? Don't you know Promethidae take lovers outside of marriage?"

"Eyes devour you, please don't use that word," Domi squeaked.

The starholder laughed. "All right, I'm sorry. I will tone it down, I promise." Domi breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm not ready for sex yet, either."

Eyes devour! "You're just making it worse," Domi said, hiding his burning face in his palms.

Sidus pried his hands away, and Domi tried on a stern glare. "I need to read." He pulled his hands away from the other boy and gestured toward the piles of books. "Aix wants me to summarize three pages from one of these tomorrow. So leave me be."

Sidus sighed. "Fine." And plucking up one of the books, he flopped down on his back.

"What the heck?" Eternal Radiance, why was there a boy in his bed? He blushed. On his bed. On.

"Shh, I'm reading."

He thought about throwing the starholder out. Not that he was confident he would be able to persuade the annoying boy to leave. But he kind of liked having him there. So, sighing, he let Sidus stay.

Which was the only reason why, when the assassins arrived, Domi didn't die.

He was crouching over to pick up another book, Sidus snoring behind him with pages spread over his face to block the light from his eyes, when Domi found himself jerking aside.

His memory remained unclear, later, about what alerted him. A rustle of fabric? A shift of shadow? Whatever it was, before the figures slipped through the canvas screens and came for him, Pullati instincts honed by years of breaking and snatching sent him into motion.

Domi threw himself backward from one of the veiled assailants, and the first crystal knife missed him.

Promenia sang in the second white-handled blade the hooded man clutched in a shaking hand, and Domi had time to either try to dissolve the magic or dodge the quartz-like knife.

Domi understood what blades could do, but he had no idea what the magic would do to him and didn't want to find out. He reached for the promenia, his thoughts clawing after memories of sparks and sizzles.

Aix's warding cloud rebuffed him.

The red-clad man's knife slammed down into Domi's shoulder, and knees buckling, he fell with it.

"I'm sorry, Kid," the man in the crimson paenula murmured, releasing the hilt of the knife and stepping back.

He would be sorry. With a bloodthirsty growl, Domi yanked the blade from his body and threw the awful, singing thing back at the man. Agony seared down his whole right side at the harsh movement. He didn't care if it meant he might be able to get the bastard back.

The attacker leaped away from the knife with a yelp.

Domi should have thrown the icicle-like blade at the woman. The black-clad assailant glanced down at the bloodied knife as it clattered across several books, and then she cursed, eyes bulging, as Domi dragged himself to his feet. She jumped across a thick volume on amphitheater architecture and crashed into him. They fell hard together.

Domi screamed in pain as the fall jostled his injury. His scalp stung as a hand yanked his head back by a fistful of his hair, exposing his throat. A chill blade pressed his jugular.

"No!" the crimson-clad man shouted.

The knife bit deep, digging into Domi's skin with a spurt of pain and trickle of heat, and Eternal Radiance, he was going to die.

"Drop it."

As the wave of promenia accompanying those words crashed over him, Domi would have dropped anything and everything in his possession in mindless obedience. Instead, the knife in his assailant's hand clattered to the cedar floor as her grip released.

She must have had experience with starholders. The woman sprang away from Domi, grabbing the arm of her red-clad companion. "Let's go. Go!"

The two turned and bolted. Sidus's voice snapped out, "No, stop! Don't move a muscle!"

They did not pause, already through the hanging shades and fading into the crimson evening.

Domi, caught in the wave of promenia, obeyed the starholder's command. He stopped so completely he didn't even draw a breath, staring unblinkingly before him. His heart hammered in his chest as terror surged through him at what just happened and the fact he couldn't move or breathe.

Sidus started to dart after the assassins but drew up as his eyes fell on Domi kneeling helplessly in the middle of the floor. Promenia dissipated, and the starholder caught him as he sagged.

"Are you all right?" Sidus's hand lifted away from Domi, who stared at the crimson liquid smearing the older boy's fingers. The starholder gasped in his ear. "No, you're not. You're bleeding. Come here."

"Ouch," Domi whispered as the other boy drew him to his feet and guided him over to the cot. His whole body ached from throwing himself around, his shoulder throbbed in hot agony, and his throat burned. Yet a slow chill seeped into his bones.

"Hello?" The shaking voice made them both pause. "A-anybody here?" Then the girl chanted, "Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead."

Sidus relaxed and rubbed Domi's uninjured shoulder. "Is that you, Edera?"

At that, Domi's eyes widened and fear spiked through him. He shook his head hard, but Sidus only frowned at him in confusion and called, "If you'd come here please, we could use your help."

A moment later, a head of pink hair ducked between the canvas screens, followed by the rest of the petite lifeholder girl. "Sidus? I saw people running from the greenhouse, and I sense blood. Are you hur—" She broke off as her eyes landed on Domi.

"I didn't do anything this time," he said with a shaky smile. "I swear."

Her jaw clenched, and she turned to Sidus. "What happened?"

Domi jerked back as a wave of promenia, buzzing like angry bees, swarmed toward him. He dissolved the outer edge in panic and was caught again by Aix. The rest surged into him, unimpeded.

He expected pressure in his stomach and wet tearing sounds, like the last time the girl's promenia touched him. But he felt little other than the shrieking pain in his shoulder, which shrank a heartbeat later to a dull throb.

"I'm not sure," Sidus said. "I woke up, and someone was trying to slit his throat."

At those words, Domi began to shake. He had been an instant away from death. Would his prometus have saved him like the particles had with Valens's lightning? Or was a slit throat different, more permanent, than electrocution?

His eyes fell on the pair of blades on the ground, and his shuddering increased. Sidus frowned and drew the blanket on the bed over him.

"The blades," Domi said. "Over there." He pointed a shaky finger with his uninjured arm. "There is prom—"

Edera whirled, snatching up the one that had been used to stab his shoulder. "Gross, your blood is all over it."

"Not helping, Edera," Sidus said. He rubbed Domi's back. "Can you heal this?"

"It isn't life-threatening, and I'm not a physician, so no. He can use his prometus to stop the bleeding, and my aunt will patch him up the boring way. I've called her." She frowned down at the blade.

"How'd you call her?" Domi's head swam, vision blurring at the edges. He found himself leaning on Sidus. "An' what you mean, you're not a physician?"

"Caeles," she said, as though the meaningless word explained anything. "And I'm a botanist." She blinked and thrust the blade away from her. "Oh. That's interesting. And bad." She glanced up at Domi. "Are you sure this touched you?"

"Was in my shoulder to the hilt. So yeah, pretty sure."

"Yet you can move. You must outrank whoever made this."

He blinked. Perhaps blood loss made it hard to think, but the words made little sense. "It hurt, but not so much I couldn't—"

"No," she interrupted. "I mean there is promenia in this. A forgeholder made the blade, but some lifeholder charged it with paralyzing promenia. The magic should have scrambled your nervous system like eggs and your prometus with it. Only, hmm." She blinked as she studied the knife. "Oh, that's mean."

A chill swept through him, and sweat beaded on his skin. "M-meaner than t-turning my innards into e-eggs?"

Through the shadows gathering in his vision, he saw her glance up at him and frown. The roar growing in his ears almost drowned out her voice. "Why aren't you stopping your bleed—" Her eyes widened, and she tossed the blade aside, striding toward him. "Ah, Pullatus. Eyes devour. Get him lying flat, Sidus. He doesn't know how to use his prometus yet. Put a few of those books under his feet."

Domi groaned in pain as they resituated him, but he did feel better once he was lying down even if the pressure Sidus put on the wound hurt. He glanced up at Edera. "Why's it mean?"

She shook her head in confusion and picked the blade off the floor to study the knife again with narrowed eyes. "Because the magic was designed to mess you up but keep you alive. Seems those people may have planned to only hurt you and changed their minds when the promenia didn't work."

Sidus shook his head. "But why did they want to hurt him?"

Domi would rather like to know the answer to that question himself.

"My dear Pullatus," a voice called. "We must talk about all the promenia you keep destroy—"

Aix broke off the instant he ducked his head into the room and took in Edera with the knife and his bloodied charge and Sidus on the bed. "What happened?"

But before Domi or the others got a chance to explain, Arbita arrived. She took one glance at Domi and sighed. "We must stop meeting this way, Kiddo."

"I'll try," he said with a shaky smile.

An hour later, fresh sutures in his shoulder, bandage on his neck, and pain-deadening herbs in his belly, he at last got a chance to tell the two adults what happened. Arbita's brows furrowed more and more as he spoke, and Aix listened with his lips pressed in a grim line.

"I tried to contact Valens," Aix said, "but he appears to be out of range of the Trellis."

Arbita blinked. "Out of range? He just went to report to the Rex."

The worldholder shrugged. "The promenia can't find him anywhere." He hesitated, then went on with a deeper note of worry in his voice. "I will check the Compendium to see if he's still with us."

Alive, Domi realized. Aix didn't know if Valens was still alive. A pang of sadness bit deep at the idea the surly worldholder might not be.

"You think this was someone trying to get rid of Valens and his alumna?" Arbita asked with a gasp.

Edera sniffed. "I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to do something like that," she said with a pointed glare at Domi. Her hands clenched at her sides. "But if they wanted to do it, they should have thought twice before doing it in my provincia, to one of my curia members."

Domi blinked at the weird possessiveness. "But you hate me. What do you care?"

The girl glared at him. "I don't hate you, fool. I hate that you grabbed me violently and tried to take my blood without permission. That doesn't mean I'm fine with assassins coming here and trying to kill you."

"I think you were right, though," Sidus said, his voice quiet. His eyes grew distant, lost in thought. "They didn't intend to kill him. Not until the blade failed to work."

"Worked on me plenty," Domi said, fingers tracing the edge of the bandage on his shoulder.

Edera slapped his hand away. "Don't touch that, you idiot."

"Still," Arbita said, "whether they only intended to injure him at first, in the end, they tried to take his life." She glanced at Domi with a worried frown. "And they might come back."

He had not thought of that. "G-great." He didn't think he had it in him to try to dodge knives a second time. The pain had drifted far away for now, but exhaustion left every muscle aching, and he could tell the agony would come crashing back over him if he aggravated the wounds.

However, Arbita said his prometus would heal the injuries enough over the course of five days for the sutures to come out. He found such hard to believe after growing up with the risk a bad papercut might make him bleed out, but he trusted her.

Aix cleared his throat. "If they come back again, I don't want him to be alone tonight, at the very least. I'll stay. Arbita, will you?" She nodded. "Sidus? Edera? This will be easier if we take shifts."

"Yes, I will," the boy said. "I need to do something first, and then I'll be back." He glanced at Edera, arching his brows.

She scoffed. "No, thanks." She hesitated as she studied Domi. "But I'll send some of Father's Armati."

"Thank you, Edera," he murmured.

"Don't mention it," she said and glared at him. "No really, don't. I don't want my name and yours shared in the same breath any more than they already are, Pullatus."