It was like Domi blinked. He just blinked, and everything changed. A different place surrounded him than where he had been drinking tea an instant earlier.

He gasped and jerked so hard he almost fell off the chaise where he found himself sitting.

Except that wasn't right. He had not been sitting on a chaise but in his bed in the greenhouse cottage. Domi lifted his hands—his empty hands—and stared. A moment ago they'd held a mug. He had just taken a sip of the pain-deadening tea Sidus gave him in the pre-Brightening crimson light.

Now there was no tea. No tea, no Sidus, no cottage, no crimson early-morn light.

Instead, Domi sat on a velvet chaise in a spacious salutatio room. An ornate gray rug covered half of the black marble floor, and a promenia chandelier glowed silver overhead. Three ebony marble walls and one gray accent wall, all crusted with rich silver detailing, hummed with promenia that made him cringe back the instant he glanced their way. A window with opal-studded black tapestries, tied open with a gray satin ribbon to admit violet Trellis-light, likewise sang with promenia that made him lean away.

"W-what?" he gasped, his head darting to and fro. The ornate room was pleasant, a breaker's daydream, but a very, very bad feeling rose within him like blood from a wound.

A latch clicked, and Domi bolted to his feet, already halfway to the door before it opened. Thundering bells reverberated through his head, and he gasped, skidding on his heels. He didn't want to go any further. He wanted nothing to do with the door, or the window, or promenia, or escape. No way.

A beautiful middle-aged woman stepped into the room. A jade clasp held her wavy black hair back to put her emerald laurel on display. Gold-banded, the tracings shimmered against bronze skin and reflected in her almond-shaped eyes.

She closed the door behind her and then sat across from him in a velvet chair. She gestured to the chaise behind him. "You might as well sit."

He crossed his arms as tightly as his injured shoulder allowed. "Who are you? Where am I?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "My name is Cercitis. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, Laetus."

"Laetus? Cerci—Prome, that's not my name." He crept toward the door and winced as promenia howled at him. "When are you going to let me out of here? Or give me a barrister? I'm a Lightbearer, I have a right to legal representation, don't I?"

"Laetus is your birth name," the Empowered lifeholder said as though she had not heard the rest. "Your mother named you after her elder brother, Laetus Adurere."

"Adurere. That's..." He knew that name. Everyone knew that name.

Was this a weird dream? Maybe his wound was infected, and he lay abed in a fever, lost in delirium. Except it all seemed very real. So perhaps his mind was not the one gone but this woman's. The thought sent terror through him in a cold, acidic rush.

He concentrated hard on sizzles and sparks. Maybe he could get out if he dissolved the painful ringing that pinned him to the center of the room and—

The reverberation thundered in his ears, and he gasped, thoughts of escape scattering.

"Yes," Cercitis said. She must have thought his sharp breath was in response to her absurd delusion and not his failed attempt to flee the room's protections. "Adurere is your mother's family name, and your brother's, and yours."

Yes, she was indeed mad. That, or she intended to capture someone else and instead snatched Domi from his bed by mistake. Perhaps she meant to grab Sidus? Domi's self-appointed protector also happened to be the Princeps Worldholder's foster brother, after all. Sidus was actually important. People just didn't abduct people like Domi.

"Prome," he said, trying to keep his tone as reasonable as possible. If she realized he wasn't this Laetus person, she might let him go. Though he didn't understand how she captured him in the first place. The tea? "It seems like you put a lot of effort into catching me, so I'm sorry to disappoint you. But you have the wrong person. I don't have a brother, that's not my name, and my mother's name is Merula Nocticola."

"No, Laetus," she said with an infuriating shake of her head, "Merula is your foster mother. Your real mother, the woman who birthed you, gave you another name. If things were different, and we could reveal who you are to the world, you would be addressed as Basiluculus Laetus Adurere Viarius." She met his eyes. "Principis Heres Worldholder, next in line for the Throne of Solitude."

"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said, growing heartily tired of this farce. "I'm a Pullatus. My name is Domi. I don't know who the heck you are, Cercitis, but you've mistaken me for someone else."

"I'm your twin brother's royal physician and your mother's before him. I delivered you with my own hands." She swallowed. "And fifteen years ago, I suppressed your prometus myself and left you on the steps of the comitii basilica in Urbs Hostiae."

He stumbled back, slumping onto the chaise as new shock and old hurt alike struck him like a punch to the gut. To the skull. His head spun and he could not catch his breath.

This was the woman who abandoned him? But why? Just because he had been born the brother of some royal dunce? Other Princepses had siblings. Maybe not twin siblings, but younger brothers, sisters, and nonbinary siblings.

Yet if she was telling the truth, if he really was the Princeps Worldholder's twin brother, he had been cast out of his family.

But why? Why didn't they want him?

"If you're telling the truth, and I'm part of the royal family," he asked bitterly, "why am I locked up like a criminal?"

"Because I cannot allow you to leave here."

Ice swept through his veins, and he froze. What did she mean, she couldn't let him go? Did she mean forever? Would he be held prisoner here for the rest of his life just because he had a brother he didn't know? Or did she mean she was going to... No, she didn't plan to kill him, did she? Why would she need to do that?

She watched him as he shook, but her eyes were more compassionate than he expected. "Your mother, father, and I hoped suppressing your prometus and separating you from your brother would be enough," she said in a gentle voice. "But now you are a Lightbearer, and unfortunately, your magic interferes with your brother's sorcery, Laetus."

"What? How? And Eyes devour you, stop calling me that. I don't care what some people who abandoned me called me, my name is Domi." If she meant to keep him here, or worse, he would at least have her show him the respect of using his name. His real name, the one bestowed by his real mother, the only woman who, no matter his birth, had ever mattered. "How am I interfering with the Princeps's magic? He's the most powerful sorcerer in the world. It's ridiculous to think I can do anything at all to him."

"The two of you are identical twins, Domi." He settled a little, though not without a grudging glare. "Your prometus resonates with his because your bodies are so similar. You kindled early because his prometus ignited your own." She closed her eyes, her expression pained. "And he dropped part of the Trellis in Provincia Sicarii because your prometus interfered with his own during a critical working."

Her words plunged his whole body into ice. A high-pitched ringing that had nothing to do with the room's wards filled his head as memories rolled through his mind. Broken Trellis shards high in the heavens. Teardrops of fire. Pale clivias. Crystalline growths crawling from Epileus's and Gemma's wounds like frost. Thousands of dead villagers. All that happened because of him? "My prometus is messing with the Trellis?" he asked, his voice choking with horror.

"Yes, and as you improve as a worldholder, the resonance will grow worse. Your prometus will shape your prometarium channels to support new powers, making your body ever more similar to your brother's. The interference between your sorcery and his will intensify. One day, your magic will kill your brother and destroy the Trellis. Unless you are stopped."

Stopped. He was a threat to the world and had to be stopped. The pieces fell into place. "You sent the assassins, didn't you?" he asked in a small voice.

"Yes."

The breath swept from his chest. It took several seconds for him to find enough air to squeeze any words out. "Is it the only way? Death? Can you suppress me again?" He didn't want to hurt anybody. He had been a Pullatus his whole life, and he would gladly go back if it meant not destroying the world.

Domi should have let Arbita suppress him when she suggested it. He was suddenly glad the room didn't let him mess with promenia. What if he dissolved the particles by accident and made his brother dissolve the Trellis? He might hurt so many people. He might hurt the whole world.

"I wish I could suppress you again, but I cannot." She sounded sorry, but the firmness in her voice told him regret would not stop her from doing what she believed must be done. "You overcame magical suppression once, and though there are herbs I can administer to suppress your prometus again for a time, eventually you would develop tolerance. Your prometus would return."

For a long time after she spoke, Domi could only stare. Just stare in numb resignation at the gray and silver rug beneath his feet. There was no way to suppress him. No way to stop him. Not without killing him. No wonder she sent assassins. If she spoke the truth, Domi should have died long ago.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?" His too-calm voice seemed to come from miles away. "Why did you bring me here?" Wherever here was. It did not matter anymore.

She sighed, appearing older than her perhaps thirty or thirty-five years. "I brought you here to explain and to offer you a choice. I should have done so before, and I'm sorry I did not. I owe you that much. Also..." She paused, her eyes filling with shame.

"To keep it quiet," Domi said as realization dawned. "And make sure no one interferes again." She dropped her gaze from his and did not deny it. Domi drew a deep breath. Choices. She had brought him here to give him a choice. "What are our options, if suppression won't work?" he made himself ask.

He had once seen a slum healer give an elderly beggar bad news, telling him kindly but matter-of-factly that the growth on his neck would claim his life. When Cercitis answered, her voice was like that, sympathetic but laying the situation out in no uncertain terms. "We can make your body so different from your brother's that you two will no longer resonate. Or we can end your life. Or we can do neither, and risk you destroying the Trellis."

"No," Domi said. "That last one isn't an option." He didn't need to think about it. "There's no way I'm going to risk killing everyone so I can breathe a few more years. Everyone dies. It's just a matter of how soon." Every Pullatus understood that better than most.

Fear bit deep as he considered the rest, but it was a chilling, numbing terror. If he wouldn't save his own skin and leave the world to suffer the consequences, then he faced two awful choices. But really only one choice, he realized with growing resignation as understanding settled over him.

"And you don't know if m-maiming me will be effective, do you? You could try, and it might not be enough. You have no way to know for sure." He trembled. "No. There's only one way. You... Y-you..." He gulped, and it took three tries for him to find his voice again. She waited in compassionate silence for him to finish, her eyes dark with anguish. "You're a lifeholder," he managed at last. "Can... Can you make it quick?"

"You will feel nothing," she said, her voice soft. "I promise, I won't let it hurt."

He nodded, unable to stop shaking despite the reassurance. He hoped it would be like when Valens struck him with lightning. It had not hurt then, either. He'd felt nothing.

"Then do it," he said, his voice a choked whisper. "Now, before I lose my nerve."

Despite his words, as she rose and stepped toward him, it took everything in him not to leap from the chaise and flee—flee to the door, to the window, to anything. He held himself still, gulping but not flinching when she knelt before him and reached for his shoulder.

"W-wait," he said, and she paused, withdrawing her hand. He bit his lip. "Tell the people back home I died doing something cool. Fighting a thousand clivias. Learning to fly. Something like that, since you can't tell them the truth, can you?"

"No, but the truth is far more impressive." She hesitated, then cupped his cheek in one hand. He realized if things had been different, if he had just been a brother and not a twin, this woman would have been his foster mother. Would have raised him. It didn't seem fair. It didn't matter anymore. "You are giving your life to protect the whole world, Domi. We owe you an incredible debt. You're a hero."

"Wish it felt more heroic." Then, in a tiny voice, he confessed, "It's just scary."

"I know." Her hand dropped from his cheek to his shoulder. Kind. Deadly. Promenia hummed a bellsong lullaby, gathering around her, spiraling down her arm and into her hand. Into him. "Are you ready?"

"N-no," he whispered. "But do it." He squeezed his eyes closed. "Don't tell me when, just—"

His chest tightened, and his breath stalled. As he fell limp, a gentle hand lowered him onto the chaise.

She hadn't lied. It did not hurt.