Damian dreamed of the Angel.
Far beneath the tallest mountains, buried by the weight of the world. In a dome carved out of bedrock that had existed long before the stars fell and man first worshipped the Heavens' Prophets.
The Angel was chained.
They were breathtakingly beautiful, a being of incomparable power and indescribable form. To even look upon Them was to invite awe and sorrow in equal measure; yet here, in Damian's dreams, he felt nothing but a deep sense of regret.
The Angel's limbs were spread apart, their ankles and wrists bound by manacles forged from fallen stars. The chains were stretched taut, embedded into the bedrock by mile-long stakes. Even the Angel's glorious wings—colossal wings made of the purest, Flaming feathers—were pinned back, shackled even tighter than the rest of Their body.
"Do not forget your sins."
The Angel's words were musical, and terrifying; both the crackling of a log in the hearth, and the blazing fury of an inferno. They looked upon Damian with Their golden eyes, Their gaze penetrating deep into the heart of his soul.
He tried to turn away from Their eyes, tried to shy away from the truth being forced upon him. But there was nowhere to run—he could not escape Their power; Their wrath; Their vigor.
"The throne must not remain empty."
Damian wept, and gouged out his eyes, but even with his vision darkened, and his hands stained with blood, he still saw the Angel, burned into the deepest recesses of his mind.
"Do not forget your sins."
***
FORTY-THREE HOURS BEFORE THE DEATH OF DAMIAN ROSWALD
Damian woke, his skin slick with sweat.
For the first few moments of consciousness, he stared up at the ornate ceiling above his bed. The dream still played across his mind, sending shivers down his spine. Deep within his gut, the Flame in his soul flickered ever so briefly, before quieting once more.
I'm dreaming of the Angel again.
As a child, the Priests had called his dreams 'prophetic'—proof of his claim to the throne. When he'd grown older, and his Blessings had failed to manifest, they'd called the dreams 'delusions'—and he'd never spoken of them again.
As he lay there, the details of the dream slipped away from him, drifting from his memories like silk slipping through his fingers. Like ashes lost to the wind.
He rose, scrunching his toes into the plush carpet. With a slight grunt, he stood, stretching wide, flexing the muscles that rippled across his back. He crossed the room and threw the curtains wide, revealing the sprawling city of Rosweiss down below. At this early hour, much of the city still slumbered, but here and there, warm lights shone through the dreary morning fog.
Damian's eyes followed the winding River Rose from the westernmost part of the city, past the squat buildings and around wide plazas, towards the darkened shipping yards of Tenebrae. Even there, amidst the thickest part of the fog, he saw twinkling lights—but they were of the gas variety, dim and unfriendly, unlike the warm amber hue of the Flame.
He stepped away from the window, an uneasy sensation gripping his chest.
Nothing a little exercise can't help.
He stepped behind the changing partition and retrieved a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms from the wooden closet. The wintery chill prickled his bare feet as he slipped on a pair of comfortable sneakers.
Damian crossed the large bedroom, passing the fireplace where a gentle flame flickered and danced in the hearth. He opened the heavy wooden door to the hallway beyond.
"Good morning, Your Highness."
The man standing outside the door snapped to attention, respectfully bowing his head a few degrees. He wore a black suit that barely disguised the growing paunch of middle age, but Damian had few doubts about the competency of his guards—he had, after all, personally approved each of them.
"Morning, Pascal. A quiet evening?"
"As always, Your Highness."
"Is your family doing well?"
Pascal allowed a small smile to grace his lips, his gaze resting an inch beneath Damian's amber-hued eyes.
"You're very kind to inquire about my family, sir. My youngest, Sidney, has her dance recital today, actually—The Ballad of the Starfall, you know. First time she's not playing a tree, so we're all very proud of her, naturally."
"Well, tell Sidney that the Crown Prince is wishing her the very best. And please, if you require any time away, let Gunther know."
The night-guard snapped to attention again, slamming a clenched fist against his chest.
"You're very kind, Your Highness. Shall I inform Master Dominic you are about?"
"No doubt he's already awake—the man keeps better hours than myself. I'm going down to the gym, in any case. Take care, Pascal."
"Very good then, sir. Good day to you."
"And you."
Damian walked down the hallway, humming tunelessly beneath his breath. He'd always made it a point to remember the names of the regulars in his guard and maid service—a habit forced into him by his mother at a young age.
"They may be paid to serve us, but they have lives every much as you or I."
Damian remembered those words fondly, and he also remembered that, for all the tears he'd shed a decade ago, there'd been just as many staff wiping their own eyes, too. His mother had lived the words she preached, and he sought to follow in her footsteps as best he could.
The small amounts of daily chatter proved oddly therapeutic for Damian—a relaxing routine that grounded him. And if it helped balance out some of the more jagged edges of his royal reputation, well, all the better.
He stopped outside the elevator cage of the twentieth floor—the second-highest floor in the tallest building in Rosweiss—where a young woman dressed in white robes awaited. The woman had a hood drawn over her face, and around her neck hung a thick iron chain—the symbol of the Holy Order of the Flame.
As Damian approached, the young woman offered a wordless curtsy.
"Third floor, if you please."
"Of course, Your Highness," was her only reply. She pulled back the elevator's cage, and gestured for him to step inside.
Of all the staff within the royal residence, the Priests of the Flame remained largely nameless to him. Unlike his guards or maids, the Priests were frequently rotated out to reduce the burden of repeatedly using the Angel's Blessings. For that matter, the Priests were usually silent types anyway, unwilling to provide more than a few sentences, so Damian had long since given up making conversation.
When both had entered the elevator, the Priest shut the doors. There were no levers or knobs in the small cage, unlike those infernal contraptions the adherents of the Deep used. This was a fully Flame-powered elevator, operated by a Priest.
The young woman clasped her hands together in silent prayer, and a moment later, the gilded cage trembled. An amber shine rippled across the metal surface, and then they were descending smoothly, other floors flashing past them.
There were few tall buildings in the city, and even fewer that required elevators. It was hard enough for even the richest of households to hire enough Priests to keep the lights on, the fires lit, and the stoves hot. Businesses often hired Priests from the church, but there was a limit to how many Blessings a Priest could invoke per day. Even as the elevator descended, Damian saw a bead of sweat drip down the Priest's cheek.
The elevator shuddered, and the glow retreated, replaced by the normal ambiance of a Flame-blessed light fitting. The Priest pulled the cage doors open and swept a hand outside, gesturing for him to depart.
"Thank you," Damian said, to which he received another silent curtsy.
He hastened down the corridor, passing beneath more light fittings. In each of the glass brackets, a fist-sized ball of Flame gently bobbed up and down. Another Priest stood on a step-ladder partway down the hall, uttering an incantation to restore a light that had almost entirely faded away.
The third floor of the royal residence had recently been refashioned at Damian's behest to have training equipment and a gym—a rather pleasing invention he'd discovered in his travels to the Duchy of Lombrass.
Damian passed paintings of his ancestor's faces as he walked, their likenesses captured in various inks and oils. The Roswald family held a significant claim to these lands, their lineage reaching back to the Starfall itself. Each King had taken the coronated name of "Xavier," and their sharp eyes peered down at Damian as he passed.
The last painting in the line was not, however, of his father, Xavier V.
Instead, the corridor ended with a portrait of the late Queen Amelia. As always, Damian's footsteps came to a halt; he barely even realized it. His eyes lingered on his mother's soft features, on the hawkish eyes he'd inherited, along with her silky black hair. Her skin had been much darker than his; much to his dismay, he was as pale as his father, and the other male regents before him. Damian's hair, however, was shoulder-length and black, unlike the long history of red locks that had dogged the Roswald line.
Damian Roswald, Crown Prince to the Kingdom of Sidralis.
The only child of the late Queen Amelia, and the sole heir to Xavier V. The thought prickled at the back of Damian's neck, like an itch he couldn't scratch. With a shake of his head, he pushed open the door at the end of the hallway and stepped into the brightly lit gym.