I. The First Brother
It had been years since Aurelia last saw her father; for her, it felt like a handful of afternoons. Time wore different boots around the Princess. When the first of her brothers came to the Palace, he filled the doorway as if the room had been built to his measure.
Horus Lupercal was very tall—near to the Emperor's height—and carried the ease of one used to being the calm in a storm. Gold winked from the trim of Luna‑forged plate; a wolf‑tooth charm ticked once against the gorget and fell still. Kindness sat easily on him, as did command. Surprise, too, when his gaze took in the small figure with the quiet halo.
"You are small, my princess," Horus said, amused without mockery.
Aurelia lifted her chin as if to offer battle, then smiled. "If you carry me, I will be as tall as you."
He laughed—a bright, human sound that made even the Custodians at the arch glance without meaning to—and set her on his shoulder as if that had been the proper place all along. Later, she would decide his smile was a beautiful star; she wished, in the uncomplicated way children make vows, never to see it fall.
They walked the galleries like that—the Lupercal listening more than he spoke. She asked about Cthonia. His gaze flicked to the middle distance, to tunnels that had taught hard words to boys who wanted to see the next sunrise.
"It was a hungry world," he said at last, choosing his steps as he chose his words. "Stone and ash. Many hands, not enough bread. We learned to be useful, or we learned to be gone."
Aurelia heard the absent nouns—the gangs, the cuts, the rites that were knives by other names—and did not press. She asked instead for the version that could be told in daylight. Horus obliged. He made a map of narrow streets with his voice. He told of crews that watched each other's backs and of debts paid in loyalty rather than blood, and of a day he had decided to become someone other boys could follow out of the dark.
"And then what happened?" she asked, eyes alight.
"Then I won the fight," he said, chuckling, "and I came here, to you."
"Will you tell me more stories?"
"As many as you like." He meant it. However full his docket ran—assemblies with his inner council, orders from expeditionary fleets—time was found, a chair was pulled up, and the Princess heard another story. In return, she showed him small tricks the Palace had learned for her: a corridor that returned echoes kindly, a fountain that kept a cup warm in winter, a garden that bowed when she entered and rose when Horus did.
Once, at her insistence, he taught her a Cthonian word that meant we share the danger and the bread. She repeated it until the syllables sat right, then made a vow in that borrowed tongue that he would never have to stand alone. He ruffled her hair with a gauntleted hand and pretended something in his eye needed clearing.
He watched, fond and wary both. There was steel in his regard where duty lived; there was warmth where the child sat on his shoulder and pointed at stars painted on a ceiling that had seen too many oaths. In the ledger of the future, he wrote a private line he never spoke aloud: Keep her far from war.
The princess's energy ran out and found herself sleeping on Horus's arms, and he could only smile.
A Custodian—old, gold, and patient—once asked if the Lupercal required for the princess to be taken to her chambers. "No," Horus said, eyes on the small hands braced against his chest "Let her rest here, for a bit. It reminds me of what we fight to return to." The Custodian inclined his head by half a degree; for him, that was sentiment.