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A light as bright as Lucius’s must cast a shadow as monumental. The laws of nature decreed it so. In that shadow dwelled his younger brother Titus.
Creatures born in the dark, by necessity, develop keen senses. The spare heir heard the subtext between every line of praise his brother received, and the void of ones coming his way. He tasted the bitterness in scrounging for scraps in his Emperor Father’s peripheral vision. While brawn remained Lucius’s forte—his brother was larger than life both in size and in splendor—Titus developed an eye for other roads to success. A masterful tactician and a promising young princeps senatus, he smelled blood in the water from malms away, and he knew each trail to follow to strike. Follow them he did, without fail; if not for Father’s affection, then for other sources of warmth.
The first such flame he found in a wife. From every strategic angle, a union with Arrecina tol Clemens was fortuitous; currying favor with the IIIrd by marrying their tribunus opened military doors his own lack of prowess had closed. Not to mention, she was a woman of great cunning herself. She took to high society like a knife through butter, as adept there as on the battlefield; she always knew where to whisper the right words to build her husband’s following. Because the shadow was not where Titus was content to stay.
Still, for all his vying for the throne, he could not have imagined his brilliant brother’s light snuffed.
Darkness fell upon the palace. It spread like the departed’s illness across every corner of the Empire as tears flowed for the lost prince. While no one mourned more than Emperor Solus, Titus found himself suffering all the same.
Lucius had never been cruel to him, nor was he dismissive. He’d been busy with expanding their territory, just as Titus was with his politics—but when the brothers crossed paths, there had been kinship there. Titus curbed his guilt of allowing his spite to overshadow it and turned his full devotion onto his new family. From a marriage of convenience had blossomed a real love, and from that love sprouted first a daughter, then a son the following winter. From holding these bundles of joy in his arms spread a new insidious resentment: if it was this easy to adore both his children, why was his father incapable of the same?
Left behind by his brother, meanwhile, were his inconsolable Hypatia and their son—but a babe in the cot himself, barely older than his cousins. Arrecina had suggested taking the boy under their wing, but that was not to be; a gulf had grown between family members from the passing of who held it together. Hypatia’s pride refused help from her distrusted brother-in-law, anyhow, and thus was Varis’s upbringing up to her and Solus himself. The latter’s appearances in court grew scarcer and scarcer as his care for his remaining blood diminished. Titus washed his hands of the matter. The boy was a future threat, not a child to be coddled. Arrecina admitted her maternal hormones must have gotten the best of her. She knew just as well what had to be done.
It was paramount that their own progeny grew up knowing the love of family. All Titus’s rays were sent their way, and so they would never doubt.
In his advanced age and apathy, Solus zos Galvus rarely entertained visitors. He sat upon his throne, slumped under the weight of his ruler’s garb, his overgrown hair creeping down the armrests like roots. It was challenging for Titus to imagine the seat without him; what but death itself could pry his father from his power? Even then, he could see centuries passing and Solus still remaining.
The reality begged to differ. Two decades before the first of those centuries, the Emperor’s health was already in decline. He would not last many years longer, and the entire court was aware. That was no doubt the reason Titus had been summoned in front of his father. The doors to the grand hall shut behind him with a thunderous bang. The Emperor’s eyes flicked up, the same lack of warmth greeting him as always. No—it had grown more severe, much colder, and his sire now regarded him as no bigger than an ant.
“Titus.” His voice, once booming and full of authority, had diminished to something frail.
In comparison, his son stood tall and proud, still in his prime even as his own hair had long turned grey. Not the premium specimen Lucius had been, but a suitable inheritor for the throne all the same. Titus hoped the Emperor would see that. “Father,” he responded. “It has been overlong.”
Solus did not rise, nor did he seem inclined to. He silently beckoned his son closer with a crook of the finger, and Titus obeyed. He walked the long length of the hall and stopped short at the foot of the throne, his hands clasped behind his back as he bowed his head in silent respect.
“Look at you, dutiful as ever. Stand straight.” The Emperor’s command snapped out, and at that, Titus raised his chin and squared his shoulders. He held his gaze with his father’s, his eyes steely.
Discomfort crawled up his spine as Solus observed him, searching for something, a flaw, a trace of weakness. When he spoke, the Emperor sounded like he had found plenty reason for his scorn. “Do you know why you are here?”
Titus hesitated to answer. He was no fool; he could guess the reason for the summon, but for his father to ask the question directly… It was a test. To see if he would deny the truth. “At the risk of sounding presumptuous,” he buffered his admittance, “I assumed it was about inheritance.”
The corner of Solus’s mouth twitched into a half-smirk. “You’ve always been one of the clever ones. Most of the courtiers believe I called you here to settle your succession as the crown prince.” He scoffed, which quickly devolved to a cough. “Fools, all of them.”
Hearing those words set off alarm bells. Titus’s eyes widened momentarily, though he schooled his expression back to neutrality shortly after. If this was a test, perhaps he had just failed it. He remained silent, still, waiting for his father to continue, though irritated questions bounced in his head. Solus let the silence drag out, seemingly savoring his son’s anxiety as he watched the cogs in his mind turn.
Eventually, the bomb dropped.
“I have no intention of giving you the throne.”
A wave of disbelief crashed over Titus’s frozen body. The statement was so absurd at first, he wondered if he had misheard. His father could be cruel, but this was more than that—this was a pointed insult.
“You—what?” He struggled to keep his voice level. Its volume rose unbidden. “Who, then? Varis? You hardly even look his way!”
His father regarded him with a look akin to mild exasperation, as though he was speaking to a stubborn child and not a man with grandchildren of his own. “A laughable notion. But no—not him. Not you, either.”
The confusion and rising anger were beginning to overtake any sense of restraint. This was unlike him—his son as a youth and grandson after him had their moments of temper, but Titus prided himself on his cold calculation. He had, however, found his limit; his father had traipsed over it with reckless abandon. Titus swallowed his ire before forcing more words out. “I don’t understand. If not my nephew—”
At once, horror exploded in Titus’s chest. He should have understood that look on his father’s face.
No. No.
He tried and failed to keep his voice from trembling. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
Just to spite him further, Solus smiled. It was not a happy expression. The Emperor leaned forward, propping his bearded chin on a gnarled hand, and regarded Titus coolly, the picture of regal composure. Then, with unnerving casualness, he confirmed his son’s fears. “You can settle it between yourselves. I am not naming a successor.”
Titus could only stare in stunned disbelief as his heart plummeted into his stomach. This was madness. The ground under his feet was whipped away, leaving him suspended in a cold void.
When his voice returned to him, all sense of restraint was gone. He could have spat. “You would throw the Empire into turmoil. You would let your grandsons spill each other’s blood for scraps of your power. What is the meaning of this? Why?”
Solus responded as if explaining elementary mathematics to an idiot. “It is quite simple: I have no desire for a broken creature to succeed me.” He leaned back in his seat with an air of contempt, and fixed his son with a chilling look. “Why should I reward any of you with what you so desire? What do any of you truly deserve it for?”
Broken. Titus clenched his jaw hard, hands balled into trembling fists at his sides. He had devoted his entire life to the throne, to the glory of Garlemald. Decades of unwavering service and loyalty to an uncaring parent, and this was what he had to show for it. War with his own family. He had much more to say on the matter, many further arguments on how disastrous a mistake his father was making, but he knew they would reach deaf ears. Solus was unwavering as stone, unwilling to give up the throne even as his body failed him.
“Will you call Varis here next?” he asked in lieu of airing further grievances.
His father waved a hand dismissively as though Titus was a noisy pest. “No, son, I won’t bother. This is my final gift to you alone. Let him figure it out on his own.”
It is no gift, Titus almost said—but there was no use in wasted words. He stood motionless and tense, unable to tear his gaze from his father and the throne beneath him, a maelstrom of emotions raging inside.
The silence dragged out. Only the labored sound of Solus’s breathing could be heard, faint and raspy; the steady ticking of time running out. The Emperor waited, and watched, as his son remained paralyzed in place. Titus struggled to keep his cool as a burning fury threatened to consume him, but he forced it down and composed himself; he would not give his father the satisfaction.
He bowed, deep and stiff, and gritted out the words, “I thank you for the generous gift, Father.”
No official dismissal came, but Titus could tell his father grew weary of him. So did he of him. His boots hit the tiled floor hard as he stormed back to his domain in the palace; he had strategy to discuss with his children, Flavia’s spies to send forward and a senate to face with Nerva.
A civil war was not something to rush into. When preparing to eat your kin, you first had to sharpen your knife.