¶ Lia Domiandi
⚠️ This article contains spoilers for Wingless in the Sky (Book 1), up to and including Act 2.
"Sea eyes are lucky and dangerous."
— Old Maritana proverb
¶ At a Glance
Full name: Lia Domiandi
Age: Twenty-two at the start of Book 1
Origin: Maritana, capital of the Midland Empire
House: Domiandi (minor, dispossessed)
Status: Niece of Empress Maren De Valoren; former apprentice of the Mage Conclave; Imperial delegate to Aeloria
Magic: Heart magic (anomalous — humans should not possess it)
¶ Appearance
Unremarkable at first glance, as Lia herself would be the first to tell you. Warm brown hair with auburn undertones worn practically — braids, low buns, whatever keeps it out of the way — falling to mid-back when loose. Fair olive skin, pale from years spent indoors in the Mage Tower. Slender build, average height. Pretty enough, if someone bothers to look.
They usually don't, which suits her.
Her one immediately distinctive feature is her eyes. Grey-green, the colour of deep water on an overcast day — what Maritana folk call "sea eyes," a rare colouring said to mark the descendants of some ancient mariner people, long vanished from the world. Close up, if the light is right, you can see faint gold specks near the pupils. There is an old proverb attached to the colour: sea eyes are lucky and dangerous. Lia spent years finding this romantic. By twenty-two, bored out of her mind in grey apprentice robes, she has revised that opinion.
Her clothing changes with her circumstances. In Maritana she wears the grey robes of a Mage Conclave apprentice, or the modest, flowing dress of minor court nobility — sea blues, greens, creams. In Aeloria she is given palace-provided finery, fine fabrics designed for a wingless body, none of it quite her style and none of it quite comfortable. In Tross, practical grey Trossan clothing, austere and functional — and for the first time, something close to relief.
¶ Background
Lia was born into House Domiandi, a minor noble family connected to the Imperial line through her father, Domian. The house had once held more influence; by the time of Lia's childhood it was comfortably modest — royal blood, limited funds, a permanent position at the edges of real power. Her father was present, warm, and curious, the kind of man who taught his daughter to read and then encouraged her to argue with what she read. Her mother, Amalia, was anxious even then — protective in the way of someone who has already sensed, without knowing why, that the world intends to take things from her.
When Lia was twelve, her father disappeared.
No warning, no explanation, no body. An Imperial investigation followed; it found nothing. Lia's mother collapsed into grief from which she has never fully emerged. Lia raised herself, more or less, learning court survival from necessity while the wound of her father's absence quietly shaped everything she would become. She has never stopped looking for him. The Empress, she eventually learned, had something to do with his disappearance — Domian was exiled as a political threat. Whether he survived the exile, no one has told her.
Her heart magic manifested in the weeks after he vanished, emerging from a desperate attempt to sense whether he was still alive somewhere. Untrained, uncontrolled, and impossible — humans do not have heart magic, full stop — it terrified her enough to keep it secret. Only her mother and the Empress know. Maren, with characteristic pragmatism, had Lia enrolled in the Mage Conclave's apprentice programme to keep her occupied and close. Lia spent the next decade failing to learn mind magic, which is structurally incompatible with what she actually has, while practicing heart magic in secret and reading every scrap of Highfolk scholarship she could find.
The novel opens on the day she accidentally destroys part of the Mage Tower. Six months of house arrest follow. Then Maren calls her in for a different kind of assignment entirely.
¶ Education and Skills
Lia received the standard formation of Imperial minor nobility: court manners, languages (the Empire's diversity makes multilingualism a practical necessity, and all nobility are taught at least three or four from childhood), history, music, the kind of general learning that keeps a court-adjacent woman useful and presentable. She absorbed most of it readily — she likes learning for its own sake, which is rarer than it sounds.
The education that actually matters, though, is the one less formally taught. Noble women of Maritana are not instructed in combat. They are instructed in survival — how to read a room on arrival, how to assess threat without appearing to, how to move when things turn dangerous. It is the kind of training that sits so deep it becomes instinct. In Aeloria, in the middle of a street brawl staged as a distraction, Lia is the one who spots the archers on the rooftop before either of the two trained soldiers beside her.
"In Maritana," she explains afterward, voice still shaking slightly, "they don't teach women to fight. But they teach us how to survive attacks and assassinations. I've been trained in that since I was small."
Kyrian nods slowly. "It shows."
¶ Personality
Lia is a survivor, which is different from being fearless. She bends rather than breaks — assessing situations quickly, adjusting her behaviour to what is actually required, never quite losing herself in the adjustment. She has learned to be nearly invisible when she needs to be, and impossible to ignore when she chooses to speak. She is intellectually hungry in a way the court has never quite known what to do with: she reads voraciously, asks inconvenient questions, and is constitutionally incapable of accepting an official answer when the unofficial one is more interesting.
She reads people accurately, with the kind of precision that comes from years of watching and no margin for error. She sees through Kyrian's arrogance to the pain underneath it earlier than he realises, and finds this both useful and deeply inconvenient. She is genuinely empathetic — other people's pain reaches her — but she is also capable of using that empathy strategically when she has to. She does not enjoy doing it. She is not above it.
Underneath the composure: loneliness, old and practised. No real friends in Maritana. Maren's affection is genuine and also transactional, and Lia has always known both things simultaneously. Her mother is present but unreachable. She craves real connection and is frightened of it in roughly equal measure.
Her one consistent impulsiveness is anything connected to her father. It is the only crack in the calculation, the only place where she acts before she thinks. It is, not coincidentally, the reason she agreed to go to Aeloria.
¶ Heart Magic
Lia's heart magic is anomalous in the strictest sense — the Mage Conclave has no category for it, and if they knew it existed in her, the political consequences would be severe. Maren suppressed the knowledge for exactly this reason: "They'd probably kidnap you and experiment on you for science. Also, political disaster — their monopoly on magic is challenged. Can't have that."
The magic manifests as white-gold light from the chest, with tendrils of white fire when directed offensively. It drains her significantly with extended use — emotional exhaustion, sometimes physical collapse. It is not structured or incantation-based; it responds to feeling and will, which is why mind magic has never worked for her and never will. She is not learning the wrong discipline badly. She is being taught the wrong discipline entirely.
Her Heartvision — the heart magic ability to perceive another's physical and emotional state — develops slowly across her time in Aeloria. In the early weeks it is more instinct than skill: flares of awareness, impressions, a sense of something present beneath the surface of what she can see. Control comes later, and not without difficulty.
¶ Key Relationships
Empress Maren De Valoren — Lia's great-aunt by blood and the most important person in her life, which is a complicated thing to be. Maren protects her, educates her, and sent her into genuine danger because the Empire's interests required it. She has real affection for Lia and also a clear-eyed view of her usefulness. Lia has always known both things and loved her anyway. The question of what Maren did or did not do to Domian sits between them, largely unasked.
Amalia (Mother) — Lia's mother, still living, still grieving. Protective in the urgent, helpless way of someone who lost the one person she counted on to keep everything together. Lia comforts her rather than the reverse. She promised to come back from Aeloria. She is not certain she can keep that promise.
Beros — Her first real friend in Aeloria, and possibly the first real friend she has had anywhere. Kyrian's captain of the guard: practical, warm, no condescension, treats her as a person when almost no one else in the sky does. He shares food and warnings and the occasional terrible joke. He also plants the seed she cannot stop thinking about — that Kyrian, under everything, might be capable of being different. She is not sure whether to thank him for that or not.
Thalis — Scholar, researcher, and the most useful person in Aeloria after Beros. Their dynamic is captured almost perfectly by one exchange: "You're the most interesting thing I've ever studied!" / "I'm not a thing. I'm a person." / "Can't you be both?" Thalis is genuinely helpful and, Lia gradually understands, genuinely sees her as a specimen first. This turns out to matter more than she expected.
Kyrian — Enemies-to-lovers, which means the enemy part comes first and the rest develops slowly and against both their better judgements. She reads him more accurately than he reads himself from early on, which gives her an advantage she is not always sure she wants. He is cruel in the specific way of someone in pain who has learned to use cruelty as armour. She finds this explicable before she finds it forgivable.
¶ 📂 Article Index
This article is about a Character — Protagonist · Romance Lead
| All Characters | Character Index |
| Protagonists | Lia · Kyrian |
| Romantic Bond | Lia & Kyrian · The Heart Bond |
| Race | Human · The Three Races |
| Home | Maritana · Aeloria (delegate) |
| Magic | Heart Magic · Heartvision · The Heart Bond |
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