Pherenike - Chapter 103

Actor Nikandros. The child uttered her father’s name so freely, but to Pherenike, it grated like sand.

Love, for a child, is radiant. The princess was only just beginning to speak. She was still so little. But what if she’d been even younger—so small she couldn’t remember anything? What if there’d been a time before she loved her father?

If only she’d never learned what love meant with that little mind of hers…

Pherenike gave a faint, bitter smile.

All such speculation was pointless. From the day she was born, her daughter had always been with her father. When she opened her eyes in the morning, the first thing she saw was that man’s dark hair. And until she fell asleep again, those round eyes always found her father’s blue-grey gaze.

Actor Nikandros was the beginning and end of the child’s world—her mornings and nights, her dreams’ start and finish. He was the most natural, absolute presence in that tiny universe. More so than even the mother who bore her.

Would it have been better to simply take the child away from him altogether? To keep her from ever seeing her father’s face? To keep her from knowing the eyes that would greet her when she returned from her dreams?

She could have used the fact that the man had once claimed he’d even give up the child’s life as an excuse—not killing the child, but refusing to let Actor see her.

If she’d kept the child so close that the man never even caught a glimpse of her hair… If her daughter had never learned love from him…

Like a river turning its course, Pherenike’s hand turned to grip Leuce’s small hand. She pressed her forehead to her daughter’s tiny hand and let out a slow, stifled breath.

Back then, she hadn’t liked this. She hadn’t even looked at her.

The princess was the greatest flaw Pherenike had ever tried to leave behind—a mistake, a wrong answer. And yet, in Lykke, she was the only thing that could still make her mother smile.

A blessing that felt like a curse. The child had loved her mother first, long before Pherenike could love her back.

Maybe all of this came from that man. Maybe, with the love she’d learned from him, with the gentle gaze she’d known from her cradle, the child looked at Pherenike that way now.

To feel anything tender for what came from Actor Nikandros was humiliating. Following that emotion back led Pherenike to memories she’d tried to bury—nights spent with Actor Nikandros in Geotil’s sanctuary, or on the road, or in that quiet forest, all surfacing like old sins.

The fire in the woods. The hearth by the bed. The man who kept watch through the night by the flames, guarding his pregnant queen. The face she saw when she opened her eyes. That calm voice. The gentleness always half-hidden in his expression. The eyes that always found her first.

Those blue-grey eyes.

Maybe there were moments she didn’t hate those eyes. She’d grown so used to that man, disgusted by herself for not hating his touch, his arms, his presence.

When she thought back to the Actor Nikandros of those days, Pherenike could almost imagine the tiny world her infant daughter must have known. Waking from a dream, those blue-grey eyes would silently reassure her: you were safe all night, I was here to protect you.

For the child, that must have been everything. Pherenike’s own father had never been that kind of man, but she’d known something like that love, once.

Axiothea had loved her that way—bringing comfort through the night. At bedtime, she’d lay little Deucalion and Pherenike side by side, whispering that she prayed they’d receive only the best from the gods of dreams.

Every soft and gentle thing Pherenike knew in life had really come from those days with Axiothea. Until Leuce was born.

‘At last you’ve escaped from Morpheus’ wings, my child. I’ve been waiting for you.’

Whenever Pherenike woke, Axiothea was there. In her memory, those were the kindest eyes in the world.

Deucalion’s twin sister, Pyrrha, had died in her sleep as a child. Ever since, Axiothea had feared her children’s sleep. She loved Pherenike like a daughter, so she feared for her rest as well. There were nights when she kept vigil at their bedside, praying for them.

Does love give birth to fear? Or does fear give birth to love?

‘That was what I was truly afraid of, Pherenike.’

‘…..’

‘That I was making you pay the price for being at my side.’

For a moment, Pherenike squeezed her child’s hand with desperate strength. Absurdly, she finally understood Actor’s fear: the dread that Leuce might pay for her mother’s choices.

She realized that life was a comedy of absurdities.

There were only three women she had ever truly loved in her life: Axiothea, Atalanta, and Leuce. Leuce’s father was an enemy not just to her, but to those two women as well.

The man who had, without any special malice—only from duty or fate—taken a child’s life from Axiothea, a father or son from Atalanta.

Leuce was a shard of that man. Like a broken piece of pottery, holding her would make her bleed, yet she couldn’t let go. In the end, she had to kill the king but save the princess—keep her by her side for a lifetime.

Even if she wasn’t a better mother than that man could have been. Even if she was, in truth, a worse mother than any other. Even if she could never love the way her father did, even if she brought only sadness to these eyes—

Still, you must live…

“Mother, are you crying?”