Chapter 107
Actor’s lips curled sharply in the darkness.
A man whose feelings usually flickered faint as dawn on a cloudy day, for a moment, looked just like his half-brother. He stared at her the way an angry Deucalion would have.
But he was not Deucalion. Pherenike had never tried to soothe or win over the king the way she had her love.
“A child who hasn’t even learned to speak properly still has the whole world to teach her. Leuce doesn’t know pain or hardship yet. She’s reckless before everything she doesn’t understand. But what about you?”
“……”
“Are even those with ears keen enough to hear what mortals cannot—are they so stubborn simply from ignorance?”
She turned her head away, stubbornly. Suddenly, his large hand, which had been gripping the edge of the carriage door, gently cupped her face and drew her back toward him.
“There’s nothing I know that you don’t.”
“……”
“Pherenike.”
“Whatever the reason, never protect me like that in front of others again.”
She took his hand and slowly pulled it down.
“Don’t look at me as if I were your little princess, or treat me like some fragile thing that needs to be shielded.”
“……”
“Don’t treat me like a pitiable woman locked away in your private chambers, someone who ought to be protected by your hands.”
“……”
“Even the kindest protection is an insult to someone as stubborn as I am. For you, it’s nothing but a pointless waste.”
“…If I don’t protect you, then what else is there for me to guard?”
The king’s twisted voice posed the question to his proud wife. He looked at her as if he were standing before a closed city gate, staring at something just beyond his reach.
For a moment, she was at a loss for words, caught by the shadow in his eyes. For once, Actor looked at her with a kind of wounded reproach, as if something delicate and raw had just cracked open.
His feelings were laid bare for just a heartbeat. Then, just as quickly, he changed his gaze, shedding Deucalion’s shadow.
“Agilon is a man who doesn’t know the value of his own body.”
“Yet even with a sword in hand, he’s doomed to play the righteous man.”
“He is not righteous. If anything, he is unjust.”
“…Are you insulting your former teacher, Your Majesty?”
“He takes your grace for granted, Kybellaune.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“He shamelessly expects yet another blessing from these hands, after already making a waste of everything you once suffered through.”
Actor took her hand—the one she’d just pulled away—and covered it with his own. Her hand was enveloped by his large palm.
Pherenike simply watched as he bent his head to kiss her nails, her knuckles, and each bone on the back of her hand, one by one.
He pressed his lips to her skin as if he’d forgotten his own status, as if a servant were kissing the foot of his mistress, or as if he were paying reverence before a god.
But the way he looked at her was nothing like that, nothing holy or exalted.
He looked at her as an outsider with a sword might look at a goddess in a foreign temple—about to bring her statue down and desecrate it, no matter how sacred. Something too noble to possess, and yet about to be possessed. Something to be owned and thereby profaned.
“Kybellaune. Even so, isn’t that man unjust?”
He pressed his lips into her palm, speaking softly, as if swallowing a feather. Pherenike tried to pull her hand free from Actor’s grasp.
But he kept his lips pressed to her skin, following her hand as his shadowed eyes lifted to meet hers.
“Don’t save the unjust.”
“……”
“Don’t concern yourself with the suffering of men who carelessly throw away the bodies you’ve gone to such pains to heal, just for the sake of their own renown. Those wounds that should never have been mended in the first place.”
“……”
“Don’t pour out your blood, your Althea, over their heads.”
“……”
“Don’t let yourself be moved by men who take your grace and call it their own courage, who mistake reckless bravado for heroism.”
“……”
“Don’t make me burn with petty jealousy, Nike.”
His lips trailed over her fingertips, kissing each one gently, as if asking after her well-being.
Pherenike did nothing, yet he acted as if he alone had extinguished the fire she’d swallowed. But she hadn’t been fooled by the king’s impassive face for a long time.
He was still angry. Beneath that cool exterior, she knew he was seething. Actor Nikandros always saved these confessions for the night.
“…Those ‘men’ you speak of are, after all, your own loyal retainers.”
A faint smile appeared on Actor’s otherwise blank face as he slowly released her hand.
“I know.”
“And do you realize that everything I’ve done here has always been for you?”
“……”
“Even today, it was all for your sake.”
Or rather, she’d spent years in Lykke acting like the sort of woman who cared for him.
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