Pherenike - Chapter 115

Pherenike blamed her child. She cursed herself for feeling that way. It was at that moment, racing through the darkness, that she crossed some unseen threshold.

She heard her daughter’s small, ragged breaths—a sharp metallic ring as a sword was drawn.

Only then did Pherenike’s eyes fly open. Darkness poured into her vision like a flood of light. She couldn’t make out the face of the man holding the sword, nor could she see the child immediately, but she could sense the direction her daughter’s voice came from.

The man, rather than turning to the child, slowly turned to face her. Reaching down, she pulled a dagger from her ankle, where it was tied with a leather strap. The young man had blond hair and eyes full of hate for her—there was something oddly familiar about him, but his name didn’t come to mind.

“Pherenike of Vassilios.”

The man called her name as if addressing a mere noblewoman. The man’s face was still veiled in twilight, impossible to truly see. Pherenike tried a moment longer to recall his name, but discarded the thought like a scrap of rubbish—he was already charging at her with his sword raised.

It didn’t matter. A killer doesn’t need to know their victim’s name. He swung the blade at her, knowing it would never truly wound her—just as if he was using a club to drive off an intruder.

She deliberately took the blow, sliding under his arm to drive her dagger upward. His massive hand—still gripping the sword—struck her head.

As she hit the ground, she stabbed him in the foot, then raked the blade along his shin. When he tried to shake her off, she was kicked in the stomach but managed to stab his thigh.

She stabbed him over and over, until the man’s huge body toppled like a falling pillar, until she was certain he was truly dead. Even then, she mounted his collapsed body and stabbed his throat again and again.

Strangely, she recalled—almost fondly—having once gazed at a face so like his. In a trance, she called his name.

But what she said, or what she heard in reply, was lost to her memory.

Her daughter, watching her blood-soaked mother in horror, bolted from the storeroom in terror. Pherenike chased after her, only to hear the girl’s scream of fear.

Fleeing from her, the child called for her father as if calling a god at the edge of death. That single, desperate cry crushed Pherenike’s heart in a way no man—lover or beloved—ever had.

She saw blood flowing from the small, wounded body, her blade had grazed her daughter in the chaos. Please, don’t go. Stay here, you’re not safe. Don’t run. Stay with your mother… Pherenike tried to grab and hold her, begging, but the girl only collapsed in terror, as if just being held by her was a nightmare.

Her hand found the place where the sword had struck. She had to heal her. She had to. But the Althea would not answer. She couldn’t heal the child at all.

It would have been better not to see or speak, better not to witness her daughter’s horror, not to know the way her own child looked at her like a monster.

Before, she could always call on Althea. Back then, she could have driven off every soldier, healed her bleeding, wounded child. But now she couldn’t even close a single torn gash. To have Althea and be powerless while her child bled in her arms…

“…Pherenike.”

“….”

“Pherenike.”

Suddenly, with eyes wide open, Pherenike violently shook off the gentle hand on her shoulder.

He didn’t resist. In an instant, she was straddling Actor, staring down at him as she caught her breath.

He looked up at her calmly, a faint smile at his lips. For a moment, the face of the blond man overlapped his and then vanished.

“Kybellaune, what on earth were you doing in your dream?”

“…I’m sorry.”

Still on her knees, Pherenike shifted to one side, slipping off him rather than returning to her spot on the bed. Actor sat up slowly as she moved away.

The man’s nameless face faded from her memory. In frustration, she clawed at her throat, trying to scrape the feeling away. If only it had been just a meaningless dream, a formless anxiety, she might have let it go.

But what if it was the voice of the goddess, instead?

“Pherenike.”

He approached quietly from behind and gently pulled away the hand she was using to hurt herself. Even that simple, familiar gesture from Actor’s hand made it seem like the man from her dream, even for a heartbeat.

How ridiculous. At least, in Leuce’s world, Actor would be the least dangerous person.

Pherenike stared down at her hand, clean and whole in Actor Nikandros’s gentle grasp. So unlike the blood-soaked horror in her dream.

The real danger to Leuce Pelagon was neither the faceless man who’d threatened her in that nightmare, nor the foolish king standing before her now. Not even Deucalion, who had stood by as his wife bore another man’s child, could do as much harm to the girl as she herself could.

Pherenike thought of her daughter, gasping for breath in her arms in that dream. Of the small child who ran from her, wounded, as if from a monster. A crooked smile twisted her lips.

In her child’s life, she was the greatest source of harm—a monster truly worth fleeing.