Pherenike - Chapter 16

At any rate, after ascending from the dungeon, Deucalion would have immediately discarded the clothes he wore for days and sought a bath. Nothing could be inferred from his current appearance.

Deucalion, wearing a himation slung over his bare body without a chiton underneath, appeared unscathed at first glance.

Pherenike focused solely on his body, ignoring his expression, and slowly extended her hand towards him. With the himation draped diagonally from his left shoulder to his right waist, his chest was partially exposed.

The moment she gently caught the hem of his garment and began to lower it towards his abdomen, Deucalion caught her elbow and pulled her into his embrace.

Pherenike caught a glimpse of a wound under his garment.

“Were you stabbed?”

“What does it mean that you saved me?”

Both questions demanding an answer were thrown simultaneously. Neither of them responded.

Pherenike stubbornly shut her mouth, while Deucalion gripped her arms higher up, rubbing his fingertips against the inside. The familiar touch was tender, but she defiantly pulled her arm away as he was preventing her from healing him

Suddenly, her other hand was also seized by him. The sight of her arms being held like that was somewhat comical. Pherenike glanced at her right arm, held aloft as if in defeat, and said.

“…Let go.”

“Answer me first, Pherenike Vassilios.”

“…”

“You saved me?”

A sneer formed on Deucalion’s lips, but it was not directed at her.

“How did you manage that?”

“…”

“With your personality that can’t even utter a sweet word to the elders of the sanctuary and instead incur hatred from everyone, who did you beg from, huh?”

“Just let me heal your wounds and I’ll tell you. You don’t need to do this.”

“Actor told me to thank you.”

“…He listened to my request. I was more desperate than ever. That’s all.”

“With what?”

“Cal.”

Pherenike softly called him by a childhood nickname.

It was a signal. Her answer was done, and she wouldn’t entertain the topic further.

Deucalion, like a well-trained wolfhound of Palos, switched his demeanor and dove into her neck. His lips showered famished kisses on her collarbone and eventually stopped where her pulse throbbed.

He simply changed the method of their conversation, temporarily seizing her undeniable weakness.

Like a hound gripping its prey’s neck, he savagely pulled the tender skin pulsing under her heartbeat into his mouth, assessing something momentarily. Despite Pherenike’s composed face, her heart was racing, the pulse under the delicate skin beating fiercely. She was unusually agitated.

Deucalion couldn’t have failed to notice that.

Fear. Anxiety. Pessimism. Stubbornness. Pherenike’s heart was adrift somewhere. In fact, even she knew it.

Until she could confirm Deucalion’s condition again, she had been frantic, thinking like a madwoman. Her heart racing constantly, she was always short of breath.

Despite his miserably gnawed pride, Deucalion couldn’t push her further after recognizing fear in Pherenike’s emotions.

In a moment of vulnerability, Deucalion tilted his head towards Pherenike, softly calling her name in a soothing tone.

“Pherenike.”

It was precisely when Deucalion let his guard down. Instead of responding, Pherenike did what she hadn’t been able to do earlier. She pulled down the hem of his himation and examined the wound on his abdomen.

They were standing too close for a clear view, but she could ascertain the size of the injury.

If it weren’t for the Orthea control device the royal family had placed on Deucalion’s ankle, this ridiculous struggle wouldn’t have occurred. The device controlled his power while also interfering with the Althea entering his body from the outside.

Without that cursed object, Pherenike could have poured her Althea into him without even touching him, healing him instantly. She probably has blown several times the necessary amount of Althea into the air.

But that didn’t matter. Her body was one of the greatest vessels granted by the goddess to humans. Her Althea was like an inexhaustible spring.

Even though most high priests struggled to penetrate the control device of others for a moment, for her, it was merely a matter of distance and contact.

As Pherenike traced her fingertips across his firm abdomen writing the goddess’s script, the faint light hovering around her converged towards her fingertips.

The light seeped over his wound, then rose like vivid white smoke.

“Does it hurt?”

“How could it, when you’re touching me?”

His reply sounded matter-of-fact, yet somewhat twisted. She looked up at him.

Deucalion gazed down at her expressionlessly. Maybe he truly felt nothing.