Pherenike - Chapter 48

Over the past few years, Deucalion’s name had rarely come up between them. Pherenike didn’t want to remind Actor of his brother, and Actor didn’t deliberately recall the circumstances of their marriage. Their reasons varied slightly.

For instance, Pherenike acted like someone hiding their most precious thing in the bushes, hoping the beasts wouldn’t notice. As for Actor… Pherenike thought he knew jealousy. Among the few emotions Actor Nikandros was familiar with, jealousy was surely one.

Jealousy wasn’t a grand thing. It wasn’t exclusive to precious possessions. It was a feeling even a five-year-old could have towards a passing cat in the backyard. She was not a backyard cat. She was the woman Actor had been most physically intimate with in his life.

Whenever someone mentioned ‘Lord Paetusa’, referring to Deucalion, Actor would look at her as if pulled by an invisible string, trying to guess something. But his gaze quickly moved on, as if he didn’t want to delve too deep. He seemed like someone who didn’t want to see into her heart at all.

Ironically, Actor knew best the shadow of Deucalion that lingered over her. Every habit, expression, her body’s response to a man’s touch, even her sleepy smile.

He knew she hadn’t given her first time to him. In the air, in their silent glances, on their first night, he knew and kept silent. He never voiced it.

Perhaps he too imagined the countless nights she had spent with Deucalion, the traces of his half-brother left in her, the habits and everything.

His gaze, burning dryly as he looked at her, sometimes seemed to see the man still lingering beyond her. As if all her expressions were a legacy of her youth spent with Deucalion, and her body’s knowledge of men came from him.

It’s ironic. For her ‘now’, Deucalion doesn’t fully know her.

In truth, Actor Nikandros was always seeing the traces of a man he had already killed. He was feeding on the crumbs of those times in his bed. Competing with a man who he had eradicated from the world with his own hands.

Why then had such a man called Deucalion to Lykke?

“It mustn’t have been Deucalion’s fault since you were over nine. You just seemed to have fallen.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Even then, it was you who hurt yourself.”

“…….”

“But it must have been the best time for you.”

As if Deucalion was just his brother, and she was just his wife. As if memories were just memories.

When Actor caressed his wife’s lips and nostalgically mentioned ‘their’ good times, what was he thinking? Pherenike smiled and blinked away the memories.

She ran her palm across the blunt edge of the young Deucalion’s spear, marking a white line on her skin. The dull blade, incapable of cutting flesh, traced a boundary on her hand. The tip of the spear moved a bit further down, crossing the thicker part of her palm as if traversing a mountain, then sharply descended towards her artery. Pherenike pressed on it firmly.

“Don’t do that.”

A voice that shouldn’t have been heard, and couldn’t have been there, chided her. She looked up.

“That spear isn’t for you. It’s for your child.”

“Deucalion.”

Pherenike’s smile widened gradually. Deucalion’s hand emerged from the bushes and took the child’s toy from her hand.

Yet, she didn’t focus on the confiscated object but gazed at the unconcerned face of the looter. His silver hair illuminated by the morning light.

In the ruins where they grew up together, the Queen faced the King’s brother.

Everything was in ruins, but the ‘Queen’s Garden’ Actor spoke of was still here.

Axiothea’s chamber had been abandoned, and so her garden was quickly forsaken.

Once a slice of Elysion field, the Queen’s Garden was now overgrown with dead vegetation, rotten flowers, and tall grasses.

The olive and almond trees Axiothea had planted in commemoration of her twins’ birth were now entangled in dry wildflower vines. They were dying pitifully, like a fish entwined in the net pulled above the ground.

This place was traditionally the queen’s quarters, but Pherenike, as the new queen, hadn’t spent a single day here.

King Epicydes, even on his deathbed, thoroughly erased Axiothea’s presence, who once dominated the court. Conversely, the quarters of Actor’s mother, Queen Polyxena, where she stayed for a while before dying long ago, were increasingly adorned like a temple.

As Axiothea’s quarters turned into her tomb, Pherenike was merely the wife of the Prince Regent. She never accidentally passed through this area in her courtly walks.

And finally, when she ascended the throne with Actor, the now king, she saw this place for the first time in years.

Though to say she ‘saw’ it might be a bit of an exaggeration.

*(Elysion): The paradise of heroes believed in by ancient Greeks. An island of the blessed.