Pherenike - Chapter 94

Flames leapt to life over dead firewood. The prince was as accustomed to these tasks as any soldier in the field.

Even before he reached adulthood, he’d wandered from battlefield to battlefield under the tutelage of his master, Peleus, and before heading to war, he had slit the throats of monsters in the ravines.

He ate the same food as his men, slept on the same ground, and did so for years.

Since Pherenike had left for the sanctuary, the boy could never grow attached to Lykke. And once her name began to be spoken as his half-brother’s fiance, he found no reason to linger there at all.

Whenever Pherenike returned to the capital, so did he.

It was only then that Lykke seemed to regain its color. Even if it meant seeing her standing beside his half-brother now and then, he could endure it. The boy had more patience back then than the prince does now.

After all, he knew she would eventually return to him for good. And his Nike always came straight back to him. Oblivious to the stubbornness in Actor Nikandros’s heart, she greeted Deucalion with all the joy in the world.

The little feet that raced toward him were full of delight; she looked at him as if he were her entire world.

Her happiness was his happiness. That’s just how it was.

If a hundred things made her happy, then a hundred times he would be happy too. They always looked to the same place, at the same time.

Thus, her happiness became entirely his own. Like the moon reflected on still water, Deucalion mirrored her happiness within himself. His joy was always like a mirror—he never learned to create it himself. His heart was stagnant water, unmoving and unable to flow anywhere else.

But water cannot chase a setting moon. It could only wait.

So whenever Pherenike left and Lykke lost its color, he too departed. The more vague things became, the duller he felt. Blood, on the other hand, always sharpened his senses.

After all, the king’s blade could find him anywhere. If he was going to fight back, he’d rather do it outside Lykke. The prince became desensitized to blades that came flying from the shadows.

When a trusted friend stabbed him in the side—not a monster, but one of his own—he simply severed that naive strand of trust from within.

People liked to say there was some invisible veil protecting the ‘sons of Pelagon’. As if no weapon in the world could pierce their skin and draw out that blood.

But the air that deflected a blade for a heartbeat was really just a warning to the enemy—a chance to avoid sacrilege against the goddess.

Yet when a man’s hatred, close and human, grew stronger than any distant warning from the gods, the blade would slice through the air and puncture flesh at last.

The farther the attacker was from the goddess, the better. The unchosen. The unheard.

Pure, unmitigated malice.

The first friend to betray him had never even held a strand of Orthea—just the unlucky son of some general. The goddess’s words weren’t absolute.

As a son of Pelagon, Deucalion could not die, but not dying only meant he had to suffer death countless times. Sometimes, it would have been better to simply let go and stop breathing. He endured all the pain, just as his brother had, just as his father and his uncles had before him.

Deucalion remembered the day Actor placed a sword in his young hand. His brother, two years older, crept into his room and wrapped his hands around Deucalion’s neck.

“If you don’t want to die, stab me, Deucalion.”

“…”

“If you can’t do it, then just die. Just die and be done with it.”

Still, he never believed death was easier than pain. Waking again in pain meant Nike was still there. Pain always outlasted death, and life outlasted pain—and Nike outlasted them all.

Unless dying meant he could have Nike, he had no reason to surrender.

“…Please, don’t look at me like that. Kill me. Raise your sword.”

“…”

“If one of us dies, it ends. Before you die, raise your sword. I swear, I’ll really kill you.”

Neither plea—to let him die nor to be killed—was anything but sincere. They were born to hate each other. Even looking at one another was a chore.

Deucalion understood that Actor truly meant to kill him that day. And, ironically, he also knew his brother genuinely wanted to die.

I’m sick of you. I hate myself. It hurts. I don’t even want to breathe anymore. If you don’t die, I feel like I’ll never be free. And if I don’t die, Deucalion, then you…

He noticed the hawk’s scars on his half-brother’s arm as Actor choked him, and saw a flicker of guilt in those eyes staring down at him.

“They say death makes everything easier, Deucalion.”

Their father’s favorite nonsense. If dying is so wonderful, why doesn’t he just do it himself? Deucalion raised the sword. He was out of breath. Honestly, he meant to stab his brother in the neck, just as Actor begged him to.

But in the end, the blade did not cut Actor’s throat—it slashed the arm that bore the hawk’s scars instead.