Pherenike Episode 8
Five days had passed since the Antehe Council was held. Deucalion, who had been confined in the underground prison, was moved aboveground.
The king had not reversed his decision, so only the location had changed. The prince was confined to his own villa on the outskirts of Lyke.
Originally, at around this time, Deucalion should have spent far longer than this in the prison underground. And he would have emerged half a corpse from countless tortures and prolonged starvation.
They questioned him about his crimes every day. There was a price, set by law, for the denial of guilt. And flogging was, legally, the most justified method.
The laws of Eudokia believed that pain necessarily proved guilt—or, on rare occasions, innocence.
Of course, the result was entirely the choice of the one suffering. Proof was the burden of the innocent.
But Deucalion endured it without letting out even the smallest scream. Time passed beneath the king’s urging to obtain the prince’s confession. Proper flogging had no effect.
So later, they broke one of his fingers each day, and in the end, they were said to have severed the tendons in the back of his right hand and his wrist.
Deucalion was a lancer.
They had made it so the prince could never hold a spear again. At least, not unless he was granted healing as he once had been.
The only reason Deucalion’s mangled hand had barely retained its shape was the power of Orthea inherent within him.
In those days, his entire body was so full of scars and wounds that his original skin could hardly be seen. The flesh around his thighs was tattered, and his back was nothing but the marks of the whip.
According to the old oracle that said, “Only a son of Pelagon can kill a son of Pelagon,” Deucalion was, in truth, a convenient prisoner who would not die even if they did such things. He simply did not die, while feeling pain as if he would.
Deucalion tried to prove his innocence by that accursed means. Because pain was momentary. Because the moment he admitted guilt and found ease, his people would fall as well.
He was born as someone with many things to protect.
The Eudokian maxim, “One who is innocent before the goddess is innocent even before the king’s sword,” was valid even within the kingdom’s laws.
When torture is carried out upon one who does not admit his crime, if he endures for one hundred days without dying, regard the sinner as innocent. He is not defiled, but clean.
Of course, there was no one who endured without dying through the task that separated the “clean” from the “complete sinner.” They usually lost their minds before they died, and once they lost their minds, they did not even know that they were dying. Even if innocence was proven, the only thing that changed was the name on the gravestone.
Deucalion endured it. He proved it every day. And for her sake, he himself rendered all the countless pains he had already endured into nothing.
When he finally came up to the surface with a tattoo carved into the back of his neck, marking him as a beast rather than a human.
When she first saw that wretched state beneath the sun.
That day, Pherenike cursed the king like a madwoman. She screamed like a beast. She poured out all the Althea flowing through her body until only an empty vessel remained, making him as if he had been born anew. Even after that, she held his body all day long and trembled violently.
The king gave her only that one day.
Until they met again, that had been the last time. Deucalion left her that night. With the wolf tattoo that, no matter what she did, would never be erased again. Without any promise.
“Pherenike. It wasn’t because of you.”
“All of your foolishness was because of me.”
“The reason I admitted my sins is because they are the truth. I will commit every one of the crimes my father spoke of.”
“……”
“I will kill him and return to you. I merely paid the price for those sins in advance.”
The chill of that winter day brushed her fingertips once more. But it was still autumn. The baggage wagon came to a stop at Deucalion’s villa.
Pherenike, wearing an old veil over a gray sleeveless chiton like the maids wore, got down from the wagon’s cargo bed.
As she walked, she lightly touched the restraint made from an ordinary silver bracelet, the sort a well-off maid might usually wear.
With her Althea as unstable as it was now, it was not a very good choice. But there was nothing else she could do.
Even with her face covered, Deucalion’s servants, who might have recognized her, tactfully passed by at a distance as though they had not seen her. The king’s Royal Guard was with them.
Althea and its light were the goddess’s special blessing, so unless one was being punished, wearing a restraint by one’s own will to conceal the goddess’s blessing was considered a great taboo in the sanctuary.
It also disturbed the authority of Althea. Some even said that a portion of the power gnawed away in that manner would never return.
For those who possessed Althea, Althea was usually everything. Who would want to lose even a speck of their precious power?
But even outside the sanctuary, there were a very few who possessed the eye of the mind. They sensed Daimon*, saw Nymphs*, and recognized the dazzling radiance of the authority Kybellar had gifted to certain humans.
* Daimon: A name the ancient Greeks gave, apart from the gods of Greek mythology, to supernatural powers that ruled over mountains, rivers, plants, and trees, and exerted various influences over human life.
* Nymph: Nature spirits in Greek and Roman mythology. Beautiful female spirits that inhabited specific places in nature, such as trees, springs, and the like.
Pherenike could not take any risks. Even if the restraint could not completely extinguish the light drifting around her, that faint light which did not go out could be seen only by those at the very summit of the sanctuary.
Soldiers wearing red himations, symbolizing the king’s Royal Guard, came and went inside and outside the fence. Fortunately, none of them recognized her.
Pherenike followed the corridor around the courtyard with familiarity. There was no Royal Guard inside. Birds sang in the small forest, quiet as another world.
The servants standing guard before the bedchamber recognized her and hurriedly knelt to bow. Pherenike opened the door without waiting for their courtesy to end.
No sooner had she taken a single step inside than Deucalion, who had been sitting on the bed, rose fiercely and strode toward her.
As Pherenike watched him, she gestured to Deucalion’s servant. The servant bowed toward her back and quietly closed the door.
His steps were so savage that the thick, long iron chain running from the shackles on Deucalion’s ankle to the stone pillar of the bed clattered loudly, as if it would shatter the smooth marble floor.
They’ve bound a prince like a slave being punished. Pherenike looked for a moment at his reddened ankle, then frowned, her temper twisting sourly.
With that damned personality of his, there was no way he had left his ankle alone until now. Because that was not a simple lump of iron.
In any case, it was better than the underground prison where not a single ray of light entered. This place, at least, belonged to Deucalion. His people were here.
Just as Deucalion reached out to snatch her, Pherenike took one step back.
He called her name as if growling.
“Pherenike Basilios.”
As if mocking his habit of always relaxing his mouth loosely whenever he saw her, his beautiful face beneath his disheveled long silver hair was twisted ferociously.
Deucalion had already used up all the distance the chain allowed him. His anger, too, had already reached its peak.
After tugging hard on the chain at his ankle like a dog bound by a leash, he spoke quietly, as though suppressing something seething within him.
“Come here.”
Instead of listening to him, Pherenike calmly took care of her own business first. She removed the silver bracelet, tossed it at her feet, and raised her eyes.
The pale violet eyes that resembled spring flowers turned cold. Her rigid gaze examined Deucalion from head to toe, one place after another.
He was a little thinner than the last time she had seen him. Pherenike thought so, then suddenly realized that the “last time” that had come to her mind without thinking was not the Antehe assembly hall five days ago, but a certain night four years from now.
The night he had held her for the last time before marching to war. A night that would never come again now.
At that time, Deucalion had been her husband. But now, he did not even remember that fact.
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