Perenike Episode 9
Back then, Perenike had escaped the land of Eudokia with the greatest difficulty and gone to him, and he had come to fetch her through all manner of hardship.
They encountered each other in the middle of the desert. Until then, Perenike had never seen a desert. They had brushed past death again and again, driven by the single-minded conviction that they had to meet again.
How had they finally found each other again and sworn their lives to one another?
The realization that their time had vanished was never greater than the relief that he was alive. It could not even be compared.
And yet it carved away a part of Perenike’s heart.
No matter what point in her life she returned to, Deucalion would always be loving her. The man before her, too, was the Deucalion she had loved as dearly as her own life.
Only, her husband was nowhere anymore.
The Deucalion of that time, the four years of memories they had shared, the foreigners’ seas and deserts they had seen together, the countless nights and days when they had whispered endearments to each other—all of it receded from her like the boulder of Sisyphus.*
As if it were an eternal punishment.
* Sisyphus: A king of Corinth in Greek mythology. As punishment for deceiving Hades, god of the underworld, he was condemned in the underworld to push a heavy boulder up to the summit of a mountain; whenever he reached the top with great effort, the boulder would roll back down, forcing Sisyphus to repeat the same task for eternity.
Even though she had brought Deucalion back to life, he was gone. She had lost him forever.
The moment Aktor had severed his neck, that shard of his soul had already gone to some faraway place. To a place she could never grasp again.
A terrible sense of loss surged up. Perenike calmly chewed and swallowed it down, as if suppressing vomit.
With eyes that knew nothing of what they had lost, Deucalion was looking at her.
“Perenike.”
“……Are you hurt?”
“How can that possibly matter right—”
“—It matters.”
They had already lost so much, and so now, that alone mattered.
Perenike paid no mind to his unease or anger as she looked him over carefully.
A cleanly shaven face. A clean himation.*
* Himation: An outer garment worn by the ancient Greeks.
In any case, the moment he had come up from the prison, he must have thrown off everything he had worn for days and gone straight into the water. There was no way to tell anything from his current appearance alone.
Deucalion’s body, with no chiton worn underneath and the himation draped obliquely over his bare skin, looked perfectly fine at first glance.
She focused only on his body, as if she could not see Deucalion’s expression. Then, very slowly, she reached out to him.
Beside the himation that hung slantwise from his left shoulder to his right waist, half of his chest was plainly exposed.
What she carefully took hold of was the hem of the garment just below it.
The moment her trembling fingertips dragged the hem down to his abdomen, Deucalion snatched her elbow. Then he pulled Perenike into his arms.
It was only for an instant that Perenike glimpsed the wound beneath the garment.
“Were you stabbed?”
“What do you mean, you saved me?”
Questions demanding answers from each other burst out at the same time. Neither of them answered.
Perenike abruptly shut her mouth in stubborn silence, while he dug his grip higher than her elbow and rubbed the inside with his fingertips.
The familiar touch was gentle, but it was no different from abruptly lifting her arm so she could not heal him.
Before she could evade him, even her other hand was caught in his grasp.
The sight of both her arms being held like that was somewhat ridiculous. Perenike looked once at her right arm, suspended helplessly in midair, and spoke.
“……Let go.”
“Answer me first. Perenike Basilios.”
“…….”
“You saved me?”
A sneer rose to Deucalion’s lips. It was not directed at her.
“You? By what means, exactly?”
“…….”
“With that personality of yours that can’t even offer one honeyed word to the old men of the sanctuary and earns every ounce of their hatred, who did you beg, and for what? Hm?”
“If you’ll just let me fix your injury, I’ll tell you. You don’t have to do this.”
“Aktor said so. That I should thank you.”
“……He granted my request. And I was more desperate than usual. That’s all.”
“With what?”
“Kal.”
She called him by the childhood pet name in a soft voice.
It was a kind of signal. That her answer was already over, and she would no longer engage with him.
Deucalion twisted his mouth, then changed his manner as obediently as a well-trained wolfhound of Phalos and burrowed into her neck.
Impatient kisses rained down above her collarbone, and then the lips that climbed along the line of her neck came to rest where Perenike’s pulse beat.
He had merely changed the method of conversation. For a moment, he chose to seize the weakness she could not deny.
Like a hunting dog biting and shaking the neck of its prey, he savagely took the fragile surface where her pulse leapt into his mouth, then paused as if weighing something.
Unlike Perenike’s composed face, the pulse beneath her delicate skin was violent, matching the rapid beat of her heart. She was shaken as never before.
There was no way Deucalion would fail to notice it.
Fear. Anxiety. Pessimism. Obstinacy. Perenike’s heart was wandering somewhere among them. In truth, even she knew that.
Until she could confirm Deucalion again, Perenike had lived like a madwoman. Thought like a madwoman. Her heart had been racing the entire time. She had always been short of breath.
Despite his miserably gnawed pride, the moment Deucalion detected fear in Perenike’s emotions, he could no longer press her further.
As if collapsing inwardly, his heart softened, and with his head inclined toward Perenike, he called her name in a low, soothing voice.
“Perenike.”
It was at that instant, when Deucalion let down his guard. Instead of answering, she did what she had failed to do earlier. She pulled down the edge of his himation and checked the stab wound on his abdomen.
They were standing too close to see it properly. But it was enough to confirm the size of the wound.
If not for the Orthea restraints the royal family had locked around Deucalion’s ankles in the first place, even this unsightly scuffle would not have happened.
The restraints controlled his power, and at the same time, they interfered with the Althea entering his body from the outside.
If not for that damned thing, Perenike would have poured Althea into him at once and healed him without so much as touching him with a fingertip. Though she would probably have wasted several times the amount of Althea originally needed into thin air.
But none of that mattered. Perenike’s body was one of the greatest vessels the goddess had granted to humankind. Her Althea was infinite, like an inexhaustible spring.
Just as, even though most high-ranking priests struggled merely to pierce through another’s restraints for a moment, for her it was only a matter of distance and contact.
Perenike drew her fingertips down his firm abdomen, writing the goddess’s script. Then the lights that had been faintly drifting around her gathered all at once at her fingertips.
The light seemed to seep into his stab wound, then rose white like vivid smoke.
“Does it hurt?”
“How could it, when you’re touching my body?”
He answered as if it were obvious, yet there was something twisted in his tone. She lifted her head.
Deucalion was looking down at her without expression. As if perhaps he truly felt nothing at all.
Even if it borrowed the goddess’s authority, mending flesh that a blade had once cut open was akin to burning that flesh.
Kybelar’s healing was not simply benevolent. It was, for instance, like paying all at once the price of the pain a wound had left in the body.
Of course, Perenike’s ability to handle Althea was on an entirely different level from the others of the sanctuary. And Deucalion’s body had been granted the goddess’s blade, “Orthea.”
In the distant past, when the goddess Kybelar led Eudokia and Argo into the Kadika War for the goddess, she bestowed two gifts upon this land.
Althea and Orthea.
If Althea existed for healing, Orthea existed solely for combat. Since both originated from the goddess, their roots were ultimately the same. The degree of pain he felt in accepting Althea was also different from that of ordinary people.
Moreover, Deucalion’s body had been tempered countless times by her Althea since childhood.
Even so, the logic of healing was ultimately the same. When a wound was deep, even dignified old soldiers who had handled Orthea within their own bodies all their lives would sometimes scream and sob.
Deucalion’s stab wound was not very deep, but it was long and covered a wide area.
Over the sizzling wound, light leapt low and melted his skin. Glittering smoke scattered, filling the space between them as they stood close together.
She steadied her breath and met his gaze again, a gaze that had not left her for even a moment.
There was no way it did not hurt, yet his face looked as if it knew no pain. And along with that, there was none of his usual gratitude either.
At that moment, he was not the least bit pleased to be healed.
Deucalion was merely waiting for her with fierce eyes. Because once Perenike began to send Althea flowing into him, there was no way for him to cut it off first.
He knew the method. And yet he could do nothing.
For him, severing the Althea was in fact simple. He was the spearman who handled the power of Orthea at the highest level in all the land of Eudokia, and he was not overwhelmed by the sacred supernatural power she pushed into his body.
Once healing began, most people could only endure the painful rite somehow with their bodies stiff as stone, but Deucalion could leave his place at any time.
He could lightly push her away, or even, depending on the moment, merely disturb her concentration with a few bothersome words.
The restraints had only bound his Orthea; they had not erased the Orthea inherent within him.
However, interrupting the healing would cause the shock of the injury to return in full to the one who had cast the rite.
When they were young, he had once rejected Perenike’s Althea. It had been because of his pride.
The young Deucalion had considered receiving healing from her something like the act of an insect sucking the blood of the woman he loved.