Pherenike - Chapter 37

“It was delicious.”

Pherenike always quietly thanked him after eating the fruits. Actor, watching her eat in silence, would usually smile without a word, as if acknowledging it wasn’t delicious.

He wanted to hunt for her, but killing was not allowed during this period. She insisted it was fine. That was the extent of their conversation.

They were never great conversational partners. Their travel talks were dry. Boring, monotonous times ensued.

At night, like soldiers camping, they pitched small tents in the mountains and fields. Although Nikandros’s elite troops were said to secretly protect them, Pherenike neither saw nor felt them. Even Actor, who had arranged for these elite troops, sat on a stump, leaning his head against a post, keeping watch through the night.

Pherenike never knew how Actor managed that long night.

Every morning, he was exactly where she had seen him before falling asleep.

Then, as if following a routine, their eyes would meet. His brusque gaze, previously fixed beyond the trees, would briefly greet her. And then it was morning again.

The night forest teemed with all sorts of dangers: wolves known as the brothers of the founding king, wild dogs resembling wolves, bands of bandits, escaped criminals, spirits that hated humans, wandering ghosts.

And monsters. Bastards forsaken by the gods.

Actor preferred the fields to the forests, but the forest was the best place to find clean water in the dark. Initially, Actor would turn his back behind a rock or tree and wait as she bathed alone. Later, they went into the water together and started bathing, simply to save time.

On the way back, Actor always bathed her. She had wilted like a sick flower after leaving Geotil, falling ill for just two days. Actor then insisted on bathing her for nearly 13 days. In all that time, he had never once satisfied his desires.

In Geotil’s sanctuary, they had their intercourse as set. With priests and Sybylles monitoring outside the curtain, they followed a position prescribed by law, coupled only once, and after their intercourse, they separated cleanly from each other.

Pherenike knew Actor was not at all satisfied in the sanctuary. They spent nine nights like that. It took fifteen days on the return journey.

On the way back, they were constantly close on the horse, and she knew he was sometimes e***t. But Actor maintained a nonchalant facade, acting as if nothing was happening.

Even when his stiffness naturally poked and prodded her b******s. They just returned a bit faster than they had left.

And then, it was today.

Pherenike looked down at the floor which was soiled with his traces, then stood up to wash herself.

She remembered Actor’s lieutenant trailing behind them, whispering loyally.

The master and his wife were destined to be a couple on Moirai’s thread, and Pherenike Vassilios was fated to be a queen by all means, destined to give birth to a great king.

Now, everyone only talks about that.

They had spoken with their past distrust towards the queen at one time. It was like those in an amphitheater who illuminate the hero through their folly. Their actions were no different from the actors with dim faces in the theater.

However, they were wrong not back then, but now. Pherenike recalled the lieutenant’s last report to his master, constantly praising her.

Now, nearly everything done naturally in front of Pherenike was tolerated by Actor.

Once, she thought all this was a test. But now…

“Pherenike.”

“……”

“The air is still chilly. Come into the water and avoid the cold.”

The young king was leaning languidly in the bathhouse with his eyes closed. Whenever Pherenike saw him so vulnerable and at ease, she sometimes imagined stabbing him somewhere beneath that defenseless face.

In the year they married, she had already tried to kill him once. It was the night he first fell deeply asleep by her side. But some invisible force stopped her blade, for he was the son of Pelagon, after all.

Since then, Pherenike had killed him countless times in her imagination. She fantasized about making a mess of him, raising King Epicydes from the grave just to show that sight.

The dagger plunged again into Actor’s neck. Blood gushed out, streaming down his chest, spreading in the water filling the vast bath. He sank slowly into the water like a crumbling castle.

Soon turning into a corpse drowned in wine. And once again, he died.

And again…

“Pherenike.”

Pherenike suddenly remembered the man’s face faintly smiling at her one morning in the forest.

For a moment, a strange feeling clawed at her heart.