Kryptic ↟ Deimos

twenty-four: a song of the fates

Tundareos stops before the mosaic path and looks up at the pale stone —he was still a boy when he ran away in search of his sister. Now, though, he clasps onto her shoulder, smiling. It may have taken half his life, but he is returning home having found her. Mater will be proud, he thinks, anticipation and hope swelling within him. Lesya cannot return his smile in good faith.

"Mater!" He calls, passing through the andron. Silence answers. Gathered in the courtyard are hushed voices, surrounding a corpse swaddled in linen. They are too late. Among those gathered is Hippokrates. Tundareos surges forward, pushing through the acolytes, and kneels at Kalanthe's side, shoulders shaking.

Lesya stops, staring at what she had known in her gut to be true. Hippokrates approaches her, resting his hand upon Lesya's shoulders. The plague spared neither rich nor poor and Kalanthe had fallen into hard times since the death of her thesmothetai husband. Guilt twists in her stomach. She is not sorry for killing Leandros —would do it again given the chance— but a piece of her wonders, if her mother would have fallen to the sickness, had Leandros lived. "I'm sorry," the physician confesses —both for the death of their mother and the desecration that must follow in an attempt to spare others. There will be no burial for Kalanthe, only a pyre or a nameless pit.

The acolytes lift Kalanthe's corpse, carrying her from the villa for a final time. Tundareos moves back to his sister's side —watching the dark-robed figures disappear into the grey haze. He wipes the tears from his eyes and looks around the empty villa. There are no slaves bustling, no lyres being played, no fire burning in the brazier. "Pater?" Tundareos calls and silence answers him again —he looks up as if pleading with the gods, lost.

Lesya's blood runs cold, heart dropping to the pits of her stomach. She hadn't told him Leandros, the man who sheltered them as children, was killed by her hand. There will be no more hiding after today. "Tundareos–" she rakes a hand through her copper hair, pacing around the courtyard "–I killed him," she tells him, unable to mask the small shred of pride in her tone.

"What?" He asks —the weight of Lesya's words not sinking in or either he does not wish to believe his sister had murdered their father.

"He was a hateful man who sacrificed me to the Cult, Tundareos!" Lesya shouts, voice trembling and laurel eyes burning with hatred. Everything ill that had befallen her in life was his fault. It was because of Leandros of Athens that her humanity and identity had been stripped away, leaving behind a hollow shell of a once lively girl. "It's because of him I'm a monster!" It was nigh impossible to sleep with memories haunting her and no matter how much she scrubbed her hands, Lesya could still see the blood of innocent on them. There was no other way to describe what she and Deimos had become at the hands of Chrysis and the Cult of Kosmos.

Tundareos' face twists in ire and resentment. Leandros had not been a kind man, but he had loved his sons above all else and that love had been reciprocated. His hands turn to fists at his side. Perhaps you truly are the monster they say you are, sister. He swallows the thought, but cannot contain the mix of rage and grief. "He was my father!" He roars —spittle flying in the outburst.

"I cannot change what I have done, brother," Lesya starts, meeting his cold and clear gaze, "and even if I could, I would not bring him back." Leandros —son of Kalliades— deserved to rot in the depths Tartarus for the pain he caused her.

Between his mother's death at the hands of the pestilence and his father's ruin at the hands of his sister, Tundareos cannot stomach the thought of looking at Lesya again. He turns his cheek to her and draws in a heavy breath. "Sister," he says, voice suddenly hoarse, "go." Lesya flees, wiping away tears, and travels down the street leading to Perikles' home at the base of the Acropolis.