Chapter 3
I woke up, feeling like shit. I had panicked to the point where my body was aching from being that tense and shivery and the tissue surrounding the wounds I had gotten while fleeing the hunters was still tense and bruised. My head hurt from lack of nutrients and water and I still needed to shower because I was starting to smell. At least if I was being smelly, no one would lay their hands at me.
I rolled to the other side towards the window to be able to look outside. I could see the garden and the glass trees glinting in the distance. I liked this room, it had something majestic without being too on the nose with it. I would heavily prefer the other room over this one, though. With all the shiny decoration, expensive furniture and fancy curtains I was unfit to occupy it. I didn't want to get into anymore trouble as I already was.
I got out of bed, seeing a set of clothes as well as a pair of greek sandals. It was the same attire the other servants had worn except everyone had a different color scheme and mine seemed to be navy blue and leather. I pulled the Chiton over my head, trying to avoid smearing the dirt all over it and tying the sandals to my ankles. I could find that pretty if I had to. There had been a tiny note, instructing me to go get a bath, eat breakfast and let either Nolan or Mateo introduce me to my new job.
I felt bad that I had ruined the bed and brushed over the linen to get rid of the folds and adjusted the pillows and blankets on top of it. At least I could manage to clean up after myself if I used things that didn't belong to me. As I snuck out of the room, Mateo came out of the one that was connected to this one on the right side, giving me a surprised look.
"What did you do in there" He asked suspiciously, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
"I slept in there?" I explained but it sounded more like a question.
"Are you suicidal?" He inquired, making me shrink back from him.
"No?" I offered.
"Wrong." He deduced, gesturing towards the door. "Yes, you are if you were sleeping in our master's room."
"What?" I stuttered confused. "No, I wasn't... I mean, I was but I didn't knew. He made me."
Oh, no. I was done for. Deader than dead. A servant wasn't supposed to touch their masters' things, especially not use them for personal things. Cleaning was fine. Sleeping in it? Not so much. I swallowed hard, fidgeting around. It wasn't my fault but that didn't matter. He may have invited me but that didn't mean I was supposed to take that offer. Everyone knew that you had to pay for favors and if you didn't have money, you needed to give up your body. Some were able to do that but I most certainly wasn't.
"Breakfast?" Mateo said after a quiet while of me nervously looking for an exit.
"I'm supposed to shower first." I said as I handed him the note.
"It doesn't say anything about any kind of order." He concluded, looking at it.
"It comes first in the sentence." I argued, pointing at the neat hand writing.
"You are weird." Mateo stated, shaking his head. "I will show you where you can take a bath."
With that, he just turned around and walked down the hallway. I hurried up to be able to follow him. I wondered if he still hated me for having ruined his trees but didn't dare to ask him. He opened a door right next to the staircase that led back downstairs and basically shoved me inside. I almost slipped since the marble tiles on the ground were still wet but he didn't seem to care.
"Bathing supplies are in the cabinet over there. Meet me in the kitchen after you are done." He said as he closed the door. "You do remember how to get there, right?"
I just nodded and he just shrugged and pulled the door shut. I waddled back to the door to see if it had some sort of closing mechanism that would keep people from barging in but of course, it didn't have anything. I sighed frustrated and moved over to the cabinet, inspecting its contents. There were a variety of shampoos and body washes and I just went with green tea and apple since it was the first I opened and it smelled kind of nice and grabbed a pair of towels.
I figured I would have to risk it and pulled off the clothes I had just put on before walking to the huge tub in the middle of the room that was embedded in the floor and made it look more like a tiny pool. I liked this. It gave the room some sort of openess even if it wasn't that bad. I fiddled with the buttons until it filled with steaming water, sticking my hand into it. I could feel the water whisper as I slid into it, resting against the wall.
The warm water managed to soothe the ache in my muscles, forcing them to relax. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time and just started scrubbing my body clean and washing my hair. I was in bad need of a hair cut, not only because they were threatening to spill over my shoulders, making me look even more feminine but because I didn't want people to be able to grab hair and force me to do things. Maybe I was going to shave it all off.
I dried off, put my clothes back on and managed to release the water from the tub before throwing my towels in the basket, labeled laundry. I just hoped it was the right thing to do and hurried downstairs to find Mateo. As I entered the kitchen, I found him wrapped up in Nolan's arms, kissing him and obviously not wanting to be disturbed. Before I could turn away, they heard me and broke apart.
"Brian!" Nolan chirped, blushing.
"Hello." I said awkwardly.
I had already figured out that they were allowed more freedoms than regular servants but them being able to be in a relationship this freely was weird. Not that I minded it but I had never seen it. Most of the servants I had known weren't allowed to be in any kind of relationship and severely punished if they were engaging in that kind of behavior. Apparently, it was to avoid pregnancies and jealousy in between servants.
"There is still some of that salad left from yesterday and we thought of adding scrambled eggs with spinach and tomatoes. Maybe some yogurt with honey and almonds?" Nolan suggested, walking towards the fridge.
I was glad that they didn't mention my freak out yesterday and just continued their day as if nothing happened. I nodded and went to help him prepare the food while Mateo set out plates and silverware. This time only for the three of us. I didn't know if I was feeling sad that silver eyes wasn't joining us or if I was relieved that I didn't have to be around him. His presence made me nervous and I never knew how to react.
"Master will be back around lunch. You can either choose to help Koa prepare the food for lunch, buy groceries and then help with dinner or help Nolan with cleaning." Mateo said as I distributed the eggs on the plates wile Nolan did the same with the salad.
"Cleaning sounds good." I replied, hoping I would get to talk to Nolan on my own.
We finished breakfast and while Mateo did the dishes, Nolan dragged me back upstairs. He explained that the right corridor was designated for our master and his servants and the left one was for his wife and her's. I hadn't even known he had a wife but it made sense. He was very attractive and old, he had a lot of time to have find a partner.
We started with pulling the sheets off the beds, and covers off the pillows and blankets. Just everyday servant things, changing the bed sheets, vaccuming, dusting and wiping the surfaces. This was something I was good at and I could be useful with. I could earn my food doing this and I was very relieved that I wasn't adding more debt to my crippling pile of debt.
"What's his name anyway?" I asked while helping with hauling the bed sheets to the laundry room.
"Erebus." Nolan replied, making me freeze.
"Erebus as in Nyx's husband?" I asked alarmed.
I had heard so many gruesome stories about the pair of primordial gods. Every story highly contrasted what was actually going on. He was treating his servants decently and I highly doubted that they were still that excited to see him and sit down to eat with him if he abused them. If the stories were true they would live under constant fear that he was going to hurt them.
"No, the other one that sells shells at the beach." Nolan scoffed. "Yes, her husband."
"Sorry, I just didn't expect him to be like this." I shrugged, stuffing the laundry into the washing machine.
"Like what?" He wanted to know,
"Nice?" I suggested, making him smirk.
Erebus was supposed to rip people apart for looking at him and not to gather them up after they hurt themself and look after them. I would have expected him to end my life mere seconds after he had found me lying there. I never thought he was actually that caring. Maybe he was just doing it because he thought I was going to pay him back, which I was and hat he was going to get something more out of this, which I most certainly wasn't.
"You can have the room I went to fetch you on your first day here. You can't keep sleeping in our master's room." Nolan criticized me. "Or at least you shouldn't be."
"Does he mind you being with Mateo?" I decided to ask instead of reacting to is remark.
"Nah." He shrugged as we walked back upstairs. "But Nyx does. She never caught us, though. We'd be dead."
"Do you like working for him?" I drilled further into him.
"Yes." He smiled as he got out the cleaning items in one of the cupboards in the bathroom. "I can't complain with all the free time we have and the way he treats us."
I guess he was right. He seemed to be very calm and nice, almost like a normal mortal person. I wondered why there were so many bad rumors about him and if he was that nice how could he be with someone as nasty as Nyx? I decided it was none of my business and just continued scrubbing the sinks, trying not to think about it that much. We finished off the bathroom and now we just had to vaccuum the guest rooms that had partially been converted to servant rooms.
"Do you want to talk about why you are here?" Nolan offered after a short period of silence.
I shook my head. I didn't want him to know what happened. It wasn't because I didn't like him but because I just wanted to forget what happened. I actually found him quite pleasant to be around. Just as we left the bathroom to take on the vaccuuming, I smacked face first into a very smooth fabric, belonging to Nyx dress. She grabbed me by the back of my neck, easily liftig me up to her face and getting way too close for my taste.
"I'm sorry. I apologize." I managed while basically wetting myself in fear.
"Put him down." Erebus' voice came out of nowhere. "I'm dealing with him later."
"Teach your servants some respect." She sneered, throwing me past her.
I managed to catch my balance without falling on my butt and just glared at her back while Nolan sidetepped around them, bowing as deep as he could. They stalked down the stairs without so much as looking at us again. Erebus had changed out of his sweatpants and was now wearing some kind of silver armour above one of those black battle suits that had his symbol imprinted on the front and a black cape, draped across his shoulders. He looked absolutely terrifying.
"Are you okay?" Nolan whispered as we watched them leave.
"I think I actually peed myself." I hissed back, making him snicker at me. "Where are they going?"
"Probably to the front of the battle Olymp and Hades are waging against Hell?" He replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"They are participating in a war?" I asked baffled.
"Yes? A lot of gods and goddesses are? Erebus has his own military that he leads into battle and Nyx just likes to watch people suffer." Nolan explained, looking at me as if I was some sort of freak.
I hadn't know that there even was a war going on currently. My old master never let me watch TV and even if I was cleaning up after him and happened to find a newspaper, I wouldn't be able to read it. No one ever taught me how to read or write in Greek. Which was fine, I had never needed it anyway but I wanted to know what was going on in the sphere.
"Tell me more!" I gasped, grabbing onto his shoulders.
"About what?" He asked reluctant, seeming overwhelmed with me being all over him.
"About the war! What's going on in the world?" I was basically begging him now.
"I will tell you once we are done cleaning." He promised, handing me the vaccum.
I let him stand there, going back to work to finish this up as fast as I could. I managed to work semi fast and very efficient, waiting for him to finish with giving the surfaces a good scrub. He just rolled his eyes, taking the vaccuum from me and wandering off to put it away, while I kept tailing him, waiting for him to tell me more.
"It's lunch time." He finally opened up.
"You promised." I complained.
"I didn't say, I wasn't going to tell you. I will tell you while we go and get our food." he huffed, grabbing my hand.
Nolan dragged me downstairs just as Mateo came in from outside, the smell of flower soil sticking to him. We followed him towards the kitchen where Koa was standing at the stove, looking kind of angry. He started maltreating the poor ingredients in the pot, basically pulverizing them with the cooking spoon as he aggressively stirred them in the pot.
"What crawled up your ass and died?" Nolan asked, making him snap his head around.
"The question is who crawled up my boyfriends ass? Not me, that's for sure." He snapped, turning his attention back to the food.
"He cheated on you?" Mateo asked appalled.
"No, he just had a prostate exam by someone who didn't graduate from medical school." He grunted. "Happens all the time."
I didn't know what to say and just as Nolan opened his mouth to say something I could feel the rift that went along with people teleporting. They all turned around, looking at the door as they heard footsteps coming towards it. Another silver eyed god showed up with dark, silky curls and cheek bones that could probably cut your finger if you touched them. He was about a head smaller than Erebus and looked more like an excited puppy than anything else.
"Hi! Have you seen my dad?" He asked, swaying back and forth on his feet.
"He went off with your mother." Nolan stated.
"Aw man." He complained. "Thank you for the information. Could you tell him I hopped in to say hello?"
"Sure." Mateo agreed, earning a big smile
Koa ignored him and the strange god just teleported off. I raised an eyebrow, staring at the spot that he had been standing at. His constant fidgeting made me nervous and I was relieved that he had left again. The fire demon started distributing food into bowls and shoving them at people, almost spilling stuffed tomatoes all over me. I just took it without saying anything and went over to the table.
"Who was that?" I asked, sitting down where the walls met and I could see the entire room.
"Hypnos." Nolan explained, sitting down next to his boyfriend. "He comes over a lot."
I inspected my bowl and found stuffed tomatoes, something that might have been a piece of veggie and noddle hotdish but had been torn apart as well as two wraps filled with feta, salad, onions and some kind of yogurt sauce. I happily dug in, stuffing as much food as I could into my mouth, sighing as it filled my stomach. Here they were actually feeding me decent food that filled me up instead of some weird greasy slime that always made my stomach hurt.
"You have conquered your food shyness, I see." Koa remark and almost smiled.
"It's just so good." I munched, making the nymphs watch me amused. "Are you vegetarians?"
"What makes you think that?" Mateo asked confused.
"You haven't had meat as far as I have seen." I said in between bites, coming to the conclusion that speaking with my mouth full of hotdish was rude.
"Budgetwise we don't have that much money to spend it on meat every day and we have agreed to eat meat once a week." Mateo explained. "We kind of prefer high quality over low quality. With low you never know what exactly is in there. Last week they busted a butcher for using dragon meat."
I gagged a little at the thought. I had never seen a dragon in real life since I had never stuck around people who were rich enough to buy one but from what I had heard they weren't even animals and had a conciousness comparable to people's. I couldn't imagine what they had to endure to end up in food. I was glad that they had this sort of mindset, not only because it meant that I didn't have to eat people but also because I didn't want to support it.
"Erebus doesn't eat meat, though." Nolan remarked while poking his tomato with a fork. "In case Koa gets sick, you will have to take over cooking. You better remember this."
I nodded. I scarfed down the rest of my food, licking my lips satisfied. The fire demon didn't even ask and just refilled my bowl. I hadn't been this well fed in forever and it felt nice to not faint from lack of nutrition once in a while. Maybe I could actually gain some weight. I wanted to stop looking like a sceleton and maybe more like me. Whatever that meant.
"We finished our jobs for the day." Nolan reported as he tried to put the entire tomato into his mouth, failing miserably and making it plop back into the bowl. "Brian smacked face first into Nyx, though."
"I told you, you were suicidal. Sleeping in our master's bed, now this?" Mateo laughed, busy holding his wrap together that fell apart everywhere.
"You slept in his bed?" Koa asked way too deeply impressed.
"Looks like he has a new favorite." Nolan said, wiggling his eyebrows.
"Shut up." I huffed, having had enough with their teasing.
I didn't ask to sleep in his bed and I didn't want to be anyone's favorite. Being favored meant getting things that you had to pay for and ninetynine percent of the cases there was a power imbalance involved, giving one of the parties total control over the other party. First, they'd give you things, pamper you and grow attached to them and then they'd take everything away, demanding you to pay for your favors and you just couldn't because what did a poor servant have beside their body.
"I don't want to be anybody's favorite. I just want to be left alone." I said quietly. "It just comes with consequences I don't want to experience."
I pushed away the rest of my food, having lost my appetite. I felt sick to my stomach that this entire situation was already starting to play out like I didn't want it to. I was already owing him, he already had total control over me since I couldn't leave the property without hunters instantly tailing me, how was I supposed to get out of this without having to give up something I wasn't ready to give up.
We spent the rest of lunch in silence, the others chewing their food but they didn't look like they were enjoying their food very much. My thoughts kept circling around the silver eyed god and what he was going to do to me if I couldn't compensate him for his troubles and I was adding more and more onto the pile the longer I stayed. I waited for them to finish until I got up and put my bowl into the sink.
"I'm going to go to my room." I announced and basically ran upstairs.
I was already starting to freak out again, unable to formulate a clear thought that didn't lead me further into the trap that was my mind. As I reached the top of the stairs I saw him standing there, chatting to a female nymphe. I tried to turn around as I suddenly remembered his words. He was going to deal with me later. I felt the fear grip hold of my guts, making me feel nauseated. I didn't know what he meant by that and I didn't want to find out. He had seen me and turned around just as I wanted to bolt.
"Caleb, wait." He ordered, making me flinch.
I stopped in my tracks, hoping he wouldn't come after me but of course he just had to do that. He walked over to me, still wearing his armor which clinked with every step as if couning down the time I had left on this earth as he came closer. I started to hyperventilate as he towered above me, being at least two heads taller than me. I felt like a rabbit being stared down by a wolf except that this was even worse. I was going to suffer before I died.
"I'm sorry." I managed to whimper. "It was an accident. I should have looked where I was going. It's not going to happen again."
His face didn't show the slightest emotion as he processed my words for a few seconds before the facade melted off and he looked concerned. It made me angry because I couldn't tell if this was sincere concern or if he just played with me, trying to convince me that he actually cared, lulling me in so I wouldn't put up as much of a fight.
"It's okay." He reassured me, offering me a gentle smile.
"No, it's not." I was basially screaming at him now. "Stop being nice to me."
He didn't understand, I could see it in his eyes. Of course, he wasn't going to understand it, it never happened to him. He lived his life, getting everything he wanted because he was able to pay for it. He'd never be forced to pay his debt like this but it was people like him that forced people like me to endure these kinds of things and I didn't want other people's dirty hands on me again.
The way I addressed him would have cost me my life if I were to do that to any other god but he just cocked his head at me, looking sad. I groaned frustrated, running my fingers through my hair. I needed to get out of here. He wasn't going to stop and I wasn't going to play along. I would get a job somewhere else and pay him back but I was leaving here as soon as I could. I wasn't going to put myself into any more dangerous situations.
"I need to go." I declared, hoping he would let me go.
"But the hunters..." He started but I interrupted him.
"I want to go." I firmly stated. "I'm sorry I ruined your trees, used your bed and ate your food. I need to borrow these clothes but I will find a job and pay you back, I promise."
He looked at me for the longest time and it weirded me out how he mustered me from head to toe. He sighed and just snapped his fingers, making a bag appear, attaching it around my shoulder. It was kind of heavy but he didn't explain what was in it and just stepped back again. I gave him a questioning look but he didn't bother to say anything further.
"Okay." He said at last, gripping my shoulder and teleporting us away.
As I opened my eyes I was standing at some kind of giant gate that connected to the wall, surrounding the garden. It was the exit I had so desperately tried to find the entire time I had spent here. I started walking towards it, relieved that he wasn't following me and just kept standing where we had reappeared. Before exciting the property I turned around to meet his gaze for the last time.
"Thank you." I smiled.
He just inclined his head before turning around and walking off, giving me the chance to start a new life on my own.