#bellerophon

“You left me,” you said carefully, clearly, Phainon’s presence shielding you, emboldening you. “You did. Perhaps if I were a god or a hero, these trials would not have been so difficult, but I am neither, you know I am not. I could not bear them. I could not handle them.”

“You could,” Nikador began, but you cut them off, fresh tears springing to your eyes, pricking and scalding as they rolled down your cheeks.

“I couldn’t! Not alone, not like how you abandoned me. I was going to die!” you said, and as the last remnants of mania from the battle against the Khimaira wore off, you began to sob in earnest once more, shivering as every last bit of anger you had ever felt vanished, leaving you an empty husk, caught up in the sort of cold that even Phainon could not ward off. “I was going to die…even on the mountain, they were going to sacrifice me just because I saw your cult for how rotten it has become and dared to speak against them. The High Priest, Socrippe, Elder Caenis, the pantheon itself, they have all been trying to kill me for so long, and you did nothing! You left me. He is — Phainon is —”

“Nikador,” Phainon said, standing and setting you beside Pegasus, who nuzzled your hair and held a wing before you, the white feathers a wall separating you from the rest of the world. “Go from here at once.”

“Or what?” Nikador said, their voice calm instead of furious, amused instead of enraged. You could not fathom the smile playing at their lips, and it seemed neither could Phainon, for his sword shimmered to life in his grasp and he pointed it at them immediately, the tip a mere hair’s breadth from digging into their throat.

“Or I will show you why Kephale chose me as your replacement,” he hissed. Nikador chuckled.

“Until you let go of the world you left behind, you cannot ever replace me fully,” they said. “But alright, boy, as you wish. I have no interest in a fight, not over something so petty.”

“Good,” Phainon said. “Then we have, for once, come to an agreement.”

“So we have,” Nikador said, and then they turned to you. “If you ever find yourself changing your mind, I will come and bring you to the heavens at once. You must understand I hold no malice towards you, even for this decision.”

They were gone before you could say anything, leaving the three of you motionless in the smoldering remains of the clearing where the Khimaira crumbled into ash, Phainon’s sword still drawn, Pegasus’s wing still lowered, your chest still caving in with every successive breath.

Only when a strangled whimper escaped you did Phainon’s sword vanish and he fell upon you, pulling you to your feet and then embracing you, murmuring soothing words — oh, oh, sacrifice, my sacrifice, don’t cry like this, they will never harm you again, you are free of the gods now, I will defend you, I won’t let them touch you, not Nikador or Thanatos or any of them — as he helped you onto Pegasus’s back and then kissed where your dress had torn and exposed the muscle of your calf, just as gently as he used to touch it with his hand when you both traveled together.

“Will you go back to Okhema now?” he said quietly, like he was half-expecting you to burst into a new wave of wailing should he speak above a whisper. Yet the familiar feel of the saddle between your legs was enough to ground you, even if Pegasus was taller and leaner than your pony ever had been, the literal wings sprouting from his barrel notwithstanding.

“Yes,” you said. “Now that I have slain the Khimaira, they have to let me stay there. That was their condition, and they would not dare break a promise, not even to an exile such as myself.”

“You will have a good life there,” he said, nodding decisively. “Mnestia will make sure of it. You can have a house by the sea, and a husband who is not a god, who you can love without fear.”

“What about you?” you said.

“What about me?” he said.

“You said Mnestia will make sure of it,” you said. “You won’t?”

“Okhema is not my domain. I cannot meddle there any more than I can meddle about in the mountain or the Grove, not without being directly called upon. I have already faced the consequences once, and Kephale will not be so lenient the second time,” he said.

“Then I will call upon you every day,” you said. 

“You mustn’t,” he said. “Nor should you want to. Isn’t it as you said? I am a god, and you are a mortal. My presence in your life is what has brought you so much pain; your life in Okhema will be much happier, much safer, if I only watch you from afar.”

“No,” you said. “No, you can’t do that, you can’t tell me that I will be happier without you, not when I was so miserable every day I spent on my own—”

“Pegasus will stay with you,” he interrupted. “He will graze in your pretty little yard, and when the rest of your children are old enough, they will learn to ride on his back, and never will he let them fall. You won’t be entirely on your own.”

“You said you would always be with me,” you said, and you knew it was pitiful, but then you were leaning over Pegasus’s side, reaching for Phainon, taking his hands in between your own and holding them to your forehead. “You said you didn’t want to leave me.”

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “For the rest of time, I shall while away my hours gazing at you through the looking glass of the heavens, and if any god threatens you, even Thanatos, I will strike them down with my own sword. Should it come to it, Kephale themself will not be enough to stop me, I promise you that.”

“But you won’t be with me,” you said. “You’ll still leave me alone.”

“If I could bring you to the heavens with me, I would,” he said. “If you wanted, and if I could, I would take you as my — well, but I cannot. I am not like the others, not yet, and so I am not given the same rights, the same powers.”

“Then this is farewell,” you said. “After this, Pegasus and I will leave for Okhema, and we may never see you again, not like this.”

“That’s right,” he said, and for some reason, his reluctance soothed you, perhaps because it promised his sincerity, perhaps because it meant he, too, felt this hurt in a way a god should not be able to and yet did. “I have done enough to you, to both of you. I see that now, and so I will leave you alone to find your own peace henceforth.”

He waited, then, for you to do something, to give him a grand farewell worthy of this parting. And there were so many things you could have said to him, so many things you wanted to say to him, but they all felt wrong, dying on your tongue before you could speak them aloud. I will miss you. I will think of you often. I will see you in every sunrise, and I will mourn you in every sunset. I wish I did not spend so long cursing you and fearing you and exiling you from my heart as surely as I was exiled from my home. I wish I spent longer knowing you. I wish I could spend forever knowing you.

“I will pray to you,” you said, instead of any of these other things. “Every day, I will make sweets and burn them in your honor, and then I will call your name in prayer. O shining one, sunbringer, god of dawn; o great white calamity, world-bearer, god of the denied; and also…o Phainon, my Phainon, god of deliverance, who I—”

“Yes,” he said when your voice broke off. “Yes, and I will not always be able to come to you, but I will listen. Every time, without fail, I will listen. I will grant you as many miracles as I am able, just so that you have to thank me and think of me for a little longer; maybe it is jealous of me to do, but although I cannot be by your side, I don’t want you to forget me, to turn your back on me as you did Nikador.”

“I could never forget you, not when you have already given me so much,” you said, and then the prospect of him preparing to disappear as Nikador had lent you a kind of courage you had not really felt without feigning in so long that it was all but foreign. “And I have never even thanked you for it. May I now, or is it late for that?”

“What?” he said, furrowing his handsome brow. “What do you mean?”

“I do not have any cakes or flowers with me, so in return for your earlier blessings, I can only offer you this and hope it is enough. Thank you, Phainon — I am sorry I spent so long resenting you. I should have realized from the start that you were not like the others, that you have only ever tried to save me,” you said, and maybe it was Mnestia smiling down upon you, but you were as forward as any one of their priests, who dealt out such tributes with alacrity. So you took his face in your cold hands and brushed your lips against his, the taste of ambrosia lingering even when you pulled away, and then you kicked Pegasus forward before Phainon could reciprocate or respond, leaving him behind before he could do it to you first.

The tireless Pegasus brought you to Okhema in less than half a day, his wings slicing through clouds as you shot through the air like a lead-tipped javelin, the lifeless skies empty save for you and a few high-flying birds that paid you no mind. How free you were in that moment, when it was just he and you and endless swathes of blue, and how bashful, too, whenever you remembered the sweetness of Phainon’s mouth, how soft it had been against your own, how you might have kept kissing him and kissing him if not for the sacrilege of it all, of a mortal taking what they willed from a god who should have long since killed them for their greed.

Dear, beloved Phainon, who must have been watching over you even now; you wondered what he would think if he knew your mind never strayed from him. What an irony — after so long spent shunning him, it was only at this final hour, when you were finally free of the gods and their meddling, that you came to realize how much it was that you longed for him, how much you desired him, how much you needed him. 

You landed in the courtyard of the palace with the sun beating down on your back, sending attendants scrambling with the suddenness of your arrival, and this time, when Pegasus pinned his ears, it was a clear marker of his irritation, not fear — for he would never feel that again, not in this life, not when he was a celestial being, a demigod, the only son of the dawn himself. An attendant reached for his bridle and he snaked his neck towards her, his teeth flashing as he lunged, ignoring her shriek and only halting because you yanked him back, after which he gave you a look far too contrite for an ordinary horse and entirely reminiscent of the expression Phainon often donned, all innocent and puppy-like.

“Behave yourself,” you said. “This is our home now. We must get along with the people here, and that means not attacking them, even if we do not love them particularly.”

It was a facade of bravado, of course; never had you been more nervous, and now that you were robbed of the comfort of the divine Pegasus as your mount, you were faintly dizzy, powerless once more, the victim of a world so determined to toss you about. As the attendant reached for Pegasus again and found herself met without resistance, you nearly protested, nearly begged to keep him with you, but of course you could not. A horse had no place in a palace, not even one such as he, so you could only stare as he plodded away before you trudged towards the councilroom.

Although you were alone now, and afraid more than ever, you found that, strangely, too, it did not seem like you were. You could — or maybe you just wanted to — sense Phainon in the heavens above, smiling down upon you, fond yet wary, the gold of his eyes more brilliant than any decoration in this entire palace might ever claim to be. He could not do much to protect you in this heart of Mnestia’s, but even his gaze was like a miracle, and you decided that if you survived this next ordeal, you would find some proper way to thank him, some better offering than a mere kiss.

“Elder Caenis!” you said, slamming the door open in the middle of what seemed to be an important meeting, judging by the presence of what you could only assume to be every single councilmember. “I have slain the Khimaira.”

The woman herself sat at the head of the table, but your proclamation, no doubt coupled with your dreadful appearance, startled her into rising, although her expression immediately soured with something beyond surprise and bordering on acrimony when she understood who she was speaking with.

“So we have heard,” she said, her upper lip curling into a sneer. “How did you do it? No, no, don’t answer, it doesn’t matter. You managed it, and that is the greatest concern. You…have done Okhema a great service, it seems.”

“I don’t ask for thanks,” you said when she hesitated, her mouth opening and closing, pinching at the corners as if she were sucking on one of the lemons that grew heavy on the boughs of the trees lining the city. “Just somewhere to stay. A home by the sea, if I am being selfish in my request, with grass for Pegasus to graze on so that he need not wander far from my side. I won’t cause any fuss. I’ll keep quiet and work an easy job and never introduce myself as the former princess of the mountain; you’ll forget I exist entirely, if you so choose.” 

“Ah, that would be an impossibility. It will always be a sour note, thyme and mountain-tea spoiling the scent of Mnestia’s lemon blossoms — but I suppose your request is easily granted,” Caenis said, her voice drifting into musing before hardening once more. It was difficult to remember at times, for she seemed the opposite of the romantic and lovely priestesses, but it was true that she, too, was a follower of Mnestia, highly learned in her own way, and so she was sensitive to these barest traces of Phainon which clung to you stubbornly still.

“Then…?” you said, not yet allowing yourself to hope but wanting very badly to. After so many misfortunes, the notion of something happening in the way you wanted all but rotted away at your insides, the hope shriveling away at your weary heart, which had long since grown tired of unanswered prayers.

“You will be given a home and trained to work as an attendant in the palace; as a former princess, you should find it familiar and easy, provided you are willing to debase yourself with the pursuit of subservience to others,” she said.

“It matters little to me,” you said. “I haven’t thought of myself as anything but debased since I left the mountain. I don’t think anyone else has, either.”

“You’ll have to take a new name,” Caenis said, nodding brusquely in acknowledgement at your acceptance. “An Okheman one, entirely opposite to that lance-branded title you were given at birth.” She paused, then, smiling in the way a fox might, right before pouncing. “Hyacinthia.”

You knew she was waiting for you to flinch, and you could not help yourself from doing exactly as she had wished. Hyacinthia. The name was not Okheman, although the embellishments, the soft, twisting details of its story most certainly were — for who else but those devotees of Mnestia would weave such a tale? Hyacinthia, Hyacinthia, the moniker stung you as it reverberated in your mind, but who were you to argue with Caenis’s so-called generosity? Biting your tongue and bowing your head, you clasped your hands together to disguise how they longed to curl into fists around the hilt of a sword.

“If that is your recommendation, then I would be remiss to disagree with it,” you said.

“Very good,” she said, and then she waved you off in a manner that was nothing but dismissive. “Off you go, then, Hyacinthia; to the baths, please, I’ll not have such a filthy, wild looking thing in my palace. After that, you may stay in the guest wing until we find more suitable accommodations for you, as per your request.”

They led you to a private bath, and although you knew this was typically a great honor, you could not help feeling like it was just a way to keep the frightful mess of you hidden away from the public’s discerning eye. Your scratched legs and torn clothes and windblown hair were such a sight, and the attendant even gave you a sympathetic glance when she handed you a set of fresh robes and closed the door quietly behind her.

Sliding into the silky water, you sat motionless for a moment, hugging your knees to your chest and resting your cheek against the scraped skin. It was hot, and the scent of flowers wafted from the placid surface, but you found you could not bring yourself to relax no matter what you tried, no matter how long you waited for the balmy air to sedate you into a sleepy sort of acceptance. None of it did anything; there you remained, your muscles tense and twitchy, your throat still swollen and your eyes rose-rimmed with the evidence of the many tears you had already shed.

Stretching one leg and then another, you sank down so that you were submerged up until your neck; when that proved not to be enough, you went even lower, holding your breath and leaving only your eyes peering out, gazing at the setting sun through the arch of the window. The fading resplendence of it painted the marble bronze and turned the water to ribbons of amber, eddying around your figure as you eventually came up for air. You found yourself transfixed by it all, unable to look away for even an instant as the horizon faded from orange to blue. This was the closest you could come to him, now, and of course you could not take the sun into your palms, but for a moment, when it neared to finishing its descent, you raised your hands and cupped its image in them as though it were an orange, closing your fingers over its radiance and holding them there tightly until, like it always would, it slipped from your grasp.

“They say that you will be one of us soon,” the attendant said to you as she led you back to a familiar set of chambers, the very same that you had stayed in before you had been banished to find the Khimaira. When the door opened, you could not stop yourself from craning your neck, searching for a white squirrel or a small bird or some other such sign that Phainon was there, but of course there was nothing. You had expected it, had known it, but you could not stop yourself from feeling disappointed anyways, from grieving his absence as if the two of you were freshly parting once more.

“It is one of the conditions for my acceptance as a citizen of Okhema, yes,” you said, latching onto this first friendliness you had been shown in so long. “They have given me a new name and a home. Tonight is my last night as the former princess of the mountain; tomorrow onwards, I will be Hyacinthia, another servant of the council.”

“Hyacinthia?” she repeated with a small gasp. “As in—?”

“What other Hyacinthia do you know?” you said, with no small amount of loathing. Maybe you should’ve tempered yourself better, but the pinch of her brow warmed you to her, and anyways you had not had a proper confidante in years, really, even before you were exiled, so you could not forgo this one indulgence. “The very same Hyacinthia who was killed by Phainon when Georios grew jealous of her love for him and tricked him into driving his sword into her heart.”

“The name is cursed,” the attendant said. “No one would ever dare name their daughter after her, not when she was so coveted by all of the gods and came to such an end for it.”

“Well,” you said. “I suppose she and I have that much in common, so maybe it is more apt than you might think.”

The story of Hyacinthia was well known even on the mountain, for all tales of Phainon’s follies were told to you, the priests gleeful as the enemy of their beloved god was made a mockery of. She had the sort of gentle heart and kind spirit that any man or woman might hold dear, and so when it came time for her to devote herself to a god, instead of choosing one of the older deities, she called upon Phainon, who at that time was even younger, even more naive than he was now. Her heart bled for him, for that lonely and sad man who was really just playing at divinity more than anything, who had neither followers nor cities nor hymns, and she promised that if no one else, she alone would be his follower.

But the gods were jealous, they were always, always jealous, and in this case it was Georios who could not stand that the lovely Hyacinthia had not chosen them as her patron. They sent one of their children after her, a wind-giant that might’ve torn her apart if he had the opportunity, and when Hyacinthia called upon Phainon for protection, they sent up dust clouds, so that Phainon’s sword veered off course and struck her heart instead of the giant’s. 

They said the world went dark when Hyacinthia died, night falling at midday as the sun lamented her loss. Curiously, they never told you of Phainon’s vengeance, and it was only now that you had met him that you understood why: because he would never have taken it, not against Georios. After all, in the end, it was Phainon’s blade that was lodged in her chest. In the end, the one who had killed her was him.

“Sometimes, they will give such names to children that are meant for great destinies,” the attendant said. “It is a way of cleansing it. Perhaps that is what the elders meant by it.”

“I hope I do not have any more great destinies left for me,” you said. “What I have managed thus far is enough.”

“But you will be remembered as Hyacinthia,” she reasoned. “Now the moniker belongs to the slayer of the Khimaira instead of another one of Phainon’s mistakes.”

“Perhaps it is the case,” you said. “Anyways. If it is not presumptuous of me, might I ask for some sweets to be sent here?”

“Sweets?” she said, arching a brow. “Have you a love for them?”

“Not I,” you said, and although you could tell she was waiting for you to elaborate, you did not, only smiling with your hands clasped, waiting for her to acquiesce. Eventually she shrugged.

“Very well. I will bring something, although I don’t know if the elders will approve — so please don’t tell anyone!” she said, holding her finger up to her lips. You weren’t sure what drove her to the small rebellion, if whatever friendship you had extended her way truly had endeared you to her so well, but you were in no position to complain, so you simply nodded.

“Thank you,” you said. “I won’t forget your kindness.”

She returned a few moments later with an assortment of Okheman desserts — a pudding with lemon peel scraped over the top, candies made of sesame and honey, and a few figs she must’ve sliced herself, judging by the juice still staining her fingertips. Glancing this way and that, she thrust the bundle into your hands before once again begging you to keep silent and then running off, leaving you finally, blessedly alone.

The attendant had been keen enough to give you a ceramic bowl wrapped in the cloth, understanding what you had not said aloud: that these were for Phainon, not yourself, and so had to be burnt if you hoped they might ever reach him. You regretted not asking her name and wished you could thank her properly; as you arranged the sweets in a neat pile and touched your candle to them, you swore you would find her soon and tell her again and again how grateful you were.

“Phainon,” you murmured as the candies began to melt and the figs blackened at the edges, the flames lapping away at them with a sort of gluttony. “I remember you like fruits, so I am doubly glad that that girl brought these with her. I feel a little less guilty about…everything. About not really being the kind of devotee you deserve. About running to Okhema when I knew you could not follow me here. Would you have preferred if I had gone somewhere that you might be closer? But nowhere else would ever accept me, anyways. Ah, I think you must not resent me, or you might’ve said something earlier, when there was still a chance. Yet you instead insisted upon it, so you must believe this is the right decision. I don’t know myself, but I believe in you, and so I will continue onwards as you have suggested.

“They call me Hyacinthia now. Did you hear? Soon, you may be the only one who remembers my name as it once was, my true name. If my brother or my mother ever visit Okhema, they may think to themselves that that attendant looks familiar — but her name is Hyacinthia, and no doubt she is wearing some glamor of Mnestia, so she will be nothing more than a passing curiosity. Only you will remember the princess of the mountain, who everyone else will presume dead; only you will know me enough, if you ever come to me again, to call me by that name I was born to. Anyways, even if you didn’t care much, you would never call me Hyacinthia, I know it to be true. They only chose that name to hurt you.”

The pudding turned to smoke and the candies to ash; the figs took the longest to burn, as if they were worthy of being savored, as if their flavor was one the blaze wanted to linger upon. You watched them, entranced by the slowness, the acrid sting of smoke in the back of your throat nothing compared to the sweetness of the fruit’s aroma.

“If only I were her,” you said as even the figs crumbled away into nothingness, the fire petering out with nothing left to devour. “As many people loved her as do hate me. Maybe it spelled her ruin, but at least for a time she knew what it was like…”

You swept the ashes into the wastebin and wrapped your arms around yourself. You knew it was wrong of you to covet anything from a dead girl, but you could not help your brief jealousy at the thought that she had been so dear to so many, that the gods had fought to win her favor instead of to torment her, as they did you. 

“How did you feel?” you whispered, pulling your blankets over your shoulders and staring at the ceiling when sleep evaded you. “To you who had never known pain nor fear…was the suffering especially worse, Hyacinthia? When the sword of your savior made its home in your heart, did you find it in yourself to regret your choice?”

Your life in Okhema settled into a sort of comfortable monotony very early on. The home you were given was far from the bustle of the city, right by where the waves broke on the pebbly sand, and a few minutes’ walk away was a meadow for Pegasus, who you did not mind turning free, for he was too intelligent to ever leave you for very long. The job of an attendant was easy and calm — in a stroke of mercy, or maybe out of respect for your former station, which the elders might not have cared for but the other attendants certainly did, you had not been assigned any particular manual labor. Instead, you were responsible only for the upkeep of the small altar for Mnestia in the westernmost part of the palace, which was rarely visited and thus hardly required anything beyond a daily sweeping.

You did not resent this new peace. You grew accustomed to your life as the attendant ‘Hyacinthia’ quickly, without fuss, and you worked diligently so that no one ever had cause to complain about you. Every morning you awoke at dawn and performed some rite or another to Phainon, for you did not want him to think you had forgotten him, and every night you bade Pegasus farewell and slept without dreaming. No gods dared to threaten you, and whether this was Phainon’s doing or Mnestia’s, you could not be sure, but you tried to remember to thank them both when you could. There were no plagues or floods or earthquakes; only the sweet smell of grass and lemon and figs as they burned away in curls of smoke that reached for the heavens.

You should have known better than to assimilate so well, but there was still this one final, naive piece of you which clung to the desperate hope that your trials were over, that the gods were satisfied and you would live the rest of your days exactly as Phainon had said you would — happy, safe, with a yard and a home and the seaside on your doorstep. It was foolish, but you could not help it. Even after all of this time, you could not stop yourself from hoping.

They came to you when you were alone before Mnestia’s altar, a broom in your hand and a far-off look on your face, your mind preoccupied with thoughts of your dinner and how you might go about making it. You weren’t expecting them — why should you have been? Who in Okhema would even draw weapons in a holy place? But there they were, and you knew as soon as you saw the black-robed figures surrounding you that they were sent by Elder Caenis. No one else had that power or that daring, and furthermore no one else paid you enough mind to send men after you, not anymore.

“Who are you?” you said, holding the handle of the broom tighter, your knuckles paling from the force of your grip. It would not do very well for a weapon, but it might’ve been your only option if it came to it; in the back of your mind, you wished you had the sword of the dawn in your grasp once more, although you could not wield it alone — but the sword of the dawn at your side implied that Phainon would be there, too, an invisible, reassuring presence helping you to cut down those who opposed you. “Why have you come here?”

None of them responded, but you had not really expected them to. You knew who they were, and why they had come: to kill you. You had fulfilled Elder Caenis’s request in slaying the Khimaira, but Medea had after all asked her old friend to kill you. Why had you thought that the council would have forgotten about that just because Phainon had saved you from that first sentencing of theirs? No wonder they had named you Hyacinthia. Your fate, like hers, could not change. 

“Don’t consider praying to Phainon,” one of the men said when you closed your eyes, his voice muffled by the mask he wore. “In this holy sanctuary of Mnestia’s, such a weak god can never interfere. Unless they strike us down — and they will not, most assuredly — that boy can not lift a finger in your defense. Did he promise you protection? Gods lie. He is not the first.”

But Phainon didn’t lie, you knew him too well to think he ever would. If you called for him, if you wept and implored him to defend you, then even Mnestia’s gaze over the sanctuary could not stop him from coming to your side. To what end, though? You would still die eventually — if not here, if not now, then someday. How many times could you ask him to go against his own nature, his own divinity, for your sake? How many punishments could you bring him, how many enemies could you make him?

Already, he was so-despised; Mnestia was one of the few who was still fond of him, who still held him dear despite his mortal upbringing. Mnestia, who loved mankind and who loved Phainon especially…but they would forsake him, you did not believe they would not. If he came to you, if he defiled their temple with the blood of their own worshippers, then they would have no choice. They would begrudge him, perhaps only for some time but perhaps forever, and if that came to pass then Phainon, your beloved Phainon, would be entirely alone until the end of eternity, when giants split apart the pits of Georios’s stomach and swallowed the gods whole.

So as the black-robed men held their knives to your throat, you did not pray to Phainon, as they commanded. For a moment you had some notions of being brave, of accepting your death and charging forth without terror, but just as you had been against the Khimaira, when you and your pony plummeted from the cliff, just as you had been in the temple upon the mountain, when you were blindfolded and marched to Nikador’s altar, you found that you were afraid. You were afraid and you longed for Phainon most fervently, but you were not so afraid that you could bring yourself to damn him in that way. There was only one recourse left for you, and as the shallow cut along your collarbones grew deeper, you choked out a prayer for the one who had, in turn, played father and brother and deserter alike, who had been everything to you — except, of course, that which you truly needed.

“Nikador,” you said, and the sanctuary grew silent, even the mice not daring to scuttle along before such a being’s imminent arrival. “You were right all along. I need you, o savage king who bears the lance of fury; you who vanquish all enemies and who are with me in all my battles; befriend me in this mine hour, great Nikador, bring me to the heavens as your successor could not and save me from this fate.”

“What have you done?” the man closest to you said, stepping back as you opened your eyes, his hood falling to reveal pale skin turning bluer and bluer, his flesh crumbling away as he became one of the Furiae Soldiers, Nikador’s stone-slaves, who would fight at the god’s side when the world was set to end and remained as statues until that moment.

“It is a great honor to be a Furiae Soldier,” you said softly as the men screamed and clawed at themselves, though they were helpless in face of the petrification brought upon them. “Those of the mountain pray to be allowed to serve their lord in such a way, to remain beside them even in their final moments, when all else has been forgotten. You ought to thank me.”

“Thank you? We are devotees of Mnestia, not—” the man’s voice broke off as his mouth froze in place, rendering him immobile and mute, trapped in the making of that final, derisive remark.

“Mnestia would never accept your ilk,” said a familiar voice, and then there they were, donning that same guise of a bare-chested, helmed man, though today they did not brandish a spear before them. “You and your Council, you are no devotees of Romance. Mnestia would scorn you if they knew the truth of your beings and if they were not so easily distracted by sweets and butterfly-books.”

“Nikador,” you said, a little awed that after so long, they had finally answered when you asked, and also a little shy, because although their face was obscured, their frame alone was comely enough — though Phainon’s is immensely more, you could not help thinking to yourself — and if they had come from the heavens for you, then there could only be one reason, which made you entirely aware of your innocence with such matters.  

“I knew you would call upon me eventually,” they said, and then they unfurled their left hand, showing you a piece of golden cloth folded in their palm. “Come closer to me, girl.”

“Can they still feel anything?” you said as you skirted around the Furiae Soldiers, careful not to touch them, far too concerned that they might shatter if you knocked them over, although you knew that they were virtually indestructible, titankin to Strife as they were.

“They can, but they also cannot,” Nikador said, opening the cloth and beginning to wind it around your eyes when you paused before them, that old obedience rallying in you once more now that they had come to you as they had sworn. “It is as if they are sleeping. The time until the end will pass for them in a blink.”

“What are you doing?” you said, for you were suddenly far more worried for your own fate than you were for your would-be killers’. Nikador chuckled as if you had told some profound joke, but it was wrong to hear them laugh when they were always so serious. Phainon laughed, Phainon was the god of good humor and so of course he laughed readily, unsparingly, but Nikador was angry and grave and stoic, Nikador was not supposed to find joy in anything but the misfortune of their enemies.

“If you look upon the gods and the heavens in their true forms with your mortal eyes, you will be burnt to ashes in an instant,” they said, tying off the cloth in a knot at the back of your head. “This is for your own protection, silk blessed by Mnestia to grant you temporary blindness, so that your form is not overwhelmed by Kephale’s Throne and its sheer, robust divinity.”

“You are taking me to Kephale’s Throne?” you said as their fingers laced through yours and then blazed to life, as painful as an ember in your grasp but without any of the proper burning, the ineffaceable scarring.

“All visitors to the heavens must meet with the pantheon before they can live freely, and you most of all, girl,” Nikador said, chuckling in that unsettling way once more. You wished to wrench yourself from their grip suddenly, to rid yourself of their cruel grip and their mean demands, but they held fast, and then your entire body was folding in upon itself and it was all you could do to try and remember how to breathe.

In the priests’ stories, the heavens were a wide, warm expanse centered around Kephale’s Throne, where the entire pantheon congregated in times of celebration and trouble alike. The looking glass of the heavens was there, as well as the tomb of the legendary hero Khaos and the records of each of Oronyx’s prophecies; it was the most sacred of sacred places, holiest amongst the holy, most blessed amongst the blessed, forbidden for mortals to enter and taint with human vices.

So you were sure that Nikador had brought you not to the throne but merely to its gates, where the gods had gathered to finally glare at you, to glare at Phainon’s singular devotee and Nikador’s only bride. What did they think of you now, you wondered? What would they think, if you became one of their kind? Maybe it was as Phainon had said — maybe he alone amongst all others would understand you, would understand what it meant to leave behind the world and become something greater.

‘Nikador.’ Of course you could not see anything, but just as you could feel the eyes of the gods, you knew the weight behind that unspoken voice meant it could only belong to Kephale, who did not even need to speak in order to be heard. ‘So you have brought her.’

“I don’t know about this, I don’t know about this,” another voice fretted, and although you had never heard this god speak before, you could tell by their uncanny habit of saying everything twice that they were the two-faced Janus, god of passage. “Do we have to, do we have to?”

’Silence, little Janus. If it is truly as Nikador claims, then we must be certain.’

“Even my devotees in the Grove are tested daily anew,” said wise, calm Cerces. “It is the price of power, of strength, and doubly so for we who are meant to be so far above the pitfalls of our creations.”

“If you made a mistake, o Kephale, might it not be better to correct it now rather than later?” Nikador said. You thought Kephale would scorn them, but strangely, they were quiet, defenseless to Nikador’s sly accusation.

“I agree with Janus, for what it is worth,” Mnestia said, sounding the same as when you had met them last, comforting you even as you grew more and more unsure.

“Nikador,” you murmured. “Nikador, what is happening?”

“Isn’t it a waste?” Mnestia continued. “She is lovely and learned. There may be uses for her yet; I say we turn her to a nymph and let the boy be happy with her as he’d like so that this entire sorry affair can end.”

“She is only a girl,” Cerces said. “There are lovelier in Okhema and more learned in the Grove. It is as Nikador said, when you consider it.”

“Very well,” Mnestia said, surprisingly dispassionate for one whose dominion was Romance itself. “It is a shame, but there will be others.”

“I wonder if he realizes that, I wonder if he realizes that,” Janus said. 

‘I suppose we will soon see.’

“Nikador, please tell me what is happening, I don’t—”

Phainon arrived with the strength of an eclipsing sun, so bright that even through the blindfold you could see little sparkles of light where he stood — or was that your imagination, your callow thinking? Was he really here, or was it only the strength of your yearning?

“Leave her be, Nikador,” he said, and to your surprise it was almost as if he were pleading. But what cause did a god have to plead? “Nikador, I beg you, I beg you, leave her be. You can be Kephale’s general once more, you can win every fight you challenge me to, but do not bring her into this. Hasn’t she suffered enough at your hand?”

“Phainon?” you said, reaching out in that haze of blackness, feeling about in the hopes that you could touch him one more time, that you could hold onto him and ask him to explain the world and its whims to you as he always did, patiently, with no end to his wit and absurdity but without trace of severity to his merriment, either, only a gentle amusement and a playful patience. “Phainon, Phainon, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s — let go of me, vile Georios, wicked Thanatos — how I will curse you! Release me or I will curse you, you foul wretches, I will lead monsters to your temples and watch as they—”

‘Enough, Phainon. You know why she is here. You know why you are here.’

Before Kephale’s authority, even Phainon could not say anything, and so, as Nikador took your hands, the heavens echoed with emptiness, although they were in fact bursting to seams with those celestial onlookers, all of whom were motionless as the first lord of the mountain led you forward in the way your brother once had, through the temple to this very god, who you had once loved with your entire being.

“Mortals have no place in the heavens,” Nikador said as wind began to nip at your cheeks, the heat of the surrounding gods dissipating in face of the abyssal cold. “Dear girl, you must know that.”

“Yes,” you said, your voice trembling. “But I — I did not want to come, I never really wanted—”

“They call him the young general of the gods,” Nikador scoffed. “And yet he is the most human of us all.”

“What?” you said. “Phainon? What does this have to do with him? I know I broke the rules, but he is blameless — I am the one who asked to wed you, who called upon you in Mnestia’s sanctuary — punish me as you’d like, Nikador, but do not — please, o Nikador, leave him, do not harm him—”

“Is he mortal or myth?” Nikador mused, as if you had not spoken in the first place, as if you had all the significance of a mantis or moth, as if you had never mattered and never would. “Kephale granted him immortality, but until he can leave behind what made him a man, he can never truly be considered a god.”

“Nikador, please,” you repeated, at a loss for anything else to say, though you knew it was futile. This time, like every other, the god would play deaf to your frantic prayers

“Thank you, girl,” Nikador said, caressing your hair almost tenderly, in the way your father had, before the High Priest had usurped his already-tenuous authority and left him a shell of a king, of a man. “For everything you have done, I thank you. You are my final and greatest revenge on that brat-god. Phainon. Did you know that he is also the god of grief and lost love? Well, that title, at least, is one he earned on his own.”

“No—!”

There was a horrible sound when Nikador pushed you from the heavens, an anguished, shrieking wail that no creature of the earth could ever produce — for it was the sound of the god of grief as he mourned, as he wept for a mortal girl whose death had been known from the start but which he could not bear regardless.

Mnestia’s blindfold sparkled away into nothing as the gods turned their backs on you. All of the gods, not just the ones who had hated you from the start — even Janus, who spoke in your defense; even Mnestia, who loved humanity; even Phainon, who loved—

The vast, blank stretch of blue sky above you was split by the bronze streak of a shooting star, plunging towards you like an arrow belonging to a Furiae Archer, a trail of desperate flame flickering behind it, behind him, as he grew nearer and nearer, extending a hand towards your frail figure. He had never turned his back on you after all, and you knew just then that he never could, because he was Phainon. Phainon, the god of the dawn, of the denied, of the deliverance; Phainon, the one who had held the sky on his back when he was only a man; Phainon, who was favored by Kephale, by the world itself, but who also refused all of those blessings, because he could never love them as he loved you.

You reached your hand towards him, and even though his visage seared at your irises, you could not bear to look away, could not close your eyes until he interlocked your fingers with his and pulled you close to the bleeding expanse of his chest. One arm encircled your waist, the other cradling the back of your head as his wings, iridescent in iconography but now tattered and ragged, wrapped around you firmly and his mouth met your own.

How wonderful it was, that even as you both spiraled towards the ground, you could feel the sweet, pounding warmth of his immortal life in full, could drink wine and ecstasy from his lips, could taste ambrosia on his tongue as he gave you all that he ever had, all that he ever could. And as the earth drew nearer, as the world grew dark, you finally found the answer to the question you had posed to the long-dead Hyacinthia all of those many days ago: you could not bring yourself to regret him, just as she must not have been able to, either, for you finally realized as she surely did that he had never doomed you — you had always been doomed, anyways. He had saved you and he had loved you and how could you resent him for that?

How, then, shall I sing of you? For everywhere, Phainon, is beholden to you, over the mountains and across the isles, from high-sloping foothills to beaches canting seaward. Do I sing of how you were born a man amidst golden furrows, and how you then rose to become the joy of mankind itself? Hear this, Earth and wide Heaven, surely he will have his fragrant altar and precinct, and he shall be honored above all; as for me, I will carry his name close to my heart, and I will never cease to praise that white calamity, o shining Phainon, god of every dawn.

Your mother’s low voice still lingered in the back of your mind when you awoke, the only lullaby which had ever managed to soothe you as a screaming child, that old hymn to Phainon, who had saved you time and time again. For a moment you luxuriated in it, and then you gasped, sitting up abruptly when you realized that you were still alive. Perhaps curled in an enormous and inexplicable crater, perhaps sore and bruised with the taste of metal in your mouth, but alive. How? How had you survived such a thing, a fall from the very heavens? 

“Phainon!” you said when you realized he was limp beside you, surrounded by a cloud of feather-dust and a puddle of gold. His wings were long-gone, and he was plainer than you remembered, dressed in merely pants and a tunic instead of the white armor he typically preferred. He did not stir when you called his name, and you frowned, shaking him by the shoulders, first mildly, then with more and more vigor the longer he was still. “Phainon. Phainon. Phainon, you are the god of good humor, so surely you understand that there is no humor to this play. Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up! What will I do without you? Who will I become? Please wake up, Phainon, I need you. I love you.”

You did not know when you began to cry, only that suddenly you were, your tears splashing against the scrapes welling red along his brow, trickling down his face so that they appeared to be his. You hated the gods for many things, but for this most of all. How could they? You were a mortal going beyond your place in the natural order of the universe, so to punish you for it was at least sensible, but he was one of them, he was a hero and a god, he was the sun and the morning, he was theirs, they favored him, so after all of that, how could they?

“Why do you weep, o sacrifice?” There was a certain roughness to his voice, a lack of musicality as his thumbs rubbed along your cheekbones, wiping away your mourning carelessly, thoughtlessly. “You mustn’t. I don’t much enjoy when you do.”

“You — I thought you were dead!” you said, holding onto his cold wrists as he groaned and sat up, shaking one of his hands free to rub his forehead, allowing you to cling to the other, your shock mingling with overwhelming relief as you felt his pulse beat reassuringly through his blue-green veins.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m as alive as you are,” he said, wincing when he straightened his back and it creaked in protest. “Somewhat regrettably.”

You threw your arms around his neck, burying your face in the crook of it, for you were afraid that if you ever let go, you would lose him again, maybe even permanently. For his part, he allowed it, stroking your back and tucking his chin over your shoulder, holding you impossibly closer, as if he, too, were afraid of that very same thing.

“I don’t understand what happened,” you said.

“Nikador’s grudge on me,” he said, his body vibrating against you as he laughed bitterly. “They could not face me and win, but they have never been an honorable god, as long as their victory is assured. They and the others, Thanatos and Georios and Phagousa and mad Aquila, they poisoned Kephale’s mind against me, claiming that I am closer to mortality than to its lack — and this, they said, was because of you. Because I would choose you over even my throne in the heavens, over my role at Kephale’s side.

“And so, at Kephale’s behest, Nikador brought you to the heavens as a test. I, like the rest of the gods, had to remain indifferent to your killing if I wished to prove that I was like them, that I had transcended the weaknesses of man and become something greater. But oh, my sacrifice, I could not do that. You know I could do that.

“Kephale cursed me as I fell with you, cursed me to lose more and more of my godly nature the closer I grew to the earth, until at last my feet touched soil for the first time and all was lost. There was nothing I could do but shield you with my remaining power, for you were an anchor, a tether, dragging me with you to inevitability.

“My only remaining divinity was in my ichor, which prevented my death but could not do the same for yours. So I bled myself, pouring those remnants down your throat as your heartbeat grew fainter, forcing you to drink until I was only a man and you were certainly, assuredly alive. After that, I must have gone unconscious; ah, the pitfalls of the human body, I certainly didn’t miss this aspect of mortality…”

“So you are mortal now?” you said. He shook his head ruefully. 

“Just so,” he said. “I suppose in the end, they were right. I was never meant to be a god.”

“I’m sorry,” you said unsurely, for as you sat back and touched his face, his beautiful, worn face, you could not bring yourself to be properly apologetic. His eyes were crinkled at the corners from ages of laughter, and freckles dusted the bridge of his nose, but these little things only made you wish to learn him better. Did the dark moles along his neck continue down his back? Were his hands calloused and scarred? Privately, you believed the Furiae Soldiers might come alive before you finished categorizing these things, memorizing that which made him a man instead of a deity, which made him Phainon instead of sunbringer.

“Don’t be,” he said. “No, no, don’t be. Immortality was a curse and you were the cure, so please never, ever be sorry.”

“Where shall we go?” you said. “The mountain and the sea and the Grove and Okhema, we have been cast from them all. So where shall we go from here?”

“There is one place,” he said. “It is a village, small and very far, but…I knew a girl in my childhood, I can remember her now that Kephale’s fog has lifted from my mind — she was my neighbor, my closest friend, and her descendants still live there. I cannot say for certain, but I feel as though we will be welcomed by them.”

“Very well. Then let us leave at once,” you said, though you paused before you could stand. “Say, Phainon?”

“Yes?” he said, cocking his head at you as he had when he would shift between forms at will, perhaps an old habit from those days when he could become a dog or a cat or a bird whenever he pleased.

“Your eyes,” you said. “They’re blue.”

The color of the sky right after sunrise. Bright and lovely. The kind of color that was impossible to refuse, for he was impossible to refuse.

He smiled at that, and when he did, it was just as Mnestia had said, crooked and dimpled and endearing, so endearing. How you adored it. How you wished he would keep smiling forever, exactly in such a way. 

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose they are.”