Chapter 5 - Hypatos

One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of having Arete as my charge. One year of stolen conversations in the Pegasus tavern with Saea, her acidic humor smoothing some of the roughness from each day. One year of stolen moments with Arete herself, slipping into dark corners to press desperately shut mouths together, hands grasping clothing and skin until hers was all I could see or feel, and my life as Keeper to House Ares didn’t seem quite so empty. It hadn’t been enough. 

Time itself seemed to pause while the messenger spoke. He was young, probably no older than I was before I was cast down from grace. Dust coated his cheekbones, and he kept his eyes focused on the floor when he spoke to Eugenius in the main hall of our estate. I’d been polishing ceremonial armor in a dark corner when he’d arrived, but I heard him.

Chimera. 

Attack. 

On the road to Erasmus’s estate. 

Lady Arete… 

Dead. 

The bronze cuirass had fallen from my hand and landed with a clatter on the marble floor, the tinkling noise echoing endlessly through the void that had opened up inside my skull.

Dead. 

Those two syllables punched the air from my lungs as if they were a physical blow. My love. The one person in all the world I would have followed willingly into death was dead.

She had smiled that crooked smile of hers when she told me Erasmus had given her a granddaughter. She’d been so happy, Eugenius’s stupid gift had given her a reason to smile. Pure, crystalline happiness. That, at least, had been stolen from her by the same foul fate that had cursed me to live without my arm.

I hadn’t even been allowed to grieve properly. Not me, who loved her more than any man should love a woman. I, who had fathered her eldest two sons. I, who had dreamt of life after Eugenius when I could steal away into rooms with her, and she would kneel before me, a proud man in both body and title. All I had was to watch Eugenius, her owner, the man who bought her like she was some expensive horse, posture and preen as he “grieved” for her.

He hadn’t loved her. He hadn’t lost anything at all. I knew the look in his eye as we watched her procession to the funeral pyre, cold and calculating as he watched the other family members to see who’d be ripe for the plucking for his next bride.

The funeral was extravagant. A roaring bonfire in the middle of House Ares’ courtyard. I stood at rigid attention with a dozen other low-ranking soldiers while Eugenius lit the flames. My helmet under my arm, I was just another face in a sea of bronzed armor.

They let me watch as he stepped up to the pyre, his face alight with grief. It hadn’t fooled me. Anyone who knew Eugenius knew that prideful sneer wasn’t the face of someone who loved Arete half as much as I did.

He was stealing her from me. Taking the only piece of light in my life, he dared to claim her as his own to everyone who cared enough to watch.

I had no right to curse or protest. I had to stand there, jaw clenched, while the woman I loved burned before my eyes. I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t cry. Not even break down and collapse into hysterical madness. All I could do was watch as the woman who had been the light of my life turned to ash in the fire.

In the months after Arete’s death, I didn’t just spiral. I shattered. 

The drinking, once a dulling agent for my sorrows, became catastrophic. I stopped caring about appearances, about my duties, about anything beyond the numbing embrace of the bottle. My world shrank to the size of a mug, the bottom of which I was always chasing. 

I became a ghost haunting my own life, my temperament growing crueler, my words sharper, designed to wound anyone foolish enough to get close.

The Pegasus became my true home, and Boreas, the old centaur, finally cut me off. “You were dead weight, Hypatos,” he had grunted, pushing my coins back across the bar. “Come back when you’re a man, not a specter.” 

So I had found cheaper, rougher taverns in the lower city, places where no one knew my name or cared that a one-armed Spartan was drinking himself into an early grave. I stumbled back to my rooms at the House of Ares in the early hours, reeking of cheap wine and my own despair, my face a mask of sullen defiance.

Even 11-year-old Androkles had noticed the change. He was older then, his features sharpening, his unnerving intelligence maturing into a chilling perceptiveness. He saw more than adults realized. 

Our dynamic subtly shifted from master and servant to something more complex, more wary. He watched me with those cold, analytical eyes, not with a child’s fear, but with a growing understanding of my brokenness.

One evening, I had passed out in a chair in the antechamber of his chambers, a half-empty bottle of stolen wine clutched in my hand. I woke with a start to find him standing over me, not in judgment, but in quiet observation. He hadn’t shouted or summoned guards. He looked at me, his expression unreadable.

“Lady Arete trusted you,” he had said, his voice a low, steady monotone that cut through my alcoholic haze more effectively than any shout.

The comment unexpectedly devastated me. It hadn’t been an accusation. It was a statement of fact, a simple, brutal truth that landed like a physical blow. 

Trusted. Past tense. 

She had trusted me to be strong, to endure, to be the steady rock in the secret life we shared. And I was failing. I was dishonoring her memory with every drop of wine I consumed, with every cruel word I spat, with every moment I surrendered to this pathetic, self-pitying grief. 

Her trust hadn’t been in my love for her, but in my strength, and I had none left. The shame of it was a crushing weight, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

Half a year after Arete died, I was no better than rubble. I grew crueler and sloppier, drunken brawls and throwing my wine upon tables, resulting in my getting banned from every respectable place in town. I stumbled to The Obnoxious Pegasus every night, compelled by some unknown power and drawn inexorably towards the rot like a moth to flame. And every night, there sat Saea. 

The other bartenders wanted me kicked out. “He’s a hazard,” Elara, the nymph who served behind the bar with Boreas, told him one night after I broke a table whilst shouting at someone who wasn’t there. “He’s chasing away potential customers.” 

Saea calmed them down each time. She spoke softly but authoritatively, cutting them off whenever they tried to argue. “He’s hurting,” she’d said. “Let him be.” 

She cleaned up after me, wiped spilled drinks off the floor, and led me away from fist fights wordlessly, practically dragging me home on nights when I refused to listen to reason.

This time, I drank too much. Faces swam before my eyes and warped grotesquely. I felt the room lurch around me and attempted to right myself before my legs buckled underneath me. As I fell, I registered the warmth of strong arms catching me and the smell of wildflowers and starched clothes.

Saea. 

She had taken me home that night, asking strangers for directions so I wouldn’t pass out and die in an alleyway somewhere. It wasn’t romantic, simply a caretaker, yet still felt emotional. She had never stepped foot in my home until that night, but moved through it as if she owned the place, gently lifting me bridal-style into my own bed.

Delirium had gripped me then, heartbroken grief blurring past and present. I looked into Saea’s eyes and saw Arete’s grave, white hair crown fall into view, and smelled roses burning somewhere nearby.

“Arete…” I croaked, tears slipping unchecked down my cheeks. “You came back to me.” 

She paused mid-motion, hand frozen above my forehead. “It’s Saea, Hypatos,” she replied softly. “I’m here.” 

The voice brought me back to my senses, and I cracked open one eyelid. Alone, save for the satyr pinching behind my shoulder, and Arete was nowhere to be found. My chest burned, and I turned away so violently I started to cry. Loud, helpless tears that shook my frame like the ichor-less wretch I was.

Saea fetched a chair from somewhere and pushed it beside my bed before crawling into it. She didn’t apologize; she didn’t console me with her common-sense platitudes. Instead, she sat beside me in silence, staring quietly into the darkness. She didn’t leave until sunrise. 

The next morning, I woke to the gray light of dawn filtering through my window and a throbbing in my skull as if a chimera were trying to claw its way out. I wasn’t alone. I turned my head, and my heart seized. Saea was asleep in a chair beside my bed, her head lolled to one side, her white hair spilling over her shoulder. 

She had stayed. She had watched over me all night. 

A wave of horror and embarrassment washed over me, so potent it almost sobered me instantly. I, a former commander of Sparta, had been reduced to a pathetic drunk, cared for by a satyr who was barely more than a stranger.

I must have made a sound, because her eyes fluttered open. 

She blinked, stretching with a soft groan. “Morning,” she said, her voice a little rough from sleep. “You look slightly less like death warmed over.”

I pushed myself up, the room spinning slightly. “Thank you,” I mumbled, the words feeling clumsy and foreign. 

I was uncomfortable with this genuine kindness, a currency I had no experience with. It was easier to deal with pity or contempt. This... this was something else entirely.

She stood, smoothing down her simple tunic. “Well, someone had to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit. It would have been a terrible mess to clean up.” Her dry humor was a welcome relief, a return to the familiar rhythm of our bar-side conversations.

Before she could leave, I found myself asking, my voice quieter than I intended. “Why do you bother helping someone like me?”

Saea stopped at the door, her back to me. She didn’t turn around immediately. When she did, her expression was open and honest. 

“Because no one else does,” she said. 

Then she gave me a small, tired smile and slipped out of the room, leaving me alone with the silence and the echo of her words.

I stared after her, unsettled by how much comfort her presence had brought me during one of the worst nights of my life. For the first time in months, the crushing weight of my grief felt just a little bit lighter, and I didn’t know whether to be grateful or terrified of the reason why.