Chapter Text
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
I
new mutiny
Damen could almost physically feel the priest’s strident voice touching the walls of St. Zeno’s[1] and ricocheting back to his ears. The wooden harshness of the pew was digging into his spine despite the well-achieved muscles covering his bones. It was a gloomy day in Delpha, the grey clouds slowly traversing behind the semi-opaque, colorful glasses on the church walls. There was a strip of weak light creeping from one of the ajar windows and Damen’s posture was always restlessly moving to prevent direct contact to his eyes.
“Stop fidgeting, Damianos,” hissed his brother from his left. “The six-year-old child sits more still than you.”
Damen's eyes drifted to his nephew Andreas, sitting dutifully between Kastor and Jokaste. Though his feet were far from touching the slightest bit of the ground, they did not even dangle in the empty air. At that age, Damen would have already gotten a dozen pinches on whichever arm that would be the closest to reach by his father.
He found an awkward position that hid his eyes from the light, his back vaguely bent forward and his head tilted to the left which put him in direct physical contact with Theomedes. A statue of Jesus on the cross was solemnly looking down at Damen while he felt his father's sturdy arm pressing against his. For a moment, it was not a crazy idea that there might have been multiple gods of Damen's in this church.
The priest in a green vestment adorned with gold embroidery had his palms glued to each other, resting between his chin; his eyes were closed. It took a certain dramatic talent to deliver this performance, thought Damen. What was the difference between this man and any other actor he had seen on Broadway, pacing around the stage with a voice too loud? Well, this one was probably getting paid higher.
He was speaking about the ultimate power of benevolence. It was better than whatever topic he chose two weeks ago, one that had Theomedes averting eyes with a sudden impulse to clear his throat and had Kastor bucking his head repeatedly to catch Damen's eyes, a mocking smirk on his face. “Those men,” the priest had said. “Those men. They lay together.” The serious betrayal on his face almost had Damen thinking that maybe the priest was just upset that he couldn't get involved.
Today, thankfully, he was more mild.
“The only thing important,” said the old man in green, “Goodness. Goodness. Goodness.”
Words echoed in Damen’s aching head. It was like an interesting way of torture, the way the priest’s voice echoed all around the church despite Damen’s throbbing temples. He could hear that one word repeated over and over again accompanied by the smacking sound of an imaginary whip that went off immediately after the word was uttered. Goodness. Goodness. Goodness.
Something tucked under his belt prodded his waistline. His gun.
Damen was fairly sure that the goodness did not come close to people who saw it necessary to even come to the praying with a gun. Though Theomedes, vehemently and ridiculously, was nodding his head.
They shook hands with the priest as they were exiting the church, Damen buttoning the top of his shirt that he had left open in the suffocating atmosphere of the inside. Andreas skipped his steps ahead of them, his shoes splashing the little ponds of rainwater formed between the cobblestones. Aside from his wet steps and Theomedes’s warnings for him to “walk like a man,” the walk back to the van was silent, their perfect functional family.
Their chauffeur, Adrastus, was waiting for them beside a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, the sleek doors already wide open. Damen and his father sat beside each other, a wide seat empty between them which, before long, was filled by Andreas. Kastor and Jokaste took their places on the respective seats in front of the others. They looked like the picture perfect of the ideal traditional family; Jokaste with a modest dress that stiffly covered her knees and chest, and Kastor in a, well, suit. Though Damen was one of the only people who knew that the true foundation of their marriage and the possible struggle of making Jokaste wear that dress were not showing much decorum for an ideal traditionality.
The view of Delpha was sliding by the car like a flip book animation; the residences, the hotels, and the companies blurred together, creating a mess of achromatic colors especially heightened by the silver sky. This part of the city was different than the other parts with its looming skyscrapers, gold chandeliers peeking from the windows, and cars with too low undercarriages—their owners did not care much that they were more vulnerable to damaging, they could be easily disposed and replaced. What truly gave Delpha its reputation of windy mountains, tangerine fruits, blue-white potteries and turquoise sky merging with the warm sea was lost behind the thick, granite smudge of paint brushed all over this side of the town. Whenever one looked up to the sky, the tops of high buildings invaded their sight, the metal rods on the peak framing the view in all corners as if they were some ugly pins used to secure a poster of the sky.
When Adrastus pulled up to the house, the black, iron gates were held open by two security guards with a slight, reverent bow in their heads. When Andreas repeatedly knocked on the window to get their attention and wave at them, they did not look up. Damen and his family got out of the car when they reached the turned off fountain in the garden.
“Remember when I tried to drown you here?” Kastor asked as the doors of the car were automatically closing behind them. His finger was pointing towards the marble fountain.
“I do,” said Damen. A normal sibling would not bring up their embarrassing mistakes over and over again, but Kastor had a more cynical approach to these events. Sometimes it seemed to Damen that he was reminding those things only because he did not want to let anyone forget that he could commit such acts, even as a kid.
The Valens mansion was a secluded estate hidden among the high and wide trees of Delpha. The embedded stones of the footpath leading to the house were marred with little dents and notches from years of walking, running, and dropping things on them. The garden had a faint scent of variegated fruit trees placed all over the garden, crusty and robust branches welding with one another, forming little alcoves that used to be rarely left empty by much younger Damen and Kastor.
Inside, a servant took all their coats and they slowly walked to the grand table. Silent, silent, silent. The table was already filled on every inch. Readied doors, readied gates, readied tables. One did not have much else to do in a life like theirs. Especially talk, apparently.
They took their usual seats; Theomedes at the head, Damen and Kastor at the two respective sides of their father, Jokaste beside her husband and Andreas beside his mother. The closest of the empty chairs on Damen's side would be taken by Nikandros who was yet to be here. It was nearing 8:30 a.m.
The mass usually started, ironically, at the very ungodly hour of 7 a.m. They would never have breakfast before church because Theomedes had a firm belief that “there aren't many things God disdains more than a full stomach.” Although Damen was sure there were many things the Almighty disdained more than that, specifically some things that creeped around their waistlines, he did not voice these thoughts.
The table was a portrait of different colors presented on glistening plates and bowls; Belgian waffles, chia puddings, smoked salmon bagels, egg benedicts with hollandaise sauce… It was a shame that almost all these, apart from the ones closest to Theomedes, were going to go to the bin. Before Jokaste, a bowl full of chocolate quinoa was waiting for her. Surely, this didn't have the chance to go unnoticed by Theomedes.
As on cue, his father said, “That saccharine thing for you, Jokaste? I heard that you're on a mission to change the zips of your outfits.”
“Well,” said Jokaste, her voice strained and the line of her neck stiff. “I am unfortunately not an elastic rubber that goes back to its shape even after birth.”
That was not the best of analogies. Damen did not say it.
“Birth?” asked Theomedes, although he wasn't really asking. “It's been six years.”
“How would you–” Jokaste cut herself off as Damen saw the movement of Kastor's arm aimed at somewhere Jokaste's thigh would be. Damen had never had that kind of stilling power on her.
Andreas was quiet, eyes wandering between the four adults, hands twisting a toy gun between his – and Damen would know– sweaty palms. As the twig is bent. He had Kastor's sharp bone structure with Jokaste's straight nose and fair skin. His hair was a mixture of his father's curls and his mother's blondeness, fluffy hair artfully separated with a middle part. The things he would be holding in his hands in the future, whether his mother's now abandoned gavel or his father's ever-present guns, continued to be ambiguous and a nerve that demanded careful walking on.
The main door closing and the servant quietly murmuring “Welcome, Mr. Kyriakos,” let them know that Nikandros has finally arrived. What Damen knew to be Louis Vuitton ankle boots echoed down the hallway and Damen's closest friend appeared by the door with a careful anxiety woven on his face. Breakfasts, or anything, with Theomedes were not a faint thing, no matter how many times they were repeated.
“Welcome, Nikandros,” greeted Theomedes without turning his back to him. “Come, have a seat.”
Nikandros walked to the table with his hands busying on the sleeve cuffs of his jacket and pulled the chair on Damen's left. “Good morning,” he said when he sat down.
He was a tall and broad man sheathed in an earthy skin like Damen, a walking signature of Akielon hallmarks except for his wavy hair instead of curl locks. He wore his hair long, brown strands sparkled with honey reaching to his shoulders. In Damen’s contacts in his phone, he had a picture of Nikandros taken with his hair unbound and parted in the middle, the swarthy waves rippling around his head with the force of the wind, and below it his contact name read “Nikandros of Nazareth.” Now he had a bun on his nape, folded like a knot. Theomedes did not like messy hair around tables.
His father reached for the serving spoon laid between the bagels. Starting pistol was fired. Damen took a waffle and deposited it on his plate.
“So, Nik,” said his father. “How was your church this Sunday? Do they end the mass later than we do?”
Nikandros did not attend the church. Nikandros was pagan, the barely alive religion of some Akielons, trying to brave the storms first planted by Christian missionaries in the Medieval Artes, when Akielos was a part of an empire. Though Theomedes knew this, it became a weekend hobby of his to have Nikandros on their Sunday table and poke cross-shaped skewers at his gods.
Nikandros, as the rest of them, did not have a voice loud enough to talk back at Theomedes, both out of fear and respect. He was seven years old when his father, a senior member of the Lions of the Valens, got killed with the rest of his family. Theomedes took him inside his haven, providing a fatherly hand down his small, shaking spine. Damen and his friend were about eight when Theomedes took them for the first time to a Lions meeting, accompanied by a teen Kastor who also joined for the first time. Inside of the grey-walled, palatial room; a few dozens of men dressed in suits with ablaze lion pins on their breasts were standing by their seats and waiting for Theomedes to reach his main seat. After him, Kastor, Damen and Nikandros were a variation of height, trailing like a set of wagons. Theomedes had said, before sitting down, “I brought my sons with me today. Kastor, Damen and Nikandros.” It was not the wisest of things to say to these men, bringing another son to the equation while the subject of succession remained a big question mark looming over everyone’s head. It was a self-indulgent chain of words, merely done by Theomedes’s desire and Nikandros’s sake. Despite this, Damen had felt his heart skipping over along with his suddenly wobbly steps. It was a piercing silence all over the room as they were slowly readjusting themselves on chairs that were too big for them. When Theomedes finally had begun to speak about what the men gathered for, Damen’s eyes slid to Nikandros’s hands under the table, palms plastered to the bony knees; he reached out to his friend and felt the trembling that traversed from Nikandros’s nails to his shoulder all throughout the meeting. Just like that, they were brothers.
Damen felt the same urge to reach out to his friend now, empathy rising in him because of his father’s indiscretion. But this waffle had a syrup with just the right amount of vanilla. Belgians probably only ate it with a light layer of powdered sugar. Damen sure did like it; he still had the chance to silently devour it while Theomedes’s attention was on somebody else.
To Theomedes's prodding, Nikandros only offered a tight smile and, slightly lifting the bagel in his hand, said, “These taste delicious today.” Kastor snorted.
Tension still thick, Theomedes seemingly decided that he had enough fun. Turning to Kastor on his right, he asked, “Did you settle the deal with the Androktons?”
The Androktons[2], a Vaskian underworld organization that also resided in Delpha, had the biggest warehouse in the city. Long having eyes on it, the Lions recently offered a deal where they wanted the Androktons to pay off their recent killing of two Lions with the warehouse. A bloodless, uneventful agreement proposal that promised a mendable future between two affiliations.
“Yes,” said Kastor. Damen wondered if he was aware of the way his two shoulders seemed to move up to his ears. “The warehouse is ours. Halvik said her women would leave the place spotless by this Wednesday.”
“Good, good.” Damen could see the shell pink color of the salmon turning in his father’s mouth. “Was it difficult to come to the agreement?”
“I wouldn’t say so, no.” Meaning: it wasn’t difficult to me, look at me, your best boy smugly coming out of the meetings that would make some people sweat. “Though, I could always use some help. Help of some people who don’t really have much to do.”
There. Damianos the Some People. He wondered if Kastor also had fabricated sentences and words in his mind that he assigned to Damen and how many of them came to life not very long after. It was hellish to be despised by someone that knew every hidden corner in you and still not find anything worth loving.
“I do believe that Damen is a busy architect,” Jokaste joined. It was hard to tell if she held any sentiment behind her words. Apart from her trademark detached demeanor, she always seemed to talk faster when Theomedes was around, as if she was in a haste to get the words out before a potential interruption by him.
“Making shitty houses and marketing them as bohemian for the Delphian elite knowing that they go fucking crazy for that filthy hippy shit is not being busy,” said Kastor. “Darling.”
Damen pushed the pudding around on his plate and could repress the bubbling laugh in him only so much. “Did you fucking practice that?” There must have been an annoyingly delighted grin on his face, too bad it was fake. “Though I think the practice wasn't repeated enough to dawn on you that I am not an interior designer.”
Damen was completely sure that he did not use the word bohemian once in his entire career. Did Kastor fucking google house style names?
“When are we leaving?” Andreas's thin voice cut through their ridiculous argument. Damen had almost forgotten that his nephew was right in front of him, watching their foul quarrel from the front row.
“If you are already full,” said Kastor, his eyes and voice suddenly benign on Andreas, “You can play in the garden until we get up to leave. It's probably going to be in an hour.”
Let me be a tender father and protect my son's mental health while I am being shitty to my little brother. Damen really had to stop writing scripts for Kastor in his head.
After Andreas slipped between the glass doors of the garden, Nikandros said, “I think he is a great architect.”
“I think he watched too many superhero movies,” said Kastor, softness entirely stripped from his face after Andreas's departure. Maybe the scripts suited him. He would be such a good actor. His eyes slowly turning from Nikandros to Damen, he asked, “Do you feel more like Superman when you have a normal day job?” He leaned in with a faux curiosity on his face. “Damen, do you wear glasses in your office time?”
“Kastor, that's enough,” said Jokaste, the bowl before her long forgotten.
“Quiet, Jo. We are talking.” They weren't. The only words bouncing between the walls belonged to Kastor. Even if he retorted, Damen wasn't sure what would come out would be classified as talking anyway. “Dad,” continued Kastor. “I think being an artist is more of a dealbreaker than a bastard. What are your thoughts?”
“Kastor,” Theomedes said, serene gaze on the table, voice a quiet red alarm slowly going on and off.
“What is it?” Kastor groaned. “Don't tell me that you, too, are going to argue whether architects are artists or not. We already talked this through with Damianos.”
Whatever Theomedes was warning Kastor for had nothing to do with architects and Kastor knew it. He did not know when to stop.
“Look at our beloved father,” his big brother said, thumb pointing towards Theomedes. “Look at the sleep deprived lines on his face. We all bicker about how he can't make up his mind about the heir, but can we really blame him? He has to choose between the bastard and the artist. Not to mention that the artist one is a f–”
Damen stopped him because nobody else was going to, not in that part.
“Fucking stop it!” Damen yelled. The sound of a metallic clash reached his ears, and he wasn't aware if the fork fell by accident or if he threw it. From the corner of his eye, he could see Andreas stopping his miniature car that he was moving with his hand on the damp grass. The tremor in his hands and the palpable wideness of his eye sockets almost drove him insane. He was thirty and this was ridiculous: the way the sensitive nerves jumped every time Kastor walked close to them. Surely by now, he should have gotten used to the stamps of his brother's. But the veins bled anew every single time. Sometimes they felt tangible between the two brothers, the cruel words of Kastor, Damen would think he could cut his hand on empty air if he touched the distance between them that Kastor's words were being poured into. Damen's back connected with the backrest of his chair all at once, all the air escaping from his mouth. “Stop talking. Enough.” Quieter now.
Theomedes bit into his waffle. At least he had some version of disturbance shown on his face. He chewed with a frown.
“Damianos, visit my office after the breakfast,” mumbled his father between chewing. The breakfast was already over for the rest of them, more than half of the bowls and plates not even touched. One single waffle Damen ate was swirling in his stomach, the vanilla syrup turned into a cloying, smothering taste on his tongue, not even leisurely savored.
After three egg benedicts and two glasses of romaine lettuce smoothie, Theomedes finally left the table, a cue for the others waiting for him. Jokaste walked towards the garden in which Andreas had moved to the furthest area. Kastor was trailing after their father when Damen felt a kneading hand on his shoulder.
“Do you want to go out and have a proper breakfast?” asked Nikandros as his hand was moving against a particularly taut tendon.
Damen pressed his open palms to his face and gave a guttural sigh. “No.” His voice barely escaped the confinement of his hands. “I gotta go to Dad’s office. Are you busy for the rest of the day?”
“Yes, your father wants Heston and I to have a meet and greet with some of the Androktons.”
Damen’s shoulders shook under Nikandros’s hands with an uncontainable laughter. “Already best buddies, huh?”
“Oh, for sure. Didn’t you hear? It’s a meet and greet,” his friend scoffed. “You would think we are fucking college students.”
“It is wild to imagine the Androktons as college students,” said Damen. “In what college you see that kind of cutthroat women?” Damen’s lighthearted joke made Nikandros still his hand. He suppressed a groan, now Nikandros was going to think that the joke was made on a purpose.
“I mean,” said the man behind him. “I think ours had a few of those women.”
Damen’s eyes, because it was inescapable now, glided to Jokaste who was crouching down beside her son with a hand tangled into his hair to style the unruly curls. It was impossible; she, better than anyone else, should have learned it by now. It wouldn’t make a difference when the curls belonged to a child. A Valens hair was no surrendering thing. Jokaste dropped her hand.
Despite after almost a decade, it was always startling to see her in a table full of men with a mouth mostly kept closed. Her fervor was no such a thing that was only a youthful fire, but it was eroded and rucked every year that she spent with them. He knew that Nikandros, to this day, held a subtle belief that Damen had still amorous affections for her but what was left of Jokaste for him to keep loving? Uneasy gatherings spent unseen between suits, sentiments only resided for a kid who might very well grow up to become one of those maniac men in suits. Was that the future she had dreamed for herself? Damen knew it wasn’t. But looking at her buckled figure now, Damen could recall memories he gained in train stations that he went to only for the sake of capturing photographs and the ways some people bent to their knees after running to catch the last train but failing.
The hands on his shoulders completely left the fabric of his shirt now. “You think I still love her,” Damen said.
“Not really,” said Nikandros, was he being honest? “But I do think there's something stopping you from treating her like she treated you.”
“She doesn't have a brother that I can sleep with.”
“That's not what I meant.” But he could see the idea held some kind of an allure to his friend. “Even if she did, it would be too late now.”
Nikandros, with his slightly more Machiavellian ways than Damen, could not clock that the “something” he had talked about was just Damen's conformism when it came to family matters. His family, with its job, with its history and with its dynamics, already had enough course on its plate. At twenty-two, Damen –with his fresh architecture degree, his newly discovered passion for photography and his preferences and all the other ways that were potential risks in Theomedes's eyes for his son to abstract himself from the family– could not see in himself the right to demand answers from Kastor and Jokaste. He went along with it: he attended the wedding, he welcomed all the guests, was present in the baby shower, shrieked when the giant balloon burst, and the blue confetti started to fly everywhere.
It was stupid to get lost in fantasies of revenge or what would happens. What would happen was this: Jokaste sitting on Damen's side of the table. That was it. Everything else would remain the same.
“I think I should go to the office,” Damen said.
“Go.” Nikandros patted him on the shoulder. “I'll call Heston and see if we can pass some time before the meeting.”
Having said his goodbyes, Damen walked along the long hall where Theomedes's office resided. Up until last year, the office used to be on the upper floor where the view of the trees seemed to go on forever. However, his father's rheumatism made it increasingly difficult for him to climb up the stairs, so they moved the office to one of the empty rooms on the ground floor.
The hall's walls were adorned with the deceased members of the Valens: a probably unrealistic depiction of Duke Euandors was hanged the highest, the founder of the house of Valens. A respected general among the gentry and one of the queen's military advisors, he created the house in the 16th century by letters patent. A gold-plated lion head brooch[3] was pinned on his breast pocket, its mane cascading around and forming a circle around the head, circular rubies gleaming on the outer circle. Below, Marchioness Helle was pointing a finger on the map laid on her desk, her fingertip touching the city of Ios. Damen passed by each Valens, their gazes frozen in the oil brushes, the regal noses, the broad shoulders, the olive skin shining with the gold of the lion pins.
Damen knocked on the glazed door of the office and waited for his father's voice. When it came, he opened the door and went in, his shoes creaking on the chevron parquet. The room was sterile and devoid of any personality, a stark contrast to the collection of pedigree in the hall. One would think it was a negative effect of relocating the room recently, a chance for the smaller details not yet had. But the recollection of the former room, not only of the one year ago but also of the years ago, would not be so different than this one in a younger Damen’s mind. There had never been a room for frames, for forgotten toys, for a speck of dust falling on the items from some feverish movements of a child. If the light were positioned as such, you could mistake it for an autopsy room.
Theomedes was sitting on the brown chair that looked more like a couch, behind the mahogany desk. And across him Kastor, like a terrible gift emerging in a box that was just unwrapped with too many optimistic expectations.
“Didn’t Dad say he was going to talk to me?” Damen asked he sat down on the leather bergère, the material of it almost cloudy.
Just as Kastor was opening his mouth with an embarrassing enthusiasm for his age, their father said, “Stop bickering. I have had enough for today.”
The Cuban cigar resting on the ashtray certainly hinted that he had had enough. This habit was cracking the autopsy room image for obvious reasons, but it was an act Damen was all too familiar with seeing along his father, he almost had come to a point where it was invisible to him. He would, when he was much smaller, for hours on end, study the way the smoke would rise out of the small, filled ring of cinders and the way it would journey to the opened doors of the terrace with the smell of the tobacco moving to the iron railings. Now the smell and the smoke were dissolving towards the garden where the doors to the west side of the grass were spread on both sides. Andreas was playing on the other side of the garden and Jokaste knew to keep him there. When the faint soot was nuzzling against Damen’s boy clothes, there hadn’t been a person to keep him distracted somewhere else.
“You had requested me,” Damen said. The cigar was invisible to him, just like he thought it was. There was no reason why it should have heightened the dull ache on his brow. He was not going to puff and rub his temples in front of his father.
Theomedes was smoothing the surface of his walnut desk. It was already polished. “Yes, I do remember. Your old man doesn’t have dementia just yet.” It was an offer to break the tension. Maybe. His father said, “I presume you also remember the whole deal about the Python[4] murders.”
“I do,” Damen said and cursed that this was how he was spending his Sunday. The silver clouds were seeming to disappear and clear the way for the turquoise sky.
The Python murders, Damen thought as he was watching another strip of sky getting bare. That's what they were calling it, the recent murders of the four senior Pythons. They started five months ago with Alain whose car was discovered under the river with his body already decomposing. In the reports, the officials wrote that it was a car accident. A rainy road, a pitch-black night, some neglected tires — they knew better than to get acquainted with the killing of a Python. After Alain, came Ferdinand, then Jehan and lastly, just two weeks ago, Marcelet. Food poisoning, they said, poor Marcelet.
The head of the Python organization was the de Vere family with Aleron de Vere as the current don. They, too, had aristocratic background coming from the Artes Empire when their country Vere was still one with Akielos. They ran the only Veretian mob in the Delpha underworld, the Pythons, which put them in a direct crossfire with the Lions; the Civil War that tore the Artes and the politically decided but the internally never solved issue about Delpha's ownership were as tender to them as it was to their ancestors, with the added tension of more recent and more personal vendettas.
While an air of concern took over the dirty men of Delpha, the Lions's apprehension went beyond worrying over the unidentified murders. With each senior member dropping dead, the target on the Pythons made itself more visible and tighter like a Kalashnikov getting ready to raise hell all around. And if some barrel was being aimed at the Pythons, there was little doubt that the one with their hand on the trigger was a Lion. Though, this time around, these murders kept being in a state of intricacy to the Lions, as equally as they were to the Pythons. The web got only more tangled when one started to question how the Lions were going to prove their hands unstained of any (recent) Python blood and coming clean out of the other side.
Theomedes said, “It is time we better get in action about this. Otherwise, they are going to fuck us in the ass.” His fingers were almost as thick as the cigar resting between them. “Undeservedly so.”
“What do you need us to do?” Damen asked, maybe a little too quickly because he didn't want to give Kastor the time to make an anal joke. Theomedes probably thought that Damen was just very enthusiastic. Win-win.
“I need you,” his father said, “to go somewhere for me.”
This was also one of the irritating habits of Theomedes, the way he never said what he was saying in one go. He had to pause, drop little hints, keep you guessing and condescendingly stare at your face to test if you were following. Damen's every response was a performance to rank.
“To go where, father?” Damen made his voice come out neutral.
“There is a ball Makedon is organizing. Many important faces will be present.” The hints were getting dropped too soon, was Theomedes already bored of measuring Damen? “I want you to attend and look around, read here and there, see if anyone knows more than they should and wants to share the weight.”
Damen rubbed his chin; he should have shaved. “When is it?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Damen, for the record, was not making his voice come out neutral.
“It's masquerade.”
“What?” It was the opposite of neutral now.
“Oh, my fucking god,” said Kastor. “Do you do anything other than whining?”
Damen ignored him. “Why are you telling me this now?” he asked his father. “I was planning to go to the office. Let Kastor do it.”
Kastor's eyes went to Theomedes. He was always eager to handle as many tasks as possible. But their father's gaze did not even slide to the elder son but instead it stayed on Damen, challenging, as if to deprecate Damen's protest.
Seeing that he was not going to be bestowed with the duty, Kastor took the reins in his hands. Damen could see the little wheels readjusting in his head after a brief period of halting where he waited for Theomedes's answer. “I have a child to raise, genius,” said his brother, he was so predictable. “But your little houses can wait for you to come back and redraw their tennis rooms.”
Again, Damen ignored him. “I need to go to my apartment to get ready.”
“No need,” Theomedes said. “I have made Theron pick a few things out for you.”
Theron, one of their valets. “Do you even know my size?”
“Stop with your bitching, Damianos,” he said curtly. “Get fucking dressed and do what you're told.”
Upstairs, in front of the mirror, the two-piece suit did not look but definitely felt tight on Damen's shoulders. He took a hold of the fabric of the tag, his body awkwardly twisting, his eyes dancing on the line of his nape to catch the reflection of the tag on the mirror. He could make out the black numbers printed on the white satin. It was one size smaller.
chapter footnotes
[1] An allusion to the Church of San Zeno in Verona, the basilica famous for being the site of marriage of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
[2] A personal alteration of the term Androktones (Ἀνδροκτόνες) 'killers/slayers of men' that was used to describe the Amazon women.
[3] The Renaissance period in jewelry (1300–1600) was a time of wealth and opulence. Elaborate brooches covered in gemstones or pearls were in fashion, especially with the upper classes. Gemstones commonly used for brooches were emeralds, diamonds, rubies, amethyst and topaz. Euandors’s brooch was partly inspired by this one:
[4] An allusion to the serpent in the Greek mythology with the same name, believed by the ancient Greeks to have lived at Delphi. Delphi is the city that was the main inspiration for the context surrounding Delpha in this specific work.