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Hector
Ifollowed Orestes from a distance. He’d left not long after Achilles and Paris, and I couldn’t stand waiting back here.
What was wrong with me? Why was I so afraid to act?
Be honest.
It wasn’t in my nature to lie to myself, but I had been. Since Leonora had burst into our lives, I’d be reacting out of fear. I’d been responding because of what I’d lost.WhoI’d lost.
It didn’t matter how many decades passed, my son never left my mind. He was always the first thing I thought about the second I opened my eyes.
Every day, something would remind me of him, and I’d wonder what it would be like if he was born now. If I got the opportunity to be a real father, and not a general. Or a prince.
I wished I could go back in time. All the power I had—strength and youth and immortality—I’d give it all up if I could go back and be a father to my son.
Then here comes Leonora, and suddenly, everything is changing. My friends, who were as rooted in the past as me, were looking toward the future. Worse, they were entrenched in the present.
Leaving me alone.
I nevereverthought I’d be the one dragging my heels, and resenting the fact that my friends were moving on and grasping at happiness.
The thing with my grief was—I could only bear it because my friends shared it. Maybe theirs was different—Pollux grieved his brother and Orestes the murder of his family. Paris grieved his choices, and Achilles grieved the results of his rage. But it was something. It linked us.
Now, they seemed to be leaving me behind. Putting their grief in perspective and recognizing that perhaps they’d atoned, and no longer had to punish themselves.
I wasn’t there yet.
I didn’twantto be there yet.
I didn’t deserve to be there.
How dare I have any sort of life when my son’s was taken?
Orestes’ car wove through the narrow Oxford streets. I followed, my 4x4 quite obviously tailing him. Finally, he parked.
It was a little more difficult to negotiate the Defender into a space, but I managed it. He waited, leaning against the boot while I got out. “Why are you here?” he asked. “You won’t stop me.”
“I won’t stop you from what?” I asked. “What do you expect is going to happen?” They all left, chasing after Leonora and Pollux like their lives depended on it. “Are you going to hold Leonora’s books? Take notes for her?”
It was a low comment, and Orestes ignored it. Reaching into his back pocket, he removed his phone. It shone for a second as he read whatever message he’d received, and then he slid it back. “Let’s go. Paris is with Pollux at his flat.”
Pollux stayed in Oxford on his own. He’d eked out a career doing something he enjoyed, and on the surface at least, led a normal life. But I’d never been to his flat. Never been invited. When we got together, it was at my cottage.
I trailed after Orestes. It had been a long time since I’d been in Oxford, and I found myself interested in the changes. Funny how a town a thousand years old could change so much in just a few decades. The entirety of civilization had changed in those decades. Everything moved so fast, and changed even faster. The second I figured something out, it was obsolete.
I’d never felt my age like I did now.
Pollux’s flat was on the outskirts of Worcester College, in sight of the Castle Mill Stream, and a car park. The car park hadn’t been there a decade ago.
We were quiet as the distance between us and the others disappeared. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, and Orestes seemed lost in his own thoughts.
This was another thing I didn’t like—not knowing how he was feeling. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard the Furies since Leonora, and I wonder if I’m forgiven. They never told me.” His answer shocked me. Not that he hadn’t heard the Furies, he’d said as much, but the last part.
“The Furies don’t forgive.”
“I didn’t think so either.”
