Perseus: Excidium Troiae

Twenty-One

GUESS WHO'S BACK?

AENEAS had never felt emptier. Quite literally, in fact. He had cried so much in the past few hours alone that he didn't think there were any more tears left to shed. It was disconcerting, but now he just sat at the edge of the balcony, looking down at the vast kingdom before him, dotted with little fires and figures in black; the air pierced every few seconds by wailing and shrieking. Troy was in a state of perpetual misery, and again, Aeneas felt that deep aching within him, a kind of sorrow that threatened to wrap its bony hands around his neck and drag him into an endless black hole of torment.

Aeneas let out a sigh. Oh, Hector. He missed him. It hadn't even been a week, but he missed him so much. Hector and Perseus had been his family. They had been his world. He didn't know what he was supposed to do now that half of it had been torn away. But his brother-in-law had died a worthy death. Wherever Hector had gone, Aeneas knew he would be glad, at least, that he had gone down fighting, protecting what he loved, sacrificing himself for the good of Troy—for the good of Aeneas himself.

But still, it hurt. Hector going forward to meet Achilles when—in that big golden heart of his—he had known he was going to die? It was equivalent to the late Crown Prince driving a sword into Aeneas' own chest and then twisting it in to bury it deeper so it tore through his armour and came out the other side. He didn't even know how he would begin to move past this. He couldn't. Deep inside him, he knew it would be near impossible.

He had come to his chambers with his wife next to three hours ago, unable to stand the endless anguish and agony that came with watching Priam cry into his hands or Hecuba try and maintain her composure as Hector's body was lit on fire. Unable to watch, without having a nervous breakdown, as Hector slowly burnt into ashes, passing from this world into the next. Watching the fire, it felt like his own heart and soul had been torched alongside it. He couldn't stop shaking. He couldn't stop crying silently, then. And talking about his best friend in front of the thousands of Trojans in the past tense...it had destroyed him. It didn't help that Perseus, when he arrived, had only just sat before the fiery pyre, sobbing into the earth. Aeneas couldn't bring himself to speak to him, too overwhelmed by his own grief. So he paid his respects, and then he left.

He hoped Hector got the message he had placed on his burning remains, wherever he was. He prayed Hades had mercy on his soul and then tried to go to sleep.

But for some reason, Hypnos insisted on eluding him that evening. Because how could he sleep peacefully, knowing that as the last of his ashes spread across the wind, Hector had appeared on the bank of the Styx, had paid the ferryman, and then gone to face judgment?

And so he had gone to his balcony, to stare dejectedly at the city he loved so much and the monsters from across the sea who threatened to pull it down to the ground. They were celebrating, that much was clear. Mourning, too, but across the dunes, if he concentrated hard, Aeneas knew he would hear the jingling of beads and tambourines and peals of laughter.

There was no laughter left within the city walls.

Aeneas didn't think he would laugh again, ever.

They made his blood boil, those Greeks. It also made another wave of his grief slam into him without remorse, knocking his breath away and making his lungs collapse. Aeneas felt his eyes pool with fresh tears. He'd been wrong, then. A wretched sob escaped his lips. Was this how much it had hurt? When Perseus woke at four summers alone on a random island and realised his mother had died at his father's hand? Would he be forced to look every day at the little things around him—like the knife strapped to his thigh, gifted to him by his best friend—or even the big ones, like his wife, without seeing her older brother in her face and her eyes, the very man who had introduced them and made sure their union had happened?