TRUST

Chapter 9: Another Departure

I was a prisoner.

I was seen as a dangerous one, it seemed. 

My wrists were bound with thick metal chains that made sure that a finger could not be moved without scratching the skin to bleed. I was hanging in the middle of the dungeon with my feet floating from the ground. My feet were also constrained, with chains that led to either sides of the wall. They were ensuring that escape wouldn't even be an option. This was it, wasn't it? I was a dead man. 

What would father think? He would be ashamed. He would be angry that I failed, less angry that I would die, perhaps. Maybe he wouldn't even know that I died, or it was possible that his messenger would watch me executed among the crowds. At least then, the news could arrive to him. Not that he cared.

But, mother would. How she would hurt.

Yes, mother would care, she would break, she would cry. She would lose a son once again. One dead and the other's existence unknown. 

The brazen bull placed among the streets of Althea, people who were supposedly busy about their day, suddenly rushing to watch the execution. Nobles with their colorful clothes, slaves with their robes and chores, even children with their worn out little toys all running to watch a man put to death. The death machine placed in the middle, with slaves carrying wood to place underneath it, which later would be burnt, as the victim—I was going to be burned, alive.

How would I be carried there? By a carriage? No, less likely. They would make me walk, make the sun scorch my skin, the guards with their whips tearing , and cast wound after the other continuously.

The Spartans I have killed, the Athenians, the children I have cursed to die when I was a child. Would they all wait and prepare apt punishments for me to suffer? 

Suddenly, I could hear a pitter-patter of footsteps approaching me from the dungeon's entrance. The sound was loud and definite, but a little lazy.

Loukianos

Why was he here? He did not have any matter to pick up with me, or any concerns, or anything whatsoever. Yet here he was, in front of the bars of my prison. His grey eyes flashed palely, his dark looking eyes that I had noticed since the first time I saw him, with a little sly smile on his lips. He glanced shortly at the chains on my limbs, smiling wider as he saw them and then he looked at my face.

"What do you want?" I asked flatly.

His family was going to kill me, Why give them the satisfaction of knowing that I actually care?

"Now, don't be disrespectful Alexious. I am aiding." He added with a honeyed voice, then leaned on the bars of the empty prison behind him, his foot tapping on the ground.

"Aiding, you say?" I asked, a little perplexed by the word he just used. Aiding, I tried the word in my head. Aiding me with what? Then, just then,  I realized everything he meant. I realized every single purpose he had used me for.

The first meeting. His approach towards Sapphira and I, his hesitancy in walking towards us. It was not because his relationship with his siblings were rocky, but it was mostly because he was cautious about me.

The time when he came into the garden, cloaking his intention with a pretentious care for his sister,where all he wanted to know was what lie I had come up with to enter this home. Clever bastard.

Oh! The night where he gave me the thought of killing! He knew that Georgios was about to approach me, he knew that Georgios had known and possibly shared such information with him. He intended for me to kill his own brother. One he seen as what? A threat to him or a rival within his own family?