58. Kallias
KALLIAS
The ocean wind blows, salty and cold, through Kallias’ hair where he sits alone in the empty dining hall. He tries to relish the sting of it. He can’t quite bring himself to.
Kallias knows he’s an idiot. He does.
Honestly, he’s not really sure what happened…
Well, that’s not true. He knows exactly what happened. The prettiest boy he’s ever seen flashed him a smile and he caved immediately.
But it’s more than that. He’s been living in the dark for so long and Alexander was so… bright. For a moment he could see everything clearly, like a starless night broke into glorious dawn.
As he leans back in his chair, a chill seeping into his bones, Kallias can’t help but think he got a little too used to the sun.
That’s not even taking into account last night. Last night he really did go too far. They were, what, cuddling? Cuddling. Honestly, he assumed he wasn’t capable of that kind of affection, but if anyone could bring it out of him…
No. He doesn’t have time to think about Alexander right now.
He has minutes before the Council discovers what he did—before Lykos finds the boat empty, with a camera crew to air the failed ambush to the Republic. What was meant to be a show of strength will become a display of weakness.
He can already hear what the inhabitants of Kallipolis will be murmuring for the next several months. Maybe years.
Lykos is far too trusting to think his boy wouldn’t turn on him.
Lykos let seeds of dissent grow with no supervision.
Lykos was chosen so young to be the Educator—was he the right one?
It’ll be embarrassing for the whole regime. Lykos will be murderous.
But by that point, Alexander and his idiots will be beyond his reach in the nearest coastal town. Kallias knows the protocol for shutting the ports. It will take longer to close them off than for Alexander to get on a boat and sail away.
And Kallias will still be here.
He fiddles with Alexander’s ring, hanging next to the Forms-forsaken firefly.
He shouldn’t have taken it. He knew he was never going to return it.
But Alexander insisted and he was too weak to say no, because having any of him—even just a tiny ring—is better than nothing.
And because he wants proof for when he dies in this place that once in his life, he found someone who made him want to be… Just, to be.
But that’s over now. All he can hope is that Alexander doesn’t care that he’s gone.
That’s not what you want, he hears in his head, louder than everything else going on up there. You want him to be devastated, don’t you?
His perfect recall jumps on the train of self-flagellation.
Give him back, please. Please, I’ll do anything, it supplies, and his subconscious is in the tunnels again.
The pleas are muffled by the steel of a locked door. Kallias is on his knees, wishing the wall were soundproof. He doesn’t cry—he never cries—but his heart shreds apart so violently that you could make constellations with its pieces.
Then he’s back in the dining hall, and the memory is shelved in the endless library in his head. He puts it somewhere between the day Lykos showed him the secret Library and the very moment on his eleventh birthday that he realized he was too sullied to ever be a child again.
His mind has never been a particularly nice place to inhabit. Much more talkative than he is on his best days. And meaner, if that’s possible.
It always knows what to say, though.
Forms, he is so fucked.
A shout of “Kallias!” reverberates up and down the spiral staircase leading to the dining hall. The rage behind it is palpable even from a distance.
Soon he’ll be able to shut down like he needs to. Alexander and the Library and the sun will be locked away and he’ll slip into a back corner of his mind to become the hollow shell he used to be. But it’s not working now.
Now, when the Educator yells his name again, this time with his fuming face in view, he hears ‘estrela’ whispered in his ear.
When a cane hits him across the face, sending him sprawling to the ground with a loud crack, he feels a hand carding softly through his hair.
When he’s dragged through the halls, past his peers and classmates, he sees eyes deeper than the ocean, freckled with hazel.
Forms, those eyes.
He hopes he forgets them soon.
He knows he never will.