"Rumors are that you've stayed in Epirus for the past few months."
I chuckled and swallowed the rest of my wine, the sweet liquid giving my stomach a warm presence, "Yes, and now I've returned for your wedding, dear sister."
Cleopatra tightened her grip around her glass as her lips clinched and a dark viel fell over her face. And she turned to give me an inspection worth caution. "Father embarressed you in front of the guests attending his wedding. So you escape to Epirus. You are lucky----you can escape."
Cleopatra sighed and glanced over at her husband-to-be. Father had arranged yet another marriage, this time between Cleopatra and the Molossian king⸺an uncle who shared the same name as I. The age gap wasn't as vast as the last pair that was united here, but, I was growing tired of Father's matchmaking influenza. If all went to plan, it was undoubtedly to be me that next fell to one of Father's marriage schemes. I held out my glass to be refilled. As for Cleopatra, she was the only sane sibling who shared our mother's kinship. The rest were half siblings, forgotten, because 'twas my mother who was first to bare a son----well one that was sane.
I knew that it was terror that Cleopatra felt. I was able to encourage disinterest from her past suitors, but this time my endeavors were proven inadequate. It was inevitable that she were to marry.
"....Isn't it interesting?"
Cleopatra gave me a thin smile as she took another sip from her glass, "Interesting? I'll soon have to bed with such a man. I've heard tales of all the servant girls he's shared his bed with. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole population of his home-stead originated from his seed."
"His seed?," I cleared my throat as I kept my mind away from such cloudy thoughts. I did not want to linger in the thought of....that man. "That was not at all what I was speaking of."
Cleopatra glanced away, her brow furring with annoyance. "Well, what did you mean?"
I smiled, attempting to uplift her mood, "The odds that Father would choose now to involve himself with his offspring. Isn't his fondness not selective?"
Her face read the expression of one who was defeated. I saw pain in the crease of her eyebrows and that alone supplimented another layer of resentment. My Father was a nimble man, he percieved his opening and grasped it. He had wanted to marry her off, he found the break in my armor. I was the liability, 'twas indeed an account of my negligence.
I drew myself away from her and stumbled away from the couch, the daunting discomfort weighing on my shoulders. What I had just let slip my lips, it was imbecilic and empty-headed. Had one not knew my intent was to comfort her, one would have thought I was resolved to break my own sister's spirit.
The celebration had already worn late into the night and many were already exceedingly intoxicated. It was about time that I took my leave. My only reason for coming to a celebration like this was because I was the son of my Father. If I had a choice, I would have not set foot even into the palace walls. Not surrounded by sweaty bodies and an overly saturated reek of alcohol. I wanted to vomit away the wine that had previously passed through my lips----I brang myself disgust. But in an equal breath, I desperately wished to wash the bile away with the wine I just presumed to hate. Maybe the bile feelings would wash away as well.
"Alexander, my boy!"
I glanced over my shoulder to see Father's sizable frame in the midst of a network of chitons and brush, bruely facial hair. I grasped another glass from a servant's tray. The contents smelled of the ripe befuddleness of beer. I tipped the bottom to the ceiling and let the coarse, searing liquid trail down my throat. And then I went for another.
"Cannot hold your liquor well, boy? Are you even my son?"
I stumbled forward as I stared into my Father's one functioning eye. I was looking into the eye of the disgraced, the humliated. He bent over into a knee-slapping, seizure of laughter as the countless faces laughed along with him. He went forth to jest, yet his eyes wreaked the somber of the serious.
I found myself sliding my tongue across the roof of my mouth in effort to form a coherent sentence. To speak the truth of the underdog---it was not I who was a disappointment. What was the use pleasing a man who was never happy with it?
But....I was only left with fragments of a language that never properly formed against my tongue. I felt a soft heat drift over my shoulders and resonate at the tips of my ears. I was....an embaressment. I could not form a sentence....I had forgotten what words were. What was it....that was running through my mind before this? I....I.....regretted...what was it I had regretted?
I clung to that lifeless gray thread, but it unravelled in my mind and shriveled into a place I could not reach. Everything pitched towards me in a wave of sights and colors. The smell of liquor and oils filled my senses and a hazy blur guilded over my vision. I felt the bile pounding against my chest, this time the need to dispell my stomachs contents pounding against my ribcage like the urgent beating of the trapped gorrilla within me.
I...I craved air. I could not grasp a straight thought. I needed....clearity.