Matt wrapped a towel around his waist and sat down on the wooden bench outside the boys’ showers in the downstairs torture chamber, or as the Delos family liked to call it, the “exercise” room. Hanging out with demigods was not easy, but he couldn’t just stick his head in the sand and pretend that the world was a safe and predictable place anymore. Matt’s whole life, his whole future, had changed the second he hit Lucas with his car less than a month ago.
He looked at his right hand and grimaced. He was pretty sure his knuckles weren’t supposed to be this big, or this purple. He tried to ignore them. The last time he had told Ariadne that he’d broken something she’d fixed it, and then she turned a terrifying shade of gray. Matt didn’t ever want to see Ariadne like that again, especially not for his sake.
Matt just needed a minute to relax in the residual steam of his shower, and then he’d go over to the little freezer in the corner and put some ice on his hand. It’d be fine, and if it wasn’t—well, he was left-handed, anyway. His phone rang and he winced as he reached for it, clutching his side.
“Yeah?” he answered distractedly as he walked to the mirror. There was a large red welt rising up on his ribs. Great, he thought. Now I’ll have something black and blue on the upper half of my body to match that lovely bone bruise on my shin.
“Hey, man.”
“Zach?” Matt hissed. Immediately forgetting his aches and pains, he spun around and made sure that Jason or Lucas hadn’t walked in. “What the hell!”
“I know, I know. I just need—”
“Don’t ask me for a favor,” Matt warned. “I’ve done enough of those for you over the years already.”
“I’m not asking for a favor, I only want to . . . Can’t you at least meet up with me?” Zach sounded desperate. “You know, to talk? I just want to talk to you!”
“I don’t know, man.” Matt sighed with true regret. “We’re sort of past that point. I mean, we’ve chosen our sides, right? After you ratted out Hector, every single member of the Delos family is looking for a reason to kick your ass. Just stay away, all right?”
“All right,” Zach said so softly Matt could barely hear him. His voice shook, like he was scared witless. “I just needed a friend.”
“Zach . . .” Matt began to say, but the line went dead. He didn’t call Zach back.
R u in bed?
Helen almost dropped her phone when she saw that the text was from Orion, which would have been really bad, considering she was hundreds of feet in the air and he had no other way to contact her. Recovering from the nearly disastrous fumble, she hovered in midair and told herself to calm down as she typed a reply.
Almost. Are you going to meet me? she wrote, wondering if her phone had an emoticon for “hopeful.”
y. Need to c u. Driving 2 caves now.
See you soon.
Helen was unbelievably happy that Orion had finally gotten back in touch with her, but she still felt uneasy. It didn’t feel like he’d forgiven her. She would have given a lot to be able to see his face or hear his voice instead of settling for what had to be a text written hastily while he was driving.
She came in for a quick landing in her backyard and ran into the house.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Jerry hollered as she bounded past him, heading for the stairs.
“Four minutes to eleven,” Helen hollered back as she ran up the stairs and straight into the bathroom. “Punish me tomorrow, okay? I really need to get into bed!”
She could hear her dad mumbling angrily to himself downstairs about how nice things had been when Helen was nine. In a rather loud voice, he remembered how thoughtful she’d been at that age, how she did everything she was supposed to do, and then he asked the ceiling why daughters couldn’t just stay nine forever. Helen ignored him as she washed her face and brushed her teeth.
Helen couldn’t stop to think about anything but meeting Orion. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, but that didn’t matter. She just had to see him.
Before entering her room she put on warm socks and boots that she kept in the hallway, just in case it was as cold in there as it was outside. The door stuck. She pushed it open forcibly, making the wood of the lintel groan as she burst through the entryway. Her first steps crunched, like she had stepped on a carpet of corn flakes. Looking around, Helen saw why.
The entire room was covered in hoarfrost. The dresser, the bed, the floor, even the walls glinted sliver-white with layers of feathery ice. Her breath puffed out in front of her like a billowing cloud of smoke. Tilting her head back in disbelief, Helen saw the small fingers of icicles hanging down like crystalline buds above her bed. It had to be at least ten or fifteen degrees colder in her room than it was outside. How could that even be possible? She suspected it had something to do with the Underworld. Helen remembered that the cave that led to Orion’s portal had been freezing cold.
Shutting the door behind her and desperately hoping that her room would melt by morning, Helen shivered and pulled back the covers on her bed. Ice flakes rose up and danced around the room, like handfuls of glitter tossed in the air. The clock on her bedside table read 11:11. Zipping her jacket up as high as it would go, Helen gritted her chattering teeth in determination and climbed between the stiff, cold sheets.
When Helen appeared next to him Orion was already walking down the infinite beach that never led to any sea.
“Hi,” he said shyly, like it was the first time they had ever met.
“Hi, yourself,” Helen said back in what she hoped was a spunky way. She was really nervous, and desperate to lighten the mood between them. “So, are we pals again or did you just come down here to tell me where I can shove my quest?”
Instead of laughing, Orion smiled sadly at her. Helen swallowed down the tight feeling that was building in her throat. She didn’t know what she would do if Orion stopped helping her. She might not ever see him again.
“I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to stab you!”
That sounded terrible. Helen felt her eyes start stinging. Orion got downright panicky at the sight of her tears. If Helen wasn’t so upset, the expression on his face would have been funny.
“Whoa! Back up, I’m not mad at you at all. In fact, you should be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad at you?” Helen asked, bewildered. She wiped at a leaky eye with the back of her hand and tried to see his face. He wouldn’t look at her.
“I forced you, Helen. I was trying to—” He broke off and took a moment before starting over. “There have been Scions from the House of Rome who could control hearts so well that even members of enemy Houses could be together and talk to each other like the Furies weren’t even there. I know I’m strong enough to do it too, but I’ve never had anyone to teach me how. I was trying to do it in the cave with you, but instead I did something I promised myself I’d never do to another person. I manipulated you. I made you kiss me, and I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” Helen responded so quickly she nearly cut him off. He opened his mouth to argue with her, but she talked over him. “If you hadn’t, I would have killed you. I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I did. I almost killed you,” Helen repeated. She was choking up again, feeling how close she had come to doing something that she knew her conscience couldn’t handle.
“Hey. I’m fine, so no crying, okay?” He took her shoulders and pulled her into a huge, warm hug. Helen relaxed gratefully against him. “Believe me, I’ve done things that are far worse. That’s why I want you to stop and really think about whether or not you want to have me along.”
“You’re kinda slow, huh?” she said, her words muffled in his chest. She pulled back in his arms, laughing now the worst had passed. “Of course I want you here. I need you. I don’t want to get attacked by any monsters tonight.”
“Helen, this isn’t a joke. I could do much worse than just kill you.”
“What do you mean?” Helen thought about him reaching inside of her, how it had kind of hurt, even though it felt so good. He was so gentle. She imagined how horrible it would have felt if he hadn’t been. “Is this about your invisible hand?”
“My what?” Orion asked, confused. Then he suddenly blushed and looked down.
He eased himself away from Helen and put some distance between them. She shuffled around for a moment, unsure of what to do with her arms.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to call it,” she stammered apologetically, thinking she might have said something silly. “It felt like you reached into my chest. I pictured a hand.”
“No, don’t be sorry. Call it whatever you want. I’ve just never heard it described that way, that’s all. Not that I’ve done it that much,” he added quickly. “I’ve always known that’s not the kind of love I want. Forced.”
“No, I wouldn’t want that, either. That’s quite a talent you got there,” Helen said cautiously. She didn’t want to offend him, but the truth was, it frightened her a little. “Can everyone from the House of Rome do that?”
“No,” Orion assured her. “But they can sway you—and don’t think that isn’t bad enough, because it is. Sometimes the difference between doing the right thing and the wrong thing takes less than a nudge, but I’m the only one that I know of that can fully turn a heart. Or break it forever. And that’s not the worst I can do.”
Helen couldn’t imagine many things that were worse than having a heart that was broken forever, but something in the way his eyes widened and sunk in with fear told her that he could.
“So, what’s the worst you can do?” she asked gently. Orion clenched his jaw and spoke through his teeth.
“I’m an Earthshaker.”
He said “Earthshaker” like most people would say “ax murderer.”
“Okay,” she said blankly. “Wait, I don’t understand. What’s so horrible about that?”
He stared at her disbelievingly for a moment. “Helen . . . have you ever heard of a beneficial earthquake? One where everyone went around afterward saying, ‘Gee! It’s real lucky we had that devastating earthquake! I’m so glad everyone I know is dead and the whole city is a pile of rubble now!’”
Helen didn’t mean to laugh, but it slipped out, anyway. Frustrated, Orion tried to turn away from her, but she wasn’t about to let him go. She grabbed on to one of his thick forearms with both of her hands and tugged until he turned back and faced her.
“Don’t walk away. Talk to me,” she insisted, wanting to kick herself for laughing. “Explain this whole Earthshaker thing.”
Orion dropped his head and took her hand. As he spoke, he fiddled nervously with her fingers, rolling them between his own, as if the pressure soothed him. The gesture reminded her of another time when Lucas had taken her hand. She almost pulled away, but she didn’t. Orion needed her, and she realized that she wanted to be there for him. Always. Truce or no Truce, Helen couldn’t convince herself that caring for Orion was wrong.
“You know that my father’s side, the House of Athens, is descended from Theseus, a Scion of Poseidon,” he began carefully. “Well, it’s very rare, but I was born with all of Poseidon’s talents, including the ability to cause earthquakes. When a Scion is born with this particular talent, the law of our House is that the baby is to be exposed. But my father wouldn’t do it.”
“What do you mean by ‘exposed’?” Something about the dark way he said the word gave her goose bumps.
“Left on a mountainside to die of exposure to the elements.” Orion raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “It was considered a parent’s sacred duty to do this to babies born with the power to cause earthquakes in order to protect the community as a whole.”
“Sacred duty? It’s barbaric! Your House actually expected your father to leave you to die on a mountainside?”
“My House takes this law very seriously, Helen, and my father broke it. When I was ten and they found out I was still alive, they came after us. Three of my cousins are dead because of the choice my father made. What about them? They all had fathers who loved them, some of them had wives and sons who loved them, and they’re dead now—because of me.”
He had a point. His father had killed to protect him, but those men that came after them—they lost exactly what Daedalus had killed to protect. And another cycle of killing and revenge had started anew.
“Is that how your dad—Daedalus, right?—became an Outcast?” She asked the question quietly, careful not to push him too hard. When Orion nodded but wouldn’t look up from the ground, a shocking thought occurred to her. “You agree with them! You think your father should have left you to die.”
“I don’t know what he should have done, I only know what he actually did. And I know how it turned out,” Orion said darkly. “Before you judge the laws of my father’s House, just think about how many mortals—not just Scions but innocent, normal people like your father, Jerry—could be killed by me. Did you feel the tremors in the cave? Do you know how many people felt that quake I made the other night, or if anyone got hurt? Because I don’t.”
Helen recalled their struggle in the cave, how the earth had rolled under her. She started to get an inkling of how powerful he really was, and it was scary. But it was also exciting. Orion was dangerous, but not in the way he thought.
“And I could have done much worse than that.” His voice was low and shaky. “Helen, I can bring down whole cities, drop entire islands into the ocean, or even knock the edge of this continent if I really put my mind to it.”
Helen saw a desperate light spark in his eye, and she put a hand on his arm to stop him. His whole body was trembling. She could see that he was completely terrified of what he could do, and that he found even the thought of causing so much pain abhorrent. That told her everything she needed to know about him.
“You’re capable of monstrous things, so you must be a monster. I don’t even know why I hang out with you,” Helen said harshly.
Orion looked up at her, wounded, until he saw the smile spreading on her face. She shook her head sympathetically, like she thought he was foolish for even thinking her cruel words were said in earnest. He made a frustrated sound and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“I’m dangerous when I’m out of control. And you and me together with the Furies . . .” He trailed off uncertainly, desperate to find the words that would make Helen understand him. “I could hurt a lot of people, Helen.”
“I get it.” And she did. “In the cave you could have hurt me in a million ways, and maybe killed a million people while you were at it. But you didn’t. You’re a better person than you think you are. I trust you completely.”
“Really?” he asked in a hushed voice. “You’re really not afraid of me?”
“Maybe I should be. But I’m not,” she answered softly. “You know, when the Delos family first saw my lightning, for a second there they looked at me like I was a weapon of mass destruction. But I haven’t burned down any major cities. It’s not our talents that make us safe or dangerous, it’s our choices. You of all people should know that.”
Orion shook his head. “There’s this prophecy,” he said.
“Ugh! Not this malarkey again!” Helen said vehemently. “You want to know what I think? I think all those ancient prophecies are so full of poetic nonsense that half the time no one understands what they mean. You’re not the big bad Tyrant, Orion. And you never will be.”
“I hope you’re right,” he mumbled so quietly Helen barely heard him.
“You are so afraid of yourself,” she remarked, truly sad that he couldn’t see what a crime that was.
“Yeah, well. I’ve got reason to be.”
“Okay, I wasn’t going to ask, but now I sort of have to. You said earlier you’d done way worse things than me, and this was right after I owned up to stabbing one of my best friends in the chest. So what would you consider worse than that?”
Orion smiled pensively as he walked, thinking over her question carefully. Helen watched his face and smiled. He was such a thoughtful guy, and when something was important to him he took his time to think it through before he opened his mouth. She really liked that about him. It sort of reminded her of Matt.
“Can we have that conversation later?” he said finally. “I promise to tell you someday, just not yet, okay?”
“Sure. Whenever you’re ready.”
He looked over at her with tight lips, trying to be tough, but his eyes were vulnerable and that made him look very young.
“Am I really one of your best friends?” he asked quietly.
“Well, yeah,” Helen replied, feeling jittery, like maybe she shouldn’t admit to caring for him so much. But she was only admitting to friendship—not making any commitments that could harm the Truce, right? “Aren’t I one of your best friends?”
Orion nodded, but there was a pained look on his face. “I haven’t had many friends,” he admitted. “I never knew when I’d have to disappear, so I never saw the point, you know?”
He smiled cheerfully enough, but underneath he still looked troubled, like he was thinking a thousand things at once. Helen didn’t push him. He must have been terribly lonely his whole life. Her heart pinched at the thought.
She knew she was supposed to maintain some sort of barrier between herself and Orion. But every time she saw him she felt closer to him. And she didn’t want to block him out anymore.
What does it matter, anyway? she thought rebelliously. I’m not going to be alive long enough to commit myself to anyone, anyway. The Truce is not in any danger.
They kept walking in no specific direction, wherever their feet decided to wander. It wasn’t like they had a time limit or a deadline to meet. Technically, they could stay down there as long as they could bear being parted from food and drink, and although Helen already felt the beginnings of a serious thirst, she had gotten very good at doing without.
As they walked, Helen did most of the talking, telling Orion all about Claire and Matt and her father, Jerry. She should have felt more pressured to make progress, but she didn’t. She trusted that eventually she and Orion would find the blasted river they were looking for, and it would lead them to Persephone’s Garden.
Helen considered telling Orion about how she was sort of dying, but she couldn’t bring herself to spoil the moment. She was enjoying herself too much. And besides, what could Orion do to stop her from dying, anyway? What could anyone do about it? She had no guarantee that finding the Furies would end her descents into the Underworld and save her life. Helen had to accept the fact that this task might be the last she ever completed.
At least it’s something worth dying for, Helen thought.
She looked over at Orion and knew that there were worse things that could have happened to her. Hades was no picnic, but at least she’d found Orion down here. It just goes to show that Fate is nonsense, she thought wryly. Even if someone tells you the future, you never really know what you’re going to find until you get there.
A whimsical idea crossed Helen’s mind, and she laughed out loud.
“What is it?” Orion asked as he shot her a look.
“No, it’s nothing,” she replied, still snickering. Not looking where she was going, she tripped over some loose rocks in the sand and had to grab on to Orion’s arm to regain her balance. “I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be great if you and I randomly stumbled over what we were looking for?”
“Yeah, that’d be pretty great,” he said as he helped steady her. “Most people would want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“It’s not that,” she said, subdued. “I’m not thinking that I want our quest to be over right this second. But I do want Persephone’s Garden to magically appear in front of us.”
The scenery changed.
There was no warning, no gust of wind, and no freaky dissolve like in an old movie. One second they were walking down the infinite beach during the day, and the next they were someplace else. Someplace dark and terrifying.
Just to their left, a massive structure, made entirely out of a strange black metallic rock, soared up into the dead, starless sky. The parapets glared down on them like baleful eyes, and the outermost wall seemed to shift and change position in the haze of the far distance, as if it resented being looked at directly.
Behind the black castle, a thin curtain of fire shot straight up, illuminating the barren plain around it. Following the licking flames down to their source, Helen realized that she must be looking at Phlegethon, the River of Eternal Fire that encircled the Palace of Hades.
Directly in front of Orion and Helen stood what looked like a wrought-iron dome the size of a football stadium. It was made of the same black material as the castle, except instead of being formed into huge, solid blocks, the substance was tortured into decorative curlicues. Under the arching dome was a vast garden. It was as if the builder was trying to hide the fact that he or she had built a giant cage over the garden by making it look elegant.
The black material swam with colors. Blue and purple and even warm tones like red and orange surfaced and subsided on smokelike waves. It was like looking at a rainbow buried in soot—a wonder of light, forever trapped inside darkness.
“Wow,” Orion breathed. He was looking around, as astounded by the menacing castle and the cage next to it as Helen was. Then he looked down at her hands, still gripping his arm, and grinned mischievously. “Thanks for taking me with you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Helen whispered.
She was staring at the main gate of the cage in horror. The lock on it was bigger than her torso, but there was no keyhole.
“That’s not right,” Orion whispered when his eyes finally registered the lock that Helen was staring at so intensely.
“No, it isn’t,” Helen said angrily.
The whole thing pissed her off. This beautiful structure was nothing more than a prison to trap a young woman who had been stolen from her home and then tricked into a detestable marriage. Helen stormed up to the lockless gate and kicked it with all her might.
“Persephone!” Helen shouted. “I know you’re in there!”
“Are you insane?” Orion ran up behind Helen and tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, but she threw him off.
“Let me in!” she screeched imperiously, like she was channeling some prerevolutionary French queen. “I demand to be allowed into Persephone’s Garden this instant!”
The gate clicked and swung open with an ominous groan. Orion turned his head to look at Helen, his jaw dropping open in shock.
“If you say what you want, you can make it happen.”
Helen nodded in agreement, still trying to figure out how she’d done it. She thought back to the beginning of the conversation and how she had said jokingly to Orion that she “didn’t want to get attacked” that night. They had walked for a very long time without encountering any monsters. Then she asked for Persephone’s Garden to magically appear, and it had.
“But I have to know exactly what I want, and then I have to ask for it out loud,” she said.
Her face twisted up in a rueful grimace and a pained groan erupted out of her as she remembered her tortures. Hanging from the ledge. Imprisoned in the tree. Trapped inside the hell house. Worst—drowning in the pit. The strength swept out of her legs, but she would not fall. Not now.
“So many times I’ve suffered down here and I could have ended it whenever I wanted,” she continued in a bitter monotone, needing to say it to believe it. “All I had to do was say what I wanted to happen out loud and it would have. It’s almost too easy.”
“How young you are!” A musical but melancholic voice came to them from somewhere inside the giant, gilded cage. “Knowing what you really want and having the confidence to say it are two of the hardest things to do in life, young princess.”
Helen thought that over for a moment, and grudgingly admitted to herself that she agreed. If she asked for Lucas, and got him, she’d be guilty of something that would make her feel far worse than any cut or broken bone.
“Come in and visit with me. I promise, you won’t be harmed,” the voice continued, gently inviting them.
Helen and Orion shared a look and walked together through the open gate and into Persephone’s Garden.
Dappled light stretched from floor to ceiling in lacy rays. The dim light that filtered through the cage and the upper canopy of strange vegetation hit on dark green leaves that sparkled and glinted all around, and the dancing light gave the illusion of a gentle breeze.
Helen brushed close to a cluster of what she thought were lilacs, and caught her breath in shock when she felt them. Leaning in close to inspect the cluster, Helen saw that they were actually purple jewels, delicately carved and threaded together to create near-perfect replicas of real flowers. On closer inspection, Helen saw that the leaves were not real either, but spun out of silken threads. Nothing was real. Nothing grew here.
“So beautiful,” Orion said under his breath.
At first, Helen thought he was talking about the flower-shaped jewels, but when she glanced over at him she saw that he was looking down the path at the most elegant woman Helen had ever seen.
She was almost six feet tall, graceful as a swan, with skin such a deep shade of black it was nearly blue. She didn’t look that much older than Helen, but there was something about the way she moved, patient and precise, that made her seem much older. Her long neck was wrapped in ropes of huge, sparkling diamonds that were, quite frankly, put to shame by the size and luster of her eyes. On top of her glossy, knee-length hair was a tiered crown made of every type of gem that Helen could name, and quite a few she couldn’t. She wore a gown of fragrant, living rose petals that glistened with dew. The petals were white at the top and then deepened in shade to blushing pink and then darker still, until her feet seemed surrounded in a cloud of rich, red roses.
Under her bare feet, which twinkled with many toe-rings, a never-ending carpet of wildflowers budded, bloomed, and then withered. Every step she took caused a flood of flowers to spring to life, only to shrivel and die as soon as they touched the barren soil of the Underworld. It was like watching hundreds of gorgeous flowers throwing themselves off a cliff like lemmings, and Helen wanted it to stop.
“Awful, isn’t it?” Persephone said in her musical voice as she looked down at the dying flowers beneath her feet. “My essence creates them, but in the Underworld I don’t have the power to sustain them. No flower can survive down here for long.”
She looked directly at Helen as she spoke, her eyes communicating more meaning than her words. She knows I’m dying, Helen thought.
Helen glanced quickly over to Orion, who seemed oblivious to the silent girl-talk. Helen smiled at the queen, conveying her gratitude. She didn’t want Orion to know that she didn’t have much longer. If he knew she was dying, he might change the way he acted toward her.
As if obeying a time-honored protocol, Orion stepped forward and inclined his head and shoulders in a respectful bow.
“Lady Persephone, Queen of Hades, we come to beg a favor,” he said in a formal voice. It sounded strange, but right for the situation. Helen was surprised to realize that, like the Delos kids, Orion had been raised as a Scion, and he could easily switch between modern slang and old-world manners.
“May we join you?” he asked.
“Come, sit, and be welcome,” she said, gesturing to an onyx bench by the side of the path. “For you are welcome here in my garden if nowhere else, young Heir of two enemy Houses.” She performed such a smooth curtsy that it would have put a prima ballerina to shame.
Orion’s mouth tightened. At first, Helen thought it was in anger for bringing up his less-than-ideal childhood, but as she looked closer she realized that it was because he was overwhelmed with emotion.
Helen finally understood something about Orion that she hadn’t fully grasped before. Orion had never been accepted by anyone. Half of his family hated him because he hadn’t been left to die on a mountainside, and the other half hated him because the Furies compelled them to. His mother was dead, and the mere sight of him sent his father into a Fury-induced rage. Apart from Daphne, who had an ulterior motive for everything she did, had any Scion ever invited Orion to actually sit next to them with such kindness?
Studying Orion’s serious expression, Helen sensed that the only place he had ever been formally welcomed into a Scion’s presence was right here, right now, by Persephone.
He’s only welcome in hell, Helen thought. It made her chest ache to even consider the notion.
Realizing that Helen was standing there gawking, Persephone extended a hand, generously inviting her to join them on the bench.
Helen blushed and bobbed her head in an awkward way. She’d been caught spacing out like a crazy person again, and she couldn’t remember when she’d felt like a bigger hick. She dearly wished she’d paid attention to all those stanzas on courtesy that she’d skipped over in the Iliad. Persephone seemed to sense Helen’s discomfort and gave her a warm, welcoming smile.
“No need to stand on ceremony. Come to think of it, maybe I should be the one to bow to you,” Persephone said with the barest hint of a tease in her tone.
“Hey, I’m not the one wearing a crown,” Helen said with a laugh, sensing that it was okay to make a joke. Persephone smiled graciously, but then her expression became serious.
“Not yet,” she said cryptically, and then continued in an assured voice. “You seek a way to kill the Furies.”
Orion and Helen looked at each other, shocked by such an overt statement.
“Yes,” Orion said with conviction. “I want to kill them.”
“No you don’t.” Persephone turned her sparkling chocolate eyes on Orion, melting him instantly. “You want to help them. They desperately need you to save them from their suffering, my darling. Do you know who the Furies are?”
“We don’t,” Helen said, not liking how familiar the gorgeous goddess was being with Orion. “Please explain it to us.”
“The Furies are three young sisters—born from the blood of Uranus when his son, the Titan Cronus, attacked him. The Furies were stolen away by the Fates at the moment of their creation and forced to play their role in the Great Drama. The pain they feel is real, and the burden they carry . . .” Persephone broke off and stared pleadingly into Orion’s eyes. “They are still little more than children and they’ve never experienced even one single moment of joy. You know my meaning, prince. You know what they suffer.”
“Hatred,” he said, glancing over at Helen. She recalled how horrible it was to feel hatred toward Orion in the cave, and she knew that he was thinking the same about her.
“We have to help them,” Helen whispered to him, and he smiled in answer. The two of them were entirely in tune. “We have to set them free.”
“The Furies and the Scions,” Orion said, determined.
“Yes,” Helen agreed. “And I promise, I’ll set you free, too, Your Highness.”
“No, don’t!” Persephone suddenly exclaimed. She rushed to speak. “Hurry, Helen, you won’t survive much longer without dreaming! You must bring the Furies water from the River—”
The name of the river was drowned out by a great, booming voice.
“HELEN, YOU ARE BANISHED.”
Helen felt her whole body being hurled up and out of the Underworld as if it were being scooped up and thrown by mile-wide hand. For a moment, she thought she saw a huge face dominating her vision. It seemed familiar. His bright green eyes were so sad. . . .
Helen woke in her bed. Sitting up, she dislodged the fine layer of ice crystals that were dusted over her covers like sifted flour, sending some of the glittering flecks to dance in the dry, subzero air. Her face felt stiff, so she pulled a hand out from under the blankets and raised it to her numb cheek. Although her fingers were nearly senseless with cold, she could tell that her entire face was covered in a spiky layer of frost. She moved her hand to feel her hair and she found that it, too, was frozen in thick ropes of ice.
Breathing fast and sending clouds of steam out in front of her, Helen looked around, trying to control her shivering. Everything in her room looked slightly blue, but the deep chill was worst around her bed. Helen picked up the clock on her nightstand and had to rub away a layer of ice with her thumb to see its face. The time turned from 11:11 to 11:12 as she stared at it.
Although she and Orion had been down in the Underworld for what felt like days to them, in the real world she had closed her eyes mere seconds ago and already she was nearly frozen through. The cold was definitely getting worse. Helen wondered if her body would freeze solid the next time she descended.
Then she wondered if she would ever descend again. She’d been banished by Hades himself. That didn’t sound very promising.
Helen got out of bed and slipped her way across her icy floor to get her phone, but there was no text from Orion yet. He was probably still coming up from the caves. Time didn’t pass while they were in the Underworld, which meant that the second Orion entered the portal would be the second he exited, no matter how long he had “spent” on the other side. If they were lucky, Orion was coming back right now after being allowed to stay in the Underworld long enough to hear what Persephone had to say. Helen could only hope that Orion had succeeded where she had so obviously failed.
Helen shivered violently and realized that she had to get out of her room and warm up somehow. She remembered Hector’s lecture on the beach, right after he had nearly drowned her. Helen might be impervious to weapons, but she was not completely invulnerable, and extreme cold could kill her as surely as drowning.
Muscling her icy door open as quietly as she could, Helen poked her head out of her bedroom and looked around. Luckily, her dad was still downstairs watching TV. She shut the door firmly behind her, pushed the bean-bag heat stopper up against the crack on the bottom to hide the unreal cold in her bedroom from her father, and shouted down to Jerry that she was going to take a bath to help her sleep. He grumbled something about how she should just close her eyes and give it more than one second, but he didn’t ask any questions or object.
As she headed into the bathroom, Helen smacked herself on the forehead with her phone a few times as punishment for her terrible blunder in the Underworld. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid. Hades was probably not the best place to talk about freeing the captive queen, as “the boss” was probably listening the whole time. And Helen had openly threatened to take away the one thing in the entire multiverse that Hades cared about—his queen. Stupid! Now Helen was banished. How the heck was she supposed to accomplish her task if she couldn’t descend?
As she stripped and filled the tub up with hot water, she thought through her meeting with Persephone. It struck her as odd that Hades hadn’t intervened one way or the other when she and Orion talked about freeing the Furies. It was only when Helen opened her big yap about freeing his queen that Hades had put his foot down.
Helen gingerly lowered herself into the hot water, phone still in hand, and filed that bit of information away. Then she sighed and soaked, trying to figure out how she was going to thaw out her room before her father found out about it. Her phone vibrated.
Are you up? Orion texted.
OMG, did you hear the name of the river? Helen sent back.
What r u talking about? I got booted right after P said you were going to die.
Oh. There was more, Helen replied, ignoring the whole dying thing and hoping Orion would, too. She told me that we need to give the Furies water from the River . . . I didn’t hear the name b/c I got booted, too.
Still good intel. I’ll find the right one eventually.
Wait, “you’ll” find? What about “we’ll” find?
What part of “won’t survive” did you not get?
That’s only if I don’t dream.
You don’t dream?
Not when I descend.
Then you’re not descending anymore.
Helen thought that was a little bossy.
NOT really your decision, she texted back.
NOT going to argue came his defiant reply.
Hang on. You don’t control this.
N.O. Now go away. I have to drive.
For ten minutes, Helen sloshed around the tub, muttering to herself. There was something he was missing—a point that she knew she had to make—but she couldn’t see it just yet. She tried to get him to come back to the argument with all kinds of texts. She even threatened to lie down and descend immediately. After that, he came back with a long reply, one of those texts that you have to pull over to type.
If you get back into bed, I swear to you, I’ll swim to Nantucket, kick in your door, and tell Jerry everything. You can explain to him why you want to die. Stay out of the UW. I’m not joking around anymore.
Threatening to tell her dad was just plain low—she’d told Orion that Jerry was a “no-fly zone,” and he’d promised never to violate that. But she had to admit, if she was really considering doing it, telling her dad was the only threat that would have stopped her. Orion knew her very well. She wondered how he’d managed that in such a relatively short amount of time. Helen smiled at the phone for a moment, and then forced herself to stop. She didn’t like being told what to do, but she did like that he cared enough to try.
I can’t descend, anyway, she finally admitted after a long lull in their exchange. Hades banished me and booted us both out of the UW because I threatened to take P away. Can you still go down?
Pretty sure. You’re banished? Wow. There really is such a thing as a good god. Strange that it’s Hades.
She knew he was just worried about her safety, but there was something really wrong with his logic. Helen started typing before she even knew what she was going to say. Her scattered brain finally hit on why she was so upset about being banished, and why she had argued with Orion so belligerently to begin with.
But remember the prophecy, she typed frantically. I’m the Descender—the only one who’s supposed to be able get rid of the Furies. If I don’t do this, how many more will suffer? You’d never see your dad again.
Helen bit her lip, agonizing over whether or not she should tell him what she was really thinking.
We’d never be able to see each other again. I don’t think I could handle that, she finally sent, adding in her thoughts, for what little time I have left, anyway.
There was a long pause where Orion didn’t respond, and Helen wondered if she’d just made a huge mistake. To take her mind off him, she sent an email to Cassandra and the rest of the Greek Geeks, explaining everything that had happened in the Underworld. Then she stared at the face of her dark phone until she heard her dad come upstairs, get in bed, and start snoring. Still, Orion didn’t text back.
Helen got out of the tub and dried off. She didn’t really know what she was going to do next, but she knew that she couldn’t go back to her frozen room. There was always the couch downstairs, but she decided that whether she lay down or not, it really didn’t matter. She’d lost track of how many weeks she’d gone without true rest, anyway.
She spent a very long time in the hot bathroom catching up on the grooming ritual that she’d neglected for ages. She clipped things that needed clipping and rubbed all of her bendy parts with gooey oils. When she was finished, Helen wiped the steam off the mirror over the sink and for the first time in ages, she took a good look at herself. The first thing she noticed was her mother’s necklace. It stood out in sharp relief against her flushed skin, glowing on her throat as if it had sucked power from all of her self-pampering. Then she looked up at her face.
It was the same face that so many people had died for eons ago, that so many were still dying for. Scions were still killing each other to avenge deaths that went back all the way to the walls of Troy—all the way back to the first woman to wear the exact face that Helen was looking at in the mirror.
Was any face worth all that? It didn’t make any sense. There had to be more to the story. All this suffering couldn’t be about one girl no matter how pretty she was. Something else had to be going on that wasn’t in the books.
She heard her phone buzz and rushed to grab it, knocking over half the toiletries on the sink as she did so. She snatched the assorted bottles and tubes out of the air before they had a chance to clatter noisily against the floor and wake her dad. Suppressing a nervous giggle, she put them silently back in their proper places, then looked at the message.
I’ve thought it over. If this is what it takes to keep you alive, then I’m ready for it, Orion answered, almost half an hour after they’d stopped texting. I’ll let you go, I’ll let this whole quest go, but I can’t let you die.
Helen slumped down on the edge of the tub in disbelief. Giving up would damn Orion to a life on the run, without a home or a family. He was willing to suffer all that—for her.
Or was it for her stupid face? After all, they barely knew each other. What could inspire that kind of self-sacrifice?
Daphne had called their nearly identical faces cursed, and Helen had always assumed that her mother had meant that their faces had cursed them. For the first time, Helen considered the possibility that her mother had meant that it cursed the people who looked at them. The thought of Orion sacrificing everything he’d ever wanted just because it was dangerous for her didn’t sit right with Helen. There was so much more at stake than just one person’s life, even if that life was her own.
Helen felt something give way inside—so what if she had a crush on him, or if he had one on her? Orion couldn’t give up now. Not just because of what it would cost him, but because of what it would cost them all. If no one got rid of the Furies, what would happen to Hector and the other Outcasts? What would happen to all the Scions? Helen remembered Orion telling her about his dream of a field of Scion bones in Hades, and realized that it had been more than just a nightmare. Orion had received a warning in that dream, Helen was sure of it. The cycle had to end or their kind would eventually become extinct, just like the Ice Giants.
You jackass. She stabbed at the keys with her fingers, like she was trying to push her words directly into his big, fat, self-sacrificing, and unbelievably brave head. If you give up on our quest I will hunt you down myself! I’ll find a way to fix this dreaming/banished-by-Hades problem, and when I do we’ll free the Furies together. In the meantime, you KEEP GOING. Got it?
She pressed send and waited. There was a long pause. Several times Helen started to write a text, but she ended up erasing each one. She was so tired her eyes were watering and her ears kept getting blocked up, forcing her to yawn repeatedly to clear them.
Mid-yawn Helen felt something pop behind her eyes, and noticed her upper lip had suddenly become very damp. She touched her mouth and found blood on her fingers. She put a tissue to her nose before she had a chance to stain anything and pressed down hard, waiting for the bleeding to stop. Finally, after mopping up her bloody face and glaring at her phone as if that would make Orion respond faster, it lit up again.
You can hunt for me all you want, Hamilton, but you know you’ll never find me, right?
He was joking around again, which was a very good sign. Helen knew this decision had been hard for him, so she needed to be sure. She needed something that resembled a promise, in case she didn’t make it to the end of their quest.
Do we have a deal? You’ll keep going no matter what? she texted. He didn’t respond immediately, so she added, Hello? Deal?
Sorry. Getting into bed. Yeah, I’ll keep going.
Helen smiled and slid off the edge of the tub to lean against the wall. She wrapped herself up in her robe and stuffed her feet in her slippers as she scooted down into a makeshift nest of warm, damp towels. She imagined him climbing under the covers in his dorm, taking his phone with him. He’d fall asleep like that, she thought, with their conversation cupped in his hand.
Knew I could count on you, she sent, cradling his messages close to her.
Always and forever. Where are you?
Bed, she wrote, even though it was more like “floor.”
Good, me too. You can finally rest. And so can I! Exhausted.
Helen didn’t want to stop texting with him. She could have stayed up all night trading little stories in the dark, but she was finally warm again after what seemed like years of shivering. Her eyes were beginning to close on their own.
Good night, Orion.
Sweet dreams.
