That night, Lucas dressed carefully. He knew the meeting of the Houses was a semiformal affair, but that didn’t mean that he was going to wear anything that would restrict his movement. He didn’t trust any of the guests they were about to receive, and there was no way in hell he was going to put on anything that would hinder him in a fight.
Of course, fighting was strictly forbidden at these meetings. But Lucas knew that this was going to be the first time in twenty years that most of these people had seen each other. On top of that, many of them had killed someone who someone else in the room had loved dearly. It was a grudge match waiting to happen.
Lucas went downstairs and found half his family crowded around the TV in the living room, listening to the evening news. The pictures on TV showed an intense lightning storm over what looked like a blacked-out city.
“Is that Manhattan?” Lucas asked, moving closer to the screen.
“Yes,” his mother responded, her voice quiet with shock. “The whole city is dark.”
Lucas could only imagine the chaos that would cause in New York. Subway lines would be stalled on the tracks with people inside, elevators would be shut down, stranding people at the tops of buildings—not to mention the lawlessness that was bound to break out in the dark.
“Why would Zeus do something like that?” Andy asked.
“To remind us he can,” Hector answered, his jaw set.
There was a knock at the front door, and Lucas heard everyone inhale a tense breath.
“I’ll get it,” Kate offered, but Noel put her hand on Kate’s shoulder to stop her.
“It has to be me,” Noel said kindly. “It’s my hearth.”
Lucas followed her to the front of the house. When Noel opened the door, Lucas felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. The man standing in the doorway had black hair, bright blue eyes, and a tall, athletic build. He looked like Lucas, aged twenty years.
“Daedalus,” Noel said through a tight jaw.
“Noel,” Daedalus replied. He crossed his arms in an X over his chest and bowed respectfully, but it was clear they were not on good terms.
Lucas couldn’t breathe for a moment. He’d been told many times that he looked like he was from the House of Athens, but he had no idea that he looked so much like the man who had killed his grandfather.
“Welcome,” Noel said, barely meaning it. “I offer you my hospitality.”
“I’m honored,” Daedalus said, and entered. His eyes went directly to Lucas, and he smiled ruefully in recognition. Then his eyes darted past Lucas and hardened. “Hello, son,” he said, and for a confused moment Lucas wondered if Daedalus was speaking to him.
“Father,” Orion said formally.
Lucas turned to see Orion standing right behind him with a closed look on his face. He’d been so stunned by Daedalus’s appearance that he hadn’t noticed Orion and Hector joining them.
Daedalus strode forward, his gait proud and more than a little intimidating. He offered his hand to his son, and Orion shook it without smiling.
“You look strong,” Daedalus said, his eyes measuring up Orion.
“I am,” Orion replied tersely. Their eyes locked, and Daedalus was the first to look away.
Lucas had never heard Orion speak so coldly, but after the way his father had abandoned him, Lucas couldn’t blame him. If Daedalus noticed that Orion was being uncharacteristically harsh, he didn’t show it. He looked right past his angry son and at Hector.
“Ajax,” he said under his breath. For a moment his face looked regretful before it hardened again into a forbidding scowl.
“Come inside,” Noel said. “Boys, make a hole.”
A knee-jerk reaction to protect his turf welled up in Lucas. He didn’t want to let Daedalus through, and he could tell Hector and Orion felt the same way he did. They all stood their ground.
“Oh, will you just move?” Noel grumbled impatiently as she pushed past them. “It doesn’t matter that the Furies are gone—you all still act like a pack of wild dogs. Everybody’s got to sniff everybody else’s butt.”
Daedalus managed to crack a smile and followed Noel. Hector, Lucas, and Orion finally eased up and let him through.
“Awkward,” Hector said after Daedalus had passed.
“A regular ray of sunshine, isn’t he?” Orion said sarcastically, acting more like himself again. “Oh, and that’s his ‘happy face’ by the way.”
“Why didn’t you warn me I look so much like your dad?” Lucas asked, glaring at Orion.
“I thought you knew,” Orion replied, shrugging.
“I knew there was supposed to some sort of resemblance, but this is ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to feel about this?”
“It’s no picnic for me, either. Every time I look at you I see my dad. The Fates like to mess with us, Luke. They make it so that we all look like the person it would be most ironic for us to look like.” Orion suddenly grinned. “Take Hector. He looks like someone everyone liked, but he sucks.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Hector replied brightly, like Orion had just given him a compliment. They all chuckled, and the tension dissipated a bit.
“Don’t let it rattle you,” Orion warned seriously, eyebrows lifted. “We’ve got other things to deal with tonight.”
“I won’t,” Lucas said firmly. “I know what I’m here for.” He knew Orion understood that he was talking about protecting Helen.
Helen could hear lots of unfamiliar voices downstairs as more and more Scions arrived for the meeting of the Houses. She could feel the mounting tension through the floor like the deep thrumming of a subwoofer. Helen’s new sensitivity to emotions left her wide open to everyone else’s turmoil. She didn’t know all the details of the war twenty years ago, but she was certain that there were plenty of old scores that still needed settling. One story down, a toxic mixture of hatred, love, and loss threatened to explode into violence at any moment. It felt to Helen like she was standing on top of a bomb.
Helen tugged nervously at her outfit. It was a bit fancier than she was used to. She’d always been a sales-rack kind of girl, but Daphne had brought her a designer getup, insisting that it would make her feel more confident. Instead, it made her more nervous. Helen was pretty sure the buttery-soft leather boots she wore were worth more than her entire wardrobe. She wondered where her mother got the money to pay for all the clothes, but decided she didn’t want to know. Daphne had no problem stealing priceless treasures from museums. Helen was pretty sure that department store security systems didn’t even show up on her radar.
For a moment Helen pictured her mother leaving a trail of mayhem behind her as she made her way from Newfoundland to Nantucket to get from Daedalus’s house to the meeting at the Deloses’—stolen cars, robbed stores, broken hearts piling up behind her as she traveled. Her mother had been back for an hour, and all Helen could think about was how many laws Daphne had broken since they last saw each other.
“Stop fidgeting,” Daphne said. She pulled the chain around Helen’s neck and fished out the heart necklace, laying the charm over Helen’s clothes. “The House of Atreus is descended from Zeus, so it’s the highest ranking. We join the group second to last,” Daphne said, coaching Helen. “Last, of course, is the Oracle.”
Helen pulled away from her mother, reaching for a hairbrush to hide the fact that she didn’t want to be touched by her. Daphne noticed, anyway.
“It’s time. Everyone’s here,” Daphne said brusquely.
“How do you know?” Helen asked.
“I recognize all their voices.” Daphne laughed mirthlessly and tucked her hair behind her ear with her pinkie finger. “Some of the people downstairs I know better than I know you.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Not fault,” Daphne said gently. “Choice. It was my choice, Helen, and it was the right one. You really were better off without me.”
Helen opened her mouth to argue with Daphne, but stopped. As a Falsefinder, she could hear the truth in Daphne’s voice. Daphne wasn’t feeding her a line or trying to excuse herself for bad parenting. She really believed that she’d done the right thing and, thinking about her father still asleep just down the hall, Helen agreed. She had been better off without her mother. Daphne might have abandoned her, but she’d abandoned her to a better life—a happier life—with Jerry for a dad, and Claire and Matt as best friends. It must have taken a lot of discipline for Daphne to do that. Helen started to understand how fortunate she’d been. She’d had about seventeen years of normal life that had shaped her into the person she was now. And Daphne had been the one to give that to her, by leaving.
“Thank you,” Helen whispered.
“You’re welcome,” Daphne said back hollowly.
Surprised at her tone, Helen looked down at Daphne’s chest and saw nothing but a dark void—a gaping hole that went on and on, like an endless well of emptiness instead of a heart. She shrank away from her mother. The gesture was not lost on Daphne.
“What, Helen? What is it?” she asked.
“Your heart’s gone,” Helen answered, too overwhelmed by the unnatural hole inside Daphne to remember to conceal her new talent.
“It died the day Ajax did,” Daphne replied simply.
“But there’s nothing there. Not even a broken heart,” Helen said, shaking her head. “You’re not sad or angry or hurt. You feel nothing. That can’t be natural.” She locked eyes with Daphne and grabbed her wrist to keep her from moving away. “What did you do, Mother?” Daphne tried to pull away from Helen, but her daughter was too strong.
“Whatever was left of my feelings I traded in order to accomplish a goal. Women do it all the time. Scion women swear it before Hecate,” Daphne said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion as a thought occurred to her. “But how can you know what I don’t feel?” Daphne murmured, more to herself than to Helen.
“Helen?” Andy said as she tapped on the door. “Are you in there?”
“Yes,” Helen replied. She released her mother and quickly turned to the door. “Come in.”
Andy pushed the door open tentatively and peeked into the room. “Noel is getting . . . ah . . . antsy is the only polite word I come up with right now. She says you and your mom need to get your butts downstairs before somebody murders somebody else and gets blood all over her clean floors.” She smiled and held up her hands. “I’m quoting her, by the way.”
“I’ll bet.” Helen chuckled. “We’re coming.”
There was still so much she and Daphne needed to talk about, but as usual where her mother was concerned, Helen was going to have to wait until later to get any answers. She and Daphne followed Andy out of Ariadne’s bedroom and down the hallway toward the stairs.
“My, my,” Daphne said quietly as she followed Andy’s graceful silhouette. “Aren’t you a rare fish?”
Helen saw Andy’s back stiffen at Daphne’s taunt and her gait taper off to a stop.
“I’m half siren,” Andy said. She turned to look Daphne dead in the eye. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” Daphne replied. She met Andy’s gaze and stood firm. “But you obviously do, and it’s time you got over it.”
Daphne brushed past Andy. Helen followed reluctantly, giving Andy an apologetic look as she passed by.
“Hector isn’t Apollo,” Daphne added when she reached the stairs. “It’s time you got over that, too.”
“You have no right,” Andy began angrily.
“Hector is one of the best men I’ve ever known, little half siren who hates herself,” Daphne interrupted, silencing Andy. Helen saw Daphne’s eyes harden until they sparkled like diamonds. “You don’t deserve him.”
Helen mouthed the words I’m sorry to Andy as she went down the stairs, but Andy had turned on her heel and gone before Helen could finish.
Still thinking about Andy, Helen followed her mother into the tense living room. Her eyes went immediately to a big, blond man who stood in front of Castor and Pallas in the place she knew was reserved for the Head of the House of Thebes.
He had to be Tantalus, and although she had never met him before, she recognized him. She pictured his face, red, sweaty, and twisted with rage as he tried to beat her child out of her.
Tantalus stared at Daphne. It was the same way that Menelaus stared at Helen of Troy. With Helen’s new talent she could see his chest crawling with need. For a moment, his eyes darted over Daphne’s shoulder to land on Helen. She shivered with revulsion, remembering another life when she had been forced to be his wife after Troy fell. Then his eyes went back to Daphne, where they stayed until the Oracle entered.
As soon as Cassandra glided into the room, her bell-bracelet tinkling delicately, Lucas, Hector, Orion, and Helen moved as one to join her. Cassandra sat in her giant chair. Orion stood at her left, Helen at her right. Hector and Lucas stood behind Helen, one to either side of her.
The outburst from the assembled host was immediate.
“Helen! Get back here!” Daphne scolded. Helen gladly ignored her.
“Lucas . . . son,” Castor said, clipping his words sharply. “You are to stand behind your uncle Tantalus.” Lucas looked away from his father, eyes forward and face expressionless like a trained soldier, and didn’t leave his chosen place behind Helen.
“You see? I told you!” hissed a slender man with full lips. He was older, about Helen’s mother’s age, but he was the kind of guy who just got more handsome as he aged. Definitely someone from the House of Rome, she decided. Helen didn’t recognize his face, but from the way Orion and Daedalus stared daggers at him, she knew he had to be Phaon.
Phaon turned his back on the group and addressed his faction. “Orion won’t even stand with us. He doesn’t care about the House of Rome, but you still call him your Head? Do we need any more proof that he is unfit to lead?”
Helen glanced down at the suppurating gash that should have been his heart, and her stomach churned. Phaon’s face and body might be beautiful, but this creature she looked at was rotten to the core. She saw Orion’s heart flare with anger. She caught his eyes and pleaded with him silently, trying to calm him down.
“Enough,” Cassandra commanded in a low voice. An obedient hush descended as everyone’s attention turned to the Oracle. “The days of division are over. The Houses are one, and we have formed a coalition of our own to express that union. Each House is represented by its Heir, and we’ve chosen Helen as our leader.”
“Challenge,” Phaon said immediately, a smirk plastered on his face as he sized up Helen’s skinny arms and soft hands. “I challenge Helen Atreus for the right to lead the Heirs . . . and the Oracle.”
“Did Christmas come early this year?” Hector drawled as he stepped forward, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m Helen’s champion, dickhead. You challenge her, you fight me.”
Phaon’s face blanched. He sputtered something about how his House didn’t allow champions, that it was an archaic bylaw that should be removed. Hector glared at Phaon as he backed down, every inch of him glowing like a storybook hero in front of a cringing coward.
“And you, Orion?” Daedalus called out to his son in a demeaning tone. “You allow Helen to lead, and Hector to be her champion. . . . What honor does the Heir to the House of Athens hold?”
“Orion is my champion,” Cassandra snapped. Her mouth was pinched in anger as she regarded Daedalus. “Is that honorable enough for you, Attica?”
Daedalus bowed reverently to the Oracle, his arms crossed in an X across his chest and his torso parallel to the ground as he spoke. “May the Pride of Athens serve you well, Sibyl, to the glory of our House.”
When he stood up straight again he regarded Cassandra strangely, his eyes darting from her to Orion and back again like he couldn’t understand their connection to each other.
Helen saw the confusion inside of Daedalus, drifting aimlessly around his heart like sullen smoke. As the House Heads conferred with their members over this new development, Helen stared at Cassandra and Orion.
Cassandra was the cold hand of Fate, and as such she was not supposed to be able to be passionate about anything. Lately, she had been pulling away from everyone, including her own family, and they had all accepted this as an unavoidable consequence of her position. But that wasn’t the case with Orion. She growled like a cornered cat whenever anyone slighted him.
Chastened, Daedalus moved back to his position in front of another dark-haired, blue-eyed man from the House of Athens. Orion glanced down at Cassandra and grinned. Inside his chest, Helen saw tenderness, not attraction. He was obviously fond of his “little Kitty,” and grateful that she had defended him in front of his father, but he didn’t regard her as a woman.
The silvery orb hanging in Cassandra’s chest seemed barren and remote to Helen, like a dead star, but it flared with it’s own brand of mercurial light when Orion smiled at her. It danced. It glowed. It filled up and spilled over, just like any woman’s heart would when the man she adored smiled at her.
It was exactly what Orion had told Helen he’d always wanted—to be loved more—and there it was, right in front of him. But he didn’t seem to see it.
Helen glanced at the faction from the House of Rome, wondering if any of them saw what she saw.
Phaon was staring at Cassandra. He ogled the pure, crystalline light inside of her in a way that made Helen’s skin crawl. Obviously, Phaon could see it, even though Orion couldn’t.
But what Orion did see was Phaon staring at Cassandra.
“Don’t even look at her,” Orion growled, stepping in front of Cassandra and shielding her from Phaon’s view.
Daedalus and his second strode toward Phaon, their blue eyes icy with hatred. Even Castor and Pallas, usually so levelheaded, reacted to the threat to Cassandra and the whole room seemed to move toward Phaon like a menacing wave. Daphne intercepted them all with raised hands.
“Dae, I know. I do. But not here, not now,” Daphne said in an undertone to Daedalus, her eyes pleading. “Castor. Don’t break your oath of hospitality. Not again.”
Helen knew that Daphne was reminding Castor of how she had been attacked by Pandora a few short months ago while she was under Castor’s protection. Daedalus, Castor, and Pallas all eased back, but their faces were livid. Phaon’s shrill laughter filled the room.
“Easy, mongrels,” he said as he wound down from his disturbing laugh. “She’s too old for me.”
“Disgusting,” Orion said under his breath. He made a choked sound and his hands tensed, as if he wanted to strangle his cousin. That was enough for Phaon.
Helen saw Phaon reach for the blade strapped across his back under his clothes. It was the same kind of sheath that Orion habitually wore, except Orion wasn’t wearing it then. No weapons were allowed at House meetings, and Helen knew that Orion was defenseless. She also sensed that despite his reluctance to meet Hector in a fair fight, in a dirty fight Phaon had had more experience and would probably win. Orion could be hurt, or even killed.
Helen felt like all her insides suddenly sprouted wings and tried to fly out of her mouth. She didn’t think about what she should or shouldn’t do, about the sacred rules of hospitality, or about the “cease-fire” they had all agreed upon. All she thought about was the bare blade in Phaon’s hand.
She called to the metal. It was similar to how she summoned bolts, only this time instead of a bright splinter of electricity, Helen took the same force and widened it into a field. It was like taking a single coin and learning the simple trick of flipping it over to discover an entirely different face. She used this field to reach out and snatch the stiletto out of Phaon’s grasp.
“How dare you!” she roared, her voice booming out of her like thunder.
The hilt of Phaon’s weapon smacked into the palm of her hand, and she stormed forward, raising the blade high above her head to slash down and cut out Phaon’s twisted little heart. The insides of her thighs burned, and Helen felt the ground rock violently underneath her. She saw Phaon tumble to the ground and grovel in front of her.
“Helen! No!” Lucas pleaded in her ear, his body convulsing against hers. “P-Please, s-stop,” he stammered, his jaw shaking uncontrollably.
She looked around, confused, like she was waking from a dream. Lucas had her by the waist, and he was pulling her back. She glanced down and saw that her skin was glowing pearly pink and blue with ball lightning. Lucas held on to her, even though in that moment she was hotter than the surface of the sun.
She switched off the current immediately, and he fell down with a scream. Furniture was toppled over, and everyone else in the room had fallen from the earthquake she had created. The floor under her was a large disk of black charcoal that still smoldered around the edges like a ring of fire. Everyone stared up at her, terrified.
Except for Lucas. His hands, chest, and cheek were black and bloody, burned down to the bone by the ball lightning she had created. He writhed on the ground in agony.
“Oh, no!” Helen cried, crouching down over Lucas. “No-no-no,” she chanted hysterically.
Lucas moaned when she touched him. His crispy skin flaked off and drifted in the air like burnt paper. He was so terribly injured and in so much pain Helen knew that there was no place in the world she could take him that could ease his suffering.
She needed a new world.
It’s not that Helen forgot Hades’ promise that the Fates would bring her to this. Nor did she forget his warning that as soon as she created her own world, the gods would challenge her for it. She just didn’t care. She’d build a whole new universe from scratch and send all of Olympus to Tartarus if she had to—anything, anything at all, to fix Lucas.
Helen gathered Lucas up in her arms. As his heartbeat stopped and his eyes closed, she created a portal to her new world and took him there.
