Creon stood along the side of the compound, entirely cloaked in shadows, and waited until his cousins sped off in their black SUV before he ran after them. He could easily keep pace with the moving car, and as long as he stayed inside a cloud of darkness, he could depend on the dreary weather to keep him perfectly hidden. No other Scion for hundreds of years had Creon’s control over light, and on a cloudy day not even another Son of Apollo could see him.
Creon had followed Hector and Jason back to the compound from Helen’s place that morning. Having nothing else to go on, he decided the best thing to do would be to eavesdrop on his estranged family. His father had told him about the shape-shifting qualities of the cestus, and he knew that he had no other choice but to wait for his quarry to reveal herself. He guessed that eventually she would make contact with the traitors, and he had been right. Now all he had to do was follow them and trust that eventually his cousins would lead him right to her.
Helen looked out the window of the hotel, searching the nearly empty street below, but she didn’t see Lucas anywhere. She’d hoped to see him one last time before she left, even if he didn’t see her. It was little enough to hope for, but apparently, little was still too much. Lucas was gone, the storm was ending, and soon she and her mother would be on the first ferry off island.
“Helen,” Daphne called from behind her. “You’re wearing your own face. You have to be consistent or we’ll be discovered.”
Helen turned around and concentrated on projecting the image of the cute brunette she and her mother had decided Helen would become when they ran away.
“Much better,” Daphne said with a pleased nod. “I still can’t believe you never stumbled on to this power by yourself.”
Helen didn’t have an answer for that. She was too disturbed by her newfound power and her newfound mother to decide whether she was being complimented or insulted. She walked over to the vanity in the bedroom to look at the stranger in the mirror. The cestus could make her look like any woman in the world, but she’d only had a few hours to practice with it. Her mother had promised to teach her how to become any age, any race, any gender in the future, but although she’d kept her disguise simple for now, she was still unrecognizable, as long as she remembered to keep up the illusion.
“You don’t have to keep your half of the cestus as the heart necklace, you know,” her mother told her, standing behind Helen and looking at her in the glass.
“Yeah, I know. I figured out how to do that much on my own, at least,” Helen answered in the stranger’s voice.
Helen’s necklace was the actual girdle of Aphrodite, the protective half that made her impervious to weapons. Daphne’s half was the adornments of Aphrodite, and although she couldn’t stop a blade or a bomb with her skin like Helen could, what she could do was potentially more frightening. Daphne was irresistible to whomever she decided to charm.
“Well, I’m glad. I’ve always worn my half as the heart, and I always hoped you did, too,” Daphne said shyly. “I guess you probably think I’ve got no right to be nostalgic about you. But I am.”
Daphne fingered her heart-shaped charm and opened her mouth to say something else, but she stopped herself and went into the other room to sort through her luggage for the tenth time. A part of Helen wanted to run after her mother and say she had always hoped her necklace was a tie between them, too. But another part of her wanted to rip the thing off her neck and throw it in her mother’s borrowed face.
Helen wasn’t certain how far Daphne’s power of persuasion went just yet. It came from the cestus, so it might be that Daphne was irresistible only in a sexual way, but Helen was painfully aware of how quickly she had agreed to leave her home and the people she loved. She was following a woman she couldn’t remember to a place she had never seen, and she had made the decision to do so in less than an hour. Helen thought through everything she had learned, looking for some clue that she was being controlled, but as she added up all the evidence, she knew that she didn’t need to be brainwashed to want to run away.
After what Daphne had told her, Helen was so disgusted with herself she would have run away, regardless.
“Are you hungry?” Daphne asked. Helen jumped away from the window at the sound and dropped the curtain guiltily. Without even realizing it, she had been looking for Lucas again.
“No,” she replied, unable to look up from the rug.
“Well, you’re still going to have to eat, and we should try out your new face before we get on the ferry,” Daphne said with a grimace. “We’re going out for breakfast before we have to travel over that blasted ocean.”
Helen tried to argue—to point out how silly it would be to test her ability to hold her new shape with so little practice—but Daphne only shrugged and said that it would be easier to test it on land before they ventured out on the water. It seemed that Helen’s fear of the ocean was inherited. Daphne loathed it, and remembering what Hector had told her about how her own dislike of the ocean came from not being able to control it, Helen assumed that her mother must be a huge control freak to hate the ocean so passionately. After a quick check to make sure that neither of them was wearing clothes that might get them recognized, Daphne dragged Helen out onto the street with a promise that it would be “fun.”
The storm had mashed the fallen autumn leaves into a kind of red-brown paste that coated the cobblestone streets and clogged the overwhelmed gutters. The rain was petering out and the wind was dying down, but the bottoms of the clouds were still a smudged-mascara color, and water ran in impromptu rivers down the sidewalks on their way out to sea. Fallen branches lay here and there, the bushy ends denuded of leaves, and the trunk ends, newly ripped from the trees, ended in fresh white splinters that stuck out in all directions like dropped boxes of toothpicks. Helen could smell the tree sap in the air as the few trees that the island had to offer bled out after losing their battle with the wind. With the disturbing image of dead wooden soldiers and giant wooden horses in her mind, the last thing that she wanted to do was eat.
“Nothing’s going to be open,” Helen protested, but she knew she it wasn’t true.
“I used to live here, too, you know. And if there’s one thing I learned . . .” Daphne stomped confidently past the boarded-up windows of the nervous art dealers and down the block, where a line was forming outside the Overeasy Café. “It’s that Whalers love nothing more than a really good storm,” she finished with relish.
It was true. Helen’s fellow Nantucketers were proud of their ability to live through whatever Mother Nature threw at them. It was a macho thing, but also a chance to bond. They shared a good laugh over the howling wind, ice, snow, or rain while they all looked for their hysterical cats and retrieved their lawn decorations from each other’s living rooms.
The block didn’t have electricity, and folks were still sweeping up glass from the broken windows. In spite of all this, Helen wasn’t at all surprised that the café was seating people. In fact, she knew that at that moment her father and Kate were six blocks away at the News Store, checking out the damage. She also knew that if people started hanging around out front looking hungry, Jerry and Kate would open the doors and feed them. With the refrigerators out, the perishables would have to be eaten or thrown out, anyway, and Kate would much rather give food to her neighbors than watch it spoil.
Helen thought for a moment of how she should be there with them, but then she caught a glimpse of her new reflection in the one window outside the Overeasy Café that wasn’t broken. She wasn’t Helen. She was a cute brunette from the mainland, and she and her tacky, horse-faced mother were on vacation in Nantucket. These two tourists owed nothing to anyone.
Helen sat, put her napkin in her lap, and ordered whatever the café could make on a gas stove—eggs, bacon, and French-pressed coffee. As she pushed her food around, Matt walked into the diner. Helen’s eyes widened when Matt looked right at her and, out of habit, she pulled in a breath to call out to him, but his eyes skipped right past her.
It was obvious that Matt had come into the café looking for her. Helen groaned to herself and rubbed her tired eyes—Claire must have told him that Helen was missing. Helen wondered how much else he knew about her. Knowing Matt and how clever he was, Helen was sure he had figured out some of her secret on his own, like Claire had.
For a moment she wanted him to find her, but he was scanning the room for Helen’s bright blonde hair. When his eyes didn’t immediately spot her, he gave up. She wanted to throw her napkin at Matt and yell that she was sitting ten feet away from him, but she realized that it was silly of her to blame him for not recognizing her. Still, it hurt not to be recognized by a guy she’d known since she was in diapers. As she watched Matt walk out of the café, she couldn’t help but feel like she was faceless, alone, and about as substantial as a ghost.
“It’s better for him,” Daphne said consolingly as she reached across the table to take Helen’s hand. “The humans who love us never last long. Scions are tragedy magnets. It’s safer for them if we leave before the trouble starts. That’s why I didn’t give Jerry more time . . .”
“You never loved my father, I mean Jerry,” Helen interrupted bitterly. She snatched her hand out from underneath her mother’s.
“No, I didn’t. I’m not going to lie to you to make myself more sympathetic,” Daphne replied, moving her rejected hand to reach for the check. “But I would never wish harm on that man. Remember, he’s the only person I trusted with my daughter. You hate me for not loving Jerry? Fine. But the least you can do is respect me for understanding how special he was and giving you the gift of thinking he was your father.”
“Jerry is my father in every way that counts,” Helen said, wrenching herself out from the sinking seat of the booth.
She waited with her back turned while Daphne threw down some bills. On their way to the hotel to get their things, Helen spotted Hector. He looked right at her and then right past her, just as Matt had done. The twins were with him, wandering around by the ferry. Helen heard Ariadne call out to Matt, sounding surprised to see him, but Daphne pulled her into the hotel before she could find out what they said to each other. Helen heard Claire’s name mentioned right before the door shut behind her making it impossible even to tell what they were saying about her, even with Scion hearing.
Lucas was in the lobby. Helen didn’t see his face, but then she didn’t need to. If she had only caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared around a corner half a mile away she would still have been able to recognize him. She turned her face away, knowing she couldn’t look at him or she would lose concentration and allow her mask to slip away. As she hurried up the stairs behind her mother, she both hoped and feared that he would yell her name, but of course, he didn’t.
Back in their room, Helen grabbed what few things she had and brought them to the entryway by the door, hiding her streaming eyes and her red nose from her mother as best she could. She tried to let the stranger’s dark hair fall across her face, but unfortunately this girl had bangs. As her mother checked over the room one last time before they left for the dock, Helen let out an incongruous laugh, suddenly remembering the last time she had taken the ferry. It was when Claire first told her about the new family that had moved into the big compound out in ’Sconset. Claire had been sure that there would be a dream boy to fall in love with each of them, and Helen had been sure that Claire was being ridiculous. So sure that she’d changed the subject, and wondered aloud whether she should cut her hair.
“Well, Claire was absolutely right,” Helen said to herself, laughing through her tears. “I do hate having bangs.”
Her breath still catching on the half-crazy laugh, Helen yanked open the door of the hotel room to leave, and ran right into Lucas. In a split second he registered Helen’s tears and the shocked face of the strange woman next to her. Lucas grabbed Helen’s arm and pulled her away from the woman, putting himself between them.
“What did you do to her?” he said, threatening Daphne.
“And just who are you?” Daphne said with a southern drawl. Lucas gave the woman a confused look and then looked back at Helen.
“Helen, who is this woman?” he asked.
“Come inside,” Daphne said, dropping the fake accent. “Come on, Helen. We’ve been discovered. He can see your true face.”
“How?” Helen asked, looking down at the hands that weren’t hers, at a body that wasn’t hers, as she followed Lucas back into the room.
“Because he loves you.” Daphne shut the door behind them. “The cestus can’t hide the face of a beloved, it can only reveal it. You’ll never be anyone but yourself to him because he loves you exactly as you are.”
Daphne rubbed her temples in frustration at this new and annoying development. She turned to Lucas and dropped her disguise. He gasped.
“You are all of the women,” Lucas said, remembering what Cassandra had seen. “Helen, this is the woman that’s been attacking you, this isn’t her real face . . .”
“I know. I even know that she was the one who hurt Kate in the alley,” Helen said, swallowing painfully. “I thought it was me—that I had shocked Kate by accident.”
“Helen, you aren’t to blame,” Daphne said, sounding almost annoyed at the idea.
“She was trying to kidnap me to get me away from your family before you found out who I really was,” Helen continued, ignoring Daphne. “She knew I wouldn’t trust her, and that she would literally have to tie me down to get me to listen to her. So that’s what she did. But this is my true mother, and this is her true face, Lucas. It’s our face.”
“It’s not possible,” Lucas said, looking from Helen to Daphne and back again. “No Scion resembles another this closely.”
“The bearers of the cestus always look like the first Scion to ever possess it,” Daphne said.
“Helen of Troy,” Lucas said quietly.
Helen nodded, then clarified while looking at her mother. “Aphrodite and Helen were half sisters, and they loved each other very much. When the siege of Troy began, Aphrodite gave Helen the cestus to protect her. Since then, it’s been passed from mother to daughter, along with the Face.”
“The Face?” Lucas asked.
“That Launched a Thousand Ships,” Daphne said, repeating the title automatically. “It’s our curse.”
“Helen of Troy was in the House of Atreus,” Lucas said as he slumped down into a straight-backed chair that decorated the entryway. “So Pallas was right. You are Daphne Atreus.”
“I suppose Pallas had to be right about something eventually,” Daphne snapped before she stopped herself and softened her tone. “I know he’s your uncle, but we have a complicated history. Your father was different. He was very kind to me, or at least he tried to be. The Furies make kindness a very relative term.”
“The Furies,” Lucas said as an idea struck him. “Why don’t I see the Furies when I’m around you?”
“For the same reason your family doesn’t see them around Helen anymore. You two risked your lives to save each other, and that released you from your blood debt. A long time ago I went through something similar with another member of the House of Thebes. But I don’t have time to explain the whole story to you,” Daphne said not unkindly. “Helen and I have to get off this island, and we have to do it now.”
“No,” Lucas said, looking at Helen. “Come back with me, both of you. My family . . .”
“Your family wants me dead,” Daphne replied coldly. “And Creon is here to hunt Helen down. I have to get her off this island, and if you love her the way I know you do, you’ll help me do it.”
“I can protect Helen from Creon,” Lucas said defiantly, still waiting for Helen to look at him, but she wouldn’t.
“How? Are you ready to become a kin-killer? An Outcast?” Daphne asked harshly.
Lucas snapped his head around to look at Daphne, responding to a phrase that he had been raised to abhor. For a moment he hated her, but only because she was right.
“You can’t defend Helen against your own family—not to the death. I’m the only one who can protect her now,” Daphne continued, her tone suggesting that she was genuinely sorry for him. “And the best way for me to do that is to get her away from Creon.”
“I won’t let him near her. I don’t care what I have to become,” Lucas said, preoccupied with Helen and troubled by the way she seemed to be avoiding him. He took her hands.
“Lucas. Let me go,” Helen said quietly, pulling her hands out of his. He went silent, sensing something very wrong was about to happen. Again. “If you love me, you’ll let me go. Do you love me?” Her voice was so thin and papery it crackled.
“You know I do,” he replied, confused. “If you’re frightened, run away with me, like we planned. You know we’re meant to be together, I know you can feel that, just like I do.”
“I want you to let me go,” she said simply as she finally met his eyes and held them.
Instead of thinking about the way Lucas’s face fell under the weight of his surprise and sadness, Helen imagined her heart as a giant tub full of water. Everything she had ever felt in her life, all the good and all bad, were just ribbons of food coloring in that water, and the whole beautiful mess was swirling down the drain. The only thing she needed to do was wait a few more seconds and the basin would be empty.
“You can hear the truth in what I say, can’t you?” she continued mercilessly. “I want you to let me go.”
Lucas caught his breath and held it for a long moment as he registered that Helen wasn’t lying to him. Then he nodded and breathed again, his face impassive.
“I believe that you want to get away from me right now, but I also know what is going to happen, regardless of what anyone wants,” he said.
“The Oracle!” Daphne exclaimed to herself, understanding Lucas’s meaning. “She survived her first prophecy? Is she still sane?” she asked breathlessly.
He gave a curt nod in response to her insensitive questions.
Daphne began to pace distractedly, as if a thousand thoughts had started elbowing around in her head. Suddenly, she stopped moving and stared at Lucas.
“What did she say about us?” she asked.
“That the beloved of Aphrodite were to find shelter in the House of Thebes,” Lucas replied, emotionless. “So you see, you will come back with me.”
“Obviously,” Daphne said turning her palms up in acquiescence. “Helen, get your things.”
Helen’s jaw dropped and she stared at her mother in disbelief. After everything Daphne had told her to get her away from the House of Thebes, this change didn’t make any sense.
“But, we’ll miss the ferry. . . .” Helen stammered, still uncertain.
“The Oracle has spoken,” Daphne said, shouldering her bag with a greedy look in her eyes. Helen had no idea what her mother was up to, but lacking any reason to object, she had no choice but to obey.
Helen and Daphne assumed their disguises and the three of them went down to the lobby. Lucas asked them to wait a moment when they got to the front door. He pulled out his phone and called Hector, telling him to bring the car around to the entrance of the hotel.
“Stay here,” he said, firmly. “Let me check the street before you go out there. Hector said that Creon was headed our way.”
“That’s not necessary, Lucas. As long as you keep your distance from us, we’re well hidden,” Daphne said confidently as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, rolling her fancy leather suitcase behind her.
As Helen watched her mother walk out the door, she happened to glance across the street. Creon was standing on the other side, staring up at the hotel windows with his reflection-defying vision. His eyes dropped down when he saw Daphne.
As soon as she saw Creon, Helen’s senses rewound to her last encounter with him. She could still feel his humid breath on her neck as he whispered preciosa in her ear right before he stabbed her. Most of all, she remembered the suffocating darkness that had left her feeling like she was lost in space and utterly helpless. The terror-echo she felt made her forget for a moment that both she and her mother were protected by their borrowed shapes.
“Mom! Stop!” she screamed instinctively, reaching out to pull Daphne back into the hotel.
Creon made eye contact with Helen as she shouted. Then he saw his cousin Lucas stride up and grab the strange girl frantically. Creon looked from the cute brunette to Lucas, noticing how they held each other so protectively. Then he looked back at the tacky woman with the expensive luggage and smiled. He ran across the street, his head lowered and his shoulders rounded like a bull.
“Daphne! He knows!” Lucas shouted, throwing Helen behind him and moving impossibly fast to intercept Creon.
The cousins collided in the middle of the street, both of them using their momentum to put power into their first punches. But Lucas could do something Creon wasn’t expecting. At the last moment he made gravity pull harder on him, and in his massive-state he pushed his stunned opponent back into the asphalt with so much force he fractured the surface of the street.
A split second later Lucas glanced up and saw Matt’s terrified face through the windshield of his car as he slammed on his brakes. Matt tried to stop, but it was too late. He hit the two figures that had appeared out of thin air in the middle of the street and his car crumpled in on itself as if it had run into a brick wall.
“Lucas!” Helen screamed as she tried to run past her mother.
Daphne grabbed Helen and restrained her just as Hector’s big SUV screeched to a halt in front of them, blocking Helen’s way to the accident. Ariadne jumped out of the passenger side before Hector had even come to a full stop and sprinted to the wreck.
“Get in the truck!” Hector bellowed at Daphne as he came around from the driver’s side and stomped to the smoking front end of Matt’s car.
Helen struggled, unable to see what was going on. She was still calling Lucas’s name as Jason and Daphne bundled her into the back of the SUV.
“Luke’s fine!” Jason said to her through gritted teeth as he wrestled with her. “Helen, please! We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”
Reminded of where she was, Helen forced herself to calm down and get into the backseat. She slid over to one of the tinted windows, and sighed with relief when she saw Lucas standing up in front of Matt’s destroyed car. He was uninjured and holding on to Hector to keep him from running off somewhere. Creon was gone, so Helen assumed that Hector was trying to follow him. For a moment, it looked like Lucas was going to hit Hector, but then he whispered something that seemed to convince his stubborn cousin, and all at once Hector calmed down and nodded.
“He looks just like Ajax,” Daphne whispered behind her, her eyes glued to Hector.
Helen glanced briefly at her mother, then turned her attention back to the wreck. Ariadne was helping Matt out of his car, holding him up. He was reeling and bleeding from the head, ash-white and owl-eyed with astonishment, but he didn’t seem to be badly hurt.
“We should get you to a hospital,” Ariadne insisted as she studied Matt’s uneven pupils.
“No,” Matt said vehemently. “There’s no way to explain this. Normal people don’t get up and walk away after you run them over with a car.”
They all knew he was right. Even concussed, Matt was a quick thinker.
“You hit your head,” Jason warned as the Scions shot each other uncertain looks.
“And I still know what I saw. Look, don’t worry about me, I’d never rat out a friend, but we have to go now,” Matt insisted. “Before the police come.”
“Ari?” Jason asked as he met his twin’s eyes in an honest exchange. “Is it life threatening?”
Ariadne ran her hands just over Matt’s skull, a faint glow coming out of her palms. “He’ll be just fine,” she said after a brief moment. She started to lead Matt toward Hector’s truck, but Matt giggled and stopped dead.
“Wow. What did you do to me?” He gave her a goofy smile.
“I healed you. That’s my gift,” she answered as she smiled back at him, suddenly looking exhausted.
“Thanks,” Matt said. He allowed himself to be moved toward Hector’s truck. “Wait. Where’s Claire?”
Helen was out of the truck and barreling down on Matt before her mother could even hold out an arm to stop her.
“What do you mean ‘where’s Claire’?” Helen demanded, balling her fists so hard her arms started shaking. “Where did you last see her?”
“The front seat,” Matt replied weakly as he gestured toward his car.
Jason’s whole body went rigid. Moving so fast he was little more than a blur, Jason tore the door of the car off with one hand and tenderly scooped Claire out from underneath the dashboard with the other. She was unconscious, bleeding, and as limp as a wet cotton doll.
“No,” Jason whispered to her. “You were supposed to stay away from me.” He placed his lips a hair’s width away from hers and held statue still.
“How is she?” Ariadne asked urgently.
“She’s breathing,” he said after a moment, his voice breaking. He lifted his head up and met his twin’s eyes.
“Well, can you heal her or not?” she asked him calmly, as though she and her twin had prepared themselves for this.
He clenched his jaw and nodded but didn’t speak, carrying Claire into the back of the truck and holding her carefully on his lap while everyone else organized.
“I’ll take care of Matt’s car and meet you back at home,” Lucas said to Hector, already obscuring the particulars of the wreck by bending the light around it.
“Wait,” Daphne commanded. She raised a hand like she was hailing a cab and closed her eyes. “This will draw less attention,” she said. Thick wreaths of pearl gray fog rolled off the water and down the street, the long, ropy tendrils racing toward her delicately tilted fingers. Helen had the feeling that the recent storm was no accident, and wondered if her mother had conjured it.
“Great Zeus, Cloud-Gatherer,” Hector said under his breath, thinking along the same lines as Helen. The scene of the accident disappeared in the fog, and then he turned to Lucas. “Where are you going to hide the car?”
“In the ocean. We can clean it up after dark,” Lucas answered as he plunged into the thick mist to push Matt’s lump of twisted metal and leaking toxins off the dock.
Everyone else squeezed into Hector’s truck. The whole incident, from Creon’s attack to their getaway, had only taken a few minutes and they were a full four blocks from the scene before they heard the first siren sounding through the fog.
They drove in complete silence, at a completely lawful speed, out to Siasconset, each of them stuck inside their own thought box of shock and worry. As they cruised along, Helen couldn’t take her eyes off of Jason and Claire. Jason had started moving his hands an inch above her body, his palms glowing like his sister’s had when she healed Matt. He whispered in her ear. He blew soft, sparkling breaths against her closed eyes as if he was exhaling energy directly into her unconscious dreams.
Whatever he was doing was helping Claire, but it was also causing him excruciating pain. A thick, slick sweat beaded up on his graying skin as Claire seemed to settle with more comfort in his arms and gather more color in her cheeks. By the time they parked at the Delos compound, Jason was so spent Helen didn’t even ask, she just picked Claire up off his lap and carried her into the house for him.
“My room. Quickly,” Jason croaked as Helen carried Claire into the crowded kitchen.
She ducked past the startled faces of the Delos family, cradling Claire close to her chest to shield her from prying eyes as she and Jason made their way to the stairs. Halfway up the staircase she felt Jason put his hand on her shoulder and lean into her for support. He was so weak he could barely put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, he made it the rest of the way.
“How can I help you?” Helen asked Jason, easing Claire down into his bed.
“You can’t,” he replied as he stretched his big frame out alongside Claire. “I made my choice, and we’re tied to each other until she recovers. It’s sort of like a Healer’s last stand. At this point we’ll either make it through that desert together or we won’t.”
“Oh, good,” Helen sighed, finally feeling hopeful. “Claire would never allow someone she cared about to just go and die, especially not to save her own life.”
She saw Jason smile and nod humorously as he remembered that no matter how dire the situation seemed, at least he had tied his life force to a genuinely legendary fighter.
“I did everything I could to keep her out of this, to protect her from our kind,” he whispered, meeting Helen’s eyes.
“Yeah, I know. All that arguing you two did, even though you’re obviously perfect for each other,” Helen said, feeling guilty. Jason had tried to push Claire away to keep her safe, but Helen hadn’t. “I get it now.”
“You have other things to deal with,” he said, his eyes already starting to close. “Go. I’ll guide her through.”
“If you lose your way, I’ll follow you down,” Helen told him, already feeling the baked air of the dry lands leaching all the moisture out of the atmosphere.
Suddenly, Helen knew what the dry lands were and why she had always been too frightened to recognize the truth when it was staring her in the face. The desert that she wandered into while she slept, the land Jason now had to traverse to save Claire, was the land of the dead. For the briefest of moments she could see Claire’s fetch, confused, scared, and soundlessly calling out Jason’s name. Helen banished that disturbing image and spoke directly into Jason’s ear. “I know the way through the rubble, and I promise, if you can’t make it on your own, I’ll come down and carry you both out.”
Jason’s eyes snapped back open in shock, but his spirit was already following Claire’s, and although he tried to fight it, his eyes closed again as he slipped into a deep comalike slumber. Helen left the room, trusting him completely with Claire’s heal. Mentally, she was already joining the battle that awaited her in the living room.
Helen picked her way down the stairs, hearing her mother’s raised voice as she neared. It was already hauntingly familiar even though she had known the woman only a few short hours. Daphne’s voice was Helen’s own, coming from outside her head like a recording played back on a crappy answering machine. Helen hated it—not the sound, but feeling like she was stuck in someone else’s mistake, doomed to adopt the worst qualities of the people she was supposed to love the most.
Helen paused for a moment to steel herself before she went into the living room. In the few short minutes Helen had been upstairs, a fight had begun.
“I’m to blame?” Daphne shrieked at Pallas, reacting to something he’d just said. “If you all had just stayed in Cádiz, away from Helen, none of this would have happened!”
“That was my fault,” Hector admitted, trying to get everyone to calm down. “My family had to leave because I nearly killed one of my own kin.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” Daphne said out of the side of her mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pallas asked indignantly.
“Are you finally ready to talk about the elephant in the room?” Daphne said bitterly. “I didn’t kill Ajax. Tantalus did.”
“You’re a liar!” Pallas said, taking a menacing step toward her.
“Then how come I’m alive? Tantalus told all of you that he killed me himself, didn’t he?”
Pallas stared at her furiously.
“Just answer this one question. If I killed your brother Ajax, then why don’t you see the Furies right now?” Daphne asked, throwing her arms out as if to show she wasn’t hiding them anywhere.
Everyone looked around at one another, as if they were expecting someone else to have an explanation, but no one did.
“Pallas, do you remember how Ajax and I hated each other, more than just the rage of the Furies could account for, but at the same time we wouldn’t allow ourselves be parted? Do you remember how we used to seek each other out, like we couldn’t bear to be separated for even a moment?” Daphne asked in a softer tone.
“You were his obsession,” Pallas said darkly, his eyes shooting briefly over to Lucas.
“And he was mine. Eventually, we fought, but at the last moment, instead of killing each other, there was a terrible accident. We ended up saving each other’s lives. When we did that, I paid my debt to the House of Thebes. And he paid his debt to the House of Atreus. After that, Ajax could be with my family without inciting the Furies, and I could be with his. How could I stand in front of you if this weren’t the truth?” Daphne motioned to Helen and Lucas. “You’ve seen it happen again, right in front of your eyes, and you all already know what the outcome is. Once the Furies were gone, Ajax and I fell in love.”
“Liar!” Pandora hissed.
“No,” Lucas said, shaking his head with a stricken, almost fearful look in his eyes. “She’s telling the truth.”
“I touched his body with my own hand,” Pandora screamed, tears tangling her pretty pixie face into a snarl. “He was dead!”
“I think we were both dead for a few seconds,” Daphne said compassionately. She was trying to get Pandora to listen to her, but in vain. Pandora shook her head at everything Daphne tried to tell her. “Ajax and I never really understood exactly what happened, but I swear to you, I didn’t kill him.”
Pandora whirled away from Daphne, turning her back and still shaking her head in denial. Ariadne went and stood next to her and took her hand, but Pandora would accept no comfort. She dropped Ariadne’s hand and crossed her arms tightly across her chest, like her insides hurt, her left hand cupping the cuff-locket on her right wrist.
“Oh, how typical! The House of Thebes thinks it knows everything because it’s the House of the Oracle,” Daphne said to Pandora’s back, almost pleading with her. “And the irony is that it’s because you think you know it all that the other Houses have been able to hide so much from you—our relics, like the cestus—even our very existence. You thought the House of Atreus was extinct, but here I am. Open your eyes! Whether you want to believe it or not, Pandora, Ajax and I saved each other’s lives that night, and then we fell deeply in love.”
“Then the two of you ran away together?” Castor asked, shocking everyone with his sympathetic tone.
“We had no choice. Even though I had paid my debt to the House of Thebes, and I could be near any of you without inciting the Furies, you all still wanted me dead,” Daphne replied with a shrug. “Ajax said that if we could explain what had happened to Tantalus, he would take our side. He really believed your brother would help us. We were so young, only seventeen.” A powerful emotion overwhelmed her and she suddenly clenched her fists and her jaw, as if she was refusing to cry.
“Finish your story,” Lucas said evenly.
“’Jax and I were living on a sailboat, hiding at sea. Tantalus rowed out to meet us because we were too frightened of an ambush to come ashore. As soon as Tantalus saw my face he went mad. They fought over me in the rowboat. I can’t swim—I swear, I couldn’t get to them. Ajax lost,” Daphne said. She stared directly into Lucas’s eyes. “Tantalus claimed that he killed me that day, but obviously that’s a lie. He has been chasing me ever since, maybe because he wants me for himself, or maybe because he intends to kill me and he doesn’t want anyone else coming after me for the sake of a Triumph. I’m not entirely sure what he wants anymore.”
“I don’t believe it, no matter what you say, Lucas,” Pallas said, shaking his head in denial. “Tantalus loved Ajax.”
“Yes, he did. He loved his brother, and then he killed him,” Daphne said, frustrated to the point of cruelty. “Now, as a kin-killer, he’s an Outcast, and he can’t have contact with anyone from the House of Thebes without the Furies revealing his sin to you.”
“Pallas,” Castor said gently. “Didn’t it ever bother you that our brother stayed hidden even when there were no other Houses left to fight?”
“But there were other Houses, and there still are!” Pallas shouted, pointing to Helen and her mother. “He must have known she was still alive, and that she can seduce anyone, even us, to help her get to him.”
“I haven’t used the cestus on you, Pallas. Not even to get you to believe me,” Daphne said tiredly. “I want you to know in your own heart who killed Ajax. I need you to believe that I wasn’t the one who killed my husband.”
“Everything she’s saying is true,” Lucas said, locking eyes with Helen. “She hasn’t used the cestus. And she and Ajax were married.”
Helen looked away, although she could feel him studying her face.
“The Fates have done this many times,” Cassandra intoned, a hint of the Oracle’s glow in her eyes and voice as she momentarily peeked through the Veil. “The Star-Crossed Lovers are in the warp and weft of the pattern, and my mothers are compelled to repeat it again and again. Symmetry must be maintained or the fabric of the universe will be ruined. All Four Houses have been preserved this way.”
“All four?” Lucas repeated as his eyes sought out Helen’s. A glimmer of hope flared up in him, but instead of seeing his own elation echoed in Helen, her face was pale and empty. She looked away.
“Four Houses in Three Heirs,” the many voices continued to chant. “The Star-Crossed Lovers have preserved the bloodlines. And the Three shall raise Atlantis.”
A strange hush overtook the room, like the pause between a blinding flash of lightning and the deafening roar of thunder that inevitably follows.
“Sibyl!” Daphne said suddenly, addressing Cassandra by the most ancient title of her office. “I beg you to answer me! How can the Scions rid themselves of the Furies?”
“She can’t control them yet!” Castor gasped at Daphne, whose face had grown greedy and desperate. Helen’s mind flashed back to Daphne’s sudden decision to come back to the House of Thebes with Lucas, and she knew that this was what her mother had wanted all along.
Castor grabbed Daphne’s arm, pulling her away from his daughter, but it was too late. The Three Fates had been officially summoned into the body of the Oracle to answer a direct question, and they would not be stopped. Cassandra’s mouth glowed, her hair writhed, and her head snapped back. Her eyes grew rheumy with cataracts and her skin wrinkled. An old woman forcibly pushed her way through a young girl’s shell like she was tearing through a piece of paper. Convulsing, the old woman turned into another woman, and then a third, as the many voices chimed out of her.
“The Descender must go down to those who cannot forgive and cannot forget. The Descender and her Shield will free the Three from their suffering as she will free the Houses from the cycle of blood for blood,” they said, and then went silent.
Cassandra’s head righted itself. The wrinkles smoothed and her eyes cleared, but the eerie extra presences were still in her. Daphne pulled herself away from Castor and approached the Oracle with her arms crossed and her palms pressed flat against her chest in reverence.
“The House of Atreus owes you a debt, Sibyl,” Daphne said with a deep bow, completing her part of the ritual.
“And the House of Atreus will pay it when asked,” the Oracle said before the glow died completely and Cassandra returned fully to herself with a series of blinks and an exhalation. Everyone stared at Daphne with shock and anger.
“I’m sorry, but I had to,” she said barely above a whisper.
“You could have killed her,” Lucas said, clenching his fists. “She’s still too young.”
“If the vengeance cycle isn’t broken, she has no future, anyway. None of us do,” Daphne mumbled, unable to look at him. Several people raised their voices to argue.
“She’s right,” Cassandra said, cutting everyone off. “Things will change, Prophecy has been made, and like it or not, I am the Oracle. I can’t hide anymore.”
“Maybe not,” Castor said somberly. “But next time, we decide together what questions to ask and when to ask them.” He turned and pointed a finger at Daphne. “Another trick like that and I’ll make sure you don’t live long enough to hear Sibyl’s answer.”
Daphne nodded once with a passive face that placated Castor, but not Lucas. He’d seen Helen make that face before, and he knew it was bogus. Lucas glanced at Helen, who had noticed the same thing he did, and they shared an anxious look.
Cassandra said that she was tired, and Pandora took her upstairs to lie down for a while. Ariadne went into the kitchen to check on Matt, who was still icing a few bumps and bruises while Noel gave him a crash course in demigods.
Lucas gestured with his head for Helen to meet him in the next room. She tried to shake her head no, but he had already turned away and started moving toward the door. She had to follow.
He led her to an unfamiliar part of the house, the wing directly opposite his father’s office, one that Helen had never entered. As they moved through the empty hallways and past the unused rooms, she could see Lucas tilt his head ever so slightly over his shoulder, aware of her presence.
As she followed him, never more than a few paces behind, she could see his shoulders tense and his breathing quicken. She watched the warm skin of his back moving under his shirt with every breath, and she had to rub her tight fists against each other to keep herself from reaching out to touch him. Finally, he entered the empty solarium on the easternmost end of the compound and turned around. She had one second to open her mouth in protest before he was kissing it. The second after that she felt him gently pushing her down to the floor. The second after that Helen very nearly gave in to him.
A wave of nausea swept up from her stomach and she clamped her mouth shut as she turned her head away from him. Lucas pulled back carefully, thinking he had hurt her in some way. She braced her elbows against the marble floor and shoved against his chest.
“Stop,” she begged.
He shifted off of her immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. As they both sat up and faced each other, his eyes looked so confused, so wounded, that Helen’s eyes started leaking tears, even though she had promised herself the night before that she would never cry again.
“What is it?” he asked, bewildered and in pain.
“We can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head in a rapid motion.
“What are you talking about?” He tried to get her to look at him as he reached for her hands. “Helen, we’re free. There are two other Houses left to preserve the Truce. We can be together.”
“We can’t do this,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists so he couldn’t take them.
“Why?” he asked in a strangled voice, sensing that Helen was being honest with him, but still not understanding why. “Have your feelings for me changed so much in one night? Did you stop wanting me?”
“That’s not it,” she said, agonized. “I wish I didn’t want you.”
“How can you say that?” Lucas asked, relieved to know that at least Helen still felt the same about him. “I know you’ve been through a lot today, and maybe you’re not ready right this second. That’s fine, we’ll wait as long as you want. . . .” He tried to pull her into his arms, just to hold her, but she pushed hard against his chest and turned her face away from his.
“We’re first cousins!” she cried out hopelessly, her shoulders beginning to jump up and down with uncontrollable sobs. “Jerry wasn’t my father, Lucas. Ajax was.”
Lucas’s whole body went still with fear. In the silence that followed, all Helen could hear was the sound of the rain on the glass roof.
“That’s not possible,” he whispered, even though he could hear that she wasn’t lying. He shook his head. “No. We saw the Furies when we met. We can’t be related.”
“Yes, we can,” Helen said, wiping one cheek, then the other, then back again to the first in what seemed like an endless procession of tears that needed to be wiped away. “The children of mixed lineage can only be claimed by one House, and I was claimed by the House of Atreus. It’s been happening like this from the start.”
“From the start?” Lucas asked, recalling Cassandra’s earlier statement. “Star-Crossed Lovers are repeated in the pattern. How many other Scions of mixed lineage are out there in hiding?”
Helen sniffed and stared at him with a tiny smile. He was so sensitive, so quick to pick up on every detail she couldn’t stop herself from adoring him. There were an infinite number of ways for her to admire this one person, and because of that, there were an infinite number of ways for her to fall in love with him over and over again. She realized that she wasn’t going to have to give up Lucas just this once and be done with it; she was going to have to give up all the different ways she could have learned to love him every day from that day forward. The weight of all of those future heartbreaks pressed down on Helen until she had to drop her head, unable to look at him as she answered his question.
“Daphne calls us Rogues, and yes, there are quite a few of us,” she said quietly. “No one knows how many, but there are at least twenty that my mother can locate.”
“So if these kids can only belong to one House, but their parents are from enemy Houses, one side of the family . . .”
“Is sent into a Fury rage and hunts that baby down. Daphne said the urge to kill the newborn is almost irresistible, the same as it it for a newly made Outcast. One of the parents has to fight their family for their child, and it usually means that parent either dies at the hands of their own parents or siblings or they end up having to kill them.”
“That’s disgusting,” Lucas breathed. Helen nodded.
“It is disgusting. Babies shouldn’t be part of the blood feud. It’s just wrong. Daphne swore to get rid of the Furies so that Rogue babies like me can be with both of their families, and so that no one ever has to go through the horror of choosing between protecting their child and fighting their own brother or sister—or parent. In fact, she’s made it her mission in life to free the Scions from the curse of the Furies forever.”
Lucas nodded, finally understanding. He started pacing, as if he couldn’t remain in one posture for more than a millisecond with so many thoughts pushing and pulling on him at the same time.
“What do we do? We can’t stay away from each other,” he said as he stopped pacing and stared at Helen, who was still sitting slumped on the floor.
“I know, but I can’t be near you, either,” she said, standing up with an exhausted sigh.
Lucas groaned and covered his face. Neither could bear to look at the other, but they reached out blindly and embraced in a tight hug. They rocked back and forth, both of them needing comfort.
“My mother and I planned to leave today,” Helen whispered.
“Don’t leave me,” Lucas whispered back, tightening his arms around her.
“What are we going to do?” Helen murmured desperately, knowing he didn’t have an answer.
They stood clinging to each other in the unused room with the intermittent rain patting the glass walls until they heard worried voices shouting their names down the empty halls.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Helen said. She pulled away from him and wiped her hair off her feverish forehead. “I can’t explain it again.”
“I’ll do it,” Lucas said, instinctively reaching out for her hand, then stopping himself and withdrawing his hand.
Hector reached the door just as Lucas opened it. His face was a mask of anxiety and his chest was swelling with fast breaths. He looked back and forth between their devastated faces several times before it sank in that they were okay.
“You two are . . . alive. That’s good,” he said with relief.
“We should get back,” Lucas said with a blank look before he started walking stiffly down the hallway, leaving Hector with Helen.
“Daphne told us,” Hector said directly. “I’m sorry, cousin.”
Helen nodded a few times, not trusting herself to say anything, and started down the hallway. To her surprise, Hector caught up to her and put an arm over her shoulder as they walked. He squeezed her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head. As they neared the occupied part of the house, Helen realized just how much she was leaning on him.
