"Oh, that"s right, I forgot. Because neither of you have ever betrayed the people you love." Daphne"s cold words made Claire and Ariadne shrink back.
"It"s not like that," Ariadne said in a hushed tone. Daphne ignored her, knowing that everything Ariadne said from that point on would just be an excuse for her behavior, not a solution to the problem.
"What have you learned to help Helen"s cause since you joined the wrong side?" Daphne asked impatiently.
Claire and Ariadne looked at each other, conferring with their eyes. Claire was the first one to speak.
"A lot," Claire admitted. "But I don"t think I should tell you any of it."
"I wouldn"t expect you to confide in me, Claire. But if I brought you to Orion, would you tell him what you"ve learned?" Daphne held her hands out plaintively.
"Yes," Claire said, nodding her head in a definite motion. "What about Ariadne?"
"Don"t worry about me, Claire. My father is here with me. Tell Jason . . ." Ariadne paused as her eyes dredged up another round of tears. "I don"t know. Make something up for me."
"Okay," Claire responded with a defeated shrug. "But I doubt he"ll listen to me ever again."
The two girls embraced, whispering encouragement to each other, and then Claire turned and looked at Daphne with a level gaze, as determined as Daphne remembered her to be when she was a baby girl.
"Do you need me to do anything to sell this?" she asked.
"Just look like a prisoner," Daphne replied as she grabbed Claire by the neck and shoved her roughly out of the tent.
Daphne instantly changed her face to look like one of the girls from the House of Rome-one of the few from the House who had turned against Orion, Daphne recalled-and made a bit of a show about how she had taken Claire hostage as she dragged her through the camp.
The Myrmidons noticed immediately, as they always did.
"Why do you abuse her?" asked the one they called Telamon. "She was loyal to my master all the way to the end."
"Up to the end and no further, it appears. Since your master"s death, her heart shows signs of doubt," Daphne answered, staring at Claire"s chest like she had the Roman talent to read emotions. "Ask anyone else from the House of Rome. This girl has doubt. She is not committed to killing the Tyrant anymore."
"Then she must die," Telamon answered with a sad nod of his head. Claire trembled under Daphne"s hands, but she didn"t try to run away.
Daphne had often wished that she had had a daughter who didn"t remind her so much of herself. Claire was everything a girl should be. Smart, strong, brave, and she didn"t have the d.a.m.ned Face.
"That"s not necessary," Daphne replied nonchalantly, pulling Claire close to her so the Myrmidon didn"t get any ideas about taking her away. "She"s still useful. I"ll just bring her to Hypnos and have him change her mind."
Telamon glanced down at Claire skeptically. All he saw was a skinny mortal girl who could be snapped in two by even a half-rate Scion.
"She was the Tyrant"s best friend for all their lives," Daphne said enticingly. "She may know the enemy"s plan."
Telamon"s face changed, and he nodded his a.s.sent. "Bring her to Hypnos, then," he said. "He"s at the ferry"s landing in the center of town, recruiting the mortals from the mainland as they arrive."
Daphne and Claire hurried through the camp. It had swelled at an exponential rate. Claire looked around, overwhelmed by the population explosion. Tents had sprung up all down the sh.o.r.e. The sounds of clanking armor and the smell of campfires hung in the foggy sea air. Zeus" storm clouds darkened the afternoon sky, and Poseidon made the ocean churn, sending angry waves crashing into the sand.
"But it"s only been a few hours," Claire mumbled, amazed.
"They"re G.o.ds, Claire. They get things done quickly."
Claire craned her head around and watched one of the hypnotized "recruits" pa.s.s them, his eyes blank. "I know him," she whispered frantically, practically pointing at the boy with the leather fetish. "He"s a senior at my high school."
"Well, if he lives, I doubt he"ll remember any of this." Daphne forced Claire to keep walking like she would a real prisoner.
"My parents," Claire said, her voice thin.
"The best way to protect them now is to help Helen," Daphne said.
"I wanted to stop this," Claire said, gesturing to the growing army.
"I know," Daphne replied, hushing her with a little shake.
Hermes darted by, his eyes and ears open for information that he could bring to Zeus. For a moment his gaze rested on Claire, but he looked away and sped past. Daphne and Claire reached the no-man"s-land between the two camps and began sprinting for Orion"s tent.
Halfway there, the sky darkened like a shadow pa.s.sing over the sun. Daphne looked up to see the storm of Myrmidon arrows arcing high to hit a target in the sky.
"Move, move, move!" Daphne barked at Claire, urging her forward. The arrows reached their apex-and began a deadly fall back to Earth.
When she descended, Helen expected to find herself in one of the many landscapes of the Underworld that had become familiar to her. She was expecting to appear on the infinite beach that never led to an ocean, or in the boneyard of the Ice Giants where Cerberus had chased her and Orion, or even in the ever-creepy Fields of Asphodel where the hungry ghosts fed on the white blooms of the asphodel flower. But instead she found herself inside a great hall she"d never seen before.
Black marble floors studded with Doric columns stretched out like a dark, petrified forest reaching up and back onto a seemingly infinite s.p.a.ce. Giant bra.s.s braziers, twice her height, flickered with the golden fire of clean-burning oil scented with jasmine and amber. The air was desert dry. Jewels, embedded in every column"s decorative seams, took up the light. They refracted it around Helen so that everywhere she looked there were tiny rainbows-night rainbows that were created with neither sun nor rain.
There had been one other time that Helen had seen the air sparkle like this all around her. It was when Lucas had made her invisible.
"Lucas?" Helen cried, her voice splintering down the many avenues of columns in what she could only a.s.sume was Hades" palace.
"I"m here," Lucas answered.
Helen ran toward his voice, the sound of her shoes pounding against the ground, ringing out in all directions through the petrified forest of columns. She reached the head of the hall and skidded to a stop in front of a giant, white marble throne on top of a raised dais. It was carved to look like hundreds of skeletons, contorted in agony to support the man who had claimed it. She stopped.
Lucas sat on the throne of death, black shadows seeping out of him like oozing tar. Helen looked for his heart and saw only darkness.
"Oh, Lucas," she said, her voice high and breathy with disbelief. "What did you do?"
"The only useful thing left for me to do."
"You"re usually right," she said, clenching her fists in frustration. "But this time you are so wrong."
"Hector"s the one everyone needs in their lives. Not me."
"I need you."
"You have Orion."
"I don"t have Orion. We"re just friends."
"Helen." He sighed tiredly like he didn"t want to hear it.
"I know that the lord of the dead has to be able to judge hearts. So judge mine," she said, striding forward and mounting the steps that led to his throne. "Look at me, Lucas. Am I lying?"
He studied her as she came closer, and doubt began to creep into his eyes.
"I"m not with Orion," Helen continued, climbing the steps slowly toward his throne. "I never really have been, and I"m certain now that I never will be, and you know why? Because it"s impossible for me to love anyone like I love you-and I really tried with Orion."
"I"m sure you did," Lucas said, trying to sound forbidding, but there was the hint of a laugh in his voice.
"It didn"t work. It"s like I have a built-in heckler in my head. I can"t even make out with another guy without hearing this stupid voice, telling me I"m an idiot and I"m s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g everything up." Helen climbed a few more steps, and all the joking left her tone. "You"re the only one I"ll ever love. The only one I"m capable of loving completely. You"re it for me."
He looked away and swallowed. "So we love each other. So what? That doesn"t change the fact that we can"t be together."
His voice sounded convincing but, even as he spoke, the doubtful look on his face began to deepen, like he didn"t really believe what he was saying anymore. Like he didn"t fully understand why they couldn"t be together.
Helen trudged up the last few steps, the weight of what she was about to tell him suddenly pressing down on her, slowing her pace.
She knew what it felt like to have her heart broken. Lucas had done that to her once. This wasn"t simple and straightforward like that-like a single stab that was so painful you wished it just frigging killed you. What she felt now had so many barbs attached to it that no matter which way she turned the situation around in her head, she found a new way to get wounded by it.
She crossed the dais to where Lucas sat in his throne and climbed into his lap. He stiffened with surprise as she sank against him, but was so overwhelmed by her sadness that he instinctively held her close. She couldn"t make herself say it out loud, so she put her arms around his neck, placed her lips close to his ear, and whispered the whole truth to him.
Helen could feel his skin heat up with emotion as she told him about Daphne"s desperate plan to raise Ajax from the dead. Helen wasn"t exactly sure what she said. She just let the whole ugly mess tumble out of her mouth and into his ear. A few times she felt him cringe and the breath rush out of him in disbelief as a new revelation sank in. Finally, when she started talking about her behavior toward Orion on the beach and said the word "Shield," Lucas pulled back and held a finger to her lips.
"Don"t tell me any more," he whispered. He understood that when she left Orion"s presence, any hope of salvaging her plan to defeat the G.o.ds was endangered. "Don"t even think it here. You need to get back to Orion immediately."
"I"m not going anywhere without you."
"You have to go back, Helen," he said firmly, but instead of pushing her away, he only held her tighter. "I have to stay here. I made a vow." He choked on the word, realizing the enormity of his mistake.
"But Lucas, the G.o.ds are using your absence to say you"re dead and you didn"t really win the duel. This isn"t just about you and me. You have to come and show yourself to the G.o.ds, or they"ll send Tantalus"s army against us."
"My little brother will send his army against you regardless of what you do, niece. If Lucas returns to the battlefield and proves he"s alive, Zeus will just find another reason to attack," said Hades" sad voice. Helen eased off of Lucas"s lap and the two of them stood side by side, holding hands, while Hades approached from the stairs.
"Did you know?" Helen asked Hades. "About Daphne? Did you know what she was doing?"
"I see a lot, but I don"t see everything," Hades said, shaking his head. "No being is omniscient. Even the Fates have Nemesis to block them."
"I need him," she whispered, squeezing Lucas"s hand.
"And I told him that, several times, but he wouldn"t listen to me," Hades replied, looking away. "No matter how much I feel for you both, I cannot release him. He made a vow, one that binds me, too."
"It wasn"t his vow to make. He"s not fit to be your successor." Helen separated herself from Lucas and raised her voice. "I call the Eumenides to bear witness to my claim. Lucas is not fit to rule the dead."
"Clever girl," Hades said under his breath in a musing tone, like Helen"s tactic hadn"t occurred to him.
As the three girls who used to be the Furies came gliding out of the darkness behind the throne, Hades smiled at Helen almost like he was proud of her. The three ex-Furies, now known as the Eumenides or the Kindly Ones, were like supernatural defense lawyers for the Underworld, and they owed Helen big.
The Eumenides arranged themselves to the right of Lucas"s throne while Hades stood to the left. The littlest one smiled briefly at Helen, and Helen smiled back, resisting the urge to wave at her like a pal.
The littlest one stilled her face completely and turned her eyes away. The Eumenides might owe Helen their freedom from the suffering they endured as the Furies, but Helen could see now that they would do what was right, no matter what Helen needed.
"Let the dead enter and judge," the Eumenides said as one.
There were ghostly sighs on the air as invisible presences pressed up against Helen and Lucas, tipping them this way and that as they pa.s.sed. In moments, the hall filled with hundreds, then thousands, then billions of dead souls stacked up to the impenetrable dark of the ceiling and tucked into the farthest corner.
"Let the qualities of the candidate be known," the leader of the Eumenides said, striding out and waving a pale arm in Lucas"s direction. "First and foremost, he is intelligent. Proof of this-he is the only supplicant to ever offer the lord of the dead the one prize he seeks by offering himself as Hades" replacement. In terms of intelligence, the candidate is the best we"ve ever seen."
Helen bit her lip and frowned. Of course, Lucas was the smartest person Helen had ever met. Smart enough to handle being the lord of a confusing place like the Underworld.
"He commands the shadows and can make himself invisible at will. He can walk among the living unseen, like Hades does," said the one Helen always thought of as the whiny one. Again, Helen had no reb.u.t.tal.
The air crackled quietly, like the sound of burning leaves, as the dead conferred.
"He is a Falsefinder and can judge hearts, as the lord of the dead must," said the littlest of the Eumenides, almost like she was sorry to add her voice to the case against Lucas. "And he is immortal."
"No he isn"t," Helen objected immediately.
"Fact. He cannot fall ill, age, be killed by any of the natural elements, or by any weapon," the leader reminded the jury of the dead, like a moderator at a debate. "He carries the light of an immortal in him. The dead can see it."
Helen heard Lucas gasp and felt him turn to her, about to ask a million questions. She held out a hand to stop Lucas from saying anything and continued.
"I understand. And you"re right. He cannot be killed by an outside source," Helen replied with a nod. "But Lucas can still die. Proof of that was given when Hecate let him into the ring of fire to fight Matt. He couldn"t have fought Matt if he was an immortal."
"Helen speaks the truth," Hades said, impressing Helen with his fairness even though she knew that justice was one of his largest concerns. "Hecate would never allow an immortal to fight a mortal to the death. There must be something that can kill Lucas."
The Eumenides spoke quietly among themselves. Finally, the whiny one raised her voice. "If this is a trick, and he can only be killed by something that is impossible, like a blade made out of a make-believe metal that doesn"t exist, then we will consider him immortal."
"We demand to know what it is that can kill him," said the leader.
"His own will," Helen said. "If he doesn"t want to live anymore, he"ll die. It"s his choice. I"d never take that away from him." Helen turned to Lucas to make sure he was okay with this, but the look on his face was unreadable. She turned back to the throngs of the dead and continued. "If he wants to die, he will, and if you make him lord of the dead what"s to say that someday he won"t get sick of it all and just let himself die, leaving you with no one to lead?"
The dead moved around them in agitation, making the air boil. Helen saw the littlest Eumenides tilt her head, like she was listening to a voice in her ear.
"The dead judge him to be too honorable to break his word, now or ever," she said. "Hades can see that his heart has the commitment they require, and they trust that the candidate will not let himself die and leave them to Chaos."
"But how can you be sure? He doesn"t want this," Helen pleaded.
"Neither did Hades. But the candidate chose this, which is more than Hades did," said the leader of the Eumenides. She looked at Helen apologetically for a moment, and then continued stoically. "The candidate was not coerced or bribed in any way. Hades tried his best to dissuade him to go back to the light, but he wouldn"t. He willingly and knowingly chose to be the Hand of Darkness. Does the candidate deny this?"
"No," Lucas said, dropping his head. "I don"t deny it."
Helen knew Lucas would not say he was misled, even though he had been, because he was too honorable to shirk his responsibility. Helen was reminded of the time Lucas had caught her drifting up to the edge of s.p.a.ce and pulled her back to Earth. They"d resolved their horrible fight on her widow"s walk, and she"d asked him if Castor had been the one to make him push her away, but Lucas wouldn"t put the blame on his father. He"d only say that it had been his choice.
She loved him all the more for his sense of responsibility. Which only strengthened her resolve to say the worst about him-whether she believed it or not. She just hoped her hunch about what Persephone had said on Halloween was correct.
"He is intelligent, and loyal, and he has a strong sense of justice. He has all of Hades" talents. But he"s missing the most important quality," Helen said in a loud voice so every last soul could hear her. "Orion and I were the ones who pa.s.sed the test of the Furies. We freed them with compa.s.sion, and the dead found us worthy to rule. Lucas has never pa.s.sed that kind of test."
Helen paused and took a deep breath, because she knew what she was about to say would hurt Lucas, and probably change the way he saw her. Regardless, she knew she had run out of options and had to do it.
"Lucas is not fit to be the lord of the dead because he hasn"t proven to anyone that he is a compa.s.sionate man," Helen said loudly.
Lucas"s head snapped around to look at Helen in surprise. She did not look back, even though she felt him staring at her. The Eumenides paused to speak to one another quietly. The whole time Lucas kept staring at Helen, but she wouldn"t look back at him.