"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 pa.s.sed 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 Ca.s.sandra glided into the room, her bell-bracelet tinkling delicately, Lucas, Hector, Orion, and Helen moved as one to join her. Ca.s.sandra 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 a.s.sembled 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," Ca.s.sandra 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, d.i.c.khead. 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," Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra and Orion.
Ca.s.sandra was the cold hand of Fate, and as such she was not supposed to be able to be pa.s.sionate 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra"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 Ca.s.sandra. 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 Ca.s.sandra.
"Don"t even look at her," Orion growled, stepping in front of Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 b.l.o.o.d.y, 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 G.o.ds 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.
TEN.
Daphne touched her hand to the spiky crust of ice that had formed over the charcoal.
Insanity was swirling over her head while she stared at the burned-out basin that used to be a living room floor, and the snowflake-like ice that had grown over it, smothering the fire, when her daughter disappeared with Lucas. How could she use this? Daphne wondered.
Daphne had never expected this meeting to be successful, but the bickering that had ensued as soon as Helen had made her dramatic exit was rising to a fever pitch. Before everyone started hacking each other to bits, Daphne needed to take control. She didn"t plan to lose this opportunity.
"Did you make that earthquake?" she yelled up at Orion, interrupting the chaos.
"No," he said. When he got shot several disbelieving looks, he sighed and continued reluctantly. "Helen did it. She got the Earthshaker talent from me when we became blood brothers."
"And how did she take the blade away from Phaon?" Daedalus asked.
"Electromagnetism," Pallas replied. "Although I"ve never heard of any Bolt-thrower having enough voltage to create a magnetic field like that."
"She"s too powerful," Tantalus said quietly to Pallas. "She could kill us all."
Pallas nodded in agreement, as did Daedalus.
The room fell into stunned silence as they all contemplated this. Daphne couldn"t let them get distracted by that detail right now.
She grabbed the Bough of Aeneas, disguised as a gold cuff on Orion"s wrist as she stood. "Did you open a portal with this and push Helen and Lucas through it?"
"No. I can only open standing portals, not create them," he answered. "Only Helen can make her own portals wherever she wants."
"The ice?" Daphne asked, inviting him to explain it. She needed to get everyone thinking in the right direction.
"There"s always ice when she descends. But if she went to the Underworld, she"d be back almost instantly. Time stops here while you"re in the Underworld," Orion said, confused by Daphne"s line of questioning.
"That"s not always the case. At least not for Helen," Daphne countered. "I don"t know why, but in one instance I witnessed, time pa.s.sed here on Earth while Helen was in the Underworld."
Castor looked at Tantalus, who Daphne knew was a Falsefinder. Tantalus nodded. "She"s telling the truth," he said.
"The Underworld?" Castor whispered, his voice breaking. "Why would she take Lucas to the Underworld?"
They had all felt the terrible heat of Helen"s electrical storm. Except for Daphne, who could handle the intense heat of lightning, the rest of them had raw, red burns on their exposed skin. And Lucas had held on to her while she was in that state. Marry that idea to the Underworld, and they would all come to realize that Lucas was dead or dying.
"Uncle," Hector said gently. Castor"s eyes darted around, like he didn"t even hear his nephew. Hector looked across the room at Jason and Ariadne. All of them were speechless and searching each other for answers.
"Helen knows the Underworld better than anyone. Maybe she knows a place that could help Luke? Maybe that"s why she took him there," Jason said, thinking out loud. Really, he was just grasping at straws. They all looked at Orion for confirmation.
"Could that be it?" Castor asked.
Orion shrugged and shook his head as if to say that he didn"t know. He didn"t look very hopeful.
Daphne allowed a few seconds to tick by to let it sink in. "What if she stays down there with him, Orion?" Daphne said quietly, reminding herself not to push too hard.
She saw Orion"s face crumple at the thought of losing Helen forever. He loved her and would do anything for her, just as Daphne had planned when she shoved the two of them together in the Underworld.
It was predictable, really. Two young, beautiful teenagers, faced with incredible odds, teaming up together to fight a common cause. All Daphne had had to do was make a relationship with Lucas impossible, give Orion a chance to hope, and he would certainly fall for Helen. Now all Daphne could do was hope that he loved her enough . . . so that Daphne could truly control him.
"Could you go after her?" she continued, nudging him, trying to work just the right angle in this situation to get Orion to realize what, or rather what role, he was meant to play in the next Great Cycle. "Could you bring her back?"
"From the dead?" Daedalus blurted out before he realized what he was saying. He glanced over at Castor apologetically. "I"m sorry, Castor. But your son didn"t look good."
Castor nodded. His face was stark white, and his eyes stared blankly at the floor, like they weren"t seeing anything anymore.
"We don"t know what happened yet. Don"t give up hope," Tantalus whispered in Castor"s ear. He clasped his brother on the shoulder comfortingly while Daphne bit her tongue to keep herself from snarling at the sound of his voice. She wanted to scream at Castor not to trust him, but she knew it wouldn"t do any good.
Tantalus spoke up so the rest of the room was included, easily shifting into the role of leader in the wake of disaster. He had always been the most charismatic of them all, Daphne thought bitterly. Even when they knew he was evil, they trusted him, anyway. They wanted to trust him, just as Daphne had once trusted him.
"I say we use this meeting to discuss what we witnessed and how we should move forward," Tantalus said as he addressed the group. His eyes moved to Phaon and hardened. "Starting with how to punish Phaon for attempting to murder the Head of his House."
Andy sat in the kitchen with the rest of the non-Scions-the rest of the non-Scions who didn"t need to lie down, that is. Kate had taken Noel upstairs after it became clear that she wouldn"t be able to stop crying. Noel was a tough lady, Andy could see that, but after what happened to Lucas, any mother would have fallen apart.
Matt and Claire waited for Kate and Noel to leave before they spoke.
"I never thought Helen would hurt Lucas. Never," Claire whispered, her eyes blank with sadness. "I can"t believe it."
"She"s completely out of control," Matt whispered back.
The two friends sat, their faces unmoving like pale masks. Andy didn"t know Helen like they did, but she did know what malice looked like when she saw it. Having a siren for a mother had ensured that.
"But it was an accident," Andy said, sticking up for Helen. "She didn"t mean to do it."
"That makes it even worse," Matt responded heatedly. "Can you imagine what would have happened if she did mean it?"
Matt, Claire, and Andy sat silently at the table and listened in on the rest of the meeting. The Scions fought over how they were going to carve up Phaon. Apparently, this Phaon guy was extra popular, especially with the older generation. They all wanted a piece of him, but it was Daedalus from the House of Athens who claimed the biggest grievance, and not just to avenge what had nearly happened to his son when Phaon tried to kill him just moments ago.
There was mention of a young girl named Ca.s.siopeia, and the room grew quiet. Then it was unanimously decided that Daedalus and Phaon were to meet at dawn for a duel to the death. After that, the meeting was adjourned. Seconds later, Ariadne and Jason joined them in the kitchen. Ariadne"s eyes filled up with tears as soon as she saw Matt.
"Lucas . . . ," she whispered as she wrapped her arms around his chest.
Claire went to Jason and searched his face, wordlessly asking him a question. "It"s bad, Claire. We felt his heart stop," Jason said tonelessly.