Goddess (Starcrossed Book 3)

Helen finished explaining and a long silence followed. Looks got traded around the Delos kitchen table, where they all sat.

“How many Worldbuilders have there been?” Castor asked finally calm.

“Not many. Hades, Morpheus, Zeus, and the Furies all have their own lands. Other Scions in history have had the talent, but I can only remember two.”

“Remember? How can you remember the other Worldbuilders if they lived long ago?” Orion asked.

“Well, you know how I touched a few drops of water from that river?” Helen smiled at him and Orion nodded, smiling with her at the mention of their adventure on Halloween. At least Orion was still on her side. “When I got my memory back, I got more than just my memories. I got other women’s memories, too. One of them was Helen of Troy’s.”

Hector muttered a colorful swear word.

“Her life sucked, by the way.” Helen looked at Castor. “You were Priam, king of Troy. Your brother, Tantalus? Totally Menelaus. And you were Agamemnon,” she told Pallas.

Hector and Orion looked at each other and started laughing.

“You were the great Hector, and you were Aeneas, his best friend and general,” Helen said, shrugging as she looked at them. “But you guys already knew that.”

“Yeah, we kinda did,” Orion admitted with a grin.

“Wait,” Claire said, holding up a hand. “Wasn’t Helen of Troy the one who betrayed the city that was protecting her and let the Greeks slaughter her friends and family?”

The weak laugh Claire added on the end did not make her question funny. Helen couldn’t believe the accusation in Claire’s voice and glanced down at her heart. It was full of fear.

“This is terrible. You built a world,” Cassandra gasped, surfacing from her own thoughts to rejoin the conversation a few minutes late. “Zeus will fight you. He must fight you or risk being overthrown. That’s what the Fates have wanted all along. They want the children to overthrow the parents.”

“Yes,” Helen admitted. “And until the Scions overthrow the gods we’ll be stuck in this same cycle, repeating our ancestors’ mistakes with every new generation until the Fates get what they want.”

“Apollo said something similar,” Hector said, nodding in agreement. “And after spending a few thousand years cooped up on Olympus, he looks ready for a fight.”

Several people asked Helen questions at once, but as they began debating the virtues of fighting and avoiding a fight, Helen felt Lucas wake up in Everyland, and she happily turned her attention to him. He was worried about her. She made a note appear on the pillow next to him, explaining where she was and what she was telling the family.

“Wait—one thing?” he asked out loud before reading the note.

Strangely, Helen didn’t hear him say it. She felt the words appear in her head attached to some sort of essence that she understood as Lucas. It was like a freaky second sense, much more subtle than actual hearing, and she knew she could tune it out if she had to. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to spend as much time as she could, feeling Lucas inside her world, inside her mind, like this.

“Anything,” Helen replied, placing the word gently in his thoughts so he wouldn’t be frightened by some booming voice in the sky or anything too Old Testament.

“Can you make it, like, a lot warmer? What is it with you New England girls and snow, anyway? I grew up in Cádiz. I like sun.”

Helen laughed out loud and imagined a warm place for Lucas.

“Helen?” Orion asked, touching her arm to bring her thoughts back down to Earth. She looked at him and saw that her strange behavior had startled him. He was scared of her. They all were—especially Claire. Right now, Claire was looking at Helen like she’d just run over someone’s dog. Helen knew that she needed to sit down and have a chat with Claire, but she didn’t want to take the time to explain herself just yet. She was too eager to get back to Lucas and their own personal paradise.

“I have to leave,” she said, shrugging apologetically. She turned to Orion and pointed at him. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“I’ll be right here,” Orion said.

She stood up from the table and moved away so that she didn’t freeze everyone when she opened a portal. She looked at Noel. “I’ll be back with Lucas soon. Promise.”

Then she vanished.

Somewhere between Earth and Everyland Helen opened her eyes. She had been through the process of viewing the memories she’d inherited from the River Lethe enough times to know when she was doing it again. And she was doing it again.

Except, this time, when she woke with Paris’ naked body tangled up with hers, she didn’t watch the scene like a ghostly third person in the room. She felt as if it was happening to her. And of all the memories she’d relived, this one hurt the most.

It was the night that Troy fell.

Helen joined the memory as Paris was slipping into a deep sleep shortly after they had made love for the last time. She felt his body grow heavy, his joints slacken, and watched his calloused hand curl up into a fist. She desperately wanted to stay, hold him, and watch him as he watched his dreams pass behind his eyelids. But she couldn’t. She had made arrangements with Odysseus and needed to sneak out as soon as possible to do his wretched bidding.

She’d already done all her crying for Paris. The only thing left now was to protect their daughter and make sure that something of Paris was left when it was over.

Odysseus had convinced her slowly. He’d explained that immortals could not fight mortals to the death. Hecate, the only Titan more powerful than Zeus, forbade it. But this technicality didn’t stand in the gods’ way. They were remarkably good at making it so the demigods wanted to kill each other off, anyway. Over the years she’d watched as hero after hero fell in single combat, each of them goaded on by his father-god, and she saw that Odysseus must be right.

Helen understood now that the gods were purposely perpetuating the war, and she agreed that unless one side won soon all of the demigods would be exterminated. Which, as Odysseus had pointed out, was exactly what the gods wanted, and not only for the show. Aphrodite had told Helen that the gods loved to watch and place bets on whose offspring would defeat whose. But what the gods really wanted was for the greatest threat to their power to be eliminated.

The Fates had openly decreed that the gods would fall at the hands of their children. Cassandra had made the nearly unintelligible prophecy about Houses, or bloodlines that didn’t even exist yet, and of the “children overthrowing their parents” ten years ago, at the very start of the war. They had all heard it, gods and demigods alike. But in this case, the gods had the edge. Only the gods knew that Cassandra was telling the truth. The demigods thought Cassandra was crazy.

Helen knew she wasn’t. Her sister, Aphrodite, had told her about Apollo’s curse. As the war was starting, Cassandra had refused Apollo’s amorous advances and he had cursed her to always prophesy correctly but never to be believed. Helen couldn’t think of a more torturous curse—to always know what horrors the future held, but never to be able to steer the ones you love away from destruction.

Helen had watched over the years as Cassandra screamed at her family. She’d tried to tell them that Helen would betray them all and let the city fall, but no one believed her. The more she screamed, the crazier she’d seemed. And as the gods laughed, more and more demigods died.

But Cassandra was right. Helen was going to betray her family. She was going to let the Greeks into Troy, and they were going to burn it to the ground.

She felt her husband’s head slip off her shoulder as he tumbled from her arms into Morpheus’, and she knew this was her only chance. She edged her hips out from under his, and slid unnoticed out of bed when he rolled over onto his side.

She knew he was going to die.

She nearly woke him, desperate to tell him everything.

She thought of their daughter and knew that Paris couldn’t be saved. That was the deal she’d made with Odysseus—all of Troy for her daughter’s life.

It was a steep price to pay, but not an entirely selfish one. The Greeks didn’t believe her when she’d tried to reason with them. They refused to end their pursuit of the little girl who might or might not be the Tyrant. Helen had tried to tell them that if Atlanta died, all love in the world would die with her. They saw her pleas as a mother’s desperate attempt to save her only child, but that wasn’t entirely it. If Atlanta died, the Face would die with her, and Aphrodite would punish them all.

Helen’s love for Paris and the rest of his family, no matter how deep, could not compare with that. She just hoped that Odysseus managed his side of it. If he didn’t imprison the gods as he promised he could, then all of this would be for nothing. They would simply wait a generation or two and start another war to kill off all the demigods. Strangely, Helen trusted Odysseus with this. She’d heard his plan and, as crazy as it sounded, she knew him well enough to know that if there were ever anyone who could find a way to trick the gods, it would be him.

Helen leaned down over her husband and ran her lips lightly across his bare shoulder in good-bye. Maybe, someday, she would find him by the River Styx. There, they could wash all their hateful memories away, and walk into a new life together, a life that didn’t have the dirty paw prints of a dozen gods and a dozen kings marring it.

Such a beautiful thought. Helen vowed that she would live a hundred lives of hardship for one life—one real life—with Paris. They could be shepherds, just as they had dreamed once when they had met at the great lighthouse long ago. She’d be anything, really, a shopkeeper, or a farmer, whatever, as long as they were allowed to live their lives and love each other freely. She dressed quickly, imagining herself tending a shop somewhere by the sea, hoping that someday this dream would come true.

It was still early, an hour or two past sunset, as Helen stole out of the palace, taking her usual route down to the kitchens. As she crept through the herb garden on her way to the wall she saw Aeneas climbing the hill to the temple of the Oracle. Helen paused. No one visited the Oracle anymore, unless they were summoned. What did Cassandra want with Aeneas on this night . . . the night, Helen wondered?

She couldn’t follow him just now, but she realized it was a stroke of luck that he was distracted. Out of all of them, Aeneas did not feel the influence of the cestus. He was Aphrodite’s son, and could not be swayed. This was more than luck, she realized. Again, Helen had the sinking feeling that she was just a pawn of the Fates. Aeneas was the one, the only one, who could give her trouble accomplishing her goal, and the Oracle herself had stepped in to remove him from his post on the wall. It was fated, then. Troy was doomed.

In another moment, Helen was climbing the steps up to the turret. The soldiers manning that station parted and bowed to her. Helen looked over the side of the wall, down at the large wooden horse that the Greeks had left on the beach.

“Bring it in,” she ordered.

“Princess, may I speak?” asked the commander. Helen hated being called that, but as this was technically her title here in Troy she had no choice but to submit to it. She nodded her assent for the soldier to continue. “General Aeneas has ordered us to leave the horse. He thinks it’s a trick.”

“How can it be a trick?” she asked innocently. “The Greeks have gone. Sailed away. Troy has won the war.”

The men looked at each other, not knowing what to do. A young soldier, who probably didn’t remember much before the war, spoke in a wavering voice, “Excuse me, Princess. But my cousin’s nurse said her husband, the fisherman, saw all the Greek ships massed just up the beach.”

“Well, I’m sure your cousin’s nurse’s husband the fisherman knows much more about politics and warfare than I,” Helen said jauntily, and the rest of the soldiers laughed while the young man blushed and looked at his feet. “But I think it’s safe to assume that the giant wooden horse is an offering to Poseidon. The Greeks are trying to buy safe passage across the sea. If we take the horse, then we take away their offering, and maybe Poseidon will smash a few Greek ships before they make it home. What say you to that?”

Most of the men cheered at Helen’s rousing tone, but a few still looked apprehensive. Time was running short, and she knew she had no choice. As Helen used the cestus to influence the last of the soldiers, she felt true hatred for the first time. And it was for herself.

“Bring it in,” she repeated, and all the men on the wall rushed with dazed faces and blank eyes to fulfill her orders.

As the great gate was being hauled open for the first time in over a decade, Helen hurried off the wall and made her way through the city to the temple of the Oracle. If Aeneas were to return to his post now, he would ruin the whole endeavor. Helen had to make sure he stayed occupied and away from the gate, or she would have to do something drastic.

She couldn’t kill him before dawn. The deal Odysseus had made with Zeus was that Odysseus could get the great gate of Troy open and the entire Greek army into the city in one night without killing a single person before the sun rose. Then, at dawn while the city still slept, the Greeks would slaughter the citizens of Troy in their beds. In exchange for such a speedy end to a war that was turning all of the gods against each other, Zeus had sworn that the gods would not return to Earth unless the Scions united and threatened his rule.

Helen had to make sure that she didn’t kill anyone while she accomplished her end of the deal. That didn’t mean she couldn’t hamstring Aeneas and tie him up, though.

Her body trembled as she clutched her dagger. She didn’t want to hurt Aeneas, who had always been a good and true man, but she would do whatever was needed. There was already so much innocent blood on her hands that adding his wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. For a moment, Helen thought of Astyanax, Hector and Andromache’s infant son, and her eyes filled with tears.

All the women, including Helen, were to be spared—after a fashion. They were to be divided among the Greek kings as the spoils of war. Helen was to go to Menelaus. She shuddered, repressing the memory of him trying to beat her to death, and knew that she would face that over and over in the years to come. He was impotent now, made so by Aphrodite’s curse on his town, and he would be determined to take it out on Helen for as long as she managed to live through his brutality.

Helen felt like this was fair. The women were to be married off to the Greek kings, but apart from Atlanta, all the children of Troy were going to die that night. In comparison, Helen estimated that her suffering was small.

Odysseus had refused to budge on the children, no matter how much Helen had begged for their lives. The Greeks wouldn’t take the chance that the babies would grow into men who might hunt them down to avenge their fathers’ deaths.

The Oracle had warned them that the Greeks could slay all the children of Troy, but blood for blood was still to be the demigod’s fate. Cassandra foresaw that the Furies would not tolerate the killing of children and kin, and that they would punish all the demigods for the slaughter of innocents. But of course, no one believed her.

Helen kept her dagger in its sheath until she needed it, and climbed the steep, rocky hill to the temple where Cassandra lived in solitude. Many times over the years, Helen had stared up at the gleaming pillars of Cassandra’s plush prison and thought that her husband’s little sister was like the moon. She was higher than any of them, remote, and so very alone.

A few steps farther, and Helen heard some unmistakable sounds. Impossible, Helen thought as she heard the two voices cry out in unison.

Helen darted from column to column and made her way through the forest of marble in the interior of the temple, until she was close enough to the inner sanctum to confirm with her own eyes what her ears had already told her.

Aeneas and Cassandra were lovers. And from the surprised look on Aeneas’ face as he lay next to Cassandra, still panting, Helen could see that their intimacy was a new development.

Aeneas sat up in the pile of discarded clothes and torn-down draperies that had served as their bed and ran a hand across his sweaty face like he had no idea what to do next. He looked around at the knocked-over amphorae, the ripped curtains, and the general havoc that their union had wreaked on the now-defiled temple, and then down at Cassandra, completely stunned.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked her urgently.

It amazed Helen that a brutal warrior like Aeneas, who had spent the last ten years of his life shedding rivers of Greek blood, could have such tender emotions. He was more concerned for Cassandra’s well-being than he was for the fact that he had just committed a crime that was punishable by death.

The Oracle was sacrosanct. Helen couldn’t believe that the Fates had allowed this union at all. From what she understood, fate itself stepped in and kept Oracles from finding intimacy with men. Oracles could try, but the man they wanted would inevitably meet a fatal accident, get shipped off to a faraway land and never return, or there’d be some other devastating misfortune before that love could be consummated. For whatever reason, that obviously was not the case here. The Fates either wouldn’t—or couldn’t—interfere with Aeneas.

Cassandra smiled and reached up to touch her lover’s pretty mouth with her fingertips. “I hear that’s to be expected the first time. It was worth it a thousand times over,” she said quietly.

He took her hand in his and turned it so he could kiss the center of her palm. “I’m sorry, anyway,” he whispered, placing her tiny hand over the thick muscles that hid his sensitive heart.

Cassandra gazed at him hazily, her eyes swimming. Aeneas scooped her up, pulled her onto his lap, and kissed her. Cassandra swooned for a moment in his arms, but then seemed to steel herself. She pulled away from his kiss and shook her head.

“You must go,” she slurred, drunk on him. “Now, before anyone discovers us.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Aeneas responded with a low laugh. “I won’t dishonor you by running off to save my own skin.”

Aeneas shifted so that Cassandra could sit comfortably astride him and still see every change of his face as he pledged himself to her.

“I am free to remarry,” he said, smiling softly. “My wife died in childbirth years ago, and my mourning is long over. Your brother may want my life for what I’ve done to you, but I have every right to ask for your hand before it comes to that.”

Cassandra edged away from Aeneas, pushing him back so both of them could see more clearly.

“I am not simply my brother’s sister, and this is not a silly tryst that can be excused with a hasty marriage,” Cassandra said, like he was missing the point entirely. “I am Cassandra of Troy and the vessel of the Fates. You have defiled that vessel, Aeneas. The punishment for you is certain.” Cassandra spoke to him harshly, trying to make him understand the stakes. “You must run. Tonight. Now. Or you will die.”

“I won’t leave you, Cassandra. I’ll take my chances, throw myself on Paris’ mercy. I’ll beg him to allow you to be my wife if I must. But I won’t run.” A pained look crossed his face as a troubling thought occurred to him. “Don’t you want to be my wife? I thought . . . since you gave yourself to me . . . that you loved me.”

Cassandra dropped her head into her hands. Aeneas tried to soothe her. He caressed her, held her, and urged her to look up at him. When she finally met his gaze again, her piercing blue eyes sank deep into his bright green ones, and she spoke with all the authority of Fate itself.

“I couldn’t love you more if you came to me holding the sun in your right hand and all the stars in the sky in your left,” she told him, her voice as final as a funeral dirge. “I could live a hundred lifetimes and never wish for a more perfect man than you. I have loved you since the second I saw you, and unfortunately for me, I know for a fact that I will never love anyone or anything as much as I love you.”

Helen’s heart jumped into her throat. She ducked behind the column that hid her and stuffed a hand over her mouth to keep her heart, and the choked sound that followed it, from leaping out. Cassandra knew Troy was going to fall that very night. She had seduced Aeneas on purpose in order to force him to run away. It was a desperate attempt to save his life.

Cassandra had risked angering the Fates to save the man she loved, but instead, her plan had turned back around and devoured itself like a snake eating its own tail. By loving Aeneas, Cassandra hadn’t made him want to flee Troy as she had planned, but rather, she had given him an unshakable desire to stay. For all her foresight, the one thing Cassandra hadn’t accounted for was that Aeneas might fall madly in love with her. But it had happened. And now she had to change his mind or watch him die at the hands of the Greeks.

“I know Paris will support our marriage,” Aeneas said, making excited plans. “You’ll have to leave your high station at the temple, of course, but that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“It would be paradise,” Cassandra admitted sadly. She climbed out of his lap, sought out her chiton in the heap, and put it on as she spoke. “But you have more to fear than just my brother. We all do.”

“Are you talking about the fall of Troy again?” he asked, his face wary. He braced himself, like he was getting ready for Cassandra to start raving.

“No. I’ll never speak of it again,” Cassandra said quietly, and Aeneas relaxed. “I’m talking of another matter that has nothing to do with prophecy.”

So he might believe her, Helen thought, trying to figure out Cassandra’s strategy. Her curse is that her prophecy is not to be believed, not other truths she might know.

“You must leave Troy before the sun rises, or Apollo will see that you have become my lover.”

“How does this concern Apollo?” Aeneas asked cautiously.

“I refused him years ago. The only reason I’m still alive is because even he fears the Fates, and they claimed me first.” Cassandra’s voice faltered when she saw the horrified look on Aeneas’ face, but still, she continued. “Apollo comes with the sun. If he sees that I gave myself to you he will curse you, your boy, and your father.”

Aeneas stared at Cassandra, his face paling in the torchlight.

“I’m sorry.” She reached out to him but Aeneas threw her hands off and pushed away from her.

“Why?” he asked her desperately. “Why did you do this to me?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. He stood up, searched for his chiton, and tied it angrily.

“I was ready to die for you if that was my punishment, but my son and father have nothing to do with this. You should have told me.” His voice shook with betrayal. “You’ve cursed my family forever.”

“No,” Cassandra said, dashing tears off her cheek. “If you leave now, take your father and your son and get out of Troy before dawn, Apollo will not chase you.”

“Of course he will!” Aeneas yelled, finally raising his voice at her.

“No, he won’t be able to touch you ever again, I swear it!” she yelled back. That made Aeneas pause. Oracles did not swear lightly. “Shortly after dawn, Apollo will be trapped on Olympus by a vow that Zeus has made on the River Styx. Zeus thought it would be impossible for the demigods to accomplish their end of it, but by dawn, it will be so. Zeus’ unbreakable vow binds him and the Twelve to stay imprisoned on Olympus for many generations.”

“And what is this impossible thing the demigods will have accomplished by dawn?” Aeneas asked, like he was starting to be convinced.

“You won’t believe me.” Cassandra sighed like Atlas had just rolled his burden onto her shoulders. Then she laughed, and muttered to herself. “A giant wooden horse. Ridiculous.”

“What about the horse?” Aeneas asked, his voice dropping dangerously. “The one outside the great gate?”

“It’s already too late,” she said, shaking her head. “Get your son. Get your father. Leave Troy. If you stay, Apollo will punish us all.”

Aeneas’ shoulders shrank, and the wounded expression on his face made him look as young as he had been when Helen first met him a decade ago.

“I actually believed you when you said you loved me,” he told her quietly.

“Maybe someday you’ll look back on tonight and believe it again.” Cassandra bent her head, and Aeneas left her.

Andy woke long before dawn. She was alone in Ariadne’s bed for the first time since the Delos family had taken her in, and it felt too weird. She’d gotten used to Ariadne’s snoring and Helen’s thrashing about. In a few short days, it had started to feel like the three of them had grown up piled on top of each other, and now that the room was quiet, it felt too quiet to sleep.

It also didn’t help that every time she closed her eyes the only thing she could see was Hector rising up out of the water to come to her rescue, soaking wet, bare chested, and not exactly sleep inducing. Giving up on getting any more rest, Andy swung her legs out of bed and rumpled her short, dark hair with her fingers until the back stood up in spikes. She decided to go downstairs to see what she could do to help Noel and Kate set up for the monumental breakfast they were going to serve before Daedalus and Phaon’s dawn duel.

Noel didn’t expect Andy to do chores, but Andy insisted. She’d been taking care of herself her whole life, and she wasn’t comfortable sitting around while other people waited on her. If she was going to be protected by this family, she figured the least she could do was help out. Plus, there were milk and cookies in the kitchen—Kate’s cookies, no less. Andy may not have been on Nantucket for very long, but she’d already learned that Kate baked the kind of cookies that made a person want to get out of bed.

Creeping into the kitchen, Andy saw a big, dark shape sitting at the table and gasped in surprise.

“You’re not thinking of trying to go for another swim, are you?” Hector asked quietly.

“No,” Andy whispered, pulling up the strap of her nightgown. Ariadne was a bit bigger than Andy and most of the clothes she’d borrowed seemed to fall off her shoulder in an inadvertently seductive way. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I know,” he said, watching her. “I heard.”

“How could you . . . ,” Andy began, and broke off when she saw the gleam of his smile in the dark. Of course he could hear her tossing and turning in bed. He was a Scion. He could probably hear her sighing his freaking name in her sleep. The thought made her want to turn and run back upstairs, but instead she stayed rooted to the spot, staring at his shape while her eyes adjusted to the dark.

“Get a glass.” Hector gestured to the bottle of milk and plate of cookies in front of him.

“Aha. Kate’s cookies. You beat me to it.” Andy chuckled. She took down a mug and slid in next to Hector on the bench. He was only wearing a pair of well-worn sweatpants that said REAL MADRID in fading letters down the side. “Don’t you ever wear a shirt?” she asked. She was attempting to joke but her voice came out shaky and breathy, ruining the cool-girl effect she was going for.

“Not to bed.” He smiled and took her mug to fill it. Andy watched the muscles in his forearm flex and relax as he poured. His hands fascinated her. She liked the way he held things in such a solid, sure way. Andy’s hands had a tendency to flutter daintily when she moved, something she blamed on her siren heritage. But when Hector’s hands touched something, they took control of it.

Andy nibbled on a cookie and found herself marveling at the difference between them. Hector was unapologetically masculine in everything he did, and just sitting next to him made Andy feel more feminine than she ever had before. Femininity was something usually equated with weakness in Andy’s mind, but now that she was near Hector, Andy realized that really feeling like a woman was just about the most empowering thing she’d ever experienced.

“Do you like soccer?” she asked, gesturing to the logo on his sweatpants.

“I like Madrid,” he replied. “My family spent a lot of years in Spain. I’d love to go back someday.”

“I liked Spain, but I think I prefer Scandinavia. Have you ever swum in a fjord?” He shook his head. “The ice glows milky-blue underwater. It’s . . .” She broke off and smiled shyly. “Maybe we can do that together someday.”

The silence stretched out between them as they stared at each other. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears and knew that Hector could hear it, too.

“Did you travel a lot growing up?” he finally asked.

“When I was young. Before my mother, ah . . . went her own way.” Andy looked down at her mug. “Sirens don’t raise kids like humans do. My mom stuck around a lot longer than most would have. She really tried with me.”

“When did she go her own way?” Hector asked, using Andy’s phrase.

“When I was seven she left me at boarding school.” She saw Hector wince. “Wow. Out loud, that sounds just awful, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he laughed quietly. “This must be a shock to you. Suddenly being a part of my big, crazy family.”

“No, I like it,” Andy replied immediately, conscious of the fact that he’d included her in his family. “I love it, actually.”

It felt like a warm bubble was expanding inside her, filling up spaces she didn’t even know she had, and she suddenly wanted to touch Hector very much. She leaned closer to him, hoping that if she invited him nearer he’d come the rest of the way.

“Andy. You’re a guest in my house. There are rules about this,” Hector whispered pleadingly. She looked up at his face, arrested by his tone. “You haven’t spent much time around men. Have you.” It wasn’t really a question, but she shook her head in answer, anyway. “Fix your nightgown,” he said softly.

Andy caught at the fallen strap with her fingertips and slid it back over her shoulder, loving the way Hector’s eyes followed every move she made, like he was trying to read something written on her skin.

“Come on,” he sighed regretfully, standing up and taking her by the hand. He led her back upstairs to his sister’s room, pausing outside the door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sensing that she’d done something wrong.

“You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for, do you?” Hector asked with a humorous glint in his eye.

“No idea,” she admitted, feeling a bit silly.

He leaned close to her and brushed his lips against her cheek. Andy felt a shiver radiate out from where he’d kissed her, like ripples spreading on the surface of a pond.

“I’ll show you later,” he promised, his voice shaking slightly.

Hector opened the door to Ariadne’s bedroom and gently pushed a very confused Andy through it.

Helen sat up in bed. The sound of lapping waves greeted her and clear sea air, sweetened with the scent of rain-forest flowers, wrapped Helen in dewy heat.

She ran her hands over the crisp sheet under her and felt the dent next to her that still smelled like Lucas. She swung her bare legs to the side, parting the gauzy curtain of mosquito netting that hung over the wide, white bed. The teak floor was glossy and cool underfoot. A seashell wind chime announced where the entrance to the hut was, and Helen padded barefoot toward it.

Outside, sparkling blue-green water harbored teeming coral reefs. Beyond the watery expanse, impossibly steep and verdant islands jutted up out of the dazzling aqua water like the elbows of giants.

Helen walked the circumference of the wraparound deck and saw that their little hut was raised up on stilts in the middle of the water of the shallow cove. She found Lucas—out for a dawn swim.

Helen sat down on the deck next to a skeptical sea turtle and watched Lucas goof off with a lemon shark. She knew animals weren’t pets here, because she had made it so.

The sea turtle wasn’t about to risk getting in the water with anything that had as many teeth as a lemon shark. Helen didn’t blame her. Respect for the power of other animals was something that Helen wasn’t about to monkey with, not even in paradise. Why have a shark at all if it wasn’t dangerous? Where was the thrill in that?

Lucas seemed to be aware of the fact that the lemon shark was not a toy, and he met it in the water with all the respect that creature deserved. But they darted under the waves almost like they were having a game of tag.

It reminded Helen of how Lucas moved around the ring when he and Hector were sparring. She decided that was what Lucas was doing. He was honing his reflexes and bettering his fight skills with a creature that he’d never had the opportunity to spar with before. Maybe the lemon shark was as well.

Lucas noticed Helen watching him. He floated under the water, angling himself toward her, his arms spread out like wings. Helen’s tummy hit the floor and she smiled at him, amazed that he could still do that to her after everything they’d been through. Lifetimes that she could remember—some that lasted only a few brief years, and others that lasted decades—and he still made her all tingly like a girl who had never been kissed.

He pulled himself out of the water and sat next to her, dripping wet and soaking in the newly dawning sunshine.

“I’ve always wanted to do that—stay under and not need a breath,” he said, so excited his voice was high and boyish. “Hector and Jason may have envied me when I flew, but I died a little when they jumped in the water together and disappeared for hours. I couldn’t follow them.”

Helen heard a sad note creep into his tone, and she realized that he must have always been slightly isolated from his cousins. He couldn’t take them flying with him, and they couldn’t take him under the water with them.

Helen knew it wasn’t that Lucas envied Hector and Jason for what they could do. He envied that they could share their talents with each other, and he couldn’t share his with anyone—until Helen came along.

Lucas looked out at the gently folding waves, thinking. “Am I like this from now on?” he asked. “Will I be able to breathe underwater back on Earth?”

“Yes,” Helen replied quietly. “In Hades, he makes it so no one has any special powers—except him, of course. That way he doesn’t grant talents to individuals who weren’t born with them. Hades is very smart. He avoids the whole question of giving too much power by suspending all powers when you are with him.”

“You didn’t do that,” Lucas said quietly.

“I couldn’t. I needed to fix you. And now I just want to please you,” Helen admitted. “I want you to enjoy all that I have to give you. But in order to make it possible for you to breathe underwater here, I had to change your body permanently. That’s why I don’t know how many Scions I should bring here. I want everyone to see this, but what if I . . .”

“Inadvertently make an army of Scions who have a multitude of talents that not even the Olympians have?” Lucas finished for her. “It is a big thing to consider.”

“Unlimited power.”

Lucas thought some more. “Why didn’t Zeus do this? Give himself and all the Olympians as many different talents he could think of?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s into sharing power,” Helen guessed. “It could also be because, like Hades, he decided to set certain rules for his world that prohibit him from giving out powers. But I don’t know what the deal is with Olympus. I’ve never been there.”

“I hear there’s a lot of feasting,” Lucas said jokingly. “Ambrosia, nectar of the gods, nymphs. Lots of nymphs.”

“Keep ’em fed and happy so they don’t revolt,” Helen said with a nod and a grin. They chuckled with each other, their eyes locking. Lucas took her hand and looked away.

His eyes scanned the horizon, sweeping over the dazzling view like he was trying to memorize it. He turned back to her and grew serious. “How’s the family?”

“Anxious. We should go back,” she replied reluctantly. “Time runs here just like it does on Earth, and they’re waiting for me to come back with you.”

Although Helen would have loved to spend eternity in this hut over the water with Lucas, she had more than one reason to return to Earth. She had to get back to Orion, her Shield, so the Fates couldn’t see her while she tried to come up with a way to stop a war with the gods. She knew she didn’t have much time. Now that she’d created her own world, Zeus would be gunning for her, and she couldn’t even start to plan without making sure that the Fates couldn’t see her.

She itched to tell Lucas about all this, but she knew she couldn’t. Even in her Everyland the Fates could still see her, and if the Fates thought she was trying to dodge them, they’d find a way to keep her from Orion. They might already know what Helen was planning, whether she said it out loud or not, but she figured saying it would definitely jinx it. She had to wait until she was with Orion again to tell all of them what she was planning.

“I can feel you fidgeting,” Lucas said with an indulgent smile. “But before we go, may I ask a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t bring anyone else here, to this cove, okay? Let this place be ours.”

“Forever and ever,” she promised.