Chapter Fifteen
The meadow went on and on and on—endlessly.
There was only one type of flower that grew here—a small blossom so pale it was nearly transparent.
No bees buzzed around these flowers and none of them altered from their precise alignment unless Helen brushed against them.
They were infertile things that had no scent, sustained no life with their nectar. They were never going to bear fruit.
The terrain she plodded through was no longer hilly nor toilsome, the temperature was neither hot nor cold, and no sharp stones or thorny bushes cut her feet, but still, the place was intolerable.
Helen may as well have stood in one spot for weeks, staring at the same uninspiring flower and breathing the same stale air, as walk.
The land she had entered was unchanging, repetitive, pointless, and the longer she stayed there the more numb she became.
It was a meadow of misery.
Helen woke up and couldn’t remember what day it was.
Did it matter? she wondered, but then she remembered that if it was Saturday she wouldn’t have to go to school.
That meant she wouldn’t have to put up with any more of the random awkward questions she kept getting from eager girls trying to determine whether she and Lucas were still dating.
The vultures were circling, painting their lips or flexing their muscles, all of them hoping to be the first to land on one or the other of the carcasses.
If it was Saturday, Helen wouldn’t run the risk of seeing Lucas from afar as he went from class to class.
She wouldn’t have to recognize the graceful curve of his shoulder or the curious tilt of his head rising over the throngs of nondescript shapes that made up the rest of the population.
If it was Saturday, she could go to the Delos house knowing that he wouldn’t be there while she trained.
But if it was Saturday, that only left her with a different pile of crap to shovel for the next sixteen or seventeen hours—all day she’d have to be where he wasn’t.
Helen rolled over on the air mattress, looked at the clock, and saw that it was indeed Saturday.
Nine and a half days had passed since Noel had banned her from Lucas’s presence, and Helen was still waiting to feel something—but all she felt was numb.
She heard Ariadne stir and then scoot over to the edge of the bed to look down at her where she lay on the air mattress.
“Morning,” Ariadne said with a wan smile. “How’d you sleep?”
Helen answered by throwing the covers off to reveal the untouched jingle bells still wrapped around her ankles. They were exactly as they’d been when the two girls went to bed, but under the bells, Helen’s feet were dirty, swollen, and red from what looked like weeks of walking.
“Again?” Ariadne asked, dismayed. “You have to be floating out of the window, because I swear I didn’t hear a thing, and I barely shut my eyes last night!”
“It’s not your fault,” Helen said, shaking her head and unstrapping the useless bells.
For a moment, Helen considered telling Ariadne about her vivid nightmares.
They all knew she had them, but Helen hadn’t shared what her dreams were about with anyone since she’d told them to Kate.
Helen took a breath, intending to confide in Ariadne, and then stopped herself.
Would Ari think she was going crazy like Cassandra?
Helen decided she should keep her mouth shut.
“You know, I really don’t see the point in you spending every night here if I’m wafting out the window as soon as you nod off. ”
“Don’t even start with that, because it isn’t going to happen,” Ariadne said peevishly. She threw her covers off and stood. “Lucas is probably gonna kill me dead enough as it is,” she mumbled nonsensically as she headed to the bathroom.
“Oh, hey! Sorry!” Jerry said with surprise as he ran into a scantily clad Ariadne in the hallway.
“Hi,” Ariadne growled at Jerry as she slammed the bathroom door.
Helen tossed the silly bells under the bed and looked up at her dad, who was peeking timidly around her door.
“I didn’t know Ariadne was here. Again,” he said.
“Yup,” Helen replied, like it was obvious.
“Okay,” he said wavering in and out of the doorway. “And you’ll be at her house all day, I suppose? Working on that project for school still?”
“Yup.”
“Okay,” he said, confusion scrunching his brow. “Uh . . . Happy birthday?”
“Thanks,” Helen replied with a nod. Then she stared at him until he went away.
“Did I hear your dad say it was your birthday?” Ariadne asked with wide eyes as she came back into the room.
“Uh-huh,” Helen said. “Not a word to anyone. I just want to practice and then come home and go to back to bed.”
“No! We should do something!” Ariadne protested. “We should take the day off and go shopping, then maybe go out for dinner!”
“I’m sorry, Ari, but I can’t. I just woke up and I’m already exhausted,” Helen replied, hearing her voice sound low. “Practice, then back to bed. That’s all I want for my birthday.”
Ariadne shook her head sadly and stared at Helen while she made up the inflatable bed she insisted on sleeping in every night. Helen could see that Ariadne wanted to argue, wanted to insist that Helen at least try to enjoy herself on her birthday, but thankfully, she gave in.
Helen could barely keep her eyes open, and she was starving.
She wondered again if she actually had walked for days, like she did in her dream, or if there was something wrong with her mentally.
Noel’s words about love being able to drive a person mad came back to haunt Helen.
Were her all-too-vivid nightmares what Noel had meant?
And then she had to consider if, at that point, it might not be a comfort to go stark, raving mad.
Creon stepped onto the dock from the private yacht his father had supplied for him and his team.
The trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Nantucket had been long and tedious, but necessary.
They required tools that would never make it through customs, even on a privately owned plane, and what was more, they could never fly their quarry back, anyway.
That would be foolish. She needed to be properly secured no matter how much the preparation inconvenienced Creon and his team.
His father had explained it all to him—how years ago he’d had the chance to kill her, but that he had fallen under the spell of her face—the Face.
Creon was surprised that his father had been weaker than him, but that, too, was a sign of the coming of Atlantis.
The Scion generations were fated to get stronger and stronger, to be born with more and more talents until finally, a generation was to come that could defeat the gods.
His father’s moment of weakness, as unfortunate as it was, had its benefits.
In that moment, Tantalus had learned of her phobia for the water.
Creon’s quarry feared and hated the ocean, and that was an advantage for the Hundred Cousins.
By using a boat to transport her, she would be virtually imprisoned by an element she could not control, and considering how powerful she was, they needed to give her prison as many layers of walls as they could find.
As he disembarked, Creon turned to tell his crew to stay on the yacht and wait for his return.
He wanted to make it clear to them that he was in charge by keeping them as far away from the action as possible.
Any one of his dear cousins might be tempted to take whatever opportunity they could to insert themselves into the annals of Scion history by stealing his Triumph.
Creon couldn’t allow that to happen, not even by accident.
After all of the risks he’d taken, after all of his patience, he would finally be the one to bring his House the glory that it deserved.
He was destined to be equal to the heroes of old, like Hercules or Perseus.
Maybe even better, because Creon would do more than kill a hydra or a gorgon.
Much more. He would be the giver of immortality to his family, and to his father.
Only one life stood in his way, and that life would be delivered to Tantalus, Head of the House of Thebes and future ruler of Atlantis, by Creon, his son and Heir, who would receive the honor for the capture.
And maybe he would also be given the hauntingly beautiful prize that he deserved—his quarry’s daughter.
Ariadne and Helen drove to the compound in total silence. When they stopped behind Matt at a light in town Ariadne waved. They could both see his eyes and forehead pinched up with worry as he stared at Helen in his rearview mirror.
“I know you’re sad, but you shouldn’t ignore Matt like that,” Ariadne said with a little heat. “He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, and you’re hurting him.”
“You’re right. I’m being selfish,” Helen said. She felt blank inside. Empty. “I know it, and I hate it, but I just can’t seem to stop.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Ariadne stammered apologetically, her eyes on the road. “I know what you’re sacrificing, and I know why. But you know what? I think you need to cry, even just once. Maybe then you could let it out and feel a little better.”
Helen had tried to cry, but no tears came.
Instead, all that she felt was this creeping nothing inside her.
She knew she should care about how Matt felt, but she didn’t even care how she felt, not even when she was fighting for her life against Hector on the mat.
Their workouts had become brief and brutal.
Now that Helen no longer had an emotional block against using her bolts she was learning how to control them and let them out bit by bit.
Only someone who didn’t mind getting fried could fight her hand to hand.
Now, coupled with the power of the cestus, which made her impervious to any weapon, Helen had become nearly undefeatable.