Chapter Seventeen #4
“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.