Chapter Seventeen #5
“Sibyl!” Daphne said suddenly, addressing Cassandra by the most ancient title of her office. “I beg you to answer me! How can the Scions rid themselves of the Furies?”
“She can’t control them yet!” Castor gasped at Daphne, whose face had grown greedy and desperate. Helen’s mind flashed back to Daphne’s sudden decision to come back to the House of Thebes with Lucas, and she knew that this was what her mother had wanted all along.
Castor grabbed Daphne’s arm, pulling her away from his daughter, but it was too late.
The Three Fates had been officially summoned into the body of the Oracle to answer a direct question, and they would not be stopped.
Cassandra’s mouth glowed, her hair writhed, and her head snapped back.
Her eyes grew rheumy with cataracts and her skin wrinkled.
An old woman forcibly pushed her way through a young girl’s shell like she was tearing through a piece of paper.
Convulsing, the old woman turned into another woman, and then a third, as the many voices chimed out of her.
“The Descender must go down to those who cannot forgive and cannot forget. The Descender and her Shield will free the Three from their suffering as she will free the Houses from the cycle of blood for blood,” they said, and then went silent.
Cassandra’s head righted itself. The wrinkles smoothed and her eyes cleared, but the eerie extra presences were still in her. Daphne pulled herself away from Castor and approached the Oracle with her arms crossed and her palms pressed flat against her chest in reverence.
“The House of Atreus owes you a debt, Sibyl,” Daphne said with a deep bow, completing her part of the ritual.
“And the House of Atreus will pay it when asked,” the Oracle said before the glow died completely and Cassandra returned fully to herself with a series of blinks and an exhalation. Everyone stared at Daphne with shock and anger.
“I’m sorry, but I had to,” she said barely above a whisper.
“You could have killed her,” Lucas said, clenching his fists. “She’s still too young.”
“If the vengeance cycle isn’t broken, she has no future, anyway. None of us do,” Daphne mumbled, unable to look at him. Several people raised their voices to argue.
“She’s right,” Cassandra said, cutting everyone off. “Things will change, Prophecy has been made, and like it or not, I am the Oracle. I can’t hide anymore.”
“Maybe not,” Castor said somberly. “But next time, we decide together what questions to ask and when to ask them.” He turned and pointed a finger at Daphne. “Another trick like that and I’ll make sure you don’t live long enough to hear Sibyl’s answer.”
Daphne nodded once with a passive face that placated Castor, but not Lucas. He’d seen Helen make that face before, and he knew it was bogus. Lucas glanced at Helen, who had noticed the same thing he did, and they shared an anxious look.
Cassandra said that she was tired, and Pandora took her upstairs to lie down for a while. Ariadne went into the kitchen to check on Matt, who was still icing a few bumps and bruises while Noel gave him a crash course in demigods.
Lucas gestured with his head for Helen to meet him in the next room. She tried to shake her head no, but he had already turned away and started moving toward the door. She had to follow.
He led her to an unfamiliar part of the house, the wing directly opposite his father’s office, one that Helen had never entered. As they moved through the empty hallways and past the unused rooms, she could see Lucas tilt his head ever so slightly over his shoulder, aware of her presence.
As she followed him, never more than a few paces behind, she could see his shoulders tense and his breathing quicken.
She watched the warm skin of his back moving under his shirt with every breath, and she had to rub her tight fists against each other to keep herself from reaching out to touch him.
Finally, he entered the empty solarium on the easternmost end of the compound and turned around.
She had one second to open her mouth in protest before he was kissing it.
The second after that she felt him gently pushing her down to the floor.
The second after that Helen very nearly gave in to him.
A wave of nausea swept up from her stomach and she clamped her mouth shut as she turned her head away from him. Lucas pulled back carefully, thinking he had hurt her in some way. She braced her elbows against the marble floor and shoved against his chest.
“Stop,” she begged.
He shifted off of her immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. As they both sat up and faced each other, his eyes looked so confused, so wounded, that Helen’s eyes started leaking tears, even though she had promised herself the night before that she would never cry again.
“What is it?” he asked, bewildered and in pain.
“We can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head in a rapid motion.
“What are you talking about?” He tried to get her to look at him as he reached for her hands. “Helen, we’re free. There are two other Houses left to preserve the Truce. We can be together.”
“We can’t do this,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists so he couldn’t take them.
“Why?” he asked in a strangled voice, sensing that Helen was being honest with him, but still not understanding why. “Have your feelings for me changed so much in one night? Did you stop wanting me?”
“That’s not it,” she said, agonized. “I wish I didn’t want you.”
“How can you say that?” Lucas asked, relieved to know that at least Helen still felt the same about him.
“I know you’ve been through a lot today, and maybe you’re not ready right this second.
That’s fine, we’ll wait as long as you want.
. . .” He tried to pull her into his arms, just to hold her, but she pushed hard against his chest and turned her face away from his.
“We’re first cousins!” she cried out hopelessly, her shoulders beginning to jump up and down with uncontrollable sobs. “Jerry wasn’t my father, Lucas. Ajax was.”
Lucas’s whole body went still with fear. In the silence that followed, all Helen could hear was the sound of the rain on the glass roof.
“That’s not possible,” he whispered, even though he could hear that she wasn’t lying. He shook his head. “No. We saw the Furies when we met. We can’t be related.”
“Yes, we can,” Helen said, wiping one cheek, then the other, then back again to the first in what seemed like an endless procession of tears that needed to be wiped away.
“The children of mixed lineage can only be claimed by one House, and I was claimed by the House of Atreus. It’s been happening like this from the start. ”
“From the start?” Lucas asked, recalling Cassandra’s earlier statement. “Star-Crossed Lovers are repeated in the pattern. How many other Scions of mixed lineage are out there in hiding?”
Helen sniffed and stared at him with a tiny smile.
He was so sensitive, so quick to pick up on every detail she couldn’t stop herself from adoring him.
There were an infinite number of ways for her to admire this one person, and because of that, there were an infinite number of ways for her to fall in love with him over and over again.
She realized that she wasn’t going to have to give up Lucas just this once and be done with it; she was going to have to give up all the different ways she could have learned to love him every day from that day forward.
The weight of all of those future heartbreaks pressed down on Helen until she had to drop her head, unable to look at him as she answered his question.
“Daphne calls us Rogues, and yes, there are quite a few of us,” she said quietly. “No one knows how many, but there are at least twenty that my mother can locate.”
“So if these kids can only belong to one House, but their parents are from enemy Houses, one side of the family . . .”
“Is sent into a Fury rage and hunts that baby down. Daphne said the urge to kill the newborn is almost irresistible, the same as it it for a newly made Outcast. One of the parents has to fight their family for their child, and it usually means that parent either dies at the hands of their own parents or siblings or they end up having to kill them.”
“That’s disgusting,” Lucas breathed. Helen nodded.
“It is disgusting. Babies shouldn’t be part of the blood feud.
It’s just wrong. Daphne swore to get rid of the Furies so that Rogue babies like me can be with both of their families, and so that no one ever has to go through the horror of choosing between protecting their child and fighting their own brother or sister—or parent.
In fact, she’s made it her mission in life to free the Scions from the curse of the Furies forever. ”
Lucas nodded, finally understanding. He started pacing, as if he couldn’t remain in one posture for more than a millisecond with so many thoughts pushing and pulling on him at the same time.
“What do we do? We can’t stay away from each other,” he said as he stopped pacing and stared at Helen, who was still sitting slumped on the floor.
“I know, but I can’t be near you, either,” she said, standing up with an exhausted sigh.
Lucas groaned and covered his face. Neither could bear to look at the other, but they reached out blindly and embraced in a tight hug. They rocked back and forth, both of them needing comfort.
“My mother and I planned to leave today,” Helen whispered.
“Don’t leave me,” Lucas whispered back, tightening his arms around her.
“What are we going to do?” Helen murmured desperately, knowing he didn’t have an answer.
They stood clinging to each other in the unused room with the intermittent rain patting the glass walls until they heard worried voices shouting their names down the empty halls.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Helen said. She pulled away from him and wiped her hair off her feverish forehead. “I can’t explain it again.”
“I’ll do it,” Lucas said, instinctively reaching out for her hand, then stopping himself and withdrawing his hand.
Hector reached the door just as Lucas opened it. His face was a mask of anxiety and his chest was swelling with fast breaths. He looked back and forth between their devastated faces several times before it sank in that they were okay.
“You two are . . . alive. That’s good,” he said with relief.
“We should get back,” Lucas said with a blank look before he started walking stiffly down the hallway, leaving Hector with Helen.
“Daphne told us,” Hector said directly. “I’m sorry, cousin.”
Helen nodded a few times, not trusting herself to say anything, and started down the hallway.
To her surprise, Hector caught up to her and put an arm over her shoulder as they walked.
He squeezed her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head.
As they neared the occupied part of the house, Helen realized just how much she was leaning on him.