Chapter Nineteen
Helen stared at the glass of water in front of her as it sweated condensed moisture onto the kitchen table.
She’d already drunk what seemed like a bathtub full of water and she wasn’t thirsty anymore, but she held on to this last glass to give herself something else to look at besides the bereft faces around her.
“His whole life is this family. This House,” Ariadne said.
Her eyes were wide, red, and staring, like someone who had been stuck in too many different airports in too many different time zones for too long.
They all looked like that—like they’d woken up to find themselves on the wrong side of the planet.
“How can Hector be Outcast from the House of Thebes?”
“I could have stopped him,” Jason said with grim certainty.
“You can barely sit up straight in your chair right now, Jase,” Ariadne said, shaking her head. Jason had yet to recover from healing Claire, and his twin wouldn’t let him take responsibility for something that he hadn’t even seen. “I was there. I should have stopped it.”
“You weren’t on India Street when Hector killed Creon, Ari,” Helen said, still staring at her water glass. “I was.”
“Stop it, Helen,” Lucas said. “You and your mother saved this family, or at least, you saved what’s left of it.”
Lucas’s words brought fresh tears for Pandora.
After several minutes of quiet crying, the family lapsed back into silence.
Everyone was thinking the same thought, that if each of them had done one thing differently that day they could have staved off the pain that they were all suffering.
Cassandra had told everyone they couldn’t have known what was going to happen, but in saying that she seemed to take the burden of guilt onto herself.
She seemed locked in her own head, unable to let go of the fact that she, of all people, should have been able to protect her family.
“Call your mother,” Noel said suddenly to Helen, breaking everyone out of their tortured thoughts. “I’m the only one who can bear to be near Hector now, and I want to see my nephew. He’ll need me.”
Helen nodded and pulled out her cell phone.
It was the same phone Hector had given her with bloody knuckles and a toothless grin after Lucas had beat the stuffing out of him, but she buried that memory and dialed her mother’s number.
As her phone connected, she stood up to leave the kitchen and wandered toward the front of the house, which was usually quieter.
She heard two rings at the same time, one in her ear and one somewhere inside the house.
Helen looked around and found her mother’s bag hanging on a hook in the front entryway.
She chided herself for not being more aware.
Daphne had been kidnapped; of course she had left her things behind.
Helen hit end and heard the phone in the bag cease ringing.
She stared at her mother’s purse, and was overcome with an irresistible urge.
Just as Helen reached for it, there was a knock at the front door a few feet away from her.
Helen hastily opened her mother’s bag and took out the cell phone.
She quickly scrolled down the list of latest calls as footsteps approached from the kitchen.
Concentrating on the glowing screen, Helen saw a few incoming unlisted numbers and a single outgoing call to someone named Daedalus before she had to shove the phone back in the bag.
Ariadne appeared in the entryway to answer the door, and a moment later Castor and Pallas appeared behind her.
They were tense and probably expecting either the police or a member of the Hundred Cousins.
After the briefest of pauses they nodded to Ariadne, signaling that it was okay for her to open the door.
When she did, Daphne was standing on the doorstep.
“I call for a meeting between the House of Atreus and the House of Thebes,” Daphne announced as she crossed her arms in an X over her breast and tilted her upper body forward, giving the suggestion of a bow.
Castor and Pallas looked at each other. Whatever hatred they carried toward Daphne needed to be put down now, and they both knew it. Pallas swallowed hard and finally nodded.
“You are welcome in this House and you have our hospitality,” Castor offered formally as he bowed, stepped aside, and let Daphne over the threshold as his sacred guest.
The official meeting between the Houses took place in the library, with everyone arranged around Cassandra’s chair. Helen took her place next to her mother on the couch, and tried not to look at Lucas even though he was sitting directly opposite her.
“First of all, I would like to make amends for the violation of your safety while you were a guest in my House,” Castor began humbly, but Daphne cut him off before he finished his thought.
“Pandora was distraught. She and Ajax had a special bond, and because of that I could never hold a grudge against her for trying to avenge him, especially not now that she’s lost to us,” she said, waving a hand through the air as if to banish the thought.
“As far as I’m concerned the laws of hospitality were not violated. ”
As she said those last words, Helen noticed Lucas’s eyes snap over to Daphne, and she knew that he had sensed a lie, but decided to overlook it for the greater good.
“I called this meeting to address two very important matters that concern both our Houses,” Daphne continued in a smooth voice. “The first is Hector and his future, and the second is my daughter and her part in the prophecy.” Helen’s head spun around to face her mother.
“My what?” she asked, completely at a loss.
Helen wasn’t the only one in the room who didn’t understand. Castor and Pallas looked around, confused, and even Cassandra shrugged as if to admit she had no idea what Daphne meant.
Jason stood up and took a stiff step forward.
“Helen is the Descender that the Oracle mentioned in their prophecy—the prophecy that says that the Descender will free the Houses from the cycle of revenge,” he said from his place behind his father’s seat.
“I only realized it this afternoon, when Helen described the dry lands so perfectly that I knew she’d seen them.
That puzzled me at first because I know she isn’t a Healer.
Then she told me that she would come down and drag both Claire and me out if I wasn’t strong enough to make the journey on my own.
From her confidence, I knew she meant what she said, and I also suspected that she had physically been there more than once. ”
“The dust on your feet!” Ariadne exclaimed as she recalled Helen’s dirty feet and the mystery of the unrung jingle bells.
“What about it?” Helen asked, looking around at everyone’s immobile faces.
“The Descender doesn’t just dream about the Underworld, the Descender literally goes down into it in his or her body,” Ariadne answered with a shocked face. “You physically went into hell every night?”
“Your nightmares,” Lucas said, looking at Helen as he began to understand.
“You were with me in one of them,” Helen said back to him in a confused voice. “The night we fell, before we woke up on the beach, I went down to get you, remember? You were lost and blind and I made you to stand up and walk. I made you follow me out. . . .”
Here, Helen had to stop. Forcing Lucas to walk through the Underworld had been like doing surgery on an animal without painkillers. He didn’t understand that what she was doing was for his own good, he only knew that she was hurting him.
“That was real?” Lucas whispered.
Helen nodded and reached out to take his hand, needing to touch him to reassure herself that he wasn’t afraid of her now, but Daphne stopped her hand in midair and pulled it back, shaking her head in disapproval.
“You knew,” Lucas said, turning to Daphne.
“Like Jason, I discovered Helen’s talent this afternoon,” Daphne replied. “That’s one of the reasons I asked for this meeting.”
“And what are the rest of your reasons?” Cassandra asked coldly as flashes of the Oracle aura began to brighten the outline of her face. Daphne bowed her head reverently to the multiple presences that had begun to grace Cassandra.
“Like Aeneas, my daughter will need Sibyl’s help in the Underworld,” Daphne said in a formal tone.
“I ask that the House of Thebes care for their cousin, Helen, Heir to the House of Atreus, while she fulfills her destiny in the Underworld. In exchange, I, Daphne, Head of the House of Atreus, will grant refuge and protection to Hector Delos, Outcast of the House of Thebes.”
Everyone shot each other looks, stunned by both the request and the offer that Daphne had made. The room hung in silence as expectations recalibrated.
“Why would you do this for my son?” Pallas asked as he partially rose from his seat, torn between thanks and indignation.
“Because he is one of the strongest Scions I’ve ever seen, but he’s also one of the proudest. The loss of his place in this House is going to change him, and without guidance he could become a danger to us all.
I’ve seen it before,” Daphne said evenly.
Then she turned to Lucas and looked him in the eye to ensure that what she said was proved true by him.
“We are all family, and it’s time we started acting like it. ”
“She isn’t lying,” Lucas said, looking over at Pallas, who nodded with relief. Lucas, however, looked devastated. He had heard the truth from Daphne herself—Helen was a member of his family.
Castor and Pallas looked at each other, already in agreement, then glanced over at Cassandra for final approval. She nodded her head once, and then stood up and left the room without another word.
“One last thing,” Daphne continued, tactfully ignoring Cassandra’s rude exit. “Hector wants to know what’s to happen to Creon’s body.”