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“I’m not distracted, and I know this is my task. But I’m not getting anywhere on my own. You have no idea what it feels like to be down there!”
“Yes I do,” he whispered harshly, almost before Helen had stopped speaking. Then Helen remembered. Lucas had been in the Underworld, too, the night they fell. She was close enough to him now to see his eyes, and they were so dark blue they were nearly black and sunken. His face looked thinner and much too pale, like he hadn’t seen the sun in weeks.
“Then you should know it’s almost impossible to make it through that place without someone there to help you,” Helen said, her voice catching slightly at the thought of how sick he looked. But she didn’t back down. “And Orion is helping me—not distracting me. He’s taken a lot of risks to be there for me, and I know in my heart he wants to stop the Furies just as much, maybe even more than we do. I don’t believe he’s this evil Tyrant everyone is talking about. And I’m not going to judge m
y friend based on some ancient prophecy that may or may not be a bunch of poetic nonsense.”
“That’s very fair of you, Helen, but remember there’s always a grain of truth in the prophecies, no matter how much poetry has been frosted on top.”
“What’s wrong with you? You never used to talk like this!” Helen exclaimed, raising her voice to a shout for the first time. She didn’t care if the whole household came running and saw them alone together. She took another step toward him, and this time, he was the one to take a step back. “You used to laugh at all that ‘inevitable fate’ crap!”
“Exactly.”
He didn’t have to finish his thought aloud. She knew he was talking about the two of them. Tears started to heat up Helen’s eyes. Helen knew she couldn’t get emotional in front of him or she would truly lose it. Before she could start crying, she jumped into the night sky and flew home.
Dawn was near. The sky began to fade from deepest black to a midnight blue, and soon it would brighten with the color-rush of sunrise. Daphne didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. She had stopped shivering hours ago, which meant that she was becoming hypothermic. The sun would warm her, but it would also dehydrate her further. She had used up most of the water in her body generating nonlethal bolts to use on Tantalus, and that was before she had thrown herself into the ocean, over twenty-seven hours ago.
She shifted on the patch of flotsam that she had latched on to after hurling her body out the window. She had fallen well over a hundred feet into the churning waves, and then smashed repeatedly against the rocks. The gash on her forehead had closed, and three of her four broken ribs were mended, but the fourth would heal no further until she ate and drank. Her left wrist was still broken, too, but her ribs had tormented her the most. Every breath, every rise and fall of the water, almost felt like her last.
But not quite.
Daphne raised her head and craned it around painfully to find land. The tide was changing. It would bring her back in closer to shore, like it had the previous morning. She could only hope that Tantalus’s guards had either abandoned their search for her up and down the beach, or that she had been swept far enough away that she could allow her pathetic collection of discarded fishing net, Styrofoam, and twigs to drift ashore. She knew she couldn’t last forever in the water. Her raft was beginning to sink. Guards or no, Daphne would have to go ashore soon or drown.
She stayed low, glancing at the beach every time the swells allowed. She saw a large man running toward the water’s edge, faster than a mortal’s eyes could see. He stripped to the waist as he charged through the sand, his blond curls glinting gold in the first flashing rays of the dawn.
Her beloved Ajax, a true son of the sun, had come with the dawn to rescue her.
Daphne tried to cry out with joy and found that she could do no more than wheeze through her swollen throat. Though it made her cracked lips bleed, she smiled at the sight of her beautiful husband, who was just about to take her in his arms and carry her far away from all danger. Just like he always did, before he was murdered.
If Daphne could have cried then, she would have. Ajax was dead, she remembered anew, and it hurt as much as it had that first moment. Why struggle so hard to live when her beloved was waiting for her by the River Styx? She thought of the terrible lie she had told her daughter and for a moment she regretted leaving Helen to believe she was Lucas’s cousin, now that she was going to die. Her wounded body relaxed, her eyes still locked on her husband’s twin.
The man’s thick thighs hit the water, somehow resisting the normal drag. Slipping beneath the surface, she saw him jackknifing through the waves. As her ears became submerged, Daphne heard Hector, son of Pallas, call out to the sea and ask it to support her surrendering body.
Daphne felt her face tilted back toward the air, and took a ragged, choking breath. She hacked at the vile salt water bubbling up out of her lungs, trying and failing to say the words Myrmidon and Helen. But all she could see was Hector’s worried face. At the end of her endurance, Daphne finally lost consciousness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Helen didn’t see Orion for the next few days. She had to descend each night whether she wanted to or not, but she told him not to waste his time meeting her there until they had a plan.
I’m better off alone for now, she texted while Claire drove to school. After all, the monsters think you’re the delicious one.
Smart monsters. I am tasty.
Says who?
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
Yeah? How?
Bite me.
Helen burst out laughing. Claire looked over at her as they walked across the parking lot.
“What are you two texting about?” Claire asked.
“Nothing important,” Helen mumbled, hiding her phone in her bag.
As she and Orion texted throughout the day, cracking jokes about how exhausting it was to lead a double life, Helen started to get the feeling that he was a little too relieved to be given a break.
