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Screaming didn’t help, but getting angry did. It helped steel her enough to accept the inevitable. She’d put herself here, even if it was unintentional, and she knew how to get herself out. Pain usually triggered her release from the Underworld. As long as she didn’t die, Helen was pretty sure she would leave the Underworld and wake up in her bed. She’d be injured and in pain, but at least she’d be out.
She stared at the long splinter in front of her eye, knowing what the situation demanded she do, but not sure she was capable of doing it. As the anger fueling her seeped away, desperate tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. She heard her own constricted, choked-off sobs pressing close to her in the claustrophobic prison of the tree trunk. Minutes passed, and Helen’s arms and legs began to cry out, twisted as they were into unnatural shapes.
Time would not change the situation. Tears would not change the situation. She had one choice, and she knew she could either make it now or hours of suffering from now. Helen was a Scion, and as such a target for the Fates. She’d never had any choice but one. With that thought, the anger returned.
In one sure movement, she jerked her head forward.
Lucas couldn’t take his eyes off Helen. Even from across the kitchen he could see that the translucent skin across her high cheekbones was so pale it was stained blue by the lacy veins running below the surface. He could have sworn that when she first came over to study with Cassandra at the Delos house that morning, her forearms were covered in fading bruises.
She had a spooked, hunted look to her now. She looked more frightened than she had a few weeks ago when they all thought that Tantalus and the fanatical Hundred Cousins were after her. Cassandra had recently foreseen that the Hundred were focusing nearly all their energy on finding Hector and Daphne, and that Helen had nothing to fear. But if it wasn’t the Hundred frightening Helen, then it had to be something in the Underworld. Lucas wondered if she was being chased, maybe even tortured down there.
The thought tore him up inside, like there was a wild animal climbing up the inside of his rib cage, gnawing on his bones as it went. He had to grit his teeth together to stop the growl that was trying to grind out of him. He was so angry all the time now, and his anger worried him. But worse than the anger was how worried he was about Helen.
Watching her jump at the slightest sound, or tense into herself with wide, staring eyes, pushed him almost to the point of panic. Lucas felt a physical need to protect Helen. It was like a whole body tic that made him want to throw himself between her and harm. But he couldn’t help her with this. He couldn’t get into the Underworld without dying.
Lucas was still working on that problem. There weren’t many individuals who could physically go down into the Underworld like Helen could and survive—just a handful in the entire history of Greek mythology. But he wasn’t going to stop trying. Lucas had always been good at solving problems—good at solving “unsolvable” puzzles in particular. Which was probably why seeing Helen like this hurt him in such a nagging, hateful way.
He couldn’t solve this for her. She was on her own down there, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Son. Why don’t you sit next to me?” Castor suggested, startling Lucas out of his thoughts. His father motioned to the chair on his right as they all sat down at the table for Sunday supper.
“That’s Cassandra’s seat,” Lucas replied with a sharp shake of his head, but really what Lucas was thinking was that it was Hector’s. Lucas couldn’t bear to take a seat that never should have been vacated. Instead, he took his place on his father’s left at the end of the community bench.
“Yeah, Dad,” Cassandra joked as she took the seat that she had automatically inherited when Hector became an Outcast for killing Tantalus’s only son, Creon. “Are you trying to demote me or something?”
“Wouldn’t you know it if I was? What kind of an oracle are you, anyway?” Castor teased, poking Cassandra in the belly until she shrieked.
Lucas could see that his father was seizing this rare opportunity to play with Cassandra, because those opportunities were nearly over. As the Oracle, Lucas’s little sister was pulling away from her family, from all of humanity. Soon, she would drift away from all people and become the cold instrument of the Fates, no matter how much she was loved by those closest to her.
Castor usually took any chance he could to joke around with his daughter, but Lucas could tell that this time he was only partly focused on taunting Cassandra. His mind was elsewhere. For some reason Lucas couldn’t immediately see, Castor really didn’t want Lucas to sit in his usual seat.
He understood a moment later when Helen sat down next to him, in the place that had, through time and use, become her spot at the table. As she stepped over the bench and slid down next to him, Lucas watched his father’s brow furrow.
Lucas shook off his father’s disapproval
and let himself enjoy the feel of Helen next to him. Even though she was obviously hurt by whatever was happening to her in the Underworld, her presence filled Lucas with strength. The shape of her, the softness of her arm as it brushed against his while they passed plates around the table, the clear, bright tone of her voice as she joined in the conversation—everything about Helen reached inside of him and soothed the wild animal in his rib cage.
He wished he could do the same for her. Throughout dinner, Lucas wondered what was happening to Helen in the Underworld, but he knew he would have to wait until they were alone to ask. She would lie to the family, but she couldn’t lie to him.
“Hey,” he called out later, stopping Helen in the dim corridor between the powder room and his father’s study. She tensed momentarily and then turned toward him, her features softening.
“Hey,” she breathed, moving closer to him.
“Bad night?”
She nodded, angling herself even closer until he could smell the almond-scented soap she had just used to wash her hands. Lucas knew she probably wasn’t aware of how they always moved toward each other, but he was.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s just hard,” she said shrugging, trying to dodge his questions.
“Describe it.”
“There was this boulder.” She stopped speaking, rubbed her wrists, and shook her head with a pinched expression. “I can’t. I don’t want to think about it any more than I have to. I’m sorry, Lucas. I don’t mean to make you angry,” she said, responding to his huff of frustration.
He stared at her for a moment, wondering how she could be so wrong about how she made him feel. He tried to stay calm while he asked her the next question, but still, it came out rougher than he would have liked.
“Is someone hurting you down there?”
