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Zach took a seat on the now-vacant upper deck. The other members of the Hundred who’d come with Automedon to the island had all been called back by Tantalus shortly after the confrontation with Hector, Lucas, and Helen in the woods. Zach wasn’t sure exactly why, but he thought it had something to do with Tantalus being attacked. Whatever had happened must have been big in order for Tantalus’s elite guard to circle the wagons the way they had. All Zach knew was that now an entire battalion of the Hundred Cousins was committed to chasing some mystery woman across the world.
The voices belowdecks rose slightly in disagreement, and then quickly softened as one or the other side backed down. Zach knew better than to interrupt, so he waited on one of the teak benches.
They knew he was there, of course. Zach had learned that his master could hear him no matter how softly he tried to walk. Whoever was down there with him was equally as gifted—either a high-ranking Scion, or something else even more powerful. His master did not use that reverent tone of voice on any being he deemed less than himself, and there were very few beings on the planet that Automedon did not rank as beneath him.
When he heard the group belowdecks begin to ascend, Zach stood respectfully. Following his master up the stairs was a tall woman and a pale young man. They looked like fashion models with their delicate beauty and luminous gray eyes, and they moved like they were floating.
But, on closer inspection, there was too much white in their gray eyes, and they seemed to pant instead of breathe. Zach backed away, and by the displeased look on his master’s face knew he had done something terribly wrong. The panting woman waggled her head toward Zach, like a snake zeroing in on its target.
“Kneel, slave!” Automedon commanded.
Zach dropped to his knees but continued staring at the hypnotically ugly woman. It had taken him a moment to realize it, but for all her height and sharp features, she wasn’t a beautiful fashion model. She was repulsive, and so was the stooping, stumbling boy next to her.
They were the source of that horrid smell—bad milk mixed with sulfur. It made his eyes water, so he shut them. Violent, chaotic emotions began to bubble up inside him. He wanted to hit someone or light something on fire.
“Finally, some reverence,” the woman hissed.
“He is ignorant,” Automedon said dismissively.
“Is he too stupid to fulfill his duty?”
“Not at all. He is native to this place and quite tied to the Face,” Automedon answered smoothly. “If these are the Three Heirs of the prophecy, I expect my slave to behave just the way we need him to. Like an envious human.”
“Good.”
Zach didn’t hear the woman and the young man walk away, but when he opened his eyes, they were gone. Only the hideous smell lingered. The reckless feeling overwhelmed him, and he looked around the deck of the ship for something to break.
The Furies whispered names and hiccupped with pitiful sobs.
Helen told herself to take her hand off Orion’s chest and back away. She could feel him between her legs, but she couldn’t see him in the pitch black of the cave. That helped. If she could just stop touching him, she would be able to calm down, and she needed to calm down. She was so angry that she could have sworn she felt the earth shake.
But she didn’t back off. Without ever making a decision, she found herself digging her fingers into him, clutching at his shirt and wrenching him closer to her as he tried to back away.
Another tremor rocked the cavern floor beneath her, and this time she knew it was not her imagination. The quake was so strong that it knocked her off Orion. A great booming noise thundered through the cave as the ground heaved up and came slamming back down. She heard Orion’s breath catch in his throat as he tried and failed to say her name. Somehow, he had scrabbled out from under her, but Helen knew that he was still close.
Desperate for some light, Helen thought about summoning a bolt. She was severely dehydrated after toiling for so long in the Underworld, and she knew that dehydration would make her lightning highly unstable. If she didn’t have full control over her bolts, one could explode out of her at full force and collapse the already earthquake-damaged cave. The cestus protected Helen from weapons, not poor judgment, and the earth could smother her as quickly as the sea could drown her.
“Helen. Run,” Orion managed to say in a raspy voice. “Please.”
His voice scratched at her nerves like nails on a chalkboard, but at least it guided her back to his position.
She dove on top of him, straddling him again and pinning him down tightly between her knees. She felt his hands grip her forearms, stopping her from raining blows down on his head. Each of his hands was wrapped around each of her wrists in the dark.
As they struggled, Helen felt a third hand, insubstantial as air but unmistakably Orion’s. It reached up to touch her chest. She shook and shivered convulsively, away from the shock of his impossible touch.
With infinite tenderness, Orion’s third hand passed through her clothes, her skin, and her bones. It strummed the branching nerves caged inside her backbone, then cupped that place behind her breastbone where her laugh began—the same place that had ached so terribly since she had lost Lucas.
While Helen knew that an organ in her chest was not responsible for her emotions, it felt as if Orion held the center of her heart in his invisible hand.
She froze, overwhelmed by this new sensation. Orion sat up under her, their faces inches apart in the dark.
“We don’t have to hurt each other, Helen,” he breathed softly. His lips brushed against the hypersensitive patch of skin between her ear and jawbone. The dusting of hairs across Helen’s cheek stood up and reached out to touch Orion’s mouth as if he was summoning them. Her fists relaxed and fell from their combative posture, drifting down uncertainly, until her palms came to rest on Orion’s warm, thick shoulders.
Inside her, Orion’s third hand flexed and rushed out in five directions, like five fingers extending. His inner touch flooded down each of her four limbs and, lastly, the fifth finger reached up to fill her head.
“I could never hurt you.” His voice broke, and his real hands ran down her back to cradle her hips.
“I don’t know what you’re doing to me,” Helen whispered, keeping her voice nearly soundless so she didn’t groan or sob or scream by accident. She couldn’t decide if Orion’s inner touch was the most amazing thing she’d ever felt, or if it was so intimate it passed through pleasure and became pain. “But I don’t want to hurt you, either.”
