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Orion was screaming his brains out.
Helen shot up at the sound, shoved her mother aside, and started running. She charged down the dark hallway and halfway across the room, Lucas a blur at her side, before the two of them suddenly processed the situation and froze.
“What the hell?” Hector roared from the foldout bed that was set up next to Orion’s. He flipped on a light.
Orion was standing on his mattress, wearing a pair of brief shorts, pointing at a tiny, dark figure crouched in the narrow gap between the two beds. It was Cassandra, huddled on the hardwood floor with only a pillow and a thin blanket to sleep on.
“What are you doing down there?” several voices clamored at Cassandra. Castor, Pallas, and Daphne had come up behind Helen and Lucas in the doorway.
“You bit me!” Orion howled, still dancing on the bed, freaking out. Noel, Kate, and Claire, running at a human pace, arrived shortly and filled the room.
“I’m sorry!” Cassandra wailed. “But you stepped on me!”
“I thought you were a cat until I . . . I nearly took your head off! I could have killed you!” Orion raged back at her, oblivious to the large audience. “Don’t ever sneak up on me!”
Orion suddenly clutched his chest and bent double with pain. Hector jumped up to grab him before he fell down—but not before everyone saw. Orion had two fresh wounds on his chest and stomach from his fight with Automedon. They were an angry red, but healing fast and in a few days they would disappear completely and leave him unmarked. But what caught everyone’s attention wasn’t the new wounds, it was the long scars that marred his otherwise perfect physique.
One cut across his chest, and another was on his left thigh. As he slumped against Hector, his strength spent, they all saw the worst one on his back. Helen stared at the ghastly bone-white seam that ran parallel to his spine. It looked like someone had tried to hack him in two from the top down. She felt Lucas take her hand and she clung to it, squeezing back.
“Everyone out!” Hector barked when he noticed the shocked silence and the stares. Tilting his shoulders, he tried to hide Orion with his body. “You too, little pest,” he said softly to Cassandra, still crouched on the floor.
“No,” she protested. The thick, black braid that snaked down her back was coming undone in wild ruffles, and her face was a stubborn mask of alabaster skin, wild eyes, and bright red lips. “I’m staying here. He might need me.”
Hector nodded, giving Cassandra his reluctant assent, and folded Orion’s fainting body back into bed. “Get out,” he said over his shoulder to the rest of them, quietly this time. Everyone turned at once.
Passing through the doorway, Helen and Lucas leaned toward each other, both of them feeling their injuries again and needing support now that the adrenaline rush had passed. But instead of letting the two of them help each other, Pallas caught Lucas, and Daphne propped up Helen, pulling them apart.
“Did you know about those?” Lucas asked before they were led away in opposite directions.
“No. I’ve never seen him without his clothes on,” she answered, too shocked to be anything but blunt. She had seen Morpheus as Orion half-naked, she reminded herself, but not Orion himself. Lucas nodded, his face shadowed with concern.
“Back to bed, Helen,” her mother said sternly, and urged her to turn.
Helen let her mother lay her down next to Ariadne’s slack form. As she shut her eyes and tried to fall back asleep, she heard Noel and Castor speaking to each other in the next room. For a moment, Helen tried to block it out and give them some privacy, but the urgency of their voices wouldn’t allow even a mortal with normal hearing to ignore them.
“How did he get those scars, Caz?” Noel asked, her voice trembling. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen plenty.”
“The only way for a Scion to scar like that is for it to happen before he or she comes of age,” Castor said, trying to keep his voice down.
“But our boys fought all the time when they were little. Remember Jason’s javelin pinning Lucas to the ceiling that time? They don’t have one scar between the three of them,” Noel snapped, too upset to take Castor’s cue to be quiet.
“Our boys always had plenty of food and a clean place to heal after they beat each other up.”
“And Orion didn’t? Is that what you’re saying?” Noel’s voice broke.
“No. He probably didn’t.”
Helen heard the sound of rustling fabric, followed by deep sighs, like Castor was pulling Noel close against his chest.
“Those scars mean that Orion was very young when that was done to him. And afterward, he must have starved through his heal without anything to eat or drink or anyone to care for him. You’ve never seen those scars on a Scion before because most wouldn’t survive what it takes to get them.”
Helen gritted her teeth and turned her face into her pillow, knowing everyone on the top floor had heard the exchange between Noel and Castor. Her face got hot as she thought about how they were all probably judging Orion—pitying the abused and abandoned little boy that he once was.
He deserved better than that. He deserved love, not pity. Helen also knew that her mother was watching her while she tried, and failed, not to weep with pity for that little boy herself. She pulled the covers over her head.
Daphne let her cry herself back into a deep sleep.
Helen saw her other self getting kicked down a dusty street by an angry mob.
