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Tantalus stared at Daphne. It was the same way that Menelaus stared at Helen of Troy. With Helen’s new talent she could see his chest crawling with need. For a moment, his eyes darted over Daphne’s shoulder to land on Helen. She shivered with revulsion, remembering another life when she had been forced to be his wife after Troy fell. Then his eyes went back to Daphne, where they stayed until the Oracle entered.
As soon as Cassandra glided into the room, her bell-bracelet tinkling delicately, Lucas, Hector, Orion, and Helen moved as one to join her. Cassandra sat in her giant chair. Orion stood at her left, Helen at her right. Hector and Lucas stood behind Helen, one to either side of her.
The outburst from the assembled host was immediate.
“Helen! Get back here!” Daphne scolded. Helen gladly ignored her.
“Lucas . . . son,” Castor said, clipping his words sharply. “You are to stand behind your uncle Tantalus.” Lucas looked away from his father, eyes forward and face expressionless like a trained soldier, and didn’t leave his chosen place behind Helen.
“You see? I told you!” hissed a slender man with full lips. He was older, about Helen’s mother’s age, but he was the kind of guy who just got more handsome as he aged. Definitely someone from the House of Rome, she decided. Helen didn’t recognize his face, but from the way Orion and Daedalus stared daggers at him, she knew he had to be Phaon.
Phaon turned his back on the group and addressed his faction. “Orion won’t even stand with us. He doesn’t care about the House of Rome, but you still call him your Head? Do we need any more proof that he is unfit to lead?”
Helen glanced down at the suppurating gash that should have been his heart, and her stomach churned. Phaon’s face and body might be beautiful, but this creature she looked at was rotten to the core. She saw Orion’s heart flare with anger. She caught his eyes and pleaded with him silently, trying to calm him down.
“Enough,” Cassandra commanded in a low voice. An obedient hush descended as everyone’s attention turned to the Oracle. “The days of division are over. The Houses are one, and we have formed a coalition of our own to express that union. Each House is represented by its Heir, and we’ve chosen Helen as our leader.”
“Challenge,” Phaon said immediately, a smirk plastered on his face as he sized up Helen’s skinny arms an
d soft hands. “I challenge Helen Atreus for the right to lead the Heirs . . . and the Oracle.”
“Did Christmas come early this year?” Hector drawled as he stepped forward, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m Helen’s champion, dickhead. You challenge her, you fight me.”
Phaon’s face blanched. He sputtered something about how his House didn’t allow champions, that it was an archaic bylaw that should be removed. Hector glared at Phaon as he backed down, every inch of him glowing like a storybook hero in front of a cringing coward.
“And you, Orion?” Daedalus called out to his son in a demeaning tone. “You allow Helen to lead, and Hector to be her champion. . . . What honor does the Heir to the House of Athens hold?”
“Orion is my champion,” Cassandra snapped. Her mouth was pinched in anger as she regarded Daedalus. “Is that honorable enough for you, Attica?”
Daedalus bowed reverently to the Oracle, his arms crossed in an X across his chest and his torso parallel to the ground as he spoke. “May the Pride of Athens serve you well, Sibyl, to the glory of our House.”
When he stood up straight again he regarded Cassandra strangely, his eyes darting from her to Orion and back again like he couldn’t understand their connection to each other.
Helen saw the confusion inside of Daedalus, drifting aimlessly around his heart like sullen smoke. As the House Heads conferred with their members over this new development, Helen stared at Cassandra and Orion.
Cassandra was the cold hand of Fate, and as such she was not supposed to be able to be passionate about anything. Lately, she had been pulling away from everyone, including her own family, and they had all accepted this as an unavoidable consequence of her position. But that wasn’t the case with Orion. She growled like a cornered cat whenever anyone slighted him.
Chastened, Daedalus moved back to his position in front of another dark-haired, blue-eyed man from the House of Athens. Orion glanced down at Cassandra and grinned. Inside his chest, Helen saw tenderness, not attraction. He was obviously fond of his “little Kitty,” and grateful that she had defended him in front of his father, but he didn’t regard her as a woman.
The silvery orb hanging in Cassandra’s chest seemed barren and remote to Helen, like a dead star, but it flared with it’s own brand of mercurial light when Orion smiled at her. It danced. It glowed. It filled up and spilled over, just like any woman’s heart would when the man she adored smiled at her.
It was exactly what Orion had told Helen he’d always wanted—to be loved more—and there it was, right in front of him. But he didn’t seem to see it.
Helen glanced at the faction from the House of Rome, wondering if any of them saw what she saw.
Phaon was staring at Cassandra. He ogled the pure, crystalline light inside of her in a way that made Helen’s skin crawl. Obviously, Phaon could see it, even though Orion couldn’t.
But what Orion did see was Phaon staring at Cassandra.
“Don’t even look at her,” Orion growled, stepping in front of Cassandra and shielding her from Phaon’s view.
Daedalus and his second strode toward Phaon, their blue eyes icy with hatred. Even Castor and Pallas, usually so levelheaded, reacted to the threat to Cassandra and the whole room seemed to move toward Phaon like a menacing wave. Daphne intercepted them all with raised hands.
“Dae, I know. I do. But not here, not now,” Daphne said in an undertone to Daedalus, her eyes pleading. “Castor. Don’t break your oath of hospitality. Not again.”
Helen knew that Daphne was reminding Castor of how she had been attacked by Pandora a few short months ago while she was under Castor’s protection. Daedalus, Castor, and Pallas all eased back, but their faces were livid. Phaon’s shrill laughter filled the room.
“Easy, mongrels,” he said as he wound down from his disturbing laugh. “She’s too old for me.”
