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“Why didn’t he pick a sword?” Helen asked Orion, ignoring the gods as they placed bets.
“I have no idea,” Orion responded.
“Well . . . how many arrows does he get?”
“Just one.”
Helen’s head snapped around, and she stared at Lucas as he stood calmly in the ring. “Why would he pick that weapon then? That doesn’t make any sense,” she pressed. Orion’s puzzled look deepened Helen’s fear.
“Come on, Luke,” Jason said, throwing up his hands in an exasperated gesture, like he didn’t know what Lucas expected of him.
“Bow and arrow,” Lucas repeated distinctly.
Flushed with anger over Lucas’s seemingly suicidal choice, Jason picked a bow and a single arrow from the weapons chest that waited on the edge of the dueling ground. He pulled on the bow and stared down the shaft of the arrow to test them, and then brought them to Lucas.
“You aren’t even wearing armor,” Jason said to him in a harsh undertone. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
As soon as Helen heard Jason say this, she realized that she hadn’t considered that possibility. What if Lucas was so fed up that he wanted to die?
Lucas took his weapons without answering Jason and moved away from the edge of the ring. He didn’t try to communicate with his father or mother. He didn’t embrace Jason or give a last-minute speech about what he was doing and why. He didn’t even look at Helen or try to let her know that it was going to be okay. Lucas simply took his weapon and squared off opposite Matt, signaling that he was ready.
But Helen wasn’t. “Hang on,” she said, her voice coming out breathy and shrill with fear. “You don’t really want to die, do you?” she asked frantically. When she looked at his chest, all she saw was a dull, lifeless mass inside of him that was equal parts grief and resignation. It looked to Helen like he didn’t much care if he died or not. And that was the one thing that could kill him.
She ran at the invisible barrier surrounding the arena, sending orange fire coursing across the surface of the dome-like barrier. Even if she could find a way to batter it down, she knew it was too late.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Lucas lifted his bow, and Matt his sword before Helen could yell. As she threw herself at the barrier and was stopped short a second time, Matt charged forward. Both of his hands were wrapped around the pommel of his sword and his arms raised over one shoulder, the blade held high, to cut Lucas down with a single powerful stroke. Lucas loosed his arrow.
Matt stopped abruptly, his face shocked. The arrow stuck out of Matt’s left hand.
Out of the heel of his left hand.
Matt dropped his sword, and Lucas lowered his bow. Staring at his hand for a moment, Matt smiled and nodded.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Matt said, looking up at Lucas as his legs wobbled and weakened. “I shouldn’t have said the word heel to Hector. I should have known you’d figure it out.”
Lucas dropped his bow and met Matt as he toppled over to catch him and break his fall. Lucas laid his defeated foe respectfully on the sand.
“She’s too powerful,” Matt whispered as his life faded away.
“I’ll be there to balance her,” Lucas promised.
“Worse than Olympus,” Matt said, his voice failing. “At least with them there were twelve.”
“We don’t want to rule, Matt,” Lucas told him gently, but in vain.
Matt was already dead.
Lucas closed his eyes, just as he had Hector’s a few minutes earlier. For a moment, the only sound was of Ariadne weeping. Dark shadows spun out of Lucas like a black fog, and Helen heard gasps all around her as the crowd fearfully whispered the word Shadowmaster. He stood and pointed a finger at Helen.
“Don’t follow me,” he ordered.
Darkness billowed around him like a cloak and hid him. Before Helen could even process what he’d said, Lucas launched himself into the sky and disappeared.
Lucas soared up into the roiling thunderclouds, hidden in his cloak of shadows. He knew Helen well enough to know that by ordering her not to follow him he’d made her determined to do just that. Lucas wanted to kick himself. He would bet one of his legs that Helen had the Shadowmaster talent as well and could see through the darkness, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t learned to use it yet. This was Lucas’s only edge, and when he turned back and confirmed that Helen wasn’t following him, he went right to her house.
From the air, he could see that it was miraculously undamaged even though no one had been home for days now. The blue tarp was still covering her bedroom window from when Helen had accidentally thrown a rock through it. Lucas ducked under it and flew into her room.
It was cold and empty and the smell of her all around made him ache.
