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The two girls embraced, whispering encouragement to each other, and then Claire turned and looked at Daphne with a level gaze, as determined as Daphne remembered her to be when she was a baby girl.
“Do you need me to do anything to sell this?” she asked.
“Just look like a prisoner,” Daphne replied as she grabbed Claire by the neck and shoved her roughly out of the tent.
Daphne instantly changed her face to look like one of the girls from the House of Rome—one of the few from the House who had turned against Orion, Daphne recalled—and made a bit of a show about how she had taken Claire hostage as she dragged her through the camp.
The Myrmidons noticed immediately, as they always did.
“Why do you abuse her?” asked the one they called Telamon. “She was loyal to my master all the way to the end.”
“Up to the end and no further, it appears. Since your master’s death, her heart shows signs of doubt,” Daphne answered, staring at Claire’s chest like she had the Roman talent to read emotions. “Ask anyone else from the House of Rome. This girl has doubt. She is not committed to killing the Tyrant anymore.”
“Then she must die,” Telamon answered with a sad nod of his head. Claire trembled under Daphne’s hands, but she didn’t try to run away.
Daphne had often wished that she had had a daughter who didn’t remind her so much of herself. Claire was everything a girl should be. Smart, strong, brave, and she didn’t have the damned Face.
“That’s not necessary,” Daphne replied nonchalantly, pulling Claire close to her so the Myrmidon didn’t get any ideas about taking her away. “She’s still useful. I’ll just bring her to Hypnos and have him change her mind.”
Telamon glanced down at Claire skeptically. All he saw was a skinny mortal girl who could be snapped in two by even a half-rate Scion.
“She was the Tyrant’s best friend for all their lives,” Daphne said enticingly. “She may know the enemy’s plan.”
Telamon’s face changed, and he nodded his assent. “Bring her to Hypnos, then,” he said. “He’s at the ferry’s landing in the center of town, recruiting the mortals from the mainland as they arrive.”
Daphne and Claire hurried through the camp. It had swelled at an exponential rate. Claire looked around, overwhelmed by the population explosion. Tents had sprung up all down the shore. The sounds of clanking armor and the smell of campfires hung in the foggy sea air. Zeus’ storm clouds darkened the afternoon sky, and Poseidon made the ocean churn, sending angry waves crashing into the sand.
“But it’s only been a few hours,” Claire mumbled, amazed.
“They’re gods, Claire. They get things done quickly.”
Claire craned her head around and watched one of the hypnotized “recruits” pass them, his eyes blank. “I know him,” she whispered frantically, practically pointing at the boy with the leather fetish. “He’s a senior at my high school.”
“Well, if he lives, I doubt he’ll remember any of this.” Daphne forced Claire to keep walking like she would a real prisoner.
“My parents,” Claire said, her voice thin.
“The best way to protect them now is to help Helen,” Daphne said.
“I wanted to stop this,” Claire said, gesturing to the growing army.
“I know,” Daphne replied, hushing her with a little shake.
Hermes darted by, his eyes and ears open for information that he could bring to Zeus. For a moment his gaze rested on Claire, but he looked away and sped past. Daphne and Claire reached the no-man’s-land between the two camps and began sprinting for Orion’s tent.
Halfway there, the sky darkened like a shadow passing over the sun. Daphne looked up to see the storm of Myrmidon arrows arcing high to hit a target in the sky.
“Move, move, move!” Daphne barked at Claire, urging her forward. The arrows reached their apex—and began a deadly fall back to Earth.
When she descended, Helen expected to find herself in one of the many landscapes of the Underworld that had become familiar to her. She was expecting to appear on the infinite beach that never led to an ocean, or in the boneyard of the Ice Giants where Cerberus had chased her and Orion, or even in the ever-creepy Fields of Asphodel where the hungry ghosts fed on the white blooms of the asphodel flower. But instead she found herself inside a great hall she’d never seen before.
Black marble floors studded with Doric columns stretched out like a dark, petrified forest reaching up and back onto a seemingly infinite space. Giant brass braziers, twice her height, flickered with the golden fire of clean-burning oil scented with jasmine and amber. The air was desert dry. Jewels, embedded in every column’s decorative seams, took up the light. They refracted it around Helen so that everywhere she looked there were tiny rainbows—night rainbows that were created with neither sun nor rain.
There had been one other time that Helen had seen the air sparkle like this all around her. It was when Lucas had made her invisible.
“Lucas?” Helen cried, her voice splintering down the many avenues of columns in what she could only assume was Hades’ palace.
“I’m here,” Lucas answered.
