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We need her.
Not because we enjoy sex with her. Not because she’s destined to be Ares’s wife, which means Achilles’s wife. Not because we both like her quite a bit in our own way.
We need her because she knows things that will make the learning curve of entering into the Thirteen smoother and allow Achilles to dodge potential pitfalls. No matter how smart I am, I don’t know what I don’t know.
I don’t know a single thing about what she just mentioned.
Oh, everyone knew that Aphrodite attempted to kill Psyche, but it had appeared to be driven by jealousy and a desire to keep the woman away from her son. I had no idea that Demeter was involved at all. Or that I should be concerned about Poseidon’s bedroom habits. Or that Hermes is more than just the creature of chaos she appears to be. Or any of the other shit.
“We’ll figure it out,” I finally say. My chest hurts, and I wish I could blame it on Hector’s fists, but the feeling goes much deeper than the surface-level pain of my injuries.
“Not before you get yourself into trouble.” Helen shakes her head slowly. “Learning the security stuff is a cakewalk compared to that viper’s nest. Can you say the same if it’s the other way around?”
No, we can’t.
Achilles is brilliant when it comes to conflict, to anticipating an opponent’s move and ensuring victory for him and his team. But this is a different kind of conflict that he’s never had to deal with. That neither of us have, for all that my mothers are both from families that have a history of scheming for the available titles among the Thirteen. I think they used to indulge in more ambitious games before we moved away from the city center, but my life has been startlingly normal. Nothing like Achilles, with his ambition a hunger so large, I’m not sure Olympus itself can hold him. Certainly not like Helen, who is a warrior in her own right.
We need her.
Are you sure you’re not just saying that?
I ignore the voice, just like I have been ignoring it since my talk with Helen the night of the nominations. It doesn’t matter what I feel, because logic and facts reign supreme, and right now they’re all pointing in one direction.
Fact: Achilles is going to win the tournament and become the next Ares.
Fact: Marrying Helen is an inevitable side effect to that conclusion.
Fact: Neither Achilles nor I have had to navigate the inner circles of the Thirteen before, aside from Athena, who is an outlier among the group in how she deals with her people.
Fact: Helen has navigated those circles and done it successfully since birth.
Conclusion: It’s not enough for Achilles to marry her once he becomes Ares. We need her on our side and willing to lend us her expertise. When laid out like that, it seems simple enough. It seems logical and not at all an impulsive decision made because I can’t stand the thought of this thing between the three of us ending within a few days. I can blame Achilles and his intense looks all I want, but my own feelings are no less complicated…or irrational. It’s comforting to fall back on the strategy, to have it support the end result I selfishly want, but it does support that conclusion.
None of this is new information. Nothing we’ve talked about as we circled each other for the last few days is new information. It doesn’t matter how much we argue, because it boils down to the facts, and they never change.
We can’t argue or reason our way out of this situation.
I…don’t know what the answer is.
“Patroclus.” Achilles taps my forehead, bringing me back to the present. They’re both staring at me, him with a bemused expression and Helen with a contemplative one. He lightly taps my forehead again. “I think that’s enough for now.”
Achilles always has a better head in situations where time is of the essence. He isn’t weighed down by running scenarios and examining facts before choosing a route. He shoots from the hip, so to speak. I want to argue that right now, that isn’t the approach we need, not when so much can go wrong, but Helen gives a small smile. “He’s right. We’ve had a long day. Let’s go to bed.”
How seamlessly they move to guide me to the door, Helen tucking herself under my arm and Achilles falling a few steps behind to watch our backs. All without saying a single word. I shake my head. This is wrong. We are supposed to be looking after Helen, not coddling me because I was fool enough to get into a fight with Hector in the second trial.
Funny, but somewhere in the last day or so, I forgot I was jealous of the future bearing down on us. I glance down at Helen, waiting for the feeling to come roaring back, but there’s just a strange sort of contentment twinning with my overall stress and the pain beating in time with my heart. I’m not sure how to process that.
