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“Don’t touch it!” Paris knocked my hand aside. “You don’t know what will happen.”
“I don’t think anything will. Not unless I touch one of you at the same time.” I knelt on the ground, close to it, and put my hands under my knees. I studied the rock it was embedded in, taking in what appeared to be the swirl of a shell. It was definitely sedimentary rock. It would be difficult to get the shard out of the rock without destroying it. I might need to make a mold…
“Leo.”
Lifting my head, I found the five men staring at me.
“What did you see?” Orestes asked.
Was he asking about now, or when he and Pollux brought me to my apartment. Or that day I’d been visited by the Furies?
“Today I saw Paris’s life in Troy. I saw Helen, who was just as beautiful as the poems said.” My bangs fell into my face, so I pushed them to the side and tucked my hair behind my ears. I knew what I looked like, and all the plastic surgery in the world couldn’t turn me into her. If I shut my eyes, I could recall her face. It had all been through Paris’s eyes, and he had thought her the ideal.
“You loved her so much.” I tried to catch his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at me.
Spinning on his heel, he sat on the deep stone window sill, and stared outside.
“And earlier?” Orestes asked. “With the Furies, did you see… see me?” He stuttered over the question, but he got it out.
This was harder to answer. “I don’t know,” I replied, and when he shook his head, I repeated it—louder. “I don’t!” Closing my eyes, I tried to remember all of it, but it had only been flashes. “I heard their voices, calling me a murderer. I saw bodies, statues. Blood. Then they said something about judgment and fairness, I can’t recall exactly.”
“Did you see me kill my mother?” he asked bluntly, and I shook my head.
“I didn’t see you. I only saw Paris in the vision from earlier. IwasParis.”
Orestes opened and closed his mouth, then pushed himself back in the chair. He stared over my head to Hector, who leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
Prince Hector. Hero of Troy.
And yet here he stood.
“How are you alive?” I asked.
Not one of them answered. The idea came to me, and before I could talk myself out of it, I reached for the stone.
“No!” Hector’s voice filled my ears for a second. He grasped my hand to hold me back, but I was faster. I slapped my free hand on it while holding onto him.
I was on fire. My skin was tight, and I tried to move toward the shadows, but my body wasn’t obeying my commands. With one hand, I tried to roll to my side, but the hand by my face, the one palm against the ground, wasn’t mine.
The flesh was gone, revealing wet, red muscle. There were places where the skin was charred, as if I had been tossed on a pyre.
I had to move. My son was in danger. The Greeks—we couldn’t hold them off, and once they killed my father, and my brother, they’d come for him.
Lifting my head, eyesight blurry, I examined my body, taking stock of the damage done. But this wasn’t my body. These weren’t my legs, smashed and mangled. Or my torso, flesh torn in strips as if I’d been dragged over the stone.
The fire burned hotter, too hot. I had to get out of the sun, but I couldn’t move. Raising one hand, I stared in terrified fascination as veins connected, muscles covered bone, skin reknit.
I opened my mouth to scream, but I had no voice. All I could do was burn, and surrender to the pain, letting my body re-form, piece by broken piece and hope by the time I was whole, I wouldn’t be too late.
Hector jerked his hand back.
And in that second when our eyes met, I realized what I’d done. What I’d taken without his permission.
No excuse in the world was good enough. Yes, I wanted to know more. Yes, they were closed off. Yes, I wanted to see how all of this was possible, but what I took?
No excuse.
We stared at each other, his chest heaving as he sucked in breath after breath. “Was that good enough for you? Do you have the answers you want now?”
