Goddess

by Josephine Angelini

  “You have to calm down, Andy! You’re still healing, and your body can’t take this,” Ariadne said as she captured Andy’s wrists to keep her from hurting her abused limbs anymore.

  Panting and wild-eyed, Andy finally stopped struggling and went still in Ariadne’s arms.

  “It’s okay! That’s not Apollo. It’s just my brother, Hector. He’s not going to hurt you,” Ariadne promised. Andy glared over Ariadne’s shoulder at Hector, her sides still swelling with terrified breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” Hector called gently across the room to Andy. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  A deep red throbbing inside Hector’s chest captured Helen’s gaze and she stared at it, dumbstruck, as a red-gold web of light illuminated Hector from the inside out. It was the most enchanting thing Helen had ever seen.

  “Stay away from me, Hector,” Andy snarled, almost like she was mocking him. “Got it?”

  The brightness of Hector’s light faltered. Helen looked up at Hector’s face.

  The Hector Helen knew—and usually wanted to punch in the kidney—would have said something hilarious as he left the room, grinning at Andy in a way that would make her unsure if she wanted to kick him or kiss him. But this new, glowing Hector only nodded at Andy’s demand. He took one more moment to stare at the cuts and dark bruises on her battered face, his forehead pinching with sadness. He turned to leave the kitchen without another word.

  As Hector got to the door, Orion and Lucas were just coming through it. Helen saw Orion’s gaze immediately dart down to Hector’s chest, then back up to Hector’s face, his eyes wide with shock.

  “We heard yelling,” Orion said, confused.

  Hector pushed past Orion and Lucas. Searching the kitchen, Orion quickly found Andy, who was still glaring daggers at Hector’s back. Andy’s chest was a glowering nest of fear and anger. Helen saw Orion’s expression fall, and she knew he understood the situation as clearly as she did.

  “Hey, sunshine! What’s the matter with you?” Lucas yelled at Hector’s retreating figure. The only answer from his cousin was the slam of the front door. Lucas looked around at everyone else for an answer.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Orion said quietly to Lucas, his voice strained with worry. Helen knew Lucas was just about to say something impatient like, “No, tell me now,” so she jumped in.

  “Guys. This is Andy,” Helen said.

  Lucas and Orion smiled at Andy and introduced themselves. Andy subtly looked back and forth between the two breathtaking young men—uncertain as to whom she wanted to stare at more. Helen laughed, sympathizing completely with Andy’s predicament—Lucas’s eyes or Orion’s lips? She had trouble deciding that one herself. Helen clapped a hand over her mouth but not before she actually snorted. The odd outburst earned her a couple of wary looks.

  It occurred to Helen that all of the emotions she was so tuned in to were not apparent to anyone else—except Orion. Glancing over, she saw him studying her carefully, and her fear returned. She mouthed the words, “We need to talk.” Orion nodded once in response.

  “Breakfast is getting cold,” Noel said firmly.

  “Maybe this is a bad idea,” Andy said, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Can your family protect you?” Lucas asked directly.

  Andy looked down at her feet. “No,” she replied. “I don’t have family like you do. I’ve got a lawyer and a bank account. Sirens aren’t exactly the nurturing type.”

  “Then you’re staying here with us. Now sit down and eat,” Noel said in the kind of tone that ends discussions.

  Everyone scooted onto the bench or pulled up chairs and started passing around plates. Helen found herself between Orion and Lucas, but it wasn’t awkward or embarrassing. It felt right, like they all belonged here at this table together.

  Helen realized that the three of them were tied to each other by more than just mutual respect and attraction. She, Lucas, and Orion were blood brothers now, and each of them felt the bond to the other as deeply as if it had been there from the day they were born.

  Helen felt Lucas press his leg against hers under the table. She didn’t dare look at him as she felt the heat of his thigh seep through her jeans and into her skin. She pressed back against his thigh and felt him inch a tiny bit closer to her as he ate.

  Right or wrong, Helen knew she would always look for a way to touch Lucas under the table, or brush up against him as she passed him in the hall. She wasn’t getting over him. In fact, she wanted Lucas even more now than she did weeks ago when she almost kissed him in his bed that first night after they fell.

  Her brain filled with some other Helen’s memories of suffering because of their union. They were awful, but not even those borrowed memories of destruction and fire could bring Helen to break the contact between her leg and his.

  More memories flashed inside her head, like a movie reel played on fast-forward. Helen and Lucas had been married for decades. They had only met two months ago. They were sharing their first kiss. He made her laugh. He made her cry. They talked tenderly. They argued bitterly. Over and over the images rolled behind Helen’s eyes like giant waves. When they stopped, Helen could see everything clearly—like a beach wiped clean after a storm.

  She and Lucas were woven from the same cloth, cut apart, and then stitched back together from one cycle to another. The circumstances changed, but they were always intertwined, no matter what.

  The difference now was that in this life they were cousins. That had never been part of the deal before, and it didn’t feel right to Helen. Lucas, or Paris, or Lancelot, or any one of the hundreds of names she’d called him over the centuries had never been her cousin before. They’d always shared a doomed, starcrossed love, but they had never been related. What had happened this time to throw everything so far out of whack?

  I really don’t care if he’s my cousin anymore.

  As soon as Helen thought this, she remembered Aphrodite’s curse. If Helen didn’t have a daughter, love itself would be taken from the world. And Ariadne had once told Helen that close relatives like cousins almost always had insane children. Since Helen was quite sure that Aphrodite wouldn’t forget her 3,300-year-old curse, and since Helen could never bear the thought of damning an innocent child to insanity, there were no options for her and Lucas. She jerked her leg away and tilted her knees to her other side, toward Orion. Sensing her uneasiness, Orion looked over at Helen with concerned eyes.

  Setting aside her bias for Lucas, Helen had to admit that Orion was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. She smiled at him, and he nudged her elbow playfully with his before they both returned to devouring their food.

  Sometime later, Helen took her attention off her plate long enough to notice that Jason and Claire had joined them at the table. Claire had a newspaper with her.

  “She found something,” Jason said seriously.

  “It’s not good,” Claire warned. She opened up the paper and showed them an article. “Three volcanoes erupted last night in Europe.”

  “That doesn’t sound normal,” Kate said.

  “It’s not,” Jason replied. “Especially since one of the volcanoes had been extinct for thousands of years.”

  “Hephaestus?” Andy asked.

  “We think so,” Claire said, looking at Jason.

  “But why would he make volcanoes erupt? Just because he can?” Andy pressed.

  “No. So he can forge weapons for Olympus,” Lucas replied. Several people started talking at once. In the commotion, Helen saw the opportunity to talk privately with Orion. She swung her legs around and straddled the bench, gesturing with her chin for him to follow her out into the hallway.

  As she passed, she saw Lucas glance up at her. He looked at her like she was the big, blue sky, and he was watching it fall.

  Something bright and pretty inside of him seemed to burn up and turn to soot. Ashy-colored hurt smeared around Lucas like a fog, darkening the air and stinging Helen’s eyes.
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  Helen clenched her jaw and forced herself to keep going, heading blindly for the front door. She felt Orion hook his fingers around her arm. They were by the coats hanging in the front hall when he finally nudged her around to face him.

  “What’s going on with you?” he whispered. “I could have sworn you just saw . . .”

  “Parts of Lucas’s insides burn up and come out of his skin? Or are you talking about Hector literally glowing when he fell madly in love with a girl who hates him? Because I just saw both of those things happen,” Helen said in a manic whisper. “It’s as if everything that everyone is feeling is splashed across their insides, and I can see it! I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be able to see inside people!”

  Orion took a step back, momentarily thrown, and then nodded in acceptance. Helen looked up at him pleadingly.

  “What the hell is going on with me?” she squeaked. “I can see love, Orion, and it’s making me totally hectic.”

  “Yeah, love’ll do that,” he said distractedly. Helen bounced on her toes, anxious for some kind of explanation or reassurance—anything, really. He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed comfortingly. “You’re seeing emotions. It’s perfectly normal. For members of the House of Rome, anyway.”

  “News flash. I’m not from the House of Rome.”

  “And that’s the big problem, isn’t it?”

  “Lucas told me once that Scions are born with all their talents. Have you ever heard of this happening before?”

  “What? A Scion taking such a huge beating they wake up with a new talent? No, I haven’t.” He rubbed her upper arms with his palms a few times and then gathered her into a hug. “There’s got to be an explanation. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t want to figure it out,” Helen grumbled, her words muffled in his chest. “I want it to go away.” She pulled back a bit so she could look up at him. “How do you stand it? I usually have a hard enough time dealing with my own emotions. What the heck am I supposed to do with everybody else’s?”

  “You get used to it,” he replied with a little shrug. Helen gave him a dubious look and he chuckled. “Okay, you don’t get used to it,” he admitted. “But you do get better at blocking it out.”

  “You know what? This sucks. I was just getting the hang of all the other things I can do,” she said, throwing up her hands. “And it’s like I woke up the other day with this whole new bunch of magic tricks to deal with, but no instructions for getting the blasted rabbit back in the hat.”

  “What do you mean? What else is going on in there?” Orion asked, tapping Helen lightly on the tip of her nose with his pointer finger.

  “I don’t know,” Helen said with a frustrated sigh. “Honestly? I’m so confused right now I don’t know whether to spit or go sailing.”

  Orion smiled and leaned back against the wall, letting his gaze drift down in thought. Helen stared at him for a few moments, just enjoying his company and the fact that he was there with her. No. Better than that. He was there for her.

  Orion had saved her butt so many times now, listened to her whine when she couldn’t figure something out. He’d followed her to hell and back, and he still didn’t seem fed up with her. The gratitude she felt toward him, and toward whatever force put him in her life, was overwhelming. He sensed her flood of feeling and looked up, startled.

  “There’s something I need to show you,” Orion said quietly.

  “Sure,” Helen responded, concerned. The half-sad, half-afraid look on his face worried her.

  Even more confusing than the look he gave her were the colors she saw boiling inside of him. They twisted and changed before Helen could define them. He was hiding his feelings from her, she realized with a jolt.

  She knew Orion had been through a lot in his life, and sometimes Helen had to run through the whole mess in her head just to keep it straight. Orion was a Rogue Scion. His parents were the Heads of two opposing Houses, the House of Rome and the House of Athens. He’d been claimed by the House of Athens when he was born, so the House of Rome hated him and wanted him dead, even though he had inherited the title of Head of the House of Rome. The House of Athens hated him as well, because he was born with the talent to cause earthquakes. Earthshakers were supposed to be left to die at birth, but Orion’s father had gone against this rule.

  When other members of the House of Athens found out that Orion was still alive, they had tried to kill him when he was still just a little boy. To defend his son, Orion’s father—Daedalus—had killed one of his family members and became an Outcast, which meant that for years before the Furies were finally dealt with, Orion couldn’t be anywhere near Daedalus without feeling the Furies’ influence and wanting to kill his own father. And his father wanting to kill him.

  As if this weren’t bad enough, everyone was terrified Orion was going to turn into the über-bad guy, the Tyrant. The prophecy said that the Tyrant would come if the blood of the Houses mixed, and Orion was the son of two different Houses. The Tyrant was also supposed to be able to reduce all mortal cities to rubble. As an Earthshaker, Orion fit that description, too.

  All the Scions had feared the Tyrant before the Trojan War. As Helen remembered it, the Trojan War had started, not because of an unfaithful wife with a pretty face who ran off with a handsome prince, but because the rest of the world believed that Helen and Paris had created the Tyrant. The Scions would stop at nothing to kill the Tyrant, then and now. The only reason Orion was still alive was because they didn’t know for sure that he really was the Tyrant.

  And that’s what bothered Helen the most. The Fates were cruel to Scions in general, but Orion had been hunted, neglected, shunned, and feared since he was a small boy and he had never done anything to anyone. It was like the moment he was born, he drew the short straw and the Fates had turned the whole world against him. That amount of adversity struck Helen as unnatural, even for a Scion. What did he ever do to deserve the torture he’d lived through? And Helen was pretty sure Orion had been literally tortured. She pictured the horrific scars on his otherwise gorgeous body, and her heart broke all over again.

  Orion looked down at Helen’s chest as tenderness for him welled up inside of her. It was incredibly intimate, and Helen had to admit, a thrill to be that exposed to someone.

  “Tonight,” he said in a gravelly voice, averting his eyes tactfully as if Helen were suddenly topless. In a way she was, and they both knew it. Helen crossed her arms shyly over her chest. He pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight until he was at his full height over her. It struck Helen again just how big Orion was. Maybe that was another reason everyone feared him. The guy was huge. “I want to take you there tonight. Before I have to go back to school tomorrow.”

  Helen nearly laughed, and then caught herself when she remembered that it was her school that had been demolished in the Halloween riots, not his. After everything, Orion still had to pretend he was a normal guy who went to prep school, did his homework, and gave a crap about what the other kids thought of him. It seemed so ludicrous, but no one could say for certain what was going to happen in the future. He was just covering all his bases.

  After the big meeting of the Houses that was supposed to take place at some point over the next few days, Orion might have to go back into hiding again. Maybe Helen and Lucas would have to hide as well. The three of them were responsible for the breaking of the Truce, and there was a possibility they might have to run for their lives if the other Scions turned on them. Or they might have to face off with the gods.

  “Where are you going?”

  Orion and Helen both jumped at the unexpected sound. Cassandra appeared out of the shadows, slinking forward silently, her eyes unblinking as she glanced from Orion to Helen and then to the front door that they were standing before.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked Orion gravely.

  Cassandra’s eyes were big and shiny in the dim hallway, like two still pools of deep water in a shady forest. Distracted by a strange shim
mer, Helen glanced down at Cassandra’s chest. A single silver orb captured Helen’s eyes. Like a full moon in winter, it hung inside the midnight-dark of Cassandra’s tiny rib cage and glowed a ghost-blue color that danced across her pale cheeks.

  As lonely as a rock in space, Helen thought, staring at the orb. That’s her heart.

  When Helen looked at Orion, expecting to see him fixated on the silver shimmer of Cassandra’s core, she was shocked to see him smiling happily—as sunny and as bright as could be. It was as if the chill Helen saw inside Cassandra was invisible to Orion.

  “Hey, Kitty,” Orion said, grinning down on Cassandra.

  Cassandra didn’t object to the nickname he’d given her. In fact, she seemed to like it, which was downright baffling. She smiled up at Orion, sending the silver light in her chest out in a wavelike dance across her face and down her arms and out to the tips of her braided hair.

  “You said you were staying a while.” Cassandra’s gaze was glued to Orion. “You said you were going to make me a bell.”

  Orion threw back his head and laughed, his bright teeth flashing in the dim entryway. “I made it already. But I won’t force you to wear it if you don’t like it.”

  He pulled a long, sparkly braid of silky purple twine from his pocket. It was studded with miniature jingle bells that were smaller than sunflower seeds. Cassandra’s eyes lit up.

  “I like it,” she said enthusiastically.

  “Never heard of a kitty that actually wanted to wear a bell before,” Orion said with a comical grimace. He motioned for Cassandra to hold out her wrist, and when she did, he began wrapping the long thread around and around, forming a multilayered, tinkling gauntlet as he did so.

  “That’s really beautiful,” Helen exclaimed as Orion began knotting the bracelet to Cassandra’s wrist. The materials were simple, but the end result was surprisingly stylish. Helen wanted one herself. “When did you get the chance to make that?”