“Is that why you couldn’t see my future?” Helen asked Cassandra. “When I started meeting Orion in the Underworld and spending a lot of time with him, you said you couldn’t see my future anymore.”
Cassandra tilted her head to the side, considering this. “I suppose that could be it. The Fates won’t tell me anything about Orion. They hate it when I even think of him.”
“Good,” Orion said. “I’ve never liked the Fates.” He smiled down into Cassandra’s face, like he’d just put his finger on something. “So, is this why you’re always following me around the house?”
She smiled back and nodded shyly. “I can relax when you’re around because I know they won’t come.”
Helen glanced at Castor, Lucas, and Hector, who were all sharing troubled looks. Their hearts were filled with confused fogs, like they had no idea how they should feel about what they’d just heard. Helen wished she’d been in the room earlier. She wanted to hear this new, revised Tyrant prophecy, preferably before Orion did.
“And you’re not afraid of me?” Cassandra asked Orion cautiously. He smirked.
“Ever been to Thailand?” he asked. She shook her head slowly, bemused by his out-of-the-blue statement. “Let’s just say I’ve eaten meals that are scarier than you. Bigger than you, too.” Cassandra chuckled, but halfway through, exhaustion caught up with her and she started to yawn. “Yeah, I have that effect on a lot of people,” he said, making her laugh again through her yawn. Orion stood up with Cassandra in his arms. “Okay. I think it’s bedtime for you, Kitty.”
“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?” she asked, clutching at his arm.
“Of course.”
On his way out the door, Orion gave Helen a meaningful look. She nodded in response to let him know that she’d fill him in on anything that he missed while he tended to Cassandra. As soon as he was out of the room, several people started talking at once.
“I can’t believe the Fates left like that,” Ariadne breathed to her twin.
“It looked like they were going to kill her this time,” Jason said back.
“It’s worse than we thought,” Pallas said urgently to Castor, silencing all other side conversations. “If Orion stays, we are blind. At least with the Oracle we had an edge over the gods. A small one, but better than nothing.”
“I know,” Castor replied, his face tight with tension.
“He’s a good man. Anyone can see that,” Pallas persisted. “But good or not, he’s too dangerous. He can’t stay with us.”
“No. You can’t send Orion away,” Lucas said in a low voice, his eyes skewering his father. All eyes flew to Lucas, surprised that he of all people would defend Orion. Lucas’s face was impassive. “He saved my life and Helen’s. We’re blood brothers now.”
“I agree,” Hector said evenly. “Orion has fought alongside us. He is a part of our family,” he continued, nodding to Lucas and Helen.
“Just because someone fought alongside you does not make him a part of this family,” Pallas said to his son in a raised and frustrated voice. “You rely too much on your honor to make your choices for you, Hector!”
Hector looked away from his father’s intense stare, backing down. He was too respectful to go against his father, even if Pallas was wrong. That pissed Helen off.
“This isn’t about honor or about Orion,” Helen said bitterly. She took a step toward Pallas and felt Lucas, Hector, and Jason fall into position behind her. “It’s about Cassandra. You’re too scared to face the future without someone to tell you what to do. You’d rather let her suffer than have to doubt what’s coming next. All this talk about Orion being dangerous is an excuse so you can keep your Oracle and not feel too guilty about what that does to your own niece.”
Pallas took a step toward Helen, his lips curling into a snarl. Undaunted, Helen took a step toward Pallas and tipped her chin up at him, taunting him to take a shot. As far as Helen was concerned, this fight was a long time coming. From the first moment Pallas had laid eyes on Helen, all he’d ever seen was Daphne. After so many years of blaming Daphne for his brother’s murder, he couldn’t let it go. Pallas had always looked at Helen as if any day now she was going to betray the Delos family, and she’d had enough of it.
“And do you think the same of me, Helen? That I would let my daughter go through that torture so I can . . . what? Feel better about tomorrow?” Castor said quietly as he stepped between Helen and Pallas. Helen felt Lucas put his hand on the small of her back, and she eased off.
“No,” she admitted, dropping her gaze. “I don’t think that of you, Castor.”
“Cassandra’s health has always been one of my biggest concerns. But the real problem for our kind is the Tyrant. It always has been,” Castor continued, addressing the group. “I know how you all feel about Orion, and I think those feelings have kept you from seeing the truth.”
“Not this again!” Helen huffed. “Orion isn’t the freaking Tyrant, okay?”
“Wait, Helen,” Matt said holding up a hand. “We don’t have all the facts yet.” He turned to Castor. “What did the Oracle say about the Tyrant before we got here? Did anyone write it down word for word?”
“I did,” Ariadne said from behind her father’s desk. In all the commotion, Helen hadn’t even noticed her there, scribbling away. “I recorded most of it on my phone, too. But I don’t want to hear that again. Do you?”
Matt shook his head. He held out his hand for Ariadne’s pages, and she handed them over. Helen read along over Matt’s shoulder while Ariadne explained.
“She repeated this first line about a hundred times, that’s why I added the dots after it. I think Cassandra was trying to fight them off for as long as she could.” Ariadne dropped her eyes for a moment, collected herself, and then pointed to the notes firmly. “I made an indentation each time a new voice took over. And at the bottom there, I highlighted in blue the words they all spoke together.”
The Tyrant rises. . . .
The Great Cycle, delayed for thirty and three hundreds of years, is nearly complete.
The blood of the Four Houses has mixed and all of Olympus is contained in one.
The time has come. The children must overthrow the parents—or be devoured by them.
The Hero
The Lover
The Shield
The Tyrant—have taken the stage.
The Warrior waits in the wings, the last to join the battle.
The Tyrant shall rise up with power unlimited. On one choice will the fate of all be decided.
Nemesis has sent her vessel to blind us! Darkness! Darkness comes! He must be killed or everything will be destroyed!
Helen and Matt stopped reading at this point and looked up at each other, brows furrowed. That last line they had both heard already—as they came into the library with Orion. “Vessel of Nemesis” and “Darkness comes,” sounded ominous to Helen. If the Fates were talking about Orion here, their descriptions of him certainly didn’t help his case much.
“Is this Nemesis an evil goddess or something?” Helen asked Matt under her breath, trusting that he had done more studying than she had, as usual.
“No, she’s not evil. And she’s way older than the gods,” Matt replied. “She’s a daughter of Nyx, like the Fates.”
“So, Nemesis is probably the sister with the veil that Cassandra was talking about?” Helen asked hopefully, looking around.
“It’s possible,” Castor replied.
“And this is the only time all three of the Fates spoke together? This last line?” Matt asked Ariadne urgently.
“Yes. They grew very agitated,” she replied.
“That’s when we walked into the kitchen,” Helen said, catching Matt’s drift. “This whole bit about Nemesis and darkness could just be because they couldn’t see anymore because Orion walked in.”
“Orion could have been blocking their prophecy,” Matt continued optimistically.
“So, of course, the Fates would want him d
ead. They’ve been trying to kill him since before he was born. Even before that, actually.” Helen stopped and restarted, trying to explain. “The Fates have been targeting Orion ever since Troy because he made it out alive when he was Aeneas. He escaped fate. The only way Aeneas could have done that is if Nemesis was protecting him, too.”
Helen saw confused and worried faces everywhere she looked. She rubbed her eyes, knowing she was making a hash of this and that she was probably hurting Orion’s chances more than helping them. She looked over at Lucas pleadingly.
“Am I lying?” she asked him, calling on his Falsefinder skills.
“No,” Lucas replied immediately. “She isn’t lying.”
“Oh, of course,” Pallas said as he threw up his hands in exasperation. “Well, it’s obvious what role the Fates put you in, Lucas. You’re the Lover. You’d do anything for Helen.”
“Yes I would,” Lucas admitted with brutal honesty. “But she’s still telling the truth.”
“What she knows of it,” Castor said in a detached voice. “I’m sorry, son, but just because Helen thinks something is true doesn’t make it the truth.” Castor’s tone wasn’t confrontational. He was just making them aware of a loophole that he’d obviously spent a long time considering.
A ghost of a thought traced across Helen’s mind—a niggling doubt about something that was important, but just out of reach.
“It’s not just that. Orion can’t be the Tyrant because he’s the Shield,” Lucas said, waving away his father’s objection. “When Cassandra made the prophecy about Helen being the Descender, she said Helen would go down into the Underworld with her Shield.”
“Granted,” Matt said equitably, like he’d already thought of this. “But you also found a way into the Underworld, Lucas. And you went there to protect Helen—to shield her.”
“Okay, but I didn’t help her free the Furies,” Lucas countered, recalling the words of the prophecy.
“Yeah you did,” Helen said sheepishly, hating to go against Lucas on this. “I was banished from the Underworld until you gave me the obol. And then you helped me figure out which river we needed.”
“Yeah, but Orion was the one who was actually there with you when you freed them.”
“Luke,” Hector interrupted gently. “You gotta admit Matt’s point raises the possibility that there is more than one interpretation of the prophecy.”
“There’s always more than one interpretation,” Orion said from the doorway. Everyone turned to look at him as he came back into the library. “Face it. The Fates speak in riddles because they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. If they did, they’d say something straightforward like, ‘Orion is the Tyrant and he wants to eat your brains for breakfast’ or whatever.”
Hector’s shoulders started bouncing up and down with silent laughter. Lucas turned his head away and tried to stuff down a laugh of his own, but he made the mistake of catching Jason’s eye.
“Zombie Tyrant,” Jason whispered to Lucas, his face turning red with a repressed laugh.
“Huzzah death,” Lucas whispered back, cracking up. Apparently, that was some kind of inside joke between the Delos boys because all three of them busted out laughing.
“Enough foolishness,” Pallas said, striding angrily for the door. He stopped and turned. “What part of ‘reducing all mortal cities to rubble’ don’t you understand? We’ve all been warned what’s at stake here, and not just for Scions. I don’t want to be the one who stood by and let a tyrant worse than Stalin or Hitler get away because he seemed like such a nice guy when I met him.” He looked directly at Orion, and then back at everyone else. No one was laughing anymore. “Do you?”
“Ariadne,” Matt called quietly down the upstairs hallway.
Ariadne stopped at her bedroom door and glanced back at him, holding up a finger to signal for him to wait where he was. She listened for her father, brothers, and cousin, but it wasn’t necessary. Matt could hear all the Delos men, he could even feel their pulses throbbing in the air, and he knew that they were occupied elsewhere. But Ariadne didn’t know this, and he didn’t know how to explain it to her yet. After listening for far longer than Matt needed to, Ariadne finally looked satisfied.
“Come in,” she whispered, beckoning for him to follow her into her room. He entered uncertainly, standing in the middle of her bedroom while she transferred clothes from one piece of furniture to another without even thinking about putting anything away in her dresser.
She was always a slob. I spent half the war cleaning up after her, the new part of Matt remembered. Worst slave ever.
Matt shook his head and tried to push aside the other consciousness that kept popping up uninvited, just as he tried to suppress the flood of familiarity and tenderness he felt toward the girl he was looking at.
Her bed was just a few feet away. Part of him had never lain beside her and another part of him had spent ten years sleeping next to her—her and no other until the day he died. His hands ached to reach out and touch her again for the first time, so he shoved them in his pockets. He turned his head and stared at the wall as she tossed something silky and lace-trimmed in her closet.
“Matt?” Ariadne asked from across the room. He looked at her as she flung a long tress of her chestnut hair behind her shoulder, desperately trying not to remember how soft both her hair and her round shoulder felt. “My lingerie isn’t going to strike you blind, you know.”
“I need to ask you some questions,” he said tersely, deliberately turning the conversation away from her undergarments.
“Okay.” Ariadne crossed to him and sat on the edge of her bed. Matt took the chair she had just liberated from its burden of laundry and sat opposite her.
“Tell me about the different roles that the Fates mentioned tonight,” he asked.
Ariadne smiled, almost like she was expecting this. “You know that the Greeks were in love with theater?” Matt nodded. “Well, the Fates were, too. They always have been. It’s almost like they see the world as a stage, and the Scions are merely their players. In a lot of prophecies, there is mention of certain roles that must be filled, or that the world is waiting to be filled, in order to complete the ‘Great Cycle’ that the Fates seem fixated on. By the way, a cycle is also another name for a series of plays that are interconnected—like the plays by Aeschylus that tell the story of the beginning of the Furies. It’s called the Oresteia.”
“Yeah,” Matt said ruefully. “I’ve read that one. Now tell me about the specific roles that the Fates mentioned tonight. Have you always known about them?”
“Yes. No one really knows what those roles mean, though. Or what the Fates intend for them.”
“How can that be?”
“Because they’re vague. Think about it. The roles are the Hero, the Shield, the Lover, and the Warrior—and seriously? That could mean any one of the Scions who have been born, since like ever. We’re a bunch of hero, warrior, lover, shield-the-weak-with-your-body kind of people,” she said, mildly exasperated with how predictable her kind were. “The only role that has specific portents attached to it is the Tyrant, and all of the Houses over the eons have been super vigilant about the signs surrounding him in order to prevent him from ever coming. But you know that prophecy already.”
“The Tyrant is born to bitterness. He bears the blood of multiple Houses and must be able to reduce all mortal cities to rubble,” Matt said seriously. He didn’t like to agree with Pallas, but Matt knew he was right. He pictured someone like Hitler with Scion strength and the ability to destroy cities just by willing it.
Matt remembered Zach asking the gang a hypothetical question once: If they had a time machine and could go back and kill Hitler before he had a chance to hurt anyone, would they do it? Even if he were still an innocent child when they went back and murdered him? They had all answered yes.
“Matt,” Ariadne said, reaching out and putting her hand over his. “Are you okay?”
“And the others, like the
Shield and . . . the Warrior,” he continued. “Those are set roles, roles that must be filled? Have these roles been there from the beginning?”
“Cassandra of Troy was the first to mention them . . . so, yeah. All of these roles have been there from the beginning.”
“And every role must be filled before this cycle can be completed and the Fates can move on to a new cycle?”
“I’ve never heard it put that way before,” Ariadne replied cautiously. Her sharp mind turned this novel idea over quickly as it shuffled through dozens of memorized bits of minutia, until finally, she nodded in acceptance. “But I suppose that’s a plausible interpretation.”
“So we’re all trapped,” Matt breathed hopelessly. “We have to play our parts or the Fates will just start over and try again with the next batch of Scions.”
Ariadne frowned in thought. “Maybe that’s why it feels like we’ve never really left Troy. Because something that was supposed to happen way back then didn’t, and the Fates keep trying to re-create it.”
Matt smiled, sternly reminding himself not to lean over and kiss her no matter how clever she was. He waited a moment until he knew his voice would be steady before talking.
“That’s what I think, too,” he said. “It’s like the Scions are stuck in an endless round of auditions as the Fates shift new actors into the same roles, looking for the right cast to make their play work.”
“But they’re the Fates. If they want something to happen, why can’t they just make it happen?”
“I don’t know,” Matt replied. “There must be some other force that moves against them. Maybe their sister, Nemesis.”
“We should tell everyone about this,” Ariadne said. “Even if they think we’re wrong.”
“I agree.”
They sat for a while, each of them pondering private thoughts. The sun was starting to come up, and Matt told himself it was time to go, even though he could have sat like that with her for days.
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