“Uh-huh.” Matt looked at the two men on either side of Tantalus—Odysseus on his left and Agamemnon on his right. Pallas Delos, as Matt knew Agamemnon now.
“How’d this happen, Matt?” Pallas asked, dismayed. He gestured to the Myrmidon warriors, arrayed in precise ranks.
“He was chosen,” Telamon said defensively. “That’s all you need to know. We accept him as our Master.”
The Myrmidons whispered the word Master in their ghostly way, unsettling the Scions who shared a round of nervous looks. They were afraid of Matt’s men, as they should be.
“And do you have all the skills of Achilles?” asked the man Matt knew as Odysseus. Matt leaned his head close to Telamon.
“Daedalus Attica, Head of Athens,” Telamon told him immediately.
“That’s not your real question,” Matt said, regarding Daedalus evenly. “You want to know if I have Achilles’ weakness.”
Daedalus’s mouth turned up in a half smile. “Every mortal has at least one.”
Matt smiled back at him with closed lips, neither confirming nor denying what the crafty one was asking. They stared at each other until Daedalus looked away.
“Suit yourself,” Daedalus said. He regarded Tantalus and Pallas and raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m convinced.”
“Are you sure about this?” Pallas asked Tantalus.
“The gods will crush us all if we don’t fulfill our end of the bargain,” Tantalus replied, eyeing Matt with open distrust. “We bring the Warrior to the table, or all the Scions die. Zeus swore on the River Styx that if we do this our Houses will be preserved.”
It was like it always was. At Troy, the Greek kings made their own deal with Zeus and saved their skins, and the innocent children of Troy were thrown from the top of the wall. Matt learned long ago that kings cared only about preserving their own kingdoms and were more interested with what they could get out of any given situation than doing what was right. Matt was suddenly so disgusted by the hedging and the political posturing he saw in the Scions that he turned to go back to his tent. This wasn’t what he’d come for.
“Hold on,” Daedalus called out, taking a step toward Matt. The Myrmidons moved as one to intercept Daedalus. He put his arms up in surrender. “Easy. Everybody just take it easy.”
“I’ll fight with or without you.” Matt stopped and turned back to face them, speaking plainly. “I’m here to kill the Tyrant. If that’s what you want, then you may join me. If not, get out of the way.”
Helen led Lucas into the maze of booths, tugging on his arm. He hung back playfully, acting reluctant to follow so she had to half drag him. On the way, a barker caught his attention with an outlandish dare, and Lucas just had to stop and throw a baseball at a stack of lead milk bottles.
It took him three tries, which he insisted had never happened to him before, but eventually, he won Helen a prize. There was a fluffy elephant that caught her eye for a moment, but she finally picked a glittery wand. It had a silver star on the top and dozens of ribbons flowing out of the bottom. The wand felt right in her hand and easy to carry. She waved it a few times, willing sparks to puff off of it as they paused in front of the glass-blowing booth and watched a man make a little glass dragon.
Neither of them could stop smiling. Helen heard the carousel and ran the last few steps. She hopped onto the back of a unicorn as it swung past, waving her glittery wand in the air like it was a riding crop.
“Tally-ho!” she cheered to her painted ceramic mount, but it didn’t go any faster. The pole down the unicorn’s middle was brass, and it smelled tangy and crisp in the autumn cold.
Lucas jumped up next to her, standing by her side rather than getting a ride of his own. He stood over her, his coat opening around her when he gripped the brass pole. They stared at each other for a long time as the rest of the world spun by them. The bright, fairground colors streaked and smeared in the corner of Helen’s eye but Lucas was still.
“Why won’t you kiss me?” she asked quietly.
“Can’t you make me?” he replied, raising a teasing eyebrow at her.
“I wouldn’t want to. Especially not on our first real date.”
Lucas laughed softly. “I was thinking the same thing when we were in the café. You and I had coffee together once before school, but we never really dated, did we?”
“We never got the chance. The world was always about to end, or one of us was on fire or something equally annoying.” He chuckled. She looked up at him and tried not to blush. “You know, we can do whatever we want here. I can make sure there are no consequences.”
She could feel his breath quicken and see his eyes gleam with more than just the cold. “You remember, months ago, you gave me some advice about how I should go about making tough decisions?” he asked.
“Decide what you absolutely can’t handle, and do the opposite,” she said, surprised that he was bringing this up when she had been thinking pretty much the same thing not too long ago.
“That’s why I won’t kiss you.” He raised a hand and touched her face, and quickly dropped it. “Eventually, we’ll have to go back, and I’ll lose you again. I know for a fact I can’t handle that.”
Nor could Helen, and she was starting to consider other options. Like figuring out a way for Aphrodite to remove the curse that required Helen to have a daughter in the first place. Maybe instead of accepting her situation—which was ridiculously unfair—she needed to at least try to fix it.
“I’m tired of going round and round,” Helen sighed.
The carousel came to a stop. She stood up and jumped down, the lights of the carnival shutting off section by section around her as she walked off the fairgrounds. She dropped her wand, and snow began to fall. Billions of tiny stars were blotted out and seemed to fall through the night sky as unique little crystals. It looked like the air around them whirled with shimmering bits of frozen stars.
“Helen,” Lucas began, following her. She heard him bracing himself for another one of their legendary arguments.
“I’m not angry with you because you won’t kiss me,” she said, turning around and stopping him. “I get why you won’t kiss me. I can’t go through all that again, either.”
“So what’s the matter?” he asked patiently.
“I’m sick of believing that there are these shadowy all-powerful deities who are greater than me, keeping me from what I want. Because that’s a lie. I’m just as strong as any of the beings who would hold me back. And I know I can beat them.”
“Ah. Helen?” Lucas hazarded. “You’re not going to run off and start picking fights with the gods or anything like that, are you?”
“Well, no,” she said, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot. “I was thinking I’d start by asking a few questions and take it from there.”
“Good,” Lucas said, relieved. He reached out and took her hand, his eyes narrowing with determination. “And if talking doesn’t work, we’ll bury them.”
Helen watched a dark shadow pass across his face. “We’ll think about this later,” she said, leading him to a path that wound into the woods. “I’m not ready for our date to be over yet.”
ELEVEN
About half an hour after Tantalus, Daedalus, and Pallas left his camp, Matt heard the alarm again. There was a commotion outside, the sound of struggling, and moments later Telamon was at the entrance of Matt’s tent with a report.
“A Scion was found sneaking around the beach and captured,” Telamon informed him. “I would have sent her back to her House, only . . . it’s her, Master.”
“It’s all right,” Matt said, nodding his head. “Bring her in.”
Ariadne was led into the tent, held on either side by a Myrmidon. Her hair was tangled, and her face was red with exertion. She’d obviously put up a fight, but she was no match for even one of Matt’s soldiers, let alone a full company of them.
“Let her go. Then leave us.” The guards obeyed silently. He turned to Ariadne. “How did you find us?”
“I followed my father. He was acting weird tonight,” she whispered. Ariadne stood as far away from Matt as she could and rubbed her arms where the guards had held her.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked quietly. She ignored his question.
“How can you be him? You’re not a Scion.”
“Neither was Achilles.”
She dropped her face into her palms and rubbed her eyes roughly. “No,” she said, lifting her head suddenly. “No, I don’t believe any of this. I can’t.”
She ran for the exit, but Matt moved faster than she ever could and was there before her. He caught her wrist to stop her from leaving. She stared at him in shock.
“Believe it.” Her skin felt soft and warm in his hand. He let her go and turned away. He knew it was better this way, even though it didn’t feel like it. “Go home. My men won’t stop you.”
She didn’t leave.
Matt heard her crossing the space to him and turned, already shaking his head. “Don’t.”
She kissed him, anyway. He knew he was supposed to stop this. She might know the story word for word, but she didn’t actually remember the ending the way he did. He was just about to pull away and send her home to her brothers when she pressed her thumb into that U-shaped hollow under his Adam’s apple while she kissed him. Just like she used to a hundred lifetimes ago.
As Matt picked her up and carried her over to his bed, he marveled at how simple a gesture it was. Really—it was a silly habit she had of touching his throat with her thumb. But once she did that, Matt didn’t care who he had to kill.
“Sing for me,” Helen pleaded. She lifted her head off Lucas’s chest and stared down at him.
“Right now? With no accompaniment?” Lucas asked. Lying on his back, he looked up at the ceiling of their little cabin in the woods and blushed a bit.
“Yes. Please? I really want to listen to music, but I want it to be something from you, not from my imagination.”
She rolled off of him. The stones in front of the fireplace were nice and toasty under their blanket, despite the snowstorm that swirled outside their cabin. Helen grabbed her mug of tea off the hot flagstones in front of the fire and offered it to Lucas.
“For your throat, if it’s hoarse and you think you might sing badly,” she said with a challenging grin.
“My throat’s fine,” he said, nudging her playfully with his foot. He sat up suddenly. “I’ll make you music. But I’m a much better guitar player than a singer.”
“Really?” Helen took his hands and held them up, looking at them. They were hardened, like a fighter’s, but still sensitive, like an artist’s. Just like everything else about him, his hands were the perfect blend of opposites. She ran her finger across the calluses on his finger pads, noticing them for the first time. “Why didn’t you ever play for me before?”
“Why haven’t I ever taken you on a date before?” he said through a bittersweet smile. “There are a lot of things I’ve meant to do with you that I haven’t.”
Helen swayed closer to him. Just to breathe his air, or feel his body heat . . . anything to get another dose of him without actually kissing him and breaking the gentle understanding they’d come to.
“How’d you learn?” she asked quietly, a little ashamed that she didn’t know this already.
“My dad taught me.” Lucas paused, a serene but sad look on his face. “He taught me classical Spanish guitar, because we lived in Spain for so long, and American finger picking. I actually haven’t played at all since we left Cádiz.” Again, that slightly sad look stole over his face. “He’s better than me . . . but I’m still pretty good.”
For a long time now, Helen had taken for granted that she and Lucas were as close as skin was to bones, that there was nothing about him that she didn’t know. But here she was, learning something new and important about who he was. His dad didn’t just teach him how to swing a sword. Helen could imagine the hours that the two of them had spent together, discussing the art that they loved so much and had so little chance to enjoy.
“I’ll bet.” Helen desperately wanted to hear him play now. She imagined him a guitar—the best guitar she think of. “Will this work?”
Lucas took the instrument and turned it over, frowning. “It’s all right.” He laughed at the wounded look Helen gave him. “I’m joking! It’s beautiful.”
Helen slapped him on the thigh. “Play for me!” she demanded.
Lucas cradled the guitar in his arms, preparing to play, and stopped. “You know what I keep wondering?”
“What?” Helen asked in a mock-frustrated tone, like she thought he was stalling on purpose.
“How you can do this?” he asked seriously. “How do you know how to make carousels and snowstorms and guitars?”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said quietly. Helen leaned closer to Lucas and regarded him carefully. “In the Underworld. All that time I spent wandering around, well . . . I didn’t get it then, but Hades was actually teaching me to build worlds.”
“Really? And I suppose he did it out of the goodness of his heart?” Lucas asked doubtfully.
“Well, yeah. Actually, I think that has a lot to do with it,” she replied. “He’s a really compassionate guy. God. Whatever.”
“And how has Hades been teaching you, exactly?” Lucas continued, putting the guitar aside.
“The hard way,” Helen replied, rolling her eyes at the memory of all her trials in the Underworld, and all of the hellscapes she encountered. The tree that imprisoned her, the rusting city, the ledge of the mansion that she’d clung to—all of the places that Helen thought were cleverly designed by Hades to torture her had actually come out of her own mind. She’d created her own hell, and now that she had learned how to control her fear, she knew how to create her own paradise.
“What do you mean, the hard way?” he asked as he studied her pensive expression. His eyes were narrowed in anger.
“No, no, he didn’t do anything to me. I did it all to myself.” Lucas didn’t look pleased with that answer, either. “Let me start over. Descending isn’t really the right name for the talent I have. I’m a Worldbuilder, Lucas.” Helen spread her hands to gesture to the room around them. “Worldbuilding got confused with Descending because Hades has allowed all the Worldbuilders, not just me, to descend to his land in order to learn how to build for themselves.”
“Why would he do that?”
Helen paused, thinking about her quest to free the Furies and how much she’d learned in the process.
“I guess because he wants us to really consider what kind of world we want to live in—one based on justice and compassion for others, or one that only serves the whims of the builder. Wow. I just figured that out.” Helen looked at Lucas and smiled. “You always help me figure things out.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, smiling back at her before growing serious again. “But you could have learned those lessons without having to go through hell. Helen, I remember how sick you got. How you would come back from the Underworld covered in mud and leaves and blood sometimes. Did he have to make everything so hard?”
“Yeah, he did,” Helen said, and then stopped again, wondering if she wanted Lucas to know the next bit that had just occurred to her.
“Helen?” he said, raising an eyebrow at her. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She knew she couldn’t hide it from him for long, and she hated keeping things from him, anyway, so she told him. “Hades had to make it hard so I would toughen up. Because once a Worldbuilder actually builds a world, she has to be strong enough to defend it.”
Helen saw Lucas’s face harden. “Defend it from whom?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“The gods, I think. ‘Challengers’ was all Hades said, so I guess there have been more than one over the years. Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Morgan La Fey built Avalon, and it disappeared in the mists when she lost her fight. Atlantis sank into the sea when Atlanta lost he
rs. Those are the only two other Scions I know of who have been Worldbuilders, and they both lost. The odds are not in my favor.”
“Screw the odds,” Lucas said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That’s not what bothers me.” His eyes skipped around as he thought. “What I want to know is who’s going to challenge you, and why is Hades taking the trouble to prepare you to fight back? What does he really want?”
Helen shrugged. “I don’t know. I could ask, but I doubt he’d tell me in a way I’d understand. Hades doesn’t do easy answers.”
“I’ll bet,” Lucas mumbled, still thinking.
Helen reached for the guitar and slowly nudged it into his hands. He was onto her, though.
“Is this a hint?”
“A big fat one.” Helen grinned at him.
Lucas plucked a few strings and grimaced, tightening and loosening knobs as he went. “Figures. You’re so tone-deaf even your perfectly constructed guitars are out of tune.” Helen’s body crumpled as she laughed at the pained look on Lucas’s face. “And this guitar is strung for a leftie. I’m not Matt, you know.”
“Here, let me fix it.” Helen concentrated, and all the strings rearranged themselves. Lucas strummed the guitar and rolled his eyes when it made a comical twanging sound.
“It’s out of tune again.”
“You did that on purpose,” she said, grabbing his toe and squeezing it. “Just play!”
“Yes, your goddess-ness.”
Lying on her side, the warm fire at her feet, Helen’s laughter died away as Lucas suddenly went from tuning to playing.
It was like an orchestra in an instrument.
He played with both hands—not one hand picking and the other holding down strings—but with both hands so that it sounded like more than one guitar was playing. Sometimes he hit the strings to make them hum like a harp, and sometimes he hit the body of the guitar like a drum to add bass and keep time. It was the most fascinating thing Helen had ever watched, like Lucas had a dozen voices in his head, all singing the same song, and he’d figured a way to make them come out of ten fingers.
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