Starcrossed

by Josephine Angelini

  it’s his responsibility to keep Hector in line because, well, he’s the

  only one that can.”

  “It must be really difficult being separated from the rest of your

  family,” Helen sympathized.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Ariadne said with a tight smile.

  “Is it because of the cult?” Helen asked delicately. “Lucas never

  got a chance to explain . . .”

  “Tantalus and the Hundred Cousins believe that if only one

  House exists, then they can raise Atlantis,” Ariadne said. “That’s

  why our family has always lived right on the water. Boston, Nantucket,

  Cádiz . . . They’re all near the Atlantic Ocean and we all

  want front row seats.”

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  “That’s insane!” Helen blurted out before she realized that Ariadne

  was serious. “I mean, Atlantis is a myth, right?” The thought

  of a city existing somewhere, deep under the dark, smothering

  waves made Helen shudder involuntarily. She took a sip of her

  juice box to cover her violent reaction and waited for Ariadne to

  continue.

  “Is Mount Olympus a myth? Or heaven? It all depends on what

  you believe, and most Scions believe that Atlantis is real, but the

  problem is that we can’t get there until we accomplish a few things

  first. See, right after the Trojan War ended, there was a great

  prophecy made by Cassandra of Troy. She said that if only one

  Scion House remains, then we can raise Atlantis and claim it as our

  own land forever. The Hundred Cousins interpret that prophecy to

  mean that if we demigods earn our entrance into Atlantis then we

  will become immortal, just like the gods of Olympus.”

  “Wow,” Helen murmured. “Why wouldn’t you want that?”

  “Tempting, isn’t it? Except the problem is that if all four Houses

  unite, or if there is only one unified House left, then we would be

  breaking the Truce.”

  “What truce?”

  “The Truce that ended the Trojan War.”

  “I thought the Greeks won. Didn’t they kill all the Trojans and

  burn Troy to the ground?”

  “They certainly did.”

  “Then if the Greeks won, who’d they make the Truce with?”

  “The gods.”

  Ariadne explained that the Trojan War was the most destructive

  war the ancients had ever seen. It wiped out most of the Western

  world, nearly ending civilization as we know it, and it was just as

  destructive to the gods of Olympus as it was to the humans. Right

  from the start, the gods were invested in the war. They chose sides,

  either with their half-human children or with heroes who had particularly

  pleased them. Some of the gods even came down from

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  Olympus to fight in the war. Apollo rode in Hector’s chariot,

  Athena fought with Achilles, and Poseidon fought on both sides of

  the war, changing his mind as often as the tide. Even Aphrodite,

  the goddess of love, flew down to the battlefield on one occasion to

  protect Paris, and as she scooped him up to fly him away from certain

  death, her hand was cut by a Greek blade.

  “When her father, Zeus, saw Aphrodite’s injury, he forbade her to

  return to Troy. She disobeyed him, of course, and that enraged

  Zeus, but not enough to get involved. It wasn’t until his daughter

  Athena and his son Ares nearly sent each other to Tartarus, a

  hellish place of no return for immortals, that Zeus knew he had to

  act. The human war was tearing his family apart, and it was threatening

  his rule over the heavens.

  “Zeus’s involvement was nearly too late. Ten years had passed

  since the war began, and all the Olympians were so invested that

  the only way Zeus could get the gods to stop fighting was to get the

  Scions to stop fighting. Zeus had to bargain with the mortals, offering

  them something they wanted. After ten years of the gods meddling

  in their affairs, ten years of the gods dragging the war out and

  making it worse, the only thing that both the Greeks and the Trojans

  wanted was to be left alone. The mortals, the Scions, wanted

  the gods to go back to Olympus and stay there, and in exchange

  they agreed to end the war.

  “Zeus agreed as well. If the Scions ended the war, he swore on the

  River Styx that the gods would retreat to Olympus and leave the

  world alone. But before he sealed his vow he wanted some assurance

  that such a terrible war would never threaten Olympus again.

  As he saw it, the Greeks’ unification of the Scion Houses in order to

  fight the Trojans nearly tore Olympus apart. Zeus wanted to make

  sure that such total involvement never happened again. As he set

  his seal on the Truce and made his unbreakable vow that the

  Olympians would leave the earth to the mortals, he also swore to

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  return to earth and finish the war if the Scion Houses ever united

  again.”

  “It sounds like what happened at the end of World War II when

  the Allies divided Germany,” Helen remarked. “They broke the

  country up, hoping to avoid World War Three.”

  “It’s very much like that,” Ariadne agreed. “The Fates are obsessed

  with cycles, and they repeat the same patterns over and over

  all around the world—especially when it comes to the Big

  Three—war, love, and family.” Ariadne trailed off for a moment,

  thinking some dark thought, before she finished the story. “Anyway,

  Troy was betrayed by one of their own and burned to the

  ground, and after a few months of confusion and tricks and payback—

  most of which is described in the Odyssey—the Olympians

  finally left the earth. Zeus swore that if the Houses ever united

  again, he would come back and the Trojan War would pretty much

  pick up where it left off.”

  “And it left off somewhere just short of the total destruction of

  civilization,” Helen said, trying to imagine what “the end of civilization”

  would mean now. “If the Trojan War was so destructive with

  only swords and arrows, what would happen if it was fought with

  today’s weapons?”

  “Yeah. That crossed our minds,” Ariadne broke eye contact and

  looked at her lap. “That’s why my family—my father, uncle Castor,

  and aunt Pandora—separated themselves from the rest of the

  House of Thebes. Even if Tantalus is right, even if unification is the

  key to immortality, we didn’t think it was worth the total destruction

  of the earth.”

  “That’s a lot to give up. I mean, it’s the right thing to do, obviously,

  but immortality . . .” Helen shook her head at the thought.

  “And Tantalus and the Hundred Cousins just let you go?” she

  asked incredulously.

  “What choice did they have? They can’t kill us because we’re all

  family, but lately they were starting to threaten us, trying to bully

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  us back to the fold, and some of us—okay, Hector—were starting to

  fight back. He was looking for fights, taking the bait when they

  called him a coward for not wanting to fight the gods. In our tradition,

  to kill your own kin is the worst sin imaginable, and he came

  so close, Helen. My family left Spain be
cause Hector got into a terrible

  fight and nearly got killed, but worse, he nearly killed

  someone of his own blood. There is no forgiveness for a kin-killer,”

  Ariadne said in a hushed voice.

  “But yours isn’t the last House. Mine is,” Helen said, the whole

  truth beginning to dawn on her.

  “No one knew about you. About two decades ago there was this

  ‘Final Confrontation’ between the Houses. All Four Houses attacked

  one another, each of them trying to eliminate the others.

  The House of Thebes won, and it was thought that the other three,

  The House of Atreus, the House of Athens, and the House of

  Rome, were wiped out entirely. But even though everyone else was

  supposed to be dead, Atlantis wasn’t raised and the gods did not

  return. My father, aunt, and uncle thought that we were the ones

  that were keeping the war at bay by refusing to join Tantalus and

  his cult. We thought it had to be us because no one else was supposed

  to be left.” Ariadne took a deep breath and looked at Helen.

  “But it was you all along. Somehow your mother hid you here, preserved

  your House, whichever one it is, and kept the war from

  starting. She—you—also kept Tantalus from attaining Atlantis.”

  Helen sat in silence for a moment, realizing how many incredibly

  strong demigods wanted her dead. The Hundred Cousins believed

  that if the House of Thebes was unified and the only Scion House

  left on earth that they would become like gods, and Helen’s life was

  the only thing standing in the way. Her life was also the only thing

  keeping the Olympians from coming back to earth and starting

  World War Whatever. So the Delos family had to protect her even

  if they all died doing it. And here she was refusing to learn how to

  fight. No wonder Hector hated her.

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  “I’m sorry,” Helen finally said, so overwhelmed by her own

  selfishness that she had almost no emotion in her voice. “Your

  family is siding with me against your own kin.”

  “Your burden is heavier,” Ariadne said, taking Helen’s hand. She

  was going to say something else, but she was interrupted by Pandora

  who burst into the locker room, looking for them.

  “Hey! Am I going to have to take someone to the hospital?” she

  asked, only half joking. “There’s a whole lot of blood out there.”

  “No, she’s okay,” Ariadne answered back with a laugh as she

  stood up.

  Something was still bothering Helen. There was a hole in the

  story Ariadne had just told her.

  “Who was it?” Helen asked suddenly, looking up at Ariadne’s

  puzzled face. “The way we were taught the story, Odysseus tricked

  the Trojans with a giant wooden horse. Everyone knows about the

  Trojan horse. But you said someone betrayed Troy, and I don’t

  think it was by mistake.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t pick that up,” Ariadne said, looking

  like she was mentally kicking herself. “There was no wooden horse.

  It’s a nice fairytale, but that’s all it is. Odysseus was involved, that’s

  true, but all he did was convince Helen to use her beauty to charm

  the guards into opening the gates at night. That’s really all it took.

  It’s why we Scions never name our children after her. For us, naming

  your daughter Helen is like a Christian naming their child

  Judas.”

  Helen ran past her dad and upstairs when she got home, claiming

  she wanted to turn in early. She did her homework and then made

  herself lie down, but she couldn’t sleep. Her brain kept sifting

  through everything Ariadne had told her that afternoon, focusing

  mostly on the cult of the Hundred Cousins. To distract herself from

  thinking about just how many people would want her dead so that

  they could live forever, she got out of bed and attempted to fly.

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  She tried to think lighter, then higher. She even tried to sneak up

  on it by pretending to trip, but all she succeeding in doing was

  jumping up and down until her father yelled up the stairs for her to

  stop clowning around.

  Hoping a little ancient history would put her to sleep, she picked

  up the copy of the Iliad that Cassandra had given her and read as

  much as she could. It seemed like every page was filled with the

  gods meddling in the world of men. Helen could see why her ancestors

  had eventually decided that praying for divine intervention

  wasn’t such a good idea.

  She was up to the part where Achilles, who struck Helen as the

  world’s most celebrated psychopath, started sulking in his tent

  over a girl when she heard a definite footstep overhead. And then

  another. Relying on the extrasensory hearing she’d always known

  she had, but only recently begun to let herself use, she zeroed in on

  her father, listening to his rib cage moving against his chair as he

  breathed in and out. He was watching the late news on the TV

  downstairs and he sounded perfectly normal to Helen. The widow’s

  walk above her, however, was now suspiciously silent.

  Helen slipped out of bed and grabbed the old baseball bat she

  kept in her closet. Holding her slugger at the ready she walked

  sideways, foot over foot, out her bedroom door and to the steps

  that led to the widow’s walk. She paused for a moment on the landing

  between the stairs that led down to the first floor and the stairs

  that led up to the roof, listening again for her father. After a few

  moments of tense indecision, she heard him cluck his tongue at the

  antics of some camera-greedy congresswoman on TV and she relaxed.

  He was still okay, so she knew that whatever she had heard

  had not made it downstairs yet. With the intention of keeping it

  that way, she ascended the stairs to the widow’s walk.

  As soon as she stepped outside, Helen felt the cool fall air soak

  through the thin cotton of her nightshirt, rendering it useless

  against the elements. A flickering shadow in the starlight caught

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  the corner of her eye and she swung at it, but the top of her bat was

  stopped before it came around in a full arc. She heard the chunky

  slap of wood on skin.

  “Damn it, it’s me!” Hector whispered harshly. Helen saw him

  hiding in the shadows, shaking out his right hand like it stung.

  “What the hell? Hector, is that you?” Helen hissed back. He came

  closer so she could see him better, avoiding a dark lump on the

  ground. Helen looked at the lump more carefully and noticed it

  was her sleeping bag, the one she kept in the waterproof chest her

  father had given her. “What are you doing?!”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he responded peevishly, still

  trying to shake the feeling back into his hand.

  “Camping?” she said sarcastically. Then it hit her. All of those

  sounds she’d been hearing at night—sounds she’d thought were the

  Furies—had a much more mundane source. “You’ve been up here

  every night, haven’t you?”

  “Almost. One of us is always up here at night to watch over you,”

  he said, and then grabbed Helen’s arm as she turned away from

  him in embarra
ssment. “It’s usually Lucas because he’s the only

  one who can fly here,” he continued. As if that made it better.

  “And you never thought to ask if I wanted you here, eavesdropping

  on my dad and me?” she asked, furious.

  Hector smiled at her, smothering a laugh. “Yeah. Because I can

  see how you’d want to keep all those discussions about politics and

  baseball to yourself. So private,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Do you stay all night while I’m sleeping?” she asked, unable to

  look at him. He suddenly understood why she was so upset, and

  his smile switched off.

  “You haven’t had a nightmare in a while,” he started to say.

  “Go home, Hector,” Helen said, cutting him off and turning to

  leave.

  “No,” he responded immediately, extending his arm across the

  doorway to block her exit. “I don’t care if you’re embarrassed. I

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  don’t care if you don’t want us here. There are a lot of people who’d

  like to see you dead, Princess, and unfortunately my family can’t

  leave you unprotected until I say you can defend yourself.”

  “Why do you get to decide when I’m ready?” Helen crossed her

  arms and rubbed her shoulders against the cold. The wind off the

  water had teeth.

  “Because everyone knows that I’m the only one who won’t go

  easy on you. And just so you know, I’m not about to apologize for

  making sure you don’t get kidnapped by one of those batty women

  running around the island,” he warned. Helen’s teeth chattered.

  He looked at her standing there shivering and Helen could have almost

  sworn that he looked guilty for a second. Then he looked off

  to the side and cursed to himself. “But maybe we should have told

  you that we were sleeping up here,” he admitted finally.

  “You think? I get it, Hector. I’m in a lot of danger. But you should

  have at least given me a heads-up about this.”

  “All right! Point taken!” he said, nearly growling with frustration.

  “But we’re still not leaving you or your father unguarded at night.”

  Suddenly, Helen wasn’t angry anymore. In fact, knowing that

  Hector and his family extended their protection to her father made

  her feel ridiculously grateful. She stood there smiling at him for a

  second.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  He froze midbreath and stared at her, amazed that her mood had

  changed so quickly. “That’s it? No more arguing?” he asked