Starcrossed

by Josephine Angelini

  eyes cleared, but the eerie extra presences were still in her. Daphne

  pulled herself away from Castor and approached the Oracle with

  her arms crossed and her palms pressed flat against her chest in

  reverence.

  “The House of Atreus owes you a debt, Sibyl,” Daphne said with a

  deep bow, completing her part of the ritual.

  “And the House of Atreus will pay it when asked,” the Oracle said

  before the glow died completely and Cassandra returned fully to

  herself with a series of blinks and an exhalation. Everyone stared

  at Daphne with shock and anger.

  “I’m sorry, but I had to,” she said barely above a whisper.

  “You could have killed her,” Lucas said, clenching his fists. “She’s

  still too young.”

  “If the vengeance cycle isn’t broken, she has no future, anyway.

  None of us do,” Daphne mumbled, unable to look at him. Several

  people raised their voices to argue.

  “She’s right,” Cassandra said, cutting everyone off. “Things will

  change, Prophecy has been made, and like it or not, I am the

  Oracle. I can’t hide anymore.”

  “Maybe not,” Castor said somberly. “But next time, we decide together

  what questions to ask and when to ask them.” He turned

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  and pointed a finger at Daphne. “Another trick like that and I’ll

  make sure you don’t live long enough to hear Sibyl’s answer.”

  Daphne nodded once with a passive face that placated Castor, but

  not Lucas. He’d seen Helen make that face before, and he knew it

  was bogus. Lucas glanced at Helen, who had noticed the same

  thing he did, and they shared an anxious look.

  Cassandra said that she was tired, and Pandora took her upstairs

  to lie down for a while. Ariadne went into the kitchen to check on

  Matt, who was still icing a few bumps and bruises while Noel gave

  him a crash course in demigods.

  Lucas gestured with his head for Helen to meet him in the next

  room. She tried to shake her head no, but he had already turned

  away and started moving toward the door. She had to follow.

  He led her to an unfamiliar part of the house, the wing directly

  opposite his father’s office, one that Helen had never entered. As

  they moved through the empty hallways and past the unused

  rooms, she could see Lucas tilt his head ever so slightly over his

  shoulder, aware of her presence.

  As she followed him, never more than a few paces behind, she

  could see his shoulders tense and his breathing quicken. She

  watched the warm skin of his back moving under his shirt with

  every breath, and she had to rub her tight fists against each other

  to keep herself from reaching out to touch him. Finally, he entered

  the empty solarium on the easternmost end of the compound and

  turned around. She had one second to open her mouth in protest

  before he was kissing it. The second after that she felt him gently

  pushing her down to the floor. The second after that Helen very

  nearly gave in to him.

  A wave of nausea swept up from her stomach and she clamped

  her mouth shut as she turned her head away from him. Lucas

  pulled back carefully, thinking he had hurt her in some way. She

  braced her elbows against the marble floor and shoved against his

  chest.

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  “Stop,” she begged.

  He shifted off of her immediately, holding his hands up in a placating

  gesture. As they both sat up and faced each other, his eyes

  looked so confused, so wounded, that Helen’s eyes started leaking

  tears, even though she had promised herself the night before that

  she would never cry again.

  “What is it?” he asked, bewildered and in pain.

  “We can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head in a rapid motion.

  “What are you talking about?” He tried to get her to look at him

  as he reached for her hands. “Helen, we’re free. There are two other

  Houses left to preserve the Truce. We can be together.”

  “We can’t do this,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists so he

  couldn’t take them.

  “Why?” he asked in a strangled voice, sensing that Helen was being

  honest with him, but still not understanding why. “Have your

  feelings for me changed so much in one night? Did you stop wanting

  me?”

  “That’s not it,” she said, agonized. “I wish I didn’t want you.”

  “How can you say that?” Lucas asked, relieved to know that at

  least Helen still felt the same about him. “I know you’ve been

  through a lot today, and maybe you’re not ready right this second.

  That’s fine, we’ll wait as long as you want. . . .” He tried to pull her

  into his arms, just to hold her, but she pushed hard against his

  chest and turned her face away from his.

  “We’re first cousins!” she cried out hopelessly, her shoulders beginning

  to jump up and down with uncontrollable sobs. “Jerry

  wasn’t my father, Lucas. Ajax was.”

  Luke’s whole body went still with fear and in the silence that followed,

  all Helen could hear was the sound of the rain on the glass

  roof.

  “That’s not possible,” he whispered, even though he could hear

  that she wasn’t lying. He shook his head. “No. We saw the Furies

  when we met. We can’t be related.”

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  “Yes, we can,” Helen said, wiping one cheek, then the other, then

  back again to the first in what seemed like an endless procession of

  tears that needed to be wiped away. “The children of mixed lineage

  can only be claimed by one House, and I was claimed by the House

  of Atreus. It’s been happening like this from the start.”

  “From the start?” Lucas asked, recalling Cassandra’s earlier

  statement. “Star-Crossed Lovers are repeated in the pattern. How

  many other Scions of mixed lineage are out there in hiding?”

  Helen sniffed and stared at him with a tiny smile. He was so

  sensitive, so quick to pick up on every detail she couldn’t stop herself

  from adoring him. There were an infinite number of ways for

  her to admire this one person, and because of that, there were an

  infinite number of ways for her to fall in love with him over and

  over again. She realized that she wasn’t going to have to give up

  Lucas just this once and be done with it; she was going to have to

  give up all the different ways she could have learned to love him

  every day from that day forward. The weight of all of those future

  heartbreaks pressed down on Helen until she had to drop her

  head, unable to look at him as she answered his question.

  “Daphne calls us Rogues, and yes, there are quite a few of us,”

  she said quietly. “No one knows how many, but there are at least

  twenty that my mother can locate.”

  “So if these kids can only belong to one House, but their parents

  are from enemy Houses, one side of the family . . .”

  “Is sent into a Fury rage and hunts that baby down. Daphne said

  the urge to kill the newborn is almost irresistible, the same as it it

  for a newly made Outcast. One of the parents has to fight their

  family for their child, and it usually means that paren
t either dies

  at the hands of their own parents or siblings or they end up having

  to kill them.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Lucas breathed. Helen nodded.

  “It is disgusting. Babies shouldn’t be part of the blood feud. It’s

  just wrong. Daphne swore to get rid of the Furies so that Rogue

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  babies like me can be with both of their families, and so that no

  one ever has to go through the horror of choosing between protecting

  their child and fighting their own brother or sister—or parent.

  In fact, she’s made it her mission in life to free the Scions from the

  curse of the Furies forever.”

  Lucas nodded, finally understanding. He started pacing, as if he

  couldn’t remain in one posture for more than a millisecond with so

  many thoughts pushing and pulling on him at the same time.

  “What do we do? We can’t stay away from each other,” he said as

  he stopped pacing and stared at Helen, who was still sitting

  slumped on the floor.

  “I know, but I can’t be near you, either,” she said, standing up

  with an exhausted sigh.

  Lucas groaned and covered his face. Neither could bear to look at

  each other, but they reached out blindly and embraced in a tight

  hug. They rocked back and forth, both of them needing comfort.

  “My mother and I planned to leave today,” Helen whispered.

  “Don’t leave me,” Lucas whispered back, tightening his arms

  around her.

  “What are we going to do?” Helen murmured desperately, knowing

  he didn’t have an answer.

  They stood clinging to each other in the unused room with the intermittent

  rain patting the glass walls until they heard worried

  voices shouting their names down the empty halls.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Helen said. She pulled away from

  him and wiped her hair off her feverish forehead. “I can’t explain it

  again.”

  “I’ll do it,” Lucas said, instinctively reaching out for her hand,

  then stopping himself and withdrawing his hand.

  Hector reached the door just as Lucas opened it. His face was a

  mask of anxiety and his chest was swelling with fast breaths. He

  looked back and forth between their devastated faces several times

  before it sank in that they were okay.

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  “You two are . . . alive. That’s good,” he said with relief.

  “We should get back,” Lucas said with a blank look before he

  started walking stiffly down the hallway, leaving Hector with

  Helen.

  “Daphne told us,” Hector said directly. “I’m sorry, cousin.”

  Helen nodded a few times, not trusting herself to say anything,

  and started down the hallway. To her surprise, Hector caught up to

  her and put an arm over her shoulder as they walked. He squeezed

  her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head. As they

  neared the occupied part of the house, Helen realized just how

  much she was leaning on him.

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  Chapter Eighteen

  Waiting in the shadows outside the Hamilton house

  was a long shot, but Creon had no other choice. He

  couldn’t get within a thousand yards of the Delos

  compound now that he had shown his hand and put

  them on the defensive. He had been so close, so

  close, but underestimating his cousin had cost him. Lucas was

  stronger than he had thought. He would never make that mistake

  again, but it was possible that once was all it would take to change

  Creon from a savior to an embarrassment.

  Now that his target was being protected by his own family, he

  had few options but to wait and see if she was stupid enough to go

  out on her own. He was hoping that if she went anywhere it would

  be to the place she had once called home.

  It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all he had at this point. He

  couldn’t go back to the yacht and face his other cousins emptyhanded.

  He had to come up with something else—a lead, an opportunity,

  something—before he involved any of the Hundred. No

  matter how this turned out, his father could never know about his

  failure outside the hotel. It was too humiliating to even think

  about.

  Tantalus had finally entrusted Creon with the truth, and for the

  first time in over nineteen years, Creon had been allowed to hear

  his father’s actual voice. He hadn’t been allowed in the same room,

  or seen his father’s face, because that woman had deformed it so

  monstrously it would be death to look upon him, but for the first

  time in such a long time Creon had actually spoken to his father

  and learned about the burden he carried.

  His father praised him for being so strong and faithful over the

  years. Then he told his son what had really happened in that rowboat,

  how his thoughts and his will had been so grievously twisted

  that he had had been led into a type of sin that had marked him

  forever—marked like Medusa. Tantalus admitted his wrongs, repented

  for them, and told his son that he had been trying to right

  them ever since. He had sworn to remove the feminine evil of the

  cestus from the world so that all men, Scion and mortal alike,

  could finally control their lust. Then he had entrusted Creon with

  the same sacred mission.

  And Creon had failed.

  Creon felt his phone vibrate in his pocket for the fifth time. He

  had been ignoring it for a while and he didn’t even want to know

  who was trying to contact him, but this time he caved and pulled it

  out to look at the screen. It was his mother. He debated answering

  for a moment, then finally relented.

  “Where are you?” Mildred asked in a low voice.

  “Hunting,” Creon replied vaguely, sensing his mother was being

  watched, maybe even listened to. It had happened before.

  “One of the traitors just called me,” she said in an urgent whisper.

  “She told me about your failure in front of the hotel, and she

  wants to change sides. She wants her men freed of the cestus. . . .”

  Creon heard the crackling sound of his mother’s phone as it

  brushed up against fabric, as if it had been shoved into a pocket or

  under a sweater. A few seconds passed during which all Creon

  could hear was the rhythmic brushing of clothes against the

  mouthpiece as his mother walked somewhere else.

  “Are you still there?” she finally asked when she got to relative

  safety.

  “Yes. Mother, what’s going on?”

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  “Sssh. Just listen. The Hundred are starting to doubt you. I can’t

  let them know we’re in contact,” she whispered urgently. “Where

  are you? She wants to meet right now, to make a plan.”

  Helen spent fifteen minutes on the phone with her dad, trying to

  get him to calm down. He had been just about ready to go down to

  the police station, and he demanded to know where she had been

  all night. She didn’t have an answer for him. Jerry was as angry as

  he had ever had been with her. He demand
ed that she come home

  immediately. He even yelled at her, which he hadn’t done since she

  was a kid. Helen wasn’t used to disobeying her father, but she

  found herself telling him that she was safe and that she wasn’t

  coming home just yet. She hung up on him while he was still

  sputtering.

  She knew she was being unfair to him, but she didn’t know what

  else to do. She hadn’t decided if she was going to tell her father

  about Daphne’s return and then tell him that she was leaving to

  live with her, or if it was kinder to just disappear. Daphne insisted

  that a clean break would be better for everyone, including Jerry,

  but Helen couldn’t quite bring herself to accept that. He might be

  physically safer, but emotionally he would be destroyed. Helen

  went through both scenarios in her head, and neither of them felt

  right. Either way her father, the person who deserved to suffer the

  least, was the one who would be hurt the most. Eventually, her

  brooding was interrupted by Noel, who let Helen know that Claire

  and Jason were awake.

  Helen went upstairs to Jason’s room and pushed the door open a

  crack. Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Claire,

  holding her hand and looking down at her with a fretful tenderness.

  Daphne had loved Claire when she was a baby, she had explained

  to Helen the night before, and she had always worried for

  Claire’s safety growing up alongside a Scion. In the hotel during

  the storm, Daphne had removed Helen’s curse, and she had also

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  explained that she had left Claire excluded from being able to trigger

  the cramps, even though it could have exposed Helen, just in

  case Helen ever needed to protect Claire. Helen had thanked her

  for that, although there was little else her mother told her that

  night to make her grateful.

  “Did you sort things out with Lucas?” Daphne asked as Helen

  entered the room. Helen flinched when she heard his name, nodded

  hastily, and put the attention back on Claire.

  “Hey, Gig. You really freaked me out,” she said. She came over to

  stand next to the bed.

  “Freaked myself out,” Claire said, gesturing for her to sit down.

  Then she noticed Helen’s puffy face. “Are you okay?”

  “Not important,” Helen said as she perched next to her mother.

  “How are you two?”

  “It was easier than I thought it would be,” Jason replied. “We