“Hey, I’m not the one wearing a crown,” Helen said with a laugh, sensing that it was okay to make a joke. Persephone smiled graciously, but then her expression became serious.
“Not yet,” she said cryptically, and then continued in an assured voice. “You seek a way to kill the Furies.”
Orion and Helen looked at each other, shocked by such an overt statement.
“Yes,” Orion said with conviction. “I want to kill them.”
“No you don’t.” Persephone turned her sparkling chocolate eyes on Orion, melting him instantly. “You want to help them. They desperately need you to save them from their suffering, my darling. Do you know who the Furies are?”
“We don’t,” Helen said, not liking how familiar the gorgeous goddess was being with Orion. “Please explain it to us.”
“The Furies are three young sisters—born from the blood of Uranus when his son, the Titan Cronus, attacked him. The Furies were stolen away by the Fates at the moment of their creation and forced to play their role in the Great Drama. The pain they feel is real, and the burden they carry . . .” Persephone broke off and stared pleadingly into Orion’s eyes. “They are still little more than children and they’ve never experienced even one single moment of joy. You know my meaning, prince. You know what they suffer.”
“Hatred,” he said, glancing over at Helen. She recalled how horrible it was to feel hatred toward Orion in the cave, and she knew that he was thinking the same about her.
“We have to help them,” Helen whispered to him, and he smiled in answer. The two of them were entirely in tune. “We have to set them free.”
“The Furies and the Scions,” Orion said, determined.
“Yes,” Helen agreed. “And I promise, I’ll set you free, too, Your Highness.”
“No, don’t!” Persephone suddenly exclaimed. She rushed to speak. “Hurry, Helen, you won’t survive much longer without dreaming! You must bring the Furies water from the River—”
The name of the river was drowned out by a great, booming voice.
“HELEN, YOU ARE BANISHED.”
Helen felt her whole body being hurled up and out of the Underworld as if it were being scooped up and thrown by mile-wide hand. For a moment, she thought she saw a huge face dominating her vision. It seemed familiar. His bright green eyes were so sad. . . .
Helen woke in her bed. Sitting up, she dislodged the fine layer of ice crystals that were dusted over her covers like sifted flour, sending some of the glittering flecks to dance in the dry, subzero air. Her face felt stiff, so she pulled a hand out from under the blankets and raised it to her numb cheek. Although her fingers were nearly senseless with cold, she could tell that her entire face was covered in a spiky layer of frost. She moved her hand to feel her hair and she found that it, too, was frozen in thick ropes of ice.
Breathing fast and sending clouds of steam out in front of her, Helen looked around, trying to control her shivering. Everything in her room looked slightly blue, but the deep chill was worst around her bed. Helen picked up the clock on her nightstand and had to rub away a layer of ice with her thumb to see its face. The time turned from 11:11 to 11:12 as she stared at it.
Although she and Orion had been down in the Underworld for what felt like days to them, in the real world she had closed her eyes mere seconds ago and already she was nearly frozen through. The cold was definitely getting worse. Helen wondered if her body would freeze solid the next time she descended.
Then she wondered if she would ever descend again. She’d been banished by Hades himself. That didn’t sound very promising.
Helen got out of bed and slipped her way across her icy floor to get her phone, but there was no text from Orion yet. He was probably still coming up from the caves. Time didn’t pass while they were in the Underworld, which meant that the second Orion entered the portal would be the second he exited, no matter how long he had “spent” on the other side. If they were lucky, Orion was coming back right now after being allowed to stay in the Underworld long enough to hear what Persephone had to say. Helen could only hope that Orion had succeeded where she had so obviously failed.
Helen shivered violently and realized that she had to get out of her room and warm up somehow. She remembered Hector’s lecture on the beach, right after he had nearly drowned her. Helen might be impervious to weapons, but she was not completely invulnerable, and extreme cold could kill her as surely as drowning.
Muscling her icy door open as quietly as she could, Helen poked her head out of her bedroom and looked around. Luckily, her dad was still downstairs watching TV. She shut the door firmly behind her, pushed the bean-bag heat stopper up against the crack on the bottom to hide the unreal cold in her bedroom from her father, and shouted down to Jerry that she was going to take a bath to help her sleep. He grumbled something about how she should just close her eyes and give it more than one second, but he didn’t ask any questions or object.
As she headed into the bathroom, Helen smacked herself on the forehead with her phone a few times as punishment for her terrible blunder in the Underworld. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid. Hades was probably not the best place to talk about freeing the captive queen, as “the boss” was probably listening the whole time. And Helen had openly threatened to take away the one thing in the entire multiverse that Hades cared about—his queen. Stupid! Now Helen was banished. How the heck was she supposed to accomplish her task if she couldn’t descend?
As she stripped and filled the tub up with hot water, she thought through her meeting with Persephone. It struck her as odd that Hades hadn’t intervened one way or the other when she and Orion talked about freeing the Furies. It was only when Helen opened her big yap about freeing his queen that Hades had put his foot down.
Helen gingerly lowered herself into the hot water, phone still in hand, and filed that bit of information away. Then she sighed and soaked, trying to figure out how she was going to thaw out her room before her father found out about it. Her phone vibrated.
Are you up? Orion texted.
OMG, did you hear the name of the river? Helen sent back.
What r u talking about? I got booted right after P said you were going to die.
Oh. There was more, Helen replied, ignoring the whole dying thing and hoping Orion would, too. She told me that we need to give the Furies water from the River . . . I didn’t hear the name b/c I got booted, too.
Still good intel. I’ll find the right one eventually.