It was later than the girls had thought, and dinner was starting. Jason, Ariadne, Pallas, Noel, Castor, and Lucas were already seated. Cassandra took her customary place next to her father, and the only spot left was on the bench, between Ariadne and Lucas.
As Helen stepped over the bench, she accidentally jostled Lucas, running her arm down the length of his as she sat down.
Lucas stiffened and tried to pull away from her.
“Sorry,” Helen stammered, trying to shrug her arm away from his, but there was no room to move over on the crowded bench. She felt him bristle, and she reached under the table and squeezed his hand as if to ask, “What’s wrong?”
He snatched his hand out of hers. The look he gave her was so full of hatred it froze the blood in her veins. The room went silent and the chitchat died. All eyes turned to Helen and Lucas.
Without warning, Lucas threw the bench back, knocking Helen, Ariadne, and Jason onto the floor. Lucas stood over Helen, glaring down on her. His face was contorted with rage.
Even when they were possessed by the Furies, and Helen and Lucas had fought bitterly, she had never been afraid of him. But now his eyes looked black and strange—like he wasn’t even in there anymore. Helen knew it wasn’t just a trick of the light. A shadow had blossomed inside of Lucas and snuffed out the light of his bright blue eyes.
“We don’t hold hands. You don’t talk to me. You don’t even LOOK at me, do you understand?” he continued mercilessly. His voice rose from a grating whisper to a hoarse shout as Helen scrambled away from him in shock.
“Lucas, enough!” Noel’s horrified voice was tinged with dismay. She didn’t recognize her son any more than Helen did.
“We’re not friends,” Lucas growled, ignoring his mother and continuing to move threateningly toward Helen. She pushed her shaking body away from him with her heels, her sneakers making pathetic squeaking noises as she scuffed them against the tile, looking for purchase.
“Luke, what the hell?” Jason shouted, but Lucas ignored him, too.
“We don’t hang out, or joke around, or share things with each other anymore. And if you EVER think you have the RIGHT to sit next to me again . . .”
Lucas reached down to grab Helen, but his father gripped his upper arms from behind—stopping him from hurting her. Then Helen saw Lucas do something she’d never once dreamed he’d do.
He spun around and hit his father. The blow was so heavy it sent Castor flying halfway across the kitchen and into the cabinet of glasses and mugs over the sink.
Noel screamed, covering her face as shards of broken dishes went flying in every direction. She was the only full mortal in a room of fighting Scions, and in serious danger of getting hurt.
Ariadne ran to Noel and used her body to protect her, while Jason and Pallas jumped on Lucas and tried to wrestle him down.
Knowing her presence would only enrage Lucas more, Helen scrambled up onto her knees, slipping across a bit of broken crockery as she stumbled to the door, and jumped into the sky.
As she flew home, she tried to listen for the sound of her own body in the high, thin air. Bodies are noisy. Take them into soundless spaces like the Underworld or the atmosphere and you can hear all kind of huffs and thumps and gurgles. But Helen’s body was as silent as a grave. She couldn’t even hear her own heart beating. After what she had just been through, it should have been thundering away, but all she felt was an intolerable pressure, like a giant knee was grinding into her chest.
Perhaps it wasn’t beating because it had broken clean through and stopped.
“Is this what you wanted?” Lucas shouted at his father while he fought to break free. “Do you think she hates me now?”
“Just let him go!” Castor yelled to Pallas and Jason.
They paused, but didn’t let go right away. First they looked over at Castor, to make sure he was sure. Castor stood and nodded his head once before passing judgment.
“Get out, Lucas. Get out of this house and don’t come back until you can control your strength around your mother.”
Lucas went still. His head turned in time to see Ariadne brush a drop of blood from Noel’s face, her glowing hands healing the cut instantly.
An old memory, formed of images before he had words, came back to Lucas in a rush. Even as a toddler he’d been stronger than his mother, and once during a tantrum he’d pushed against her face while she was tenderly trying to kiss him quiet. He’d made her lip bleed.
Lucas remembered the hurt sound she’d made—a sound that still filled him with shame. He’d regretted that moment his entire life and since then he hadn’t once touched his mother any harder than he would touch a rose petal. But now she was bleeding again. Because of him.
Lucas pulled his arms away from his uncle and cousin, threw the back door open, and hurled himself into the dark night sky. He didn’t care where the winds took him.
CHAPTER TWO
Helen took tiny, gasping breaths. This was the fifth night in a row she’d descended into this same spot in the Underworld, and she knew that the less she moved, the slower she sank into the quicksand. Even breathing too deeply edged her farther into the pit.
She was prolonging the torture, but she just couldn’t bear the thought of drowning in filth again. Quicksand isn’t clean. It’s stuffed with the dead and decaying bodies of all its former victims. Helen could feel the moldering remains of all kinds of creatures bumping up against her as she was slowly dragged down. Last night her hand had skimmed across a face—a human face—somewhere under the tainted sand.