Goddess (Starcrossed 3)

“My dad first,” Helen said with a definitive nod.

Claire helped Helen dress and then let Helen lean on her as they made their way down the hallway. The door was open so she could see Jerry lying in bed, and Kate sitting up in a chair next to him. Both of them were fast asleep. Jerry was so thin and wan that Helen didn’t want to believe it was her dad. She had to remind herself that she should be grateful, but it was difficult to feel anything but fear when he looked so ill.

They walked a few paces down to Hector’s room. Helen could hear deep, male voices behind the door. It sounded like all the guys were in there. They knocked and went in to find that Hector had moved Jason and Lucas in with Orion.

Helen had another vision or memory, or whatever it was. All the men were bunking together in a tent at the middle of a large, dusty camp—the siege camp just beneath the great wall of Troy. She shook her head, and the vision cleared.

“Aren’t you all a little old for a pajama party?” Claire teased.

The guys laughed gingerly at Claire’s joke.

“I got sick of running up and down the hall to check on them, so I just carried all the beds in here,” Hector admitted sheepishly.

Hector the Protector, Helen thought. He could never bear to be away from any of his men when they were injured—whether they were indispensable generals like Aeneas, or simple foot soldiers. That’s why every man in his army loved him and followed him to certain death.

Helen shook her head and tried to blink away the unwanted memories. They weren’t even hers.

“I can’t believe you’re walking,” Orion said to Helen. She could see that despite the adrenaline-fueled burst of energy when Orion woke them with his scream, he and Lucas were still bedridden. They were nowhere near as far along in their healing as she was, and Jason was completely wrung out from saving Jerry. The three of them could barely sit up without wincing in pain, let alone stand.

“Just trying to stick it to you guys. Make you look bad,” Helen joked, trying to hide how worried she was about them all.

Claire went to Jason, and Helen automatically went to sit on the edge of Lucas’s bed. She realized what she was doing at the last minute and changed direction to join Orion. Lucas watched her, a tight expression on his face to hide his feelings. Helen swallowed and forced herself to avoid his eyes. In this life they were cousins, she reminded herself, regardless of what she’d seen in her dreams.

She took Orion’s hand and felt better. He smiled tenderly at her, and her heart tingled. She did love Orion, she thought as she swelled with pleasant warmth. So what if it wasn’t the dizzy rush that she felt around Lucas? Maybe “dizzy” wasn’t the best way to go through life, anyway.

“What are you all talking about?” Helen asked lightly, trying to tell herself that it would get easier someday to see Lucas wearing the blank look he adopted as he watched her hold Orion’s hand. For a moment, Helen thought she saw a toxic, acid-green color flashing underneath Lucas’s skin. She blinked and looked away, hoping her eyesight wasn’t totally messed up because of her damaged eye.

“We were talking strategy. The Scions need a plan, fast,” Hector replied, his face hardening. “We’re weak. Divided. This is the time to strike against us.”

Helen breathed a mirthless laugh. “I was just thinking the same thing.” Hector looked at her approvingly, and Helen considered the possibility that he might have made a soldier out of her after all.

“But we haven’t heard anything. As far as we know, the gods are still on Olympus,” Claire said, frowning with worry. Jason pulled her closer to him.

“Matt found some things. He’s coming now to explain,” he told her. Jason looked at his brother. “Where is he, anyway?”

“With Ariadne,” Hector replied, testily at first, and then his tone changed. “He checks on her about a dozen times a day.”

“It’s not a dozen times,” Matt protested as he came through the door, propping up Ariadne with one hand and carrying his iPad in the other. “Ten. Tops.”

Helen nearly did a double take when she saw Matt. She’d watched her friend get stronger over the past few months. She’d even noticed that he was turning into quite the piece of man-candy, though the thought of Matt as a love interest was icky to her. But this was different. He looked electric.

“How’re you feeling, little sis?” Hector asked Ariadne, but his eyes ticked up and down Matt, sizing him up. Whatever had changed, Hector saw it, too, Helen was sure of that.

“Ugh,” she groaned comically as she plopped down next her big brother. “Like cud.”

“Cud?” Orion asked like he must have heard her wrong.

“Chewed, swallowed, barfed, and rechewed,” she told him with a grin.

“How are you?” Matt asked Helen while everyone laughed at Ariadne’s gross analogy. And suddenly he was just Matt again, her old pal, and there was nothing strange about him at all.

“I’m all right,” she said, patting the ha

nd that he laid on her arm.

“You sure?” he pressed, looking deeper into her damaged eye. Helen remembered that her confrontation with Ares had left a blue scar running down the iris of her right eye. She was told it looked like lightning, but she hadn’t seen it yet. There had been more important things for her to do than look in a mirror.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, and then she grinned. “I’d be better if I could get Ari to stop kicking in her sleep.”