Goddess (Starcrossed 3)

“Helen . . . we should go down now,” Daphne said anxiously as she clutched Helen closer. “It doesn’t benefit you to kill me. Think clearly.”

“I am thinking clearly. You’ve never done anything but hurt me. Why should I let you live?”

“I sent you Orion.”

“And why did you do that?” Helen asked suspiciously. “I’m sure you had a reason that served your purposes and not mine.”

Daphne opened her mouth to answer and shut it again.

“Did you just remember that you can’t lie to me anymore and decide to hold your tongue?” Helen scoffed.

“That’s right,” Daphne replied, her eyes hard. “And if you really want answers from me you’re going to have to land. If you kill me now, you’ll never know. I’m not going to say another word until you bring me back to Castor’s house.”

“All right,” Helen said, her lips tight with hatred. “But don’t think you’re any safer on the ground than you are up here.”

Helen flew them at an uncomfortably fast pace to the Delos house and felt Daphne squirm in her arms with fear. When they were still twenty feet up, Helen dumped Daphne and let her crash down onto the lawn. As she watched her mother do a shoulder roll to avoid breaking a leg, Helen realized that she’d landed on that same spot the first time Lucas took her flying.

Lucas. Not her cousin. Everything they’d gone through together, the way they’d tortured each other and pushed each other away, was based on a lie.

Helen pounded into the grass bare inches away from Daphne, knocking a great ditch into Noel’s backyard and showering Daphne with dirt. Helen had only felt this kind of hatred for one other being, and she’d sent him to Tartarus. While Daphne floundered over the uneven ground, trying to get away from her livid daughter, Helen grabbed her by the back of her jacket and hauled her up like she was handling a doll, and then tossed her onto more even ground.

“Start talking,” Helen ordered as she stalked toward her mother, who was scrambling away from her on hands and knees. “I want to know everything.”

“Helen!” Castor shouted, and a second later he was holding her arms and trying to pull her back. “What happened?” he asked, breathless with the effort to control her.

Helen could easily overpower Castor, but even as she considered doing just that, he spoke into her ear.

“It’s not worth it,” Castor said in sympathetic tone. “Whatever she did to you, it isn’t worth it. That’s what they want us to do, Helen. They want us to kill each other off, and then all of their problems are solved. Remember that.”

She did remember. It had happened in several of the lives she could recall. The worst instances burned the brightest.

She remembered when Arthur, the champion of the gods, had fought his nephew Mordred, the champion of Avalon. Two great men mortally wounded each other, and both were killed in one fight. Avalon dissolved into the mists, and Camelot crumbled, snuffing out the two brightest lights in an age of darkness. The only winners of that fight were the gods.

Helen relaxed and nodded to let Castor know she wasn’t going to kill her mother. He released her, and she turned to see Noel had joined her husband.

“What’s going on?” Noel said, looking at the torn-up yard. “Please. Come inside and calm down.”

“She lied. I’m not Ajax’s daughter. I’m Jerry’s,” Helen said in a robotic voice. “Lucas and I aren’t cousins.”

“How?” Noel asked. She and Castor exchanged confused looks. “Lucas heard her say—”

“That we were all family,” Helen interrupted, figuring out how Daphne had done it. “That’s what she said, word for word, in front of Lucas. And technically, she’s right. All the gods are related, so we are, too—distantly.” She stopped and swallowed around the choked feeling in her throat. “I’m the one who told Lucas I was Ajax’s daughter when he and I were alone, not her.”

Helen paused, remembering how she’d almost given in to Lucas in the greenhouse, right before she’d fed him her mother’s big lie. She remembered how Lucas had kissed her as if he could breathe her in through his skin. How he’d tugged at her clothes as he’d guided her down to the ground so gently. She could still feel him, still see the shape of his big shoulders over her, and she knew that the moment when she pushed him off of her was the moment that had decided her whole life.

Lucas. Her home. The mansion she’d paid for a million times over but hadn’t lived in yet.

She and Lucas were meant to be together. They should have been together that night, but instead, she’d pushed away the biggest blessing of her life because of her mother. Hate hit her like a cramp, and Helen hovered somewhere between sickness and pain.

“I believed it, so Lucas heard the truth, even though it’s a lie.” Helen finished in a low voice, trying to control the almost physical need to punch her mother.

“My father used to do that to me,” Castor admitted, like he understood what Helen was feeling. “He’d make me believe a lie, then send me to tell Tantalus so all my brother would hear was the truth—the truth as I understood it. That’s the only way to sidestep a Falsefinder. Turn the people who trust you the most into patsies.”

“Ajax told me that Paris used to do it to all of you to sidestep Tantalus’s talent,” Daphne whispered. “Where do you think I got the idea from?” She and Castor shared a look, recalling something that they both seemed to remember.

“Well, you’re out of patsies, Mother,” Helen said bitterly. “Get up.”

“Helen,” Castor said, trying to remind her to stay calm. Helen ignored him and kept her mounting rage focused on her mother.