Dreamless (Starcrossed Book 2)
Dreamless: Chapter 5

Sleep well? read the text from the unknown number. Helen plowed into Claire’s back and practically knocked her down.

“What the hell, Lennie!” Claire complained loudly. Helen reeled off to the side and tried to regain her footing without stepping all over her tiny friend.

“Sorry, Gig . . .” Helen mumbled distractedly while she typed: Who is this?

“Who are you texting?” Claire asked curiously.

4-get me already? I’m 4-lorn, read the reply. Clever, Helen thought. So clever she decided to take a chance.

4-lorn? B-cuz you have 4 last names? Helen asked back, a faint smile creeping up her face and an oddly large butterfly flapping away in her tummy.

“Lennie? What’s going on?” Claire took Helen’s upper arm and pulled her along the corridor toward lunch.

“I think this might be that Orion guy—the guy I met in the Underworld. I just don’t know how. I never gave him my number,” Helen mumbled.

Claire steered Helen safely through the cafeteria while Helen stared with single-minded determination at the screen on her phone. If this was a trick, Helen knew she could possibly be outing Orion, but she had to test her mystery texter and replace out for sure. If some unknown person had her number, it might not be safe for her, either. Finally, a reply came.

Ha! 4 names, but only 1 coat. Freezing! Meet me 2-night? Orion wrote, and now Helen was certain that it was Orion on the other end of the thread. No one else could possibly know about the coat she had accidentally stolen from him, and then slept in since, except Orion. Helen hadn’t even had a chance to tell Claire about it.

4-sure. 2-night. I won’t ditch you, at least, she replied. She realized that last line was snotty as she sent it, and desperately wished she could snatch it out of the air before it reached him. Helen had waited for hours. It wasn’t that she considered meeting Orion a date. It was just that it was the first time she’d ever been expecting a boy who didn’t show. It hadn’t felt great.

Hey, no fair. Couldn’t go to the caves last night. Exam today came Orion’s delayed reply.

Caves? Helen wondered. She was a little more relieved than she should have been that he had such a good excuse, but rather than stop and examine why, she decided to stick to the most important things first. Like how Orion had found her.

How’d you get my #? Helen wrote while Claire pushed her down into her usual seat and started unpacking Helen’s lunch for her.

Daphne.

What! When? Helen’s thumbs were pressing down so hard she had to remind herself to ease up before she snapped her phone in half.

Uh . . . 5 minutes ago? Got 2 go.

Did you TALK to her?

Helen waited, staring at the screen with her mouth hanging open, but when she didn’t get an immediate response she knew the conversation was over.

“So. Orion, huh?” Claire said through pursed lips. “You didn’t tell me you’d gotten his name.”

“Well, you never asked about him again.”

“Sorry,” Claire said, knowing she messed that one up. “I was preoccupied—dodging Cassandra and Jason, looking for that scroll. So what happened?”

“We talked.” Helen took a distracted bite out of the sandwich that Claire had put in her hand.

She had a dozen questions to ask Orion, but she knew that she would have to wait until that night to get any answers. The first question she was going to ask him was why Daphne would take his calls and not hers. Orion had said that he’d known Daphne his whole life. Maybe the two of them were really close. Closer than Daphne was to her own daughter? Helen had no idea how she felt about that.

“Are you going to tell me about this Orion guy or am I just supposed to sit here and watch you chew?” Claire asked with raised eyebrows. “And why are you so grouchy?”

“I’m not grouchy!”

“Then why are you scowling?”

“I just don’t know what to think about all this!”

“All what?” Claire nearly shouted with frustration.

Again, Helen was confronted with the fact that there was a lot that she and Claire didn’t share with each other anymore.

Speaking as quickly and as quietly as she could so she could get the whole story in before the end of lunch, Helen told Claire all about how he had tried to pull her out of quicksand the first time. Then she described the gold branch on Orion’s arm, the fact that twice now he’d seemed to be fending off some kind of attack from hellish monsters when she had never seen anything like that down there, and how he had protected her during one of those attacks.

“I don’t want you to tell Jason about this just yet, okay? Because apart from texting just now, I’ve only spoken to Orion once, so I don’t know what to think about him. He said Daphne sent him down there to help me,” Helen said with a confused shake of her head. “And honestly, Gig, I don’t know what she’s up to. I feel like she’s always scheming.”

“That doesn’t mean Orion is. You don’t have your powers in the Underworld, right?” Claire asked with shrewd eyes. “And he’s a good fighter?”

“He’s an amazing fighter, and from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t need extra powers to take care of himself. He killed the thing that was on top of me with his bare hands, practically.”

“Then maybe Daphne’s only scheme is to try to keep you alive. The first time you two met, he did save you,” Claire said with an indulgent smile.

Helen wanted to argue but, as always, Claire had a really good point. Daphne wanted to get rid of the Furies and, according to Cassandra, Helen was the only one who could do it. On top of that, Helen was Daphne’s daughter and her only heir. But even so, Helen doubted that Daphne was just trying to protect her.

After a few moments of biting her lip, trying to replace a hole in Claire’s argument, Helen had to admit to herself that the only reason she disagreed was because Daphne had abandoned her as a baby. She simply didn’t trust her. Maybe she was being too harsh. Maybe this time Daphne was only trying to help.

“Okay, you’re right . . . I have major issues about Beth or Daphne or whatever she’s calling herself this decade. But I wouldn’t be so suspicious if she’d just answer the damn phone when I called once in a while,” Helen said with exasperation. “I don’t expect her to tell me everything she’s doing, but it would nice to know what country she’s in, at least.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe it’s safer for you if you don’t know where she is or what she’s doing?” Claire asked gently. Helen opened her mouth to argue and shut it again, knowing she wouldn’t win that point, either. But she still wished she knew where the hell Daphne was.

Daphne held her breath and stayed very, very still. She’d managed to convince her lungs that they only needed a fraction of the air they were used to, but there wasn’t much she could do about her hammering heart. The man she had taken a blood oath to kill was in the next room. She had to replace a way to calm herself, or all her sacrifice would be in vain.

From her hiding place in his bedroom she could hear him in the adjoining study. He was at his desk, writing the legion of letters that he used to direct his cult, the Hundred Cousins. She could almost picture his once-chiseled face, his faded blond hair, and her teeth tingled with the thought of tearing him apart. After so many years, Daphne was just yards away from Tantalus, the Head of the House of Thebes and the murderer of her beloved husband, Ajax.

Hours passed, and Tantalus was still scribbling away. Daphne knew that each of the letters Tantalus was laboring over would be taken by separate couriers and mailed from different post offices scattered up and down the coast. He was meticulous about disguising his location, and because of that, it had taken her nineteen years to track him down. She’d been obliged to follow the body of his only son back to Portugal, never once letting the corpse out of her sight no matter how many times she had to shape-shift. She knew that even Tantalus would surface long enough to put the ritual coin in his only son’s mouth, and she had been right.

Finally, she heard Tantalus put down his pen and stand. He called in the mortal porter to take the letters to the couriers. Then he poured himself a glass of something from the well-stocked bar. It took a moment for the scent to waft in to where she was standing, but she knew what he was drinking immediately. Bourbon. Not cognac, not expensive whiskey, but sweet bourbon straight out of Kentucky. He took a few sips, savoring the flavor, then stepped into his bedroom. He shut the door behind him and spoke.

“You should know, Daphne, that one of those letters was to the Myrmidon I have nested outside your daughter’s charming little house on Nantucket. If he doesn’t hear from me personally, she’s as good as dead.”

Daphne nearly moaned aloud. She knew Tantalus wasn’t lying about the Myrmidon. It had led a phalanx to attack Hector at Helen’s track meet. If that thing was watching Helen and not chasing Hector as she had assumed, Daphne knew she had no choice. She swallowed her heart and stepped out from her hiding place.

Tantalus stared at her like a starving man at a feast, his eyes skipping all over her face and body. Even though his gaze made her skin crawl, she tolerated it and focused instead on the small measure of bourbon she had smelled that remained in his glass. That was how he had known she was there.

“You smelled me, didn’t you?” she asked, her voice catching on the bitter lump in her throat.

“Yes,” he breathed desperately, almost apologetically. “Even after all these years, I still remember the smell of your hair.”

Daphne summoned a spark in the palm of her hand, just to warn him. “If you yell for your guards, I’ll kill you where you stand and take my chances of beating that letter back to my daughter.”

“And if you manage to beat my letter back to Nantucket, then what? Do you honestly think you can kill a five-thousand-year-old Myrmidon? One who fought beside Achilles himself?”

“Not alone,” Daphne responded coldly, shaking her head once. “But with your brothers and their children? It’s possible we could take the monster down together.”

“But not probable,” Tantalus said heavily. “And it would end up costing us both. You know Hector would be first into the fight, and first to die. And I wonder if you could stand to lose him again . . . He looks so much like Ajax. But I’m curious, does he feel the same?”

“You filthy-minded animal!” Daphne sparked and crackled, but eventually controlled herself.

This was his plan. Make her use up all her bolts on useless anger until she was left without a bargaining chip. That’s what had happened the night she had lost Ajax, but she was older and wiser now.

It took many times more energy to withhold a bolt to stun a target and not kill, but after years of practice, Daphne had managed to figure out that aspect of her modest power over lightning. She sent a small, baby-blue bolt across the room and put Tantalus on his knees.

“You have a Myrmidon, not a Scion, nested outside my daughter’s window. Why?” she asked calmly. When he didn’t answer, she crossed the room and touched him with her glowing hand. Tantalus sighed with pleasure, until she sent a charge through her fingertips.

“She’s protected . . . by the only living Heir to my House,” he huffed, his whole body twitching with electric pain. “Can’t allow more . . . Outcasts. Atlantis . . . too far away already.”

He still didn’t know about the Rogues, Daphne thought.

“The insect isn’t in any Scion House, and wouldn’t become an Outcast if it killed Helen and all the Deloses on Nantucket combined. Which, by the way, would save you a lot of trouble,” Daphne continued, amping up the voltage. “So why haven’t you ordered it to attack yet?”

“How could I . . . stop you . . . from killing me . . . if I had no collateral?” he huffed. Daphne cut off the current so he could speak clearly. “I want to rule Atlantis, not just survive to see it. I must become part of my House again to do that.”

His chest squeezed tight, and he rolled onto his back in pain. A moment later, Tantalus took a deep breath and smiled up into Daphne’s hypnotically beautiful face.

“I knew you’d replace me someday and that you’d come to me.”

There was an insistent knock on the door, followed by a tense inquiry in Portuguese. Tantalus glanced at the door, and then up at Daphne. She shook her head to let him know to keep his mouth shut. Daphne didn’t understand Portuguese and she couldn’t risk letting Tantalus speak, even if his silence was the thing that would give her presence away. She heard the guard at the door hesitate, and then rush off, most likely to get reinforcements. She grabbed Tantalus by the shirt and bared her teeth at him.

“I will always be behind the door, under the bed, or around the next corner—waiting for my chance to kill you. It’s in my blood now,” she whispered viciously into his ear.

He understood her meaning and smiled. Daphne had taken an oath that was more binding than any human contract ever contrived. Someday she would have to kill him, or not killing him would kill her.

“You hate me that much?” he asked, almost awed that Daphne would tie her life to his, even if it was to the death. More guards arrived and began pounding on the door, but Tantalus took little notice of them.

“No. I loved Ajax that much, and I still do.” She noticed with pleasure how deeply it hurt Tantalus to hear her say that she still loved another more than him. “Now tell me, what do you want from Helen?”

“What you want, my love, my goddess, my future queen in Atlantis,” Tantalus chanted, helpless as he fell yet again under the spell of that Face. The guards began to knock down the steel-and-concrete-reinforced door, and Daphne was forced to back away from Tantalus.

“And what do I want?” she asked, her eyes darting over the two-foot-thick stone walls of the chamber, looking for an alternate escape route. There was none.

Daphne looked out the recessed casement behind her at the sheer drop to the ocean. She looked up, hoping to replace a way up and over the parapet top of the citadel, but the overhang prevented her. She couldn’t fly like Helen could. She also couldn’t swim. Daphne was out of time, but she needed to hear what else Tantalus had to say before she jumped out the window and tried, somehow, not to drown. She glared at Tantalus and summoned the last of her sparks to threaten him into talking. He smiled up at her sadly, like he was more hurt to see that she was about to leave him than he was that she was threatening his life.

“I want Helen to succeed in the Underworld, and rid us all of the Furies,” he finally replied, gesturing to the plush prison that he was forced to live in as an Outcast. “She is my only hope.”

“Son of a bitch!” Orion swore at the top of his voice as he ducked instinctively and stumbled to the side. “When you descend, you just appear out of thin air?”

They were standing on some blah part of the salt flats that rimmed a sea Helen had never been able to get to, and therefore suspected didn’t really exist. Just another charming aspect of hell—it promised landscape that it never delivered. Helen looked at Orion’s panicky face and realized that she had practically materialized in his back pocket.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to come in so close.”

“That is really unnerving! Is there any way to warn me first?” Orion was still clutching his chest, but he had also started to laugh a bit as well, and the sound was infectious.

“I don’t think so,” Helen chuckled through her words. It was a nervous chuckle, and Helen tried to ignore that fact. She had been really worried he wouldn’t show, and a bit happier than she would have anticipated that he had.

“Hey, I may have scared the crap out of you, but at least I remembered to bring your jacket.” She shrugged her shoulders out from under the collar, tilting her face down to hide an overexcited blush.

“Yeah? And what are you going to wear?” he asked, eyeing her bare arms skeptically. Helen paused in midmotion. She’d forgotten to put her own jacket on under his, and she was only wearing a T-shirt.

“Um . . . Whoops?”

“Just keep it for now,” he said, shaking his head like he had expected this. “Better give me my wallet, though.”

“I’ll give you your jacket back at the end of the night,” she promised, handing over his wallet.

“Sure you will.”

“I will!”

“Look, do you really want to argue all night about whether or not girls ever return clothes they borrow from guys? Because from what I’ve noticed, one night can be an actual eternity down here.”

Helen grinned. She had to remind herself that she didn’t know much of anything about this guy because she was starting to feel like they had been hanging out for years.

“Who are you?” she asked, trying not to sound too overawed. She’d never met anyone like Orion before. He was obviously just as tough as the Delos boys, but Orion was so different. Sometimes the Delos boys acted a little full of themselves, but Orion was down-to-earth, even humble. “Where’d you come from?”

Orion groaned. “We’re going to need that eternity after all. Originally? I’m from Newfoundland. Look, my life story is really complicated, so first we’d better head toward some cover before something ugly replaces us.”

“About that,” Helen interjected as they turned their backs on the nonexistent sea and made their way to a thick patch of raggedy marsh grass. “Why is it that every time we’re together you’re getting chewed on by some horrendous monster?”

“The Bough of Aeneas,” he said, and pointed to the bright golden cuff around his wrist. “It was made by one of my ancestors from a very magical tree that grows at the edge of the Underworld, and unfortunately for me, monsters are drawn to it like insects to a barbecue.”

“Then why don’t you take it off?” Helen asked, like that was a no-brainer.

“Because you, Your Chosen Oneness, can come and go down here as you please.” He held apart some tall reeds for her to step between. Helen was about to argue that point, but she didn’t get the chance. “I need the Bough to open the gates between the worlds. If I didn’t have it with me, I’d just be wandering around inside a cave system in Massachusetts right now. Totally lost.”

“Cave?” Helen asked as she remembered Orion mentioning this before. “The gate to the Underworld is in a cave in Massachusetts?” she asked incredulously. Orion smiled at her and explained.

“There are hundreds, maybe thousands of gates to the Underworld scattered all over the world. Most of them are in these really cold spots at the bottom of caves. They’re ‘in between’ places that don’t become gates to the Underworld without some kind of key. As far as I know, the Bough is the only relic left that can do it, and because I’m Aeneas’s Heir, I’m pretty much the only person who can use it.”

That made sense to Helen. She wore the cestus, an ancient relic from the goddess Aphrodite, and only women born to the House of Atreus could wield it.

“But I thought magic didn’t work down here,” Helen said as she automatically touched her heart necklace. She knew the magic of the cestus didn’t work in the Underworld or she wouldn’t have ever been injured down here, and she got injured almost every time she descended.

“Only Underworld magic works in the Underworld,” Orion replied. “This is a different universe from ours, and it has its own rules. You must have noticed it. We don’t even have our Scion powers down here.”

“Yeah, that I’ve noticed,” Helen said. Intrigued by her leading inflection, Orion looked over at her as he stamped down the high vegetation to make a path. He paused in thought, and then laughed when he figured out what Helen meant.

“The hellhound! You just stood there with your eyes crossed!”

Helen’s shoulders started shaking with embarrassed laughter. “I didn’t know what to do! I don’t know how to fight without my lightning!”

“You froze up like you were having an asthma attack or something,” he chuckled. “For a second I thought I needed to have a chat with Daphne about whether I should carry a spare inhaler. . . .”

He broke off when he noticed how quickly Helen’s mood changed at the mention of her mother. She hated how he could just call her “Daphne” like that, like they were best friends or something.

“That bad, huh?” he asked quietly after a moment of tense silence.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Helen replied in an angry monotone. She turned, intending to blaze her own trail through the tall reeds, but Orion laid a hand on her shoulder and turned her back around.

“I’m a Rogue, too,” he said softly. “I know what it’s like to hate your family.”

Helen’s anger evaporated at the sight of his sad eyes. One of her hands reached out to touch him, and she had to snatch it back at the last second. She had forgotten for a moment that Rogues like her could only be claimed by one House. Half of Orion’s family would be compelled to kill him if they ever encountered him, which they were sure to do. The Furies worked like magnets, drawing opposite sides together until they eventually collided. Helen had been hidden on a tiny island, and the House of Thebes had still found her; she could only assume that something similar had happened to Orion.

“Did you and your family ever replace a way around the Furies? You know, like I did with the Deloses?” she asked softly. Helen didn’t want to specifically say Lucas’s name or talk about how the two of them had fallen and saved each other, she just hoped that Daphne had filled Orion in on some parts of her history.

“No,” he said in a tight voice, understanding Helen’s meaning immediately. “I still owe my blood debt to my mother’s House, the House of Rome.”

“But you can be with her at least, right?” Helen asked tentatively.

“No, I can’t,” he said in a final way. Helen recalled that he was the Head of the House of Rome, and not the Heir. He must have inherited his mother’s title when she died.

“So you were claimed by your father’s side? The House of Athens?” she asked, making an effort to move the conversation away from his mother.

“That’s right,” he said, turning away from Helen to end the line of questions.

“Hey, I’m sorry, but I’m just trying to get this straight. You were the one who brought up the whole family thing in the first place. Asking about my mother.”

“You’re right, I brought it up.” Orion held up his hands and made a frustrated sound. “I’m good at listening, not talking, and I have no idea what you’re feeling right now because I don’t have my powers. I can’t read your heart, and it’s driving me bananas.” He shook his head at a thought. “I guess this is the way normal guys feel it, huh? It’s really scary, so just give me a second, okay?”

“Okay.” Helen couldn’t look at him. She didn’t entirely trust herself with Orion.

“I’m going to start over,” he said, almost like he was warning her. Helen nodded and found herself laughing nervously again.

“All right. Start at the start this time.” Helen steadied her voice, trying not to sound so giggly. It was annoying.

“Right. Here goes. I’m Head of the House of Rome, but because I was claimed by the House of Athens, the House of Rome has been hunting me since the day I was born. But for other very complicated reasons, the House of Athens has never accepted me, either.” Orion looked at Helen like he was forcing himself to jump off a cliff. “When I was ten my father, Daedalus, became an Outcast defending me from my cousins. He had to kill one of his own brother’s sons to protect me. Since then I haven’t been able to go anywhere near him. The Furies make us try to kill—”

“Yeah.” Helen cut him off quickly so he wouldn’t have to spell out what he’d tried to do. Orion nodded at her, silently thanking her for stopping him.

The image of trying to kill Jerry flashed through Helen’s mind and she pushed it away, unable to bear the thought of attacking her own father.

“Everyone I’m related to wants me dead for one reason or another, and because of that I’ve been in hiding for most of my life. So, I’m sorry I got all aggro with you, but it isn’t easy for me to open up like this, because . . . well, it’s usually fatal for me to get close to anyone.”

“You’ve been completely on your own since you were ten, haven’t you?” Helen asked in a hushed voice, still unable to wrap her head around everything he had told her. “Running from both sides of your family?”

“And hiding the fact that I exist from the Hundred.” Orion looked at the ground to conceal the dark look in his eyes. “Daphne’s helped me out when she could. She was there the first time the House of Athens came to kill me. She tried to help my dad, and she saved my life. That paid her side of the blood debt to my House, even though I still owe the House of Atreus. Didn’t Daphne tell you any of this?”

“Like I said, my mother and I don’t talk much.” Was it too much to think that Daphne should have given her a heads-up about this? Something still bothered Helen. “How did she replace you and your dad to begin with?”

“Daphne’s been on a mission to help the Rogues and the Outcasts for, like, twenty years now. She’s traveled all over the world, and because the Furies draw Scions together, whenever she replaces a Scion she replaces a confrontation. She has a ton of amazing stories. I can’t believe she never told you any of this.”

But, of course, Helen didn’t know what Orion was talking about. She barely knew anything about Beth Smith-Hamilton, her supposed mother, but she knew even less about Daphne Atreus.

“Anyway, she’s saved a lot of lives, mine included, and now your mother can be with any member of any House. That’s why she’s the leader of the Rogues and Outcasts.”

Helen’s jaw dropped. Her mother was a hero? Her shady, unreliable, deadbeat mom—the one Helen couldn’t even remember—was some kind of Scion savior? If that was true, then something was either not right in the universe, or not right with the way Helen understood it.

“Listen, part of the reason I told you all of this was because I thought it might make it easier for you to forgive Daphne if I did. And please trust me on this one—you have to forgive your mother, Helen. Not for her sake, but for your own.”

“Why are you defending Daphne?” Helen asked him suspiciously. She thought about the influence of the cestus and wondered if Daphne was controlling him. “Did she ask you to say all this stuff to me?”

“No! You’re misunderstanding what I . . . Daphne never asked me to say anything,” he stammered. Helen made a derisive sound that kept him from continuing. She was angry again, but she didn’t exactly know why. Not knowing made her even angrier. She stomped past him and started marching out of the weeds.

Helen broke through the tall grass and started climbing a steep hill that was lousy with the remains of some tumbled-down medieval castle. As she stomped past a stone stairway that broke off in midair, Helen asked herself why she was so angry. She realized that it wasn’t just one thing. Several things were ticking her off simultaneously, and she was now facing them at the same time.

First, Daphne had sent Orion into the Underworld without bothering to mention it. Second, Cassandra was keeping Claire and Matt from helping her when it was her butt that was dragging through the Underworld every night, not Cassandra’s. And Lucas . . . how could he treat her that horribly? Even if he hated her, how could he do that to her? For the first time, Helen felt angry about what he had done, rather than devastated.

As she stomped along, taking her feelings out on the ground, Helen realized that, most of all, she was angry with herself. She had been so paralyzed with sadness that she had stopped making choices. She had allowed herself to drift along like a helpless bit of fluff. That had to end.

When she was out of breath from hiking up the steep incline at a breakneck pace, Helen braced herself against a massive, mossy block of granite that had once been part of the moldering castle’s outer wall. She whirled around to grill Orion, who was struggling to keep up with her.

“Do you even know why you’re here?” she snapped.

“I’m here to help,” he said through panting breaths.

“You told me my mother sent you. Do you know what the cestus is?”

“Son of Aphrodite, by the way,” he said pointing to himself. “The cestus doesn’t work on me. Daphne can only influence hearts. I can control them.”

“Oh, wow. That’s a pretty terrifying power,” Helen mumbled, momentarily sidetracked. “But you still seem awfully willing to do whatever Daphne tells you to do. Does she have something on you?”

“No! I’m not here because of Daphne, you lunatic! I’m here because I think that what you’re trying to do is amazing, and probably the most important thing any Scion has done since the Trojan War! The Furies destroyed my family, and there is nothing I want more than to stop them from doing that to anyone else. You’re the Descender, and this is your task, but you are an embarrassingly bad fighter without your powers. I’m here to pull you out of whatever smelly hole you fall into so that you actually live long enough to do what you’re meant to do!”

Helen closed her mouth with a snap. It was obvious that Orion was being honest. He had no hidden agenda, even if she still suspected that Daphne did. In fact, the deeper Helen looked into his eyes, the more convinced she became that he would do anything to help her stop the Furies.

The Bough of Aeneas was a monster magnet, but she could see that Orion needed to help her in any way that he could or he would go crazy sitting on the sidelines. And Helen knew that she would go crazy with sadness if she had to do this alone. She needed help, and Orion needed to give it—in a way, it was perfect.

“I’m sorry, Orion. What I said was unfair. It’s just that I feel like so many people are trying to tell me what to do right now, but no one is actually telling me anything. . . .” Helen stopped, struggling to replace the right words.

“I get it. You’re so crucial that everyone’s afraid of saying the wrong thing to you.” He sat down and rested for a moment on the grass. “But I’m not afraid, Helen. I’ll tell you everything I know, if you want me to.”

An ominous howl echoed through the valley. Orion jumped up and his head snapped around, seeking the source. He reached under his shirt to draw the long knife that was concealed underneath as he took a hold of Helen’s shoulder and began pushing her in front of him as he moved.

“Uphill,” he ordered in a tight voice.

Helen craned her head to look back and caught a glimpse of a distant patch of reeds being mowed down in a swath. The threat was steamrolling its way toward them. Helen had seen enough to know that whatever it was that was making its way through the marshland was gigantic.

Without her Scion strength and speed, she felt like she was barely going faster than a walk. Orion forced her up the steep hill, one hand on his knife and one hand on the small of her back to keep her from losing her footing. The thing in the grass was gaining on them.

“Go!” Orion barked into her ear.

“What do you mean, go? Go where?” she screeched, not understanding. Orion pushed her as hard as he could toward higher ground, and she stumbled forward onto her hands and knees.

She looked back over her shoulder at Orion who stood a few paces away, facing the thing that Helen could hear scrabbling toward them but still couldn’t see. Orion looked back over his shoulder at her, his green eyes so intense they nearly glowed. Helen had seen that look before and she knew what it meant. It meant that he was digging in. She couldn’t run off and let him fight that thing on his own. She slid back downhill to make her stand with him.

“Get out of here!” he screamed.

“And where the hell am I supposed to . . .”