Directly in front of Orion and Helen stood what looked like a wrought-iron dome the size of a football stadium. It was made of the same black material as the castle, except instead of being formed into huge, solid blocks, the substance was tortured into decorative curlicues. Under the arching dome was a vast garden. It was as if the builder was trying to hide the fact that he or she had built a giant cage over the garden by making it look elegant.
The black material swam with colors. Blue and purple and even warm tones like red and orange surfaced and subsided on smokelike waves. It was like looking at a rainbow buried in soot—a wonder of light, forever trapped inside darkness.
“Wow,” Orion breathed. He was looking around, as astounded by the menacing castle and the cage next to it as Helen was. Then he looked down at her hands, still gripping his arm, and grinned mischievously. “Thanks for taking me with you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Helen whispered.
She was staring at the main gate of the cage in horror. The lock on it was bigger than her torso, but there was no keyhole.
“That’s not right,” Orion whispered when his eyes finally registered the lock that Helen was staring at so intensely.
“No, it isn’t,” Helen said angrily.
The whole thing pissed her off. This beautiful structure was nothing more than a prison to trap a young woman who had been stolen from her home and then tricked into a detestable marriage. Helen stormed up to the lockless gate and kicked it with all her might.
“Persephone!” Helen shouted. “I know you’re in there!”
“Are you insane?” Orion ran up behind Helen and tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, but she threw him off.
“Let me in!” she screeched imperiously, like she was channeling some prerevolutionary French queen. “I demand to be allowed into Persephone’s Garden this instant!”
The gate clicked and swung open with an ominous groan. Orion turned his head to look at Helen, his jaw dropping open in shock.
“If you say what you want, you can make it happen.”
Helen nodded in agreement, still trying to figure out how she’d done it. She thought back to the beginning of the conversation and how she had said jokingly to Orion that she “didn’t want to get attacked” that night. They had walked for a very long time without encountering any monsters. Then she asked for Persephone’s Garden to magically appear, and it had.
“But I have to know exactly what I want, and then I have to ask for it out loud,” she said.
Her face twisted up in a rueful grimace and a pained groan erupted out of her as she remembered her tortures. Hanging from the ledge. Imprisoned in the tree. Trapped inside the hell house. Worst—drowning in the pit. The strength swept out of her legs, but she would not fall. Not now.
“So many times I’ve suffered down here and I could have ended it whenever I wanted,” she continued in a bitter monotone, needing to say it to believe it. “All I had to do was say what I wanted to happen out loud and it would have. It’s almost too easy.”
“How young you are!” A musical but melancholic voice came to them from somewhere inside the giant, gilded cage. “Knowing what you really want and having the confidence to say it are two of the hardest things to do in life, young princess.”
Helen thought that over for a moment, and grudgingly admitted to herself that she agreed. If she asked for Lucas, and got him, she’d be guilty of something that would make her feel far worse than any cut or broken bone.
“Come in and visit with me. I promise, you won’t be harmed,” the voice continued, gently inviting them.
Helen and Orion shared a look and walked together through the open gate and into Persephone’s Garden.
Dappled light stretched from floor to ceiling in lacy rays. The dim light that filtered through the cage and the upper canopy of strange vegetation hit on dark green leaves that sparkled and glinted all around, and the dancing light gave the illusion of a gentle breeze.
Helen brushed close to a cluster of what she thought were lilacs, and caught her breath in shock when she felt them. Leaning in close to inspect the cluster, Helen saw that they were actually purple jewels, delicately carved and threaded together to create near-perfect replicas of real flowers. On closer inspection, Helen saw that the leaves were not real either, but spun out of silken threads. Nothing was real. Nothing grew here.
“So beautiful,” Orion said under his breath.
At first, Helen thought he was talking about the flower-shaped jewels, but when she glanced over at him she saw that he was looking down the path at the most elegant woman Helen had ever seen.
She was almost six feet tall, graceful as a swan, with skin such a deep shade of black it was nearly blue. She didn’t look that much older than Helen, but there was something about the way she moved, patient and precise, that made her seem much older. Her long neck was wrapped in ropes of huge, sparkling diamonds that were, quite frankly, put to shame by the size and luster of her eyes. On top of her glossy, knee-length hair was a tiered crown made of every type of gem that Helen could name, and quite a few she couldn’t. She wore a gown of fragrant, living rose petals that glistened with dew. The petals were white at the top and then deepened in shade to blushing pink and then darker still, until her feet seemed surrounded in a cloud of rich, red roses.
Under her bare feet, which twinkled with many toe-rings, a never-ending carpet of wildflowers budded, bloomed, and then withered. Every step she took caused a flood of flowers to spring to life, only to shrivel and die as soon as they touched the barren soil of the Underworld. It was like watching hundreds of gorgeous flowers throwing themselves off a cliff like lemmings, and Helen wanted it to stop.
“Awful, isn’t it?” Persephone said in her musical voice as she looked down at the dying flowers beneath her feet. “My essence creates them, but in the Underworld I don’t have the power to sustain them. No flower can survive down here for long.”
She looked directly at Helen as she spoke, her eyes communicating more meaning than her words. She knows I’m dying, Helen thought.
Helen glanced quickly over to Orion, who seemed oblivious to the silent girl-talk. Helen smiled at the queen, conveying her gratitude. She didn’t want Orion to know that she didn’t have much longer. If he knew she was dying, he might change the way he acted toward her.
As if obeying a time-honored protocol, Orion stepped forward and inclined his head and shoulders in a respectful bow.
“Lady Persephone, Queen of Hades, we come to beg a favor,” he said in a formal voice. It sounded strange, but right for the situation. Helen was surprised to realize that, like the Delos kids, Orion had been raised as a Scion, and he could easily switch between modern slang and old-world manners.
“May we join you?” he asked.
“Come, sit, and be welcome,” she said, gesturing to an onyx bench by the side of the path. “For you are welcome here in my garden if nowhere else, young Heir of two enemy Houses.” She performed such a smooth curtsy that it would have put a prima ballerina to shame.
Orion’s mouth tightened. At first, Helen thought it was in anger for bringing up his less-than-ideal childhood, but as she looked closer she realized that it was because he was overwhelmed with emotion.
Helen finally understood something about Orion that she hadn’t fully grasped before. Orion had never been accepted by anyone. Half of his family hated him because he hadn’t been left to die on a mountainside, and the other half hated him because the Furies compelled them to. His mother was dead, and the mere sight of him sent his father into a Fury-induced rage. Apart from Daphne, who had an ulterior motive for everything she did, had any Scion ever invited Orion to actually sit next to them with such kindness?
Studying Orion’s serious expression, Helen sensed that the only place he had ever been formally welcomed into a Scion’s presence was right here, right now, by Persephone.
He’s only welcome in hell, Helen thought. It made her chest ache to even consider the notion.
Realizing that Helen was standing there gawking, Persephone extended a hand, generously inviting her to join them on the bench.
Helen blushed and bobbed her head in an awkward way. She’d been caught spacing out like a crazy person again, and she couldn’t remember when she’d felt like a bigger hick. She dearly wished she’d paid attention to all those stanzas on courtesy that she’d skipped over in the Iliad. Persephone seemed to sense Helen’s discomfort and gave her a warm, welcoming smile.
“No need to stand on ceremony. Come to think of it, maybe I should be the one to bow to you,” Persephone said with the barest hint of a tease in her tone.
“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.
Wait, “you’ll” find? What about “we’ll” find?
What part of “won’t survive” did you not get?
That’s only if I don’t dream.
You don’t dream?
Not when I descend.
Then you’re not descending anymore.
Helen thought that was a little bossy.
NOT really your decision, she texted back.
NOT going to argue came his defiant reply.
Hang on. You don’t control this.
N.O. Now go away. I have to drive.
For ten minutes, Helen sloshed around the tub, muttering to herself. There was something he was missing—a point that she knew she had to make—but she couldn’t see it just yet. She tried to get him to come back to the argument with all kinds of texts. She even threatened to lie down and descend immediately. After that, he came
back with a long reply, one of those texts that you have to pull over to type.
If you get back into bed, I swear to you, I’ll swim to Nantucket, kick in your door, and tell Jerry everything. You can explain to him why you want to die. Stay out of the UW. I’m not joking around anymore.
Threatening to tell her dad was just plain low—she’d told Orion that Jerry was a “no-fly zone,” and he’d promised never to violate that. But she had to admit, if she was really considering doing it, telling her dad was the only threat that would have stopped her. Orion knew her very well. She wondered how he’d managed that in such a relatively short amount of time. Helen smiled at the phone for a moment, and then forced herself to stop. She didn’t like being told what to do, but she did like that he cared enough to try.
I can’t descend, anyway, she finally admitted after a long lull in their exchange. Hades banished me and booted us both out of the UW because I threatened to take P away. Can you still go down?
Pretty sure. You’re banished? Wow. There really is such a thing as a good god. Strange that it’s Hades.
She knew he was just worried about her safety, but there was something really wrong with his logic. Helen started typing before she even knew what she was going to say. Her scattered brain finally hit on why she was so upset about being banished, and why she had argued with Orion so belligerently to begin with.
But remember the prophecy, she typed frantically. I’m the Descender—the only one who’s supposed to be able get rid of the Furies. If I don’t do this, how many more will suffer? You’d never see your dad again.
Helen bit her lip, agonizing over whether or not she should tell him what she was really thinking.
We’d never be able to see each other again. I don’t think I could handle that, she finally sent, adding in her thoughts, for what little time I have left, anyway.
There was a long pause where Orion didn’t respond, and Helen wondered if she’d just made a huge mistake. To take her mind off him, she sent an email to Cassandra and the rest of the Greek Geeks, explaining everything that had happened in the Underworld. Then she stared at the face of her dark phone until she heard her dad come upstairs, get in bed, and start snoring. Still, Orion didn’t text back.