Ares hit her face again and then stood up so he could kick her in the stomach. The wind came out between the seized-up muscles in her abdomen until she made a strange braying noise, like a donkey. He kicked her again and again. If she tried to avoid the blows by curling up and turning her back to him, he stomped rather than kicked. She felt her forearm snap and tried to bring her leg up to protect her side, but that only made him attack her more viciously. When she stopped trying to dodge the blows and just let them come, he backed off.
Helen rolled around on the ground, struggling to find a position that would make it possible for her to breathe with several broken ribs and her hands tied behind her back. Wheezing and writhing, she finally found that kneeling and bending forward with her forehead resting against the fiery ice of the ground was best. The choking, hacking noise she made as she forced air around one of her punctured lungs sounded almost like laughing.
“Fun, isn’t it?” Ares squealed, and started skipping around in a circle. “But I shouldn’t have kicked your middle so very much because now you can’t yell. And that’s what we need, right? So silly of me! Well, we can wait a bit before we play again.”
He knelt down next to her folded form and ran his finger through her hair. The exposed back of her neck crawled as he chose a tress from the nape.
He will yank it out in a moment, she told herself. Just relax and don’t fight it. It will be easier that way.
“You are exceedingly quiet,” Ares sighed as he began to slowly braid the chosen lock. “That is a problem. How will the other Heirs find you if you don’t holler and yell like you’re supposed to? You’re supposed to shout SAVE ME, LUCAS! OH, SAVE ME, ORION!” He momentarily adopted the soprano register of a damsel in distress before immediately switching back to his normal voice. “Just like that. Go on. Try it.”
Helen shook her head. Ares leaned over her, putting his lips right up against the cringing skin of her neck. He breathed his foul, rotten breath across her scalp and the backs of her ears. Even in the scouring cold of the portal, Ares still overwhelmed her with the smell of death and decay.
“Yell,” he said quietly, no longer sounding like a madman. For the first time she could remember, Ares had abandoned his usual singsong way of speaking. He sounded sane, and to Helen that made him infinitely more terrifying. “Call out to them to save your life. Call out to them, Helen, or I will kill you.”
“You’re trying to trap them,” Helen said between panting breaths. “I won’t fall for it.”
“How can I trap them? I am as powerless as a mortal in this nowhere place, and they are two against one,” he said, sounding logical. “They might even win.”
He wasn’t lying. His punches and kicks had hurt her insides badly, but she didn’t feel the strength of a god behind those blows. She looked at the knuckles on his left hand, the hand he had used to strike her, and saw that ichor, the golden blood of the gods, oozed out of the deep scrapes on his fist. It made her smile to know that although she’d lost some teeth and she couldn’t see out of her right eye anymore, Ares had most likely broken his hand in the process.
“Call out to them,” he pleaded, like all of this was for her own good. “Why won’t you yellyellyell, broken little godling? They want to save you.”
Helen knew he was right. Lucas and Orion were looking for her, and they didn’t need their Scion powers to fight Ares like she did. Both of them were strong men. She was just a skinny, exhausted, tied-up, Myrmidon-poisoned girl going against a gigantic brute twice her size. They were warriors by nature. Let them do the fighting. They enjoyed it.
Not too far away, she heard Orion calling out to Lucas, leading him through the labyrinth of the caves.
“Do you hear that, Helen? Your salvation is so close.” Ares twisted his fingers to tighten his grip and ripped the braided lock of hair out of her head, tearing an inch wide swath of scalp off with it. Helen couldn’t stop a high-pitched whistling wheeze from escaping the back of her throat, but she managed to keep the volume lower than a whisper. She wouldn’t scream. Ares grabbed another, larger lock—one that was lower and attached to even more sensitive skin.
Out of her one good eye, Helen saw blood from the back of her head running in a stream off her chin and staining the ice below her face. It fanned out in a pool, bright and vibrant, as it climbed its way through the crystal lattice like it was filling the thirsty fibers of woven cloth.
“They aren’t going to just happen to find you, if that’s what you’re hoping for. There are dozens of portals in these caves. Orion knows most of them, but still, it could take them all night to find the right one.” Ares sounded like he was growing tired of this game. “Call out to them now and save what’s left of your skin.”
Staring into a pool of her own blood, Helen saw two armies. She saw them come together in a bright flash of metal on metal. She saw an azure-blue bay fouled by the filth of a siege camp, and then over time, she saw those clear waters muddied and clogged with the ashes of burnt bodies. Finally, she saw Lucas lying lifeless in a burning, smoke-filled room.
That was what happened the last time I let others do my fighting for me.
“I will not call out,” Helen whispered as hot tears joined the blood beneath her face. “I would rather die.”
“You love Orion and Lucas so much you’d die for them? Both of them?” Ares asked quietly. He pushed her over onto her side so he could look at her destroyed face. She worked to focus her one good eye on him and responded without hesitating,
“Yes. I love them both. And I’d die for them both.”
Ares went silent. Watching the muscles of his face twitch, for a moment Helen thought he was struggling to come up with something to say. Then he sucked in a breath and burst out laughing.
“One down, two to go!” Ares said, almost like he couldn’t believe it. “Automedon was right! So ready to bleed and die—and it’s not just you, either. The thing that truly astounds me is that he says your two noble defenders would bleed and die for you as well. Do you know what that means, broken little godling? Do you know what it means if I mix all this blood you and the other two Heirs would so willingly spill for each other? Four Houses, conveniently packaged into three loving, brave, and, thank Zeus, naive Heirs.”
Helen’s mind raced. She struggled back up onto her knees and stared at the blood freezing into ice on the floor. She thought about how special the conditions had to be to make her normally impervious skin bleed, and how much Ares must have gone through to get her here so she could do just that. Then she thought about how much had to happen to get Lucas and Orion to work together when just hours ago they would have been prevented from even being in the same room because of the Furies. There was only one thing that brought them together, and only one thing she knew for a fact both of them would fight, bleed, and die for. Her. And she had already bled and pledged on that blood to do the same for them.
“Blood brothers. We’ll be blood brothers,” she gasped through her split lips. “All Four Houses will be united.”
“And we gods will be free from our prison on Olympus,” Ares said solemnly. “Three and a half thousand years I’ve waited!” His words ended abruptly as his throat closed off in a choked sound.
“No. I won’t let it happen,” she stammered, unable to accept it.
“Do you know what the tastiest part of all of this is for me? Except for the part where I get to torture you, of course,” he continued, ignoring her weak threat. “It’s that, yet again, it’s all for the love of Helen! I would never have believed that not one, but two world wars could be started for the love of a woman. You’d think money, sure. Land, of course. Thousands of wars have been fought over money and land, but LOVE? And yet here we are. Aphrodite wins again! Another war to end all wars starts for your love, and because of your love for two men and three pathetic Furies as well! And lovelovelove will be the reason the world collapses into warwarwar. It is sheer poetry!”
As Ares gurgled with insane laughter, the enormi
ty of Helen’s multiple mistakes fell on her one by one, crushing her beneath them. Morpheus had expressed misgivings about her quest, but she’d never asked why. Hades had explicitly warned her not once, but twice, that she should ask the Oracle—not Cassandra the little sister, but the Oracle, the mouthpiece of the Three Fates—if freeing the Furies was the right thing to do. Even Zach had tried to tell her that she was in danger, but she hadn’t given him a chance to explain.
And biggest of all was the warning she’d gotten from Hector. He’d told her that the most important thing was that she didn’t fall in love with Orion. Hector had always known, even though Helen hadn’t, that this struggle was about love. When he’d told her not to fall in love with Orion, what he was trying to tell her was that love, real love, always made a family—even if it wasn’t a traditional one. Love was what mattered, not the laws or the rules or the gods.
Helen could rant and scream that she’d been tricked, that none of it was her fault, but she knew better. She had charged headfirst into this quest without ever stopping to think about what could go wrong. All along she was so convinced she was right because she was doing a good deed that never once did she listen to anyone who disagreed with her. Lucas had warned her that hubris was the greatest danger to Scions, but she hadn’t really understood why until just that moment. Being a good person and doing good deeds didn’t necessarily make you right all the time.
In the next cavern, Helen heard Orion and Lucas speaking to each other in frantic whispers, urging each other on toward the flickering light of the brazier.
“Please,” she sobbed quietly. “Just kill me now.”
“Soon, soon, pet. Shhh,” Ares cooed as he pulled a little bronze dagger out of his belt and knelt down next to her. Helen felt a sliding, throbbing heat trace across her neck. With one efficient motion, Ares had slit her throat. “You’ll die, but the cut is shallow enough that you won’t die right away. I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak, though. I can’t let you go sharing the plan with the other two Heirs before they do a little fighting and bleeding of their own, now can I? Don’t want to ruin it.”
She tried to scream, but instead a thin membrane of blood shot out of her neck and sprayed across Ares’ face. He grinned and licked his lips.
“Who’s a good girl?” he said in baby talk, making grotesque kissy-faces at her. Then he stood, went to the rock wall, and whispered to it.
Helen had nearly drowned once when she was a child. Since then she had always feared the water, even though she had grown up on an island perpetually surrounded by it. Now it seemed that after all that fussing and fearing over the water she was going to drown on dry land. As blood frothed in her lungs and burned her inner ears, she thought to herself how similar her salty blood tasted to the salt water of the sea. She could hear the little ocean inside her, throbbing and rushing, ebbing out of her with every beat of her heart. Or were those footfalls pounding across the frozen cave floor?
“Uncle! Let me through,” Ares hissed more loudly at the rock wall.
Nothing happened. The look on Ares’ face grew frantic.
“Helen! No!” Lucas screamed across the yawning cavern. His cry echoed off the walls, filling the dark corners of the caves and multiplying inside of them.
Ares spun around and put his hand on his knife. As he looked down at Helen, she could tell he was contemplating a hostage scenario.
The ground heaved up and came slamming back down, making Ares stumble away from Helen and clutch at the wall. “Get away from her,” Orion growled.
Unable to roll over to look at them, Helen stared at Ares’ petrified face through her one good eye. His eyes were flying back and forth between Orion and Lucas as Ares backed up against the wall of the portal. Orion was right. The god of war was a coward.
“Hades! You have your orders!” Ares screamed hysterically as he slapped his hand repeatedly against the frozen rock wall. “Let me pass!” The portal sucked him in and Ares was gone. After a brief pause, Helen heard hurried steps behind her.
“Luke. Oh, no,” Orion groaned.
“She’s not dead,” Lucas said through gritted teeth. “She can’t be dead.”
Helen felt both Lucas and Orion kneel down next to her. She felt hands cup her shoulder and her hip to tilt her gently toward them. She squirmed, trying to shrug them away. She would have gotten up and run away from them if she could. Even their delicate touches felt like whips across her skin, but the pain wasn’t the reason she wanted them to stop touching her. She couldn’t let them get her blood on their hands.
“Easy, easy. It’s okay, Helen,” Lucas said in a high whisper. “I know it hurts, I do, but we have to move you.”
No. What they had to do was get away from her. She tried to tell them to go, but all that came out of her was a gush of blood from her neck.
“I have a knife,” Orion said, and Helen felt the bonds on her wrists cut away.
Lucas scooped her up into his arm and she fought him lamely, struggling to get him to drop her. She wanted to die in the portal, before the blood brother ritual could be completed. But as she flailed and coughed she only made it worse. She was literally spraying blood from her neck, covering Lucas and Orion. Ares might be a coward, Helen thought, but he knew everything there was to know about hurting people. The wound he had given her had made it a sure thing that anyone who came within five feet of Helen got bathed in her blood.
“I’ll lead the way,” Orion said in an urgent voice.
Helen felt a vague swaying motion, and saw the bobbing beam of Orion’s flashlight ahead as they began their ascent. She could hear just fine, and her vision wasn’t too bad, but she couldn’t move or speak. She tried to wiggle her toes or move a finger. None of her limbs responded. She told herself to blink, but she couldn’t even close her good eye. Helen was locked inside herself and completely conscious. She knew she would have to watch as the events unfolded and wondered if this was some special torture that Ares had devised for her. Maybe he’d poisoned the blade to paralyze her?
Or maybe I’m just dying, she thought hopefully. If I hurry, maybe I can still stop this.
“There’s the exit,” Orion called back over his shoulder with relief. Helen could make out his beautiful profile, backlit by a bright moon and a thousand stars winking through the dark squeeze of the cave’s mouth.
She saw Orion’s face fall as something outside the cave caught his eye. He spun around to face Helen and Lucas, crowding them back into the cave as he hunched his big shoulders over the two of them protectively. Helen saw his mouth drop open in a gasp and his bright eyes grow wide as the tip of a sword appeared under his breastbone. The ground shook. Over Orion’s shoulder, Helen saw Automedon’s shiny red insect eyes staring at her.
“Orion!” Lucas exclaimed. He reached out a hand from under Helen and grabbed Orion’s shoulder, trying to hold him up as Orion and Lucas sank to their knees together with Helen pressed between them. The tip of the blade disappeared as it was yanked out, and the shiny metal was replaced by a rush of dark blood. Helen watched as if in slow motion as a drop of Orion’s blood fell on one of her many wounds and mixed with hers.
That’s one, Helen thought helplessly. Thunder rolled across the clear, cloudless sky.
“My knife,” Orion breathed.
Lucas nodded almost imperceptibly, understanding Orion’s meaning. Helen tried to speak, hoping she had healed enough to at least warn Lucas not to fight, but instead all that came out of her was gasping cough.
“Can you take her?” Lucas whispered, looking into Orion’s eyes and begging him to be honest. In answer, Orion slid his arms under Helen and took her weight.
Lucas reached under Orion’s shirt to unsheathe the long blade. In a blindingly fast motion, he sprang to his feet, vaulted over Orion and Helen, and pushed Automedon away from the wounded pair.
Orion held Helen close to his chest as he panted for a few moments, like he was willing himself to heal faster. With a painful groan, he finally hauled him
self to his feet and shuffled out of the cave with Helen in his arms.
Outside, pressed up against the wall next to the mouth of the cave, Helen spotted Zach—his eyes wide and staring. Still paralyzed, she screamed on the inside, but nothing came out. Zach looked at Helen’s ruined face and made a desperate sound, catching Orion’s attention. Orion glared at him, and Zach stared back at Orion in terror.
Helen felt Orion’s head tilt down to look at the sword in Zach’s hands, and then back up into Zach’s eyes. Without pause, Zach held the hilt of the sword out to Orion, offering him the weapon.
“I’m a friend of Helen’s. You fight. I’ll stay and guard her,” he said in a level voice. Orion looked at Lucas, caught in a clinch and getting kneed in the gut by Automedon, and made up his mind quickly.
Helen tried to struggle when Orion put her down on the ground at Zach’s feet. She tried to spit out the word traitor but all she could do was stammer the letter T a few times and twitch.
“I’ll make sure he comes back to you,” Orion promised quietly, and kissed Helen’s forehead. Pressing on his wounded chest as if that could make it stop hurting, Orion took the sword from Zach and charged into the fray to fight alongside Lucas.
“Don’t worry, Helen, I just called Matt. They’re all coming. Hector said even your mother is on her way.” Zach tried to make her more comfortable by tugging ineffectually at the tears in her dress and smoothing her blood-soaked hair. As he looked her over, his hands started to shake and tears began to gather in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lennie. Jesus, look at what he did to your face!”
Breathing hard and coughing up inhaled blood, she stared at Zach and focused all her energy on making her frozen tongue move.
“Khl ma,” she slurred. Zach narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if she’d said what it sounded like she said. Helen braced herself and tried again. “K-hill me.”