decision, and she let him be. Then, finally, she felt him give in to something and take a deep breath.
“The twins will still be teaching you archery and spears, and Hector will still be in charge of boxing and sword fighting, but I’m taking over for all the grappling disciplines. Just a warning, this could still be vetoed by my father and uncle, no matter what I say.”
“Don’t I have any say?” Helen asked, slightly annoyed. “Castor and Pallas can’t tell me what to do. If I want you to train me, then why shouldn’t I get what I want?”
“Um . . . maybe leave my family to me,” Lucas said good-naturedly, and Helen decided to let the subject drop. “Come on, we need to go back. I don’t like having you out in the open like this.”
“Everything is so close,” Helen said as they hovered over the Delos lawn, still in awe over how fast and simple it was for her to get from one end of the island to the other. “Don’t you ever get sick of being stuck over Nantucket?”
“I would if I was stuck,” he said wryly as they touched down in the backyard, “but I just went to New York the other day.”
“You did! For what?”
“Bagels. There’s this place out in Brooklyn that I love. It only takes me ten minutes at subsonic to get there.”
Helen stopped dead when she realized what that meant.
“You mean, any day at school, you and I can just fly to Boston and eat our lunches in Harvard Square and then be back in time for fifth period?”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “I want you to get a few more weeks of experience before we go off island, but soon you’ll be strong enough to go everywhere with me.”
“I want to see the statues on Easter Island! And Machu Picchu! And the Great Wall of China!” Helen exclaimed, practically hysterical with excitement.
She started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as they walked toward the house. Lucas grabbed her hands.
“We’ll need to wait a bit before we go overseas. You can barely stay in the air as it is and it’s harder to navigate with no point of reference, plus oceanic air currents can be a nightmare.”
“But I’ll be with you, and you know all that stuff already!” She stopped dead and gripped his hand tightly to her chest. “I’m strong enough now, I swear! Please? I’ve always dreamed of traveling! Lucas, you have no idea! My whole life I’ve wanted off this island.”
“I know, and we will—soon! We’ll tape a map to a dartboard and wherever we hit, we’ll go. Fiji, Finland, Florence, whatever!” he said indulgently, pulling her against him to stop her from jumping into the air and leaving without him. “We can go eat sushi in Tokyo every night until it gets boring. We can do whatever you want, Helen. When you’re a better flier.”
“We really can, can’t we?” she asked breathlessly, noticing the fact that they had both used the word “we.” Then a less-pleasing thought occurred to her. “You’ve been doing this for a while now, haven’t you? Running off to other continents when you have a few hours to kill.”
“Yes, I have.”
“But always alone?”
“We can carry people short distances when we fly if we have to, but it’s unbelievably exhausting to tamper with other people’s gravity. You’d be better off just walking there.”
He was attempting to sound lighthearted about it, but his face was turned down. Helen looked at him sideways, trying to figure out what it must be like to know that you could go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa instead of just looking at a picture of it in a book, but you’d have to go there by yourself. It must have been so lonely for him. He’d been the only Scion who could fly for his entire life, and that meant that he’d been isolated in a lot of ways—until he met her.
“There’s plenty of time for us to see the world, but for now, I think you’d better stay local. And since I can’t ask you to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself, I promise I won’t go off island without you,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” Helen said, laughing and trying to pull her hand out of his, but he held on to her.
“I’m serious,” he said, tugging on her hand and pulling her toward him until she was