him.
“My room. Quickly,” Jason croaked as Helen carried Claire into the crowded kitchen.
She ducked past the startled faces of the Delos family, cradling Claire close to her chest to shield her from prying eyes as she and Jason made their way to the stairs. Halfway up the staircase she felt Jason put his hand on her shoulder and lean into her for support. He was so weak he could barely put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, he made it the rest of the way.
“How can I help you?” Helen asked Jason, easing Claire down into his bed.
“You can’t,” he replied as he stretched his big frame out alongside Claire. “I made my choice, and we’re tied to each other until she recovers. It’s sort of like a Healer’s last stand. At this point we’ll either make it through that desert together or we won’t.”
“Oh, good,” Helen sighed, finally feeling hopeful. “Claire would never allow someone she cared about to just go and die, especially not to save her own life.”
She saw Jason smile and nod humorously as he remembered that no matter how dire the situation seemed, at least he had tied his life force to a genuinely legendary fighter.
“I did everything I could to keep her out of this, to protect her from our kind,” he whispered, meeting Helen’s eyes.
“Yeah, I know. All that arguing you two did, even though you’re obviously perfect for each other,” Helen said, feeling guilty. Jason had tried to push Claire away to keep her safe, but Helen hadn’t. “I get it now.”
“You have other things to deal with,” he said, his eyes already starting to close. “Go. I’ll guide her through.”
“If you lose your way, I’ll follow you down,” Helen told him, already feeling the baked air of the dry lands leaching all the moisture out of the atmosphere.
Suddenly, Helen knew what the dry lands were and why she had always been too frightened to recognize the truth when it was staring her in the face. The desert that she wandered into while she slept, the land Jason now had to traverse to save Claire, was the land of the dead. For the briefest of moments she could see Claire’s fetch, confused, scared, and soundlessly calling out Jason’s name. Helen banished that disturbing image and spoke directly into Jason’s ear. “I know the way through the rubble, and I promise, if you can’t make it on your own, I’ll come down and carry you both out.”
Jason’s eyes snapped back open in shock, but his spirit was already following Claire’s, and although he tried to fight it, his eyes closed again as he slipped into a deep comalike slumber. Helen left the room, trusting him completely with Claire’s heal. Mentally, she was already joining the battle that awaited her in the living room.
Helen picked her way down the stairs, hearing her mother’s raised voice as she neared. It was already hauntingly familiar even though she had known the woman only a few short hours. Daphne’s voice was Helen’s own, coming from outside her head like a recording played back on a crappy answering machine. Helen hated it—not the sound, but feeling like she was stuck in someone else’s mistake, doomed to adopt the worst qualities of the people she was supposed to love the most.
Helen paused for a moment to steel herself before she went into the living room. In the few short minutes Helen had been upstairs, a fight had begun.
“I’m to blame?” Daphne shrieked at Pallas, reacting to something he’d just said. “If you all had just stayed in Cádiz, away from Helen, none of this would have happened!”
“That was my fault,” Hector admitted, trying to get everyone to calm down. “My family had to leave because I nearly killed one of my own kin.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” Daphne said out of the side of her mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pallas asked indignantly.
“Are you finally ready to talk about the elephant in the room?” Daphne said bitterly. “I didn’t kill Ajax. Tantalus did.”
“You’re a liar!” Pallas said, taking a menacing step toward her.
“Then how come I’m alive? Tantalus told all of you that he killed me himself, didn’t he?”
Pallas stared at her furiously.
“Just answer this one question. If I killed your brother Ajax, then why don’t you see the Furies right now?” Daphne asked, throwing her arms out as if to show she wasn’t hiding them anywhere.
Everyone looked around at one another, as if they were expecting