it was bogus. Lucas glanced at Helen, who had noticed the same thing he did, and they shared an anxious look.
Cassandra said that she was tired, and Pandora took her upstairs to lie down for a while. Ariadne went into the kitchen to check on Matt, who was still icing a few bumps and bruises while Noel gave him a crash course in demigods.
Lucas gestured with his head for Helen to meet him in the next room. She tried to shake her head no, but he had already turned away and started moving toward the door. She had to follow.
He led her to an unfamiliar part of the house, the wing directly opposite his father’s office, one that Helen had never entered. As they moved through the empty hallways and past the unused rooms, she could see Lucas tilt his head ever so slightly over his shoulder, aware of her presence.
As she followed him, never more than a few paces behind, she could see his shoulders tense and his breathing quicken. She watched the warm skin of his back moving under his shirt with every breath, and she had to rub her tight fists against each other to keep herself from reaching out to touch him. Finally, he entered the empty solarium on the easternmost end of the compound and turned around. She had one second to open her mouth in protest before he was kissing it. The second after that she felt him gently pushing her down to the floor. The second after that Helen very nearly gave in to him.
A wave of nausea swept up from her stomach and she clamped her mouth shut as she turned her head away from him. Lucas pulled back carefully, thinking he had hurt her in some way. She braced her elbows against the marble floor and shoved against his chest.
“Stop,” she begged.
He shifted off of her immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. As they both sat up and faced each other, his eyes looked so confused, so wounded, that Helen’s eyes started leaking tears, even though she had promised herself the night before that she would never cry again.
“What is it?” he asked, bewildered and in pain.
“We can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head in a rapid motion.
“What are you talking about?” He tried to get her to look at him as he reached for her hands. “Helen, we’re free. There are two other Houses left to preserve the Truce. We can be together.”
“We can’t do this,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists so he couldn’t take them.
“Why?” he asked in a strangled voice, sensing that Helen was being honest with him, but still not understanding why. “Have your feelings for me changed so much in one night? Did you stop wanting me?”
“That’s not it,” she said, agonized. “I wish I didn’t want you.”
“How can you say that?” Lucas asked, relieved to know that at least Helen still felt the same about him. “I know you’ve been through a lot today, and maybe you’re not ready right this second. That’s fine, we’ll wait as long as you want. . . .” He tried to pull her into his arms, just to hold her, but she pushed hard against his chest and turned her face away from his.
“We’re first cousins!” she cried out hopelessly, her shoulders beginning to jump up and down with uncontrollable sobs. “Jerry wasn’t my father, Lucas. Ajax was.”
Lucas’s whole body went still with fear. In the silence that followed, all Helen could hear was the sound of the rain on the glass roof.
“That’s not possible,” he whispered, even though he could hear that she wasn’t lying. He shook his head. “No. We saw the Furies when we met. We can’t be related.”
“Yes, we can,” Helen said, wiping one cheek, then the other, then back again to the first in what seemed like an endless procession of tears that needed to be wiped away. “The children of mixed lineage can only be claimed by one House, and I was claimed by the House of Atreus. It’s been happening like this from the start.”
“From the start?” Lucas asked, recalling Cassandra’s earlier statement. “Star-Crossed Lovers are repeated in the pattern. How many other Scions of mixed lineage are out there in hiding?”
Helen sniffed and stared at him with a tiny smile. He was so sensitive, so quick to pick up on every detail she couldn’t stop herself from adoring him. There were an infinite number of