of the warring cousins and shocked them both into unconsciousness. As they fell still under her hands, Helen could hear rapid footsteps behind her. The rest of the Delos family was coming.
“Get back,” she screamed with her ruined voice as she spun around to face Ariadne and Pallas, who were both running toward her from opposing streets.
Hector was unconscious, but he could still incite the Furies in his family. His sin was so recent that the impulse to kill him would be urgent and blinding, even to those who loved him the most. Helen had made peace with the House of Thebes, but she had not become a part of it, so she was mercifully free of the urge to kill Hector, who had now become their greatest enemy—an Outcast. She got in touch with the sensation that connected her to her lightning and felt a disappointingly small spark. She had been running around for hours now without a sip to drink.
She looked back at Hector and Lucas, made sure that they were both breathing, and then stood up and walked out into the street, putting herself in between Hector’s unconscious form and his infuriated family.
“Don’t come any closer,” Helen said, forcing what voltage she had left to spark out of her fingertips in a false show of power.
Helen held out her icy blue hands as she came down what was left of the steps and looked from Ariadne’s sly eyes to Pallas’s bared teeth. They were not themselves anymore, but blunt instruments for the Furies. She stepped into the street and raised her glowing hands to warn them off. At the sight of Helen’s lightning, they backed off a step or two, but just as they were about to back off completely, Castor rounded a corner, following the whispers of the Furies.
Helen was ridiculously outnumbered. She had no idea how far she would have to go to protect Hector from his own family. She couldn’t kill any of them any more than she could let them kill him. If they didn’t buy her bluff, she was out of options. She had never felt so alone in her entire life.
“Helen, I’ve got Hector! Stay between us while I take him away,” Daphne called out behind her. “Whatever you do, don’t let them lay eyes on him or we will lose this fight!”
Helen sighed at the sound of her mother’s voice, so relieved that she had someone on her side that she found the strength she needed to make the only choice that she could.
She didn’t care if she drained every last drop of water out of her body. The only thing that concerned her was stopping the vengeance cycle before it devoured a family that she loved. She flung her arms out wide and with a last gasping push made her lightning dance in a great, blinding circle around her body. Ariadne, Pallas, and Castor threw up their arms to protect their eyes from the one kind of light they had no control over.
Helen’s halo of ball lightning was hotter than the surface of the sun. It melted the pavement under her feet into lava and heated up the air around her until it literally hummed. The Delos family jumped away from the intolerable light and heat, but more important, they jumped away from Daphne as she ran into the darkness with Hector’s unconscious body slung over her shoulder.
The pain was unbearable. Helen couldn’t hold the ball of electricity for more than a few seconds. As soon as she heard Daphne’s footsteps move away, she switched off like a fried lightbulb and stumbled desperately out of the white-hot liquid asphalt that was pooling below her, burning her and choking her with noxious gases. She crawled on hands and knees toward Ariadne, Castor, and Pallas, their faces matching masks of agony as they all suddenly became aware of what they had nearly done. But Helen couldn’t let them fall apart just yet.
“Lucas needs help!” she rasped, gesturing back to the shattered steps of the Atheneum.
“Ariadne,” Castor said in a brittle voice. “Go get Lucas. Helen, can you walk?”
“No,” she admitted, shaking her head.
“People will be coming,” Castor said as he picked Helen up and started to carry her off, but he stopped when he noticed his brother wasn’t following. “Pallas! We need to go!”
“My son,” Pallas whispered, unable to move.
“Dad, come on! You have to take Creon’s body!” Ariadne hissed from the stairs of the Atheneum. She had Lucas draped over