for a moment, thinking some dark thought, before she finished the story. “Anyway, Troy was betrayed by one of their own and burned to the ground, and after a few months of confusion and tricks and payback—most of which is described in the Odyssey—the Olympians finally left the earth. Zeus swore that if the Houses ever united again, he would come back and the Trojan War would pretty much start all over again.”
“And it left off somewhere just short of the total destruction of civilization,” Helen said, trying to imagine what “the end of civilization” would mean now. “If the Trojan War was so destructive with only swords and arrows, what would happen if it was fought with today’s weapons?”
“Yeah. That crossed our minds,” Ariadne broke eye contact and looked at her lap. “That’s why my family—my father, uncle Castor, and aunt Pandora—separated themselves from the rest of the House of Thebes. Even if Tantalus is right, even if unification is the key to immortality, we didn’t think it was worth the total destruction of the earth.”
“That’s a lot to give up. I mean, it’s the right thing to do, obviously, but immortality . . .” Helen shook her head at the thought. “And Tantalus and the Hundred Cousins just let you go?” she asked incredulously.
“What choice did they have? They can’t kill us because we’re all family, but lately they were starting to threaten us, trying to bully us back to the fold, and some of us—okay, Hector—were starting to fight back. He was looking for fights, taking the bait when they called him a coward for not wanting to fight the gods. In our tradition, to kill your own kin is the worst sin imaginable, and he came so close, Helen. My family left Spain because Hector got into a terrible fight and nearly got killed, but worse, he nearly killed someone of his own blood. There is no forgiveness for a kin-killer,” Ariadne said in a hushed voice.
“But yours isn’t the last House. Mine is,” Helen said, the whole truth beginning to dawn on her.
“No one knew about you. About two decades ago there was this ‘Final Confrontation’ between the Houses. All Four Houses attacked one another, each of them trying to eliminate the others. The House of Thebes won, and it was thought that the other three, the House of Atreus, the House of Athens, and the House of Rome, were wiped out entirely. But even though everyone else was supposed to be dead, Atlantis wasn’t raised and the gods did not return. My father, aunt, and uncle thought that we were the ones that were keeping the war at bay by refusing to join Tantalus and his cult. We thought it had to be us because no one else was supposed to be left.” Ariadne took a deep breath and looked at Helen. “But it was you all along. Somehow your mother hid you here, preserved your House, whichever one it is, and kept the war from starting. She—you—also kept Tantalus from attaining Atlantis.”
Helen sat in silence for a moment, realizing how many incredibly strong demigods wanted her dead. The Hundred Cousins believed that if the House of Thebes was unified and the only Scion House left on earth, they would become like gods, and Helen’s life was the only thing standing in the way. Her life was also the only thing keeping the Olympians from coming back to earth and starting World War Whatever. So the Delos family had to protect her even if they all died doing it. And here she was refusing to learn how to fight. No wonder Hector hated her.
“I’m sorry,” Helen finally said, so overwhelmed by her own selfishness that she had almost no emotion in her voice. “Your family is siding with me against your own kin.”
“Your burden is heavier,” Ariadne said, taking Helen’s hand. She was going to say something else, but she was interrupted by Pandora, who burst into the locker room, looking for them.
“Hey! Am I going to have to take someone to the hospital?” she asked, only half joking. “There’s a whole lot of blood out there.”
“No, she’s okay,” Ariadne answered back with a laugh as she stood up.
Something was still bothering Helen. There was a hole in the story Ariadne had just told her.
“Who was it?” Helen asked suddenly, looking up at Ariadne’s puzzled face. “The way we were taught the story, Odysseus tricked the Trojans with a giant wooden horse. Everyone knows