“Yes. They grew very agitated,” she replied.
“That’s when we walked into the kitchen,” Helen said, catching Matt’s drift. “This whole bit about Nemesis and darkness could just be because they couldn’t see anymore because Orion walked in.”
“Orion could have been blocking their prophecy,” Matt continued optimistically.
“So, of course, the Fates would want him d
ead. They’ve been trying to kill him since before he was born. Even before that, actually.” Helen stopped and restarted, trying to explain. “The Fates have been targeting Orion ever since Troy because he made it out alive when he was Aeneas. He escaped fate. The only way Aeneas could have done that is if Nemesis was protecting him, too.”
Helen saw confused and worried faces everywhere she looked. She rubbed her eyes, knowing she was making a hash of this and that she was probably hurting Orion’s chances more than helping them. She looked over at Lucas pleadingly.
“Am I lying?” she asked him, calling on his Falsefinder skills.
“No,” Lucas replied immediately. “She isn’t lying.”
“Oh, of course,” Pallas said as he threw up his hands in exasperation. “Well, it’s obvious what role the Fates put you in, Lucas. You’re the Lover. You’d do anything for Helen.”
“Yes I would,” Lucas admitted with brutal honesty. “But she’s still telling the truth.”
“What she knows of it,” Castor said in a detached voice. “I’m sorry, son, but just because Helen thinks something is true doesn’t make it the truth.” Castor’s tone wasn’t confrontational. He was just making them aware of a loophole that he’d obviously spent a long time considering.
A ghost of a thought traced across Helen’s mind—a niggling doubt about something that was important, but just out of reach.
“It’s not just that. Orion can’t be the Tyrant because he’s the Shield,” Lucas said, waving away his father’s objection. “When Cassandra made the prophecy about Helen being the Descender, she said Helen would go down into the Underworld with her Shield.”
“Granted,” Matt said equitably, like he’d already thought of this. “But you also found a way into the Underworld, Lucas. And you went there to protect Helen—to shield her.”
“Okay, but I didn’t help her free the Furies,” Lucas countered, recalling the words of the prophecy.
“Yeah you did,” Helen said sheepishly, hating to go against Lucas on this. “I was banished from the Underworld until you gave me the obol. And then you helped me figure out which river we needed.”
“Yeah, but Orion was the one who was actually there with you when you freed them.”
“Luke,” Hector interrupted gently. “You gotta admit Matt’s point raises the possibility that there is more than one interpretation of the prophecy.”
“There’s always more than one interpretation,” Orion said from the doorway. Everyone turned to look at him as he came back into the library. “Face it. The Fates speak in riddles because they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. If they did, they’d say something straightforward like, ‘Orion is the Tyrant and he wants to eat your brains for breakfast’ or whatever.”
Hector’s shoulders started bouncing up and down with silent laughter. Lucas turned his head away and tried to stuff down a laugh of his own, but he made the mistake of catching Jason’s eye.
“Zombie Tyrant,” Jason whispered to Lucas, his face turning red with a repressed laugh.
“Huzzah death,” Lucas whispered back, cracking up. Apparently, that was some kind of inside joke between the Delos boys because all three of them busted out laughing.
“Enough foolishness,” Pallas said, striding angrily for the door. He stopped and turned. “What part of ‘reducing all mortal cities to rubble’ don’t you understand? We’ve all been warned what’s at stake here, and not just for Scions. I don’t want to be the one who stood by and let a tyrant worse than Stalin or Hitler get away because he seemed like such a nice guy when I met him.” He looked directly at Orion, and then back at everyone else. No one was laughing anymore. “Do you?”
“Ariadne,” Matt called quietly down the upstairs hallway.
Ariadne stopped at her bedroom door and glanced back at him, holding up a finger to signal for him to wait where he was. She listened for her father, brothers, and cousin, but it wasn’t necessary. Matt could hear all the Delos men, he could even feel their pulses throbbing in the air, and he knew that they were occupied elsewhere. But Ariadne didn’t know this, and he didn’t know how to explain it to her yet. After listening for far longer than Matt needed to, Ariadne finally looked satisfied.
“Come in,” she whispered, beckoning for him to follow her into her room. He entered uncertainly, standing in the middle of her bedroom while she transferred clothes from one piece of furniture to another without even thinking about putting anything away in her dresser.
She was always a slob. I spent half the war cleaning up after her, the new part of Matt remembered. Worst slave ever.
Matt shook his head and tried to push aside the other consciousness that kept popping up uninvited, just as he tried to suppress the flood of familiarity and tenderness he felt toward the girl he was looking at.
Her bed was just a few feet away. Part of him had never lain beside her and another part of him had spent ten years sleeping next to her—her and no other until the day he died. His hands ached to reach out and touch her again for the first time, so he shoved them in his pockets. He turned his head and stared at the wall as she tossed something silky and lace-trimmed in her closet.
“Matt?” Ariadne asked from across the room. He looked at her as she flung a long tress of her chestnut hair behind her shoulder, desperately trying not to remember how soft both her hair and her round shoulder felt. “My lingerie isn’t going to strike you blind, you know.”