“He was chosen,” Telamon said defensively. “That’s all you need to know. We accept him as our Master.”
The Myrmidons whispered the word Master in their ghostly way, unsettling the Scions who shared a round of nervous looks. They were afraid of Matt’s men, as they should be.
“And do you have all the skills of Achilles?” asked the man Matt knew as Odysseus. Matt leaned his head close to Telamon.
“Daedalus Attica, Head of Athens,” Telamon told him immediately.
“That’s not your real question,” Matt said, regarding Daedalus evenly. “You want to know if I have Achilles’ weakness.”
Daedalus’s mouth turned up in a half smile. “Every mortal has at least one.”
Matt smiled back at him with closed lips, neither confirming nor denying what the crafty one was asking. They stared at each other until Daedalus looked away.
“Suit yourself,” Daedalus said. He regarded Tantalus and Pallas and raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m convinced.”
“Are you sure about this?” Pallas asked Tantalus.
“The gods will crush us all if we don’t fulfill our end of the bargain,” Tantalus replied, eyeing Matt with open distrust. “We bring the Warrior to the table, or all the Scions die. Zeus swore on the River Styx that if we do this our Houses will be preserved.”
It was like it always was. At Troy, the Greek kings made their own deal with Zeus and saved their skins, and the innocent children of Troy were thrown from the top of the wall. Matt learned long ago that kings cared only about preserving their own kingdoms and were more interested with what they could get out of any given situation than doing what was right. Matt was suddenly so disgusted by the hedging and the political posturing he saw in the Scions that he turned to go back to his tent. This wasn’t what he’d come for.
“Hold on,” Daedalus called out, taking a step toward Matt. The Myrmidons moved as one to intercept Daedalus. He put his arms up in surrender. “Easy. Everybody just take it easy.”
“I’ll fight with or without you.” Matt stopped and turned back to face them, speaking plainly. “I’m here to kill the Tyrant. If that’s what you want, then you may join me. If not, get out of the way.”
Helen led Lucas into the maze of booths, tugging on his arm. He hung back playfully, acting reluctant to follow so she had to half drag him. On the way, a barker caught his attention with an outlandish dare, and Lucas just had to stop and throw a baseball at a stack of lead milk bottles.
It took him three tries, which he insisted had never happened to him before, but eventually, he won Helen a prize. There was a fluffy elephant that caught her eye for a moment, but she finally picked a glittery wand. It had a silver star on the top and dozens of ribbons flowing out of the bottom. The wand felt right in her hand and easy to carry. She waved it a few times, willing sparks to puff off of it as they paused in front of the glass-blowing booth and watched a man make a little glass dragon.
Neither of them could stop smiling. Helen heard the carousel and ran the last few steps. She hopped onto the back of a unicorn as it swung past, waving her glittery wand in the air like it was a riding crop.
“Tally-ho!” she cheered to her painted ceramic mount, but it didn’t go any faster. The pole down the unicorn’s middle was brass, and it smelled tangy and crisp in the autumn cold.
Lucas jumped up next to her, standing by her side rather than getting a ride of his own. He stood over her, his coat opening around her when he gripped the brass pole. They stared at each other for a long time as the rest of the world spun by them. The bright, fairground colors streaked and smeared in the corner of Helen’s eye but Lucas was still.
“Why won’t you kiss me?” she asked quietly.
“Can’t you make me?” he replied, raising a teasing eyebrow at her.
“I wouldn’t want to. Especially not on our first real date.”
Lucas laughed softly. “I was thinking the same thing when we were in the café. You and I had coffee together once before school, but we never really dated, did we?”
“We never got the chance. The world was always about to end, or one of us was on fire or something equally annoying.” He chuckled. She looked up at him and tried not to blush. “You know, we can do whatever we want here. I can make sure there are no consequences.”
She could feel his breath quicken and see his eyes gleam with more than just the cold. “You remember, months ago, you gave me some advice about how I should go about making tough decisions?” he asked.
“Decide what you absolutely can’t handle, and do the opposite,” she said, surprised that he was bringing this up when she had been thinking pretty much the same thing not too long ago.
“That’s why I won’t kiss you.” He raised a hand and touched her face, and quickly dropped it. “Eventually, we’ll have to go back, and I’ll lose you again. I know for a fact I can’t handle that.”
Nor could Helen, and she was starting to consider other options. Like figuring out a way for Aphrodite to remove the curse that required Helen to have a daughter in the first place. Maybe instead of accepting her situation—which was ridiculously unfair—she needed to at least try to fix it.
“I’m tired of going round and round,” Helen sighed.
The carousel came to a stop. She stood up and jumped down, the lights of the carnival shutting off section by section around her as she walked off the fairgrounds. She dropped her wand, and snow began to fall. Billions of tiny stars were blotted out and seemed to fall through the night sky as unique little crystals. It looked like the air around them whirled with shimmering bits of frozen stars.
“Helen,” Lucas began, following her. She heard him bracing himself for another one of their legendary arguments.