Dreamless

trying to kill Jerry flashed through Helen’s mind and she pushed it away, unable to bear the thought of attacking her own father.
    “Everyone I’m related to wants me dead for one reason or another, and because of that I’ve been in hiding for most of my life. So, I’m sorry I got all aggro with you, but it isn’t easy for me to open up like this, because . . . well, it’s usually fatal for me to get close to anyone.”
    “You’ve been completely on your own since you were ten, haven’t you?” Helen asked in a hushed voice, still unable to wrap her head around everything he had told her. “Running from both sides of your family?”
    “And hiding the fact that I exist from the Hundred.” Orion looked at the ground to conceal the dark look in his eyes. “Daphne’s helped me out when she could. She was there the first time the House of Athens came to kill me. She tried to help my dad, and she saved my life. That paid her side of the blood debt to my House, even though I still owe the House of Atreus. Didn’t Daphne tell you any of this?”
    “Like I said, my mother and I don’t talk much.” Was it too much to think that Daphne should have given her a heads-up about this? Something still bothered Helen. “How did she find you and your dad to begin with?”
    “Daphne’s been on a mission to help the Rogues and the Outcasts for, like, twenty years now. She’s traveled all over the world, and because the Furies draw Scions together, whenever she finds a Scion she finds a confrontation. She has a ton of amazing stories. I can’t believe she never told you any of this.”
    But, of course, Helen didn’t know what Orion was talking about. She barely knew anything about Beth Smith-Hamilton, her supposed mother, but she knew even less about Daphne Atreus.
    “Anyway, she’s saved a lot of lives, mine included, and now your mother can be with any member of any House. That’s why she’s the leader of the Rogues and Outcasts.”
    Helen’s jaw dropped. Her mother was a hero? Her shady, unreliable, deadbeat mom—the one Helen couldn’t even remember—was some kind of Scion savior? If that was true, then something was either not right in the universe, or not right with the way Helen understood it.
    “Listen, part of the reason I told you all of this was because I thought it might make it easier for you to forgive Daphne if I did. And please trust me on this one—you have to forgive your mother, Helen. Not for her sake, but for your own.”
    “Why are you defending Daphne?” Helen asked him suspiciously. She thought about the influence of the cestus and wondered if Daphne was controlling him. “Did she ask you to say all this stuff to me?”
    “No! You’re misunderstanding what I . . . Daphne never asked me to say anything,” he stammered. Helen made a derisive sound that kept him from continuing. She was angry again, but she didn’t exactly know why. Not knowing made her even angrier. She stomped past him and started marching out of the weeds.
    Helen broke through the tall grass and started climbing a steep hill that was lousy with the remains of some tumbled-down medieval castle. As she stomped past a stone stairway that broke off in midair, Helen asked herself why she was so angry. She realized that it wasn’t just one thing. Several things were ticking her off simultaneously, and she was now facing them at the same time.
    First, Daphne had sent Orion into the Underworld without bothering to mention it. Second, Cassandra was keeping Claire and Matt from helping her when it was her butt that was dragging through the Underworld every night, not Cassandra’s. And Lucas . . . how could he treat her that horribly? Even if he hated her, how could he do that to her? For the first time, Helen felt angry about what he had done, rather than devastated.
    As she stomped along, taking her feelings out on the ground, Helen realized that, most of all, she was angry with herself. She had been so paralyzed with sadness that she had stopped making choices. She had allowed herself to drift along like a helpless bit of fluff. That had to end.
    When she was out of breath from hiking up the steep incline at a breakneck pace, Helen braced herself against a massive, mossy block of granite that had once been part of the moldering castle’s outer wall. She whirled around to grill Orion, who was struggling to keep up with her.
    “Do you even know why you’re here?” she snapped.
    “I’m here to