Dreamless

had no idea why she’d end up in some places a few times, and other places only once, but she thought it had something to do with her mood. The worse the mood she was in when she went to sleep, the worse her experience in the Underworld.
    Still focused on her shuffling feet, Helen felt warm fingers brush against hers in the hustle of the hallway. Glancing up, she saw Lucas’s jewel-blue eyes seeking hers. She pulled in a breath, a quick inward sigh of surprise, and locked eyes with him.
    Lucas’s gaze was soft and playful, and the corners of his mouth tilted up in a secret smile. Still moving in opposite directions, they turned their heads to maintain eye contact as they walked on, their identical smiles growing with each passing moment. With a teasing flick of her hair, Helen abruptly faced forward and ended the stare, a grin plastered on her face.
    One look from Lucas and she felt stronger. Alive again. She could hear him chuckling to himself as he walked on, almost smug, like he knew exactly how much he affected her. She chuckled, too, shaking her head at herself. Then she saw Jason.
    Walking a few paces behind Lucas with Claire at his side, Jason had watched the whole exchange. His mouth was a worried line, and his eyes were sad. He shook his head at Helen in disapproval and she looked down, blushing furiously.
    They were cousins, Helen knew that. Flirting was wrong. But it made her feel better when nothing else could. Was she supposed to go through all of this without even the comfort of Lucas’s smile? Helen went to her last class and sat behind her desk, fighting back tears as she unpacked her notebook.
    Long splinters enveloped Helen, forcing her to remain completely still or risk impaling herself on one of them. She was trapped inside the trunk of a tree that sat alone in the middle of a dry, dead scrubland. If she breathed too deeply, the long splinters pricked her. Her arms were twisted behind her and her legs folded up uncomfortably underneath her, tilting her torso forward. One long splinter was lined up directly with her right eye. If her head moved forward while she struggled to break free—if she even let it sag a little with fatigue—her eye would be stabbed out.
    “What do you expect me to do?” she whimpered to no one. Helen knew she was completely alone.
    “What am I supposed to do?” she suddenly screamed, her chest and back stinging with a dozen little puncture wounds.
    Screaming didn’t help, but getting angry did. It helped steel her enough to accept the inevitable. She’d put herself here, even if it was unintentional, and she knew how to get herself out. Pain usually triggered her release from the Underworld. As long as she didn’t die, Helen was pretty sure she would leave the Underworld and wake up in her bed. She’d be injured and in pain, but at least she’d be out.
    She stared at the long splinter in front of her eye, knowing what the situation demanded she do, but not sure she was capable of doing it. As the anger fueling her seeped away, desperate tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. She heard her own constricted, choked-off sobs pressing close to her in the claustrophobic prison of the tree trunk. Minutes passed, and Helen’s arms and legs began to cry out, twisted as they were into unnatural shapes.
    Time would not change the situation. Tears would not change the situation. She had one choice, and she knew she could either make it now or hours of suffering from now. Helen was a Scion, and as such a target for the Fates. She’d never had any choice but one. With that thought, the anger returned.
    In one sure movement, she jerked her head forward.
    Lucas couldn’t take his eyes off Helen. Even from across the kitchen he could see that the translucent skin across her high cheekbones was so pale it was stained blue by the lacy veins running below the surface. He could have sworn that when she first came over to study with Cassandra at the Delos house that morning, her forearms were covered in fading bruises.
    She had a spooked, hunted look to her now. She looked more frightened than she had a few weeks ago when they all thought that Tantalus and the fanatical Hundred Cousins were after her. Cassandra had recently foreseen that the Hundred were focusing nearly all their energy on finding Hector and Daphne, and that Helen had nothing to fear. But if it wasn’t the Hundred frightening Helen, then it had to be something in the Underworld. Lucas wondered if she was