Dreamless

as he registered Helen’s anxious state. From the way she was glancing around, wringing her hands, he could tell it had nothing to do with him. “What happened?” he demanded.
    “I . . .” she began breathlessly, then broke off when a disturbing thought distracted her. “Are you just getting home now ? Where were you?”
    “I was out,” he said tersely. Lucas took a few more steps toward her until he was close enough that she had to tilt her head up to look at him, but she refused to give him any ground. She was done with being afraid of him. “Now answer my question. What happened to you?”
    “Hector called. Daphne learned that Tantalus sent a Myrmidon to watch me. The thing just caught me snooping around its nest, like, two seconds ago.”
    Without warning, Lucas reached out and grabbed Helen by the waist, and threw her straight up into the air. She released herself from gravity as a reflex, and on the momentum of Lucas’s toss, she soared twenty, then thirty, then forty feet up. Lucas rocketed past, catching her by the hand. He pulled her behind him at an unbelievable speed. Helen’s ears popped with the pressure of the mini–sonic boom that she and Lucas created.
    “Where’s the nest? Near my house?” he yelled frantically over the rushing wind.
    “At my neighbor’s. Lucas, stop!” Helen was frightened, not of him, but that they were moving so fast. He slowed and faced her, but he didn’t stop entirely or let go of her hand. Flying in close, he looked her directly in the eye, searching for a lie.
    “Did it sting you?”
    “No.”
    “Did Hector tell you to go look for its nest on your own?” His words came so quickly she barely had time to process what he was saying.
    Helen’s head hurt and her vision swam. They were up so high the air was dangerously thin. Not even demigods could survive space, and Lucas had brought Helen right to the edge.
    “Hector said not to go near it . . . but I wanted to see for myself before I made everyone panic. Lucas, we have to get lower!” she pleaded.
    Lucas looked down at Helen’s chest and saw it bellowing in and out as she struggled for oxygen. He drifted nearer, and she felt him share the slip of air he had wrapped around himself with her. A gust of oxygen brushed gently past her face. She inhaled, and instantly felt better.
    “We can call more breathable air to ourselves, but you need to relax first,” Lucas said. He sounded like himself again.
    “How high are we?” She stared at him, shocked that he was being kind to her. She didn’t know what else to say.
    “Look down, Helen.”
    Overwhelmed, she followed his gaze to the view beneath them.
    For a moment, she and Lucas floated weightless above the slowly spinning Earth, just looking at it. Black sky edged the white-and-blue haze of atmosphere swaddling the planet. The silence and the bleakness of space only served to emphasize how precious, how miraculous their little island of life truly was.
    It was the most beautiful thing Helen had ever seen, but she couldn’t fully enjoy it. If ever she came this high again, she knew would always recall that Lucas had brought her here first . Now this, too, was something they shared. She was so confused she wanted to cry. Entirely by chance, Lucas had claimed yet another piece of real estate in her mind, and he was the one who had ordered her to stay away from him.
    “Why bother to show me this? Or teach me anything at all?” Helen said, choking on the words. “You hate me.”
    “I never said that.” His voice held no emotion.
    “We should go down,” she said, forcing her eyes away from his face. This wasn’t fair. She couldn’t let him toy with her like this.
    Lucas nodded and gripped Helen’s hand tightly. She tried to pull it away but Lucas resisted.
    “Don’t, Helen,” he said. “I know you don’t want to touch me, but you could still pass out up here.”
    Helen wanted to scream that he couldn’t be more wrong. Pretty much the only thing she wanted was to touch him, and it was eating her up inside. At that moment, she imagined herself drifting closer and brushing against him until she could feel his body heat leaking out through the gaps in his clothes. She pictured how the scent of him would hit her in a wave, riding the tide of that heat. She knew thoughts like that shouldn’t even cross her mind, but they did. Right or wrong, whether she was allowed to act on it or not, it was what she truly wanted.
    What she didn’t want