Goddess (Starcrossed)

to him.
    Helen could feel his skin heat up with emotion as she told him about Daphne’s desperate plan to raise Ajax from the dead. Helen wasn’t exactly sure what she said. She just let the whole ugly mess tumble out of her mouth and into his ear. A few times she felt him cringe and the breath rush out of him in disbelief as a new revelation sank in. Finally, when she started talking about her behavior toward Orion on the beach and said the word “Shield,” Lucas pulled back and held a finger to her lips.
    “Don’t tell me any more,” he whispered. He understood that when she left Orion’s presence, any hope of salvaging her plan to defeat the gods was endangered. “Don’t even think it here. You need to get back to Orion immediately.”
    “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
    “You have to go back, Helen,” he said firmly, but instead of pushing her away, he only held her tighter. “I have to stay here. I made a vow.” He choked on the word, realizing the enormity of his mistake.
    “But Lucas, the gods are using your absence to say you’re dead and you didn’t really win the duel. This isn’t just about you and me. You have to come and show yourself to the gods, or they’ll send Tantalus’s army against us.”
    “My little brother will send his army against you regardless of what you do, niece. If Lucas returns to the battlefield and proves he’s alive, Zeus will just find another reason to attack,” said Hades’ sad voice. Helen eased off of Lucas’s lap and the two of them stood side by side, holding hands, while Hades approached from the stairs.
    “Did you know?” Helen asked Hades. “About Daphne? Did you know what she was doing?”
    “I see a lot, but I don’t see everything,” Hades said, shaking his head. “No being is omniscient. Even the Fates have Nemesis to block them.”
    “I need him,” she whispered, squeezing Lucas’s hand.
    “And I told him that, several times, but he wouldn’t listen to me,” Hades replied, looking away. “No matter how much I feel for you both, I cannot release him. He made a vow, one that binds me, too.”
    “It wasn’t his vow to make. He’s not fit to be your successor.” Helen separated herself from Lucas and raised her voice. “I call the Eumenides to bear witness to my claim. Lucas is not fit to rule the dead.”
    “Clever girl,” Hades said under his breath in a musing tone, like Helen’s tactic hadn’t occurred to him.
    As the three girls who used to be the Furies came gliding out of the darkness behind the throne, Hades smiled at Helen almost like he was proud of her. The three ex-Furies, now known as the Eumenides or the Kindly Ones, were like supernatural defense lawyers for the Underworld, and they owed Helen big .
    The Eumenides arranged themselves to the right of Lucas’s throne while Hades stood to the left. The littlest one smiled briefly at Helen, and Helen smiled back, resisting the urge to wave at her like a pal.
    The littlest one stilled her face completely and turned her eyes away. The Eumenides might owe Helen their freedom from the suffering they endured as the Furies, but Helen could see now that they would do what was right, no matter what Helen needed.
    “Let the dead enter and judge,” the Eumenides said as one.
    There were ghostly sighs on the air as invisible presences pressed up against Helen and Lucas, tipping them this way and that as they passed. In moments, the hall filled with hundreds, then thousands, then billions of dead souls stacked up to the impenetrable dark of the ceiling and tucked into the farthest corner.
    “Let the qualities of the candidate be known,” the leader of the Eumenides said, striding out and waving a pale arm in Lucas’s direction. “First and foremost, he is intelligent. Proof of this—he is the only supplicant to ever offer the lord of the dead the one prize he seeks by offering himself as Hades’ replacement. In terms of intelligence, the candidate is the best we’ve ever seen.”
    Helen bit her lip and frowned. Of course, Lucas was the smartest person Helen had ever met. Smart enough to handle being the lord of a confusing place like the Underworld.
    “He commands the shadows and can make himself invisible at will. He can walk among the living unseen, like Hades does,” said the one Helen always thought of as the whiny one. Again, Helen had no rebuttal.
    The air crackled quietly, like the sound of burning leaves, as the dead conferred.
    “He is a