Goddess (Starcrossed)

Archers bristled with arrows. Armor clanked and leather creaked. An army of Scions, small though it was, faced the first wave of Tantalus’s army—thirty-three Myrmidons that stood opposite them over a wide strip of sand, with Tantalus standing at the rear as their leader. Helen listened to Tantalus shout orders to the standing army and decided that she had to hand it him. He’d been her personal boogeyman for several months now, but he was no coward.
    As soon as Helen and Lucas touched down, Orion and Castor ran forward to meet them.
    “How did you . . . ?” Orion asked Helen as they watched Castor hug his son tightly.
    “Tell you later,” Helen replied.
    “Where’s Hector?” Lucas asked.
    “In my tent,” Orion responded, leading Helen and Lucas to it. “He actually thinks he’s going to fight.”
    “I don’t think I’m going to fight, I am going to fight,” Hector said in his grouchiest voice from inside the tent.
    “Hector, if you get yourself killed again, when I take over Hades I’ll give you a really long time-out in Tartarus,” Lucas said jokingly as they entered.
    Helen and Lucas went inside, and the first thing that Helen noticed were six sets of armor, hanging from their racks like hollow soldiers standing guard over the room.
    Bronze for Hector, white for Orion, silver for Castor, red for Jason, and black for Lucas, Helen thought. Apart from the rest, there was a set of golden armor—the size and shape indicated that it was made for a woman. That’s mine .
    Beneath the sets of armor, Jason was wrapping gauze around Hector’s chest. Jason looked pale and shaky from healing his brother.
    “Lucas!” Cassandra said, and launched herself at her brother. He caught his little sister and hugged her. His cousins swarmed him, hugging him and thumping his back, but despite their happiness at seeing him, everyone had heard what he’d said.
    “What do you mean, ‘when you take over Hades’?” Cassandra asked, releasing Lucas.
    “What happened?” Castor asked Helen accusingly, like she’d only done half her job.
    “Dad, look, there’s no way out of the vow I made. But thanks to Helen, I don’t have to take over right now. Let’s focus on the battle at hand.” Lucas squeezed his father’s shoulder, then turned to Hector. “Helen and I saw behind the enemy lines from the air. Where’s the map?” He sounded like he’d planned a battle a million times.
    Cassandra led the men to a table in the corner, and Lucas immediately began breaking down the setup of the enemy camp. Helen was about to join them when she heard a familiar voice. It was distant and weak, calling out from the no-man’s-land between the two sides.
    “Somebody help!” Claire was screaming.
    She was in pain.
    “Gig?” Helen called, and ran outside the tent, blindly heading for the edge of the line. The burning balls of pitch that the Myrmidons had launched at Helen and Lucas blotted out everything with huge clouds of black smoke.
    “Here!” Claire shouted back hoarsely, somewhere behind the smoke screen.
    “Helen, don’t!” Orion yelled, but Helen didn’t listen.
    It didn’t matter to Helen if Claire had chosen Matt over her. The sound of her best friend in pain wiped everything else away. Helen charged into no-man’s-land.
    A new wave of arrows was unleashed as soon as Helen set foot on the line—warning shots from the Myrmidons.
    “Lennie!” Claire howled, her voice jagged with pain.
    Claire was somewhere out there in the dunes, but Helen couldn’t see her. Too many arrows were falling, and fires were raging in the rose-hip bushes and in the marsh grass.
    Helen felt a giant swell of power surge up and out of her, as a desperate need to find Claire overtook her. Several things happened at once. The fires on the ground extinguished in a hiss of frost and steam. A great wind blew and whipped all the smoke back, revealing Claire and Daphne crouched on the sand. And a hundred arrows paused in midair, their bronze tips balancing on the edge of Helen’s magnetic field. Everything was still for a moment.
    Her heart in her throat, Helen saw that even though Daphne was shielding Claire from the fires with her body, they had both been shot several times with arrows.
    Claire was bleeding badly.
    Helen ran to her, her hands tingling with panic. She was belatedly aware of the fact that by running into no-man’s-land she had taken the field. Inadvertently, Helen had made it okay for the Myrmidons on the