Goddess (Starcrossed)
powers.”
“You’re right,” Claire replied. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Just make sure you can explain your actions to your conscience.”
They didn’t talk much after that. Helen and Claire woke Ariadne up and made her eat a granola bar from the vending machine and drink a bottle of water before Helen drove them all back home. She dropped Claire at her parents’ house with a few mumbled plans about meeting up first thing tomorrow, and then went on to the Delos place.
It was late when they pulled in, and Helen was so exhausted that she barely had the energy to carry the other two girls up to Ariadne’s bed before she collapsed on the couch.
Helen sat opposite herself inside a covered, horse-drawn carriage. It was dark in the enclosed compartment. The only light came from between the slats of a tiny, shuttered window. Helen wondered how she would get in and out of the carriage, because she couldn’t see a door. She guessed that the window might be large enough to let her squeeze through . . . if there weren’t bars over it.
The other Helen who sat across from her was not the Spartan one from before. This one was wearing a gown made out of some kind of rough, homespun material. There were blue-dyed strings woven into her long, blonde hair and she sat on a pile of tanned skins and furs. The backs of her hands were painted with more blue dye in intricate curlicues that Helen vaguely recognized as Irish. The word Celtic bubbled up in her mind and she knew that description, while maybe not completely accurate, was closer to the true one.
At the other Helen’s waist was a dagger. Her hand clutched it desperately at every sound she heard from outside the shuttered and barred window of her prison-like carriage. This other Helen looked like a savage and was being treated like a caged animal. Helen wondered if this “other her” was dangerous.
“My lady Guinevere!” shouted a familiar voice outside the window.
Lucas’s voice.
Guinevere opened the shutter over the window, and Helen immediately saw why this version of herself was so terrified. The Furies started weeping in the corner of the carriage as soon as Guinevere and the other Lucas made eye contact.
He was sitting on the huge, black horse that was trotting alongside the coach. He was wearing dark leather, a thick, black woolen cloak, and belted at his waist was a long broadsword. He looked big and fierce and beautiful.
“Do you need to relieve yourself?” he asked in a strange, lilting language that Helen understood although she’d never heard it before.
“My mother taught me to speak perfect Latin, as you well know,” Guinevere snarled back at him in a different language that Helen also understood without ever having heard it before. She assumed it was Latin. “She wasn’t a filthy Roman like you, but she was from the east.”
“I’m no Roman. Don’t call me that,” the other Lucas said with a dangerous glint in his eye. “Sir Lancelot will do just fine.”
Their baleful gazes met and held. The Furies wailed, causing both Guinevere and Lancelot to cringe as they tried to control themselves. Helen knew that if the bars in the window did not separate them they would have attacked each other.
Lancelot looked up and down the long line of warriors that accompanied them, as if reminding himself that there were witnesses who would keep him from doing anything stupid.
“Why don’t you just kill me now?” Guinevere hissed at him quietly. Her low tone told Helen that Guinevere was also aware that there were other people watching—people who would not understand her irrational hatred for Lancelot or his hatred for her.
“That pleasure I leave to Arthur, my cousin and king,” Lancelot replied stiffly, almost reluctantly, like something about that bothered him. “ After you marry him and ensure your clan’s allegiance, of course. Then I’m sure he’ll kill you with joy.”
“And you call us barbarians,” Guinevere snapped at him.
She slammed the window shut and threw herself back on the pile of furs. Helen knew—she remembered —that the furs were part of the large dowry from Guinevere’s father. He was the head of her clan, and he had sent along many gifts with his daughter in this wedding train. All of the rich goods were a peace offering to the undefeatable invaders from the east, and Guinevere was the ultimate spoil of war. The most beautiful girl on the island offered up as a gift to the big,
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