Goddess (Starcrossed)
down to Earth. She looked at him and saw that her strange behavior had startled him. He was scared of her. They all were—especially Claire. Right now, Claire was looking at Helen like she’d just run over someone’s dog. Helen knew that she needed to sit down and have a chat with Claire, but she didn’t want to take the time to explain herself just yet. She was too eager to get back to Lucas and their own personal paradise.
“I have to leave,” she said, shrugging apologetically. She turned to Orion and pointed at him. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“I’ll be right here,” Orion said.
She stood up from the table and moved away so that she didn’t freeze everyone when she opened a portal. She looked at Noel. “I’ll be back with Lucas soon. Promise.”
Then she vanished.
Somewhere between Earth and Everyland Helen opened her eyes. She had been through the process of viewing the memories she’d inherited from the River Lethe enough times to know when she was doing it again. And she was doing it again.
Except, this time, when she woke with Paris’ naked body tangled up with hers, she didn’t watch the scene like a ghostly third person in the room. She felt as if it was happening to her. And of all the memories she’d relived, this one hurt the most.
It was the night that Troy fell.
Helen joined the memory as Paris was slipping into a deep sleep shortly after they had made love for the last time. She felt his body grow heavy, his joints slacken, and watched his calloused hand curl up into a fist. She desperately wanted to stay, hold him, and watch him as he watched his dreams pass behind his eyelids. But she couldn’t. She had made arrangements with Odysseus and needed to sneak out as soon as possible to do his wretched bidding.
She’d already done all her crying for Paris. The only thing left now was to protect their daughter and make sure that something of Paris was left when it was over.
Odysseus had convinced her slowly. He’d explained that immortals could not fight mortals to the death. Hecate, the only Titan more powerful than Zeus, forbade it. But this technicality didn’t stand in the gods’ way. They were remarkably good at making it so the demigods wanted to kill each other off, anyway. Over the years she’d watched as hero after hero fell in single combat, each of them goaded on by his father-god, and she saw that Odysseus must be right.
Helen understood now that the gods were purposely perpetuating the war, and she agreed that unless one side won soon all of the demigods would be exterminated. Which, as Odysseus had pointed out, was exactly what the gods wanted, and not only for the show. Aphrodite had told Helen that the gods loved to watch and place bets on whose offspring would defeat whose. But what the gods really wanted was for the greatest threat to their power to be eliminated.
The Fates had openly decreed that the gods would fall at the hands of their children. Cassandra had made the nearly unintelligible prophecy about Houses, or bloodlines that didn’t even exist yet, and of the “children overthrowing their parents” ten years ago, at the very start of the war. They had all heard it, gods and demigods alike. But in this case, the gods had the edge. Only the gods knew that Cassandra was telling the truth. The demigods thought Cassandra was crazy.
Helen knew she wasn’t. Her sister, Aphrodite, had told her about Apollo’s curse. As the war was starting, Cassandra had refused Apollo’s amorous advances and he had cursed her to always prophesy correctly but never to be believed. Helen couldn’t think of a more torturous curse—to always know what horrors the future held, but never to be able to steer the ones you love away from destruction.
Helen had watched over the years as Cassandra screamed at her family. She’d tried to tell them that Helen would betray them all and let the city fall, but no one believed her. The more she screamed, the crazier she’d seemed. And as the gods laughed, more and more demigods died.
But Cassandra was right. Helen was going to betray her family. She was going to let the Greeks into Troy, and they were going to burn it to the ground.
She felt her husband’s head slip off her shoulder as he tumbled from her arms into Morpheus’, and she knew this was her only chance. She edged her hips out from under his, and slid unnoticed out of bed when he rolled over onto his side.
She knew he was going to die.
She nearly
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