Goddess (Starcrossed)

forward until he was at Helen’s right hand and glaring at Zeus over a few feet of sand. Voices shouted out, and several challenges were made at once as the crowd of Scions all reacted to Hector’s move against the gods.
    “Wait!” Helen held up an arm to stop Hector from starting a mêlée right then and there. Lucas and Jason came to keep Hector in check.
    “I haven’t seen such fire in a hundred generations,” Zeus said, laughing. “You’re right, Apollo. He’s brave, even braver than your boy at Troy, but dumber than a block of marble.”
    “Easy,” Orion said to Hector. “Trust us.”
    Zeus leaned in close to Hector, close enough for Helen to see the lightning bolts that flashed inside his amber eyes. “If he had an ounce of sense, he would remember that no matter how skilled he is, he cannot kill me.”
    “Exactly,” Helen said in a controlled voice. “So it’s not a true challenge. The gods aren’t allowed to fight mortals in duels, which is why at Troy only demigods fought demigods. The gods can try to kill Scions with ocean waves and lightning bolts and curses. But they are not allowed to participate in one-on-one combat with us unless they’re mortal as well. Like when Ares tortured me in the portal. He wasn’t immortal there, so he could kill me. But away from a portal, the gods need to find a way to make us fight each other instead. Like they did at Troy.”
    “And like they’re doing right now,” Orion continued pointedly, so more Scions could hear and understand that the gods were just trying to kill them all off.
    “There are rules to these things. You’re already my chosen champion,” Helen said. “And you’re mortal, so Zeus has to pick a mortal champion, too.”
    “How did you learn all this?” Zeus asked Helen with narrowed eyes.
    “A little river told me,” she answered, inwardly sighing with relief that her Helen of Troy memories were correct.
    Helen saw Hector relax and smile. Lucas and Jason eased back, finally trusting that Helen and Orion knew what they were doing.
    Most of the other Scions relaxed as well. Even though the other Houses didn’t know Hector personally, they had all heard of his reputation. He had killed Creon, a Shadowmaster, with his bare hands. As far as they were concerned, that was proof enough of his skill in single combat.
    There really was no Scion who could match Hector, except maybe Helen herself. He was the perfect hero. The biggest physical threat was Daphne and she adored Hector. No matter what Daphne’s motives were, and Helen openly admitted to herself that she had no idea what those could be, Helen sensed that her mother would never kill Hector. He reminded her too much of Ajax.
    At least, that’s what Orion and Helen were banking on. Neither of them could think of a Scion who could beat Hector, so they hoped that the death toll for the day would end at two—Phaon and some other poor thing, hopefully from the Hundred Cousins or from a distant offshoot of the House of Athens.
    All of this last-second planning she and Orion had done should have put Helen at ease, but it didn’t. When she looked back at Zeus, his smile had grown wider.
    Helen noticed a disturbance around them, like the sand dunes were coming alive. A moment later, the dunes were covered in strange men, dressed in archaic armor. Helen could see that some had shiny red eyes, and others had hard, armor-like skin or pincers for hands. Myrmidons. She remembered Automedon killing Zach, and her fingertips crackled with angry lightning.
    “Do you think you can take a Myrmidon?” Helen asked in an aside to Hector, realizing that she and Orion hadn’t accounted for this.
    “I got it,” he whispered back confidently. Helen looked past Hector to Lucas, who pursed his lips and nodded, silently confirming that he thought Hector could do it, too.
    “I have chosen a champion as well, Helen,” Zeus announced. Triumph gleamed in his eyes. “Achilles to match your Hector.”
    The Myrmidons parted and let a single warrior pass through their ranks to stand across from Hector. Helen knew this warrior—his walk, his haircut, even the T-shirt he was wearing, although at that moment it was mostly covered by strange armor. He’d had that shirt for two years now, and Helen knew it was his favorite. Everything about him was familiar to Helen, except for the newly developed power she could sense in him now.
    “Matt?” Helen howled disbelievingly. “What the hells are you doing