Starcrossed

then be back in time for fifth period?”
    “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “I want you to get a few more weeks of experience before we go off island, but soon you’ll be strong enough to go everywhere with me.”
    “I want to see the statues on Easter Island! And Machu Picchu! And the Great Wall of China!” Helen exclaimed, practically hysterical with excitement.
    She started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as they walked toward the house. Lucas grabbed her hands.
    “We’ll need to wait a bit before we go overseas. You can barely stay in the air as it is and it’s harder to navigate with no point of reference, plus oceanic air currents can be a nightmare.”
    “But I’ll be with you, and you know all that stuff already!” She stopped dead and gripped his hand tightly to her chest. “I’m strong enough now, I swear! Please? I’ve always dreamed of traveling! Lucas, you have no idea! My whole life I’ve wanted off this island.”
    “I know, and we will—soon! We’ll tape a map to a dartboard and wherever we hit, we’ll go. Fiji, Finland, Florence, whatever!” he said indulgently, pulling her against him to stop her from jumping into the air and leaving without him. “We can go eat sushi in Tokyo every night until it gets boring. We can do whatever you want, Helen. When you’re a better flier.”
    “We really can, can’t we?” she asked breathlessly, noticing the fact that they had both used the word “we.” Then a less-pleasing thought occurred to her. “You’ve been doing this for a while now, haven’t you? Running off to other continents when you have a few hours to kill.”
    “Yes, I have.”
    “But always alone?”
    “We can carry people short distances when we fly if we have to, but it’s unbelievably exhausting to tamper with other people’s gravity. You’d be better off just walking there.”
    He was attempting to sound lighthearted about it, but his face was turned down. Helen looked at him sideways, trying to figure out what it must be like to know that you could go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa instead of just looking at a picture of it in a book, but you’d have to go there by yourself. It must have been so lonely for him. He’d been the only Scion who could fly for his entire life, and that meant that he’d been isolated in a lot of ways—until he met her.
    “There’s plenty of time for us to see the world, but for now, I think you’d better stay local. And since I can’t ask you to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself, I promise I won’t go off island without you,” he said.
    “Yeah, right,” Helen said, laughing and trying to pull her hand out of his, but he held on to her.
    “I’m serious,” he said, tugging on her hand and pulling her toward him until she was practically stepping on his feet. “There’s another reason I want you stay over the island, especially when I’m not with you. My family can’t protect you if they can’t find you. Don’t forget, those women are still out there. And Creon will be back for you. . . .”
    At the mention of Creon’s name, it came flooding back to her. He had tried to kill her, and he very nearly succeeded. The dizzying darkness had been bad enough, but he had forced her to use her lightning and relive another terrible memory as well.
    “Helen?” Lucas said, touching the side of her face and turning her eyes to his. “I’m sorry to bring him up, but you know I had to.”
    “I know, Lucas, it’s not that,” she began and stopped, needed a second to regroup. “Do you think my lightning is dangerous?”
    “Very,” he said seriously. “But only if you don’t learn to use it.”
    “I don’t want to use it! I want to go back to forgetting about it!”
    “Helen, you don’t need to run away from yourself anymore,” he said, scowling down at the ground. “Look, this is partly my fault. I should have told you about your lightning sooner, but I could tell you were avoiding it, maybe even repressing it, for some reason. What I really wanted was for you to discover it yourself and want to learn about it, like you did with flying.”
    “Lucas, I . . .” Helen broke off, shaking her head. “I think I killed someone with it, and even if he was trying to hurt me, it still terrifies me.”
    “You can’t be afraid of your power anymore, Helen,” Lucas said gently. “You are the strongest of us all, but all that strength is for nothing until you own