Starcrossed

started pacing, as if he couldn’t remain in one posture for more than a millisecond with so many thoughts pushing and pulling on him at the same time.
    “What do we do? We can’t stay away from each other,” he said as he stopped pacing and stared at Helen, who was still sitting slumped on the floor.
    “I know, but I can’t be near you, either,” she said, standing up with an exhausted sigh.
    Lucas groaned and covered his face. Neither could bear to look at the other, but they reached out blindly and embraced in a tight hug. They rocked back and forth, both of them needing comfort.
    “My mother and I planned to leave today,” Helen whispered.
    “Don’t leave me,” Lucas whispered back, tightening his arms around her.
    “What are we going to do?” Helen murmured desperately, knowing he didn’t have an answer.
    They stood clinging to each other in the unused room with the intermittent rain patting the glass walls until they heard worried voices shouting their names down the empty halls.
    “I don’t think I can do this,” Helen said. She pulled away from him and wiped her hair off her feverish forehead. “I can’t explain it again.”
    “I’ll do it,” Lucas said, instinctively reaching out for her hand, then stopping himself and withdrawing his hand.
    Hector reached the door just as Lucas opened it. His face was a mask of anxiety and his chest was swelling with fast breaths. He looked back and forth between their devastated faces several times before it sank in that they were okay.
    “You two are . . . alive. That’s good,” he said with relief.
    “We should get back,” Lucas said with a blank look before he started walking stiffly down the hallway, leaving Hector with Helen.
    “Daphne told us,” Hector said directly. “I’m sorry, cousin.”
    Helen nodded a few times, not trusting herself to say anything, and started down the hallway. To her surprise, Hector caught up to her and put an arm over her shoulder as they walked. He squeezed her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head. As they neared the occupied part of the house, Helen realized just how much she was leaning on him.

Chapter Eighteen
    W aiting in the shadows outside the Hamilton house was a long shot, but Creon had no other choice. He couldn’t get within a thousand yards of the Delos compound now that he had shown his hand and put them on the defensive. He had been so close, so close , but underestimating his cousin had cost him. Lucas was stronger than he had thought. He would never make that mistake again, but it was possible that once was all it would take to change Creon from a savior to an embarrassment.
    Now that his target was being protected by his own family, he had few options but to wait and see if she was stupid enough to go out on her own. He was hoping that if she went anywhere it would be to the place she had once called home.
    It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all he had at this point. He couldn’t go back to the yacht and face his other cousins empty-handed. He had to come up with something else—a lead, an opportunity, something—before he involved any of the Hundred. No matter how this turned out, his father could never know about his failure outside the hotel. It was too humiliating to even think about.
    Tantalus had finally entrusted Creon with the truth, and for the first time in over nineteen years, Creon had been allowed to hear his father’s actual voice. He hadn’t been allowed in the same room, or seen his father’s face, because that woman had deformed it so monstrously it would be death to look upon him, but for the first time in such a long time Creon had actually spoken to his father and learned about the burden he carried.
    His father praised him for being so strong and faithful over the years. Then he told his son what had really happened in that rowboat, how his thoughts and his will had been so grievously twisted that he had had been led into a type of sin that had marked him forever—marked like Medusa. Tantalus admitted his wrongs, repented for them, and told his son that he had been trying to right them ever since. He had sworn to remove the feminine evil of the cestus from the world so that all men, Scions and normals alike, could finally control their lust. Then he had entrusted Creon with the same sacred mission.
    And Creon had failed.
    Creon felt his phone vibrate in his pocket for the fifth time. He had been ignoring it for a while and he didn’t even