Starcrossed

go home and I need to . . .” Helen started to say, but Pandora shook her head.
    “I can’t let you leave this house. You know that,” she said forcefully.
    “Then maybe you can take him?” Helen asked.
    “I’m sorry, I can’t right now,” Pandora said, looking down at her unadorned hands. “Why don’t you ask Ariadne? She’s in the library.” She smiled briefly at Helen and Matt, and silently hurried off toward the fight cage. It took Helen a moment to realize what was missing. For the first time Helen could remember, Pandora wasn’t wearing any jewelry.
    Helen led Matt to the library, where Castor, Pallas, Hector, Ariadne, Cassandra, and Lucas were all talking in a tight circle around Cassandra’s chair. The conversation ended as soon as they saw Helen.
    “Matt needs a ride home,” Helen announced nervously. She tried to keep her gaze away from Lucas, but her eyes kept jumping back to him.
    “I’ll take him,” Ariadne offered, immediately coming forward and motioning for Helen and Matt to leave the room.
    “What’s going on?” Helen mouthed to Ariadne, who took her hand and led her away. When they were a few paces from the library, Ariadne answered.
    “We’re trying to figure out what Creon’s up to,” she said.
    “Why was I excluded?” Helen asked, offended.
    “Come on, Helen,” Ariadne replied with a chiding look on her face. “Lucas can’t bear to be in the same room with you right now, and no offense, but he’s a much better soldier than you are. We need him at the table and we need him focused.”
    Matt shot her a confused look, but thankfully, he didn’t ask any questions about her and Lucas. It wouldn’t matter in a few hours, anyway. Helen would be gone and she would never see him or any of them again. Later, she’d crawl into some strange bed in some strange state and then she didn’t care if she ever got out of it or not. But she couldn’t let herself think about that yet. First, she needed to make sure that the people she loved were taken care of.
    When they reached the kitchen, Ariadne grabbed her bag off the back of one of the chairs and fished her keys out, looking around like she had misplaced something. She looked out in the garage, counted the cars, and then glanced back into the house, whispering, “She’s back?” to herself. Before Helen could ask what was wrong, Ariadne said good-bye and hurried Matt out to her car.
    Helen waited a few moments for Ariadne’s little car to disappear down the drive before she crept out onto the lawn. It wasn’t dark out yet, but Helen still felt like even the shadows under the bushes were reaching out to grab at her. As soon as she was clear of the house she jumped up into the air, frantic to get into the sky, the one place she knew Creon couldn’t catch her. Calmer once she was safely airborne, Helen flew home, circling high for a few moments to watch for random neighbors before coming in steep and fast to avoid being seen. Touching down in her backyard, Helen listened for the usual sounds of her father and heard that he wasn’t alone. Kate was with him.
    They were talking softly, and here and there they would laugh or lapse into silence as one or the other gathered their thoughts to make sure the words came out right. Helen looked in the window and saw them sitting on the couch together, TV off, having what looked like an important conversation. If she concentrated she could probably make out what they were saying, but Helen didn’t want to intrude on such a private moment between two people who were obviously falling in love.
    She touched her heart-shaped necklace and wished them perfect happiness together. She wasn’t sure if the cestus worked like that, but all that mattered was that Jerry would have someone to care for him when she was gone. Helen realized that if she left now, without confronting him, he would never have to know about Daphne returning to the island, and if that wound was left unopened, then this fragile understanding between him and Kate might stand a chance.
    She stood at the window for a moment, deciding which course to take, until finally the sharp drop in temperature and the tangerine color staining the clouds told her she had run out of time. She flew up to her window, sat down at her desk, and wrote a note to her father. She told him that she loved him, that she was safe, and that she was never coming back, making the note brief so she wouldn’t have to fill it up with lies. He had