Starcrossed

cuff. Pandora opened the oval face to reveal that the cuff was actually a wrist-locket, something Helen had never seen before. Inside was a picture of what Helen first thought was Hector, tickling the daylights out of a little girl with short dark hair.
    “My brother Ajax,” Pandora said wistfully. “He always had time for me, which is a big deal when you’re in a family as large as ours. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially when you’re the littlest. I used to follow him around everywhere he went, begging him to give me jobs to do. He started calling me ‘Squire’ and I loved it.”
    Helen looked at the joyful little girl squirming under the giant hand of her big brother, and then up at Pandora’s glistening eyes. “Even just looking at this picture I can tell he loved you very much.”
    “He did, and I loved him. I used to pretend he was a glorious knight and I was his only trusted sidekick, and he played along. He was so patient. He used to send me on dangerous quests to find his car keys or summon the elevator. I was seven when he died. I wasn’t supposed to be following him that night, but I was. I was there when he was murdered.”
    Helen was about to speak, to say something comforting if she could, but Pandora changed abruptly, and continued. “He was like Apollo himself,” she said with a bright, although slightly forced, smile. “Like Hector in a lot of ways . . . only sweet, and not a cranky wiseass. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephew, but damn! He can be a such a grouch.” They both broke into a much-needed laugh at Hector’s expense.
    “I wish I’d met him. Your brother, I mean,” Helen said, and was surprised to realize that she meant it. Ajax must have been truly special to inspire such enduring love in his younger sister.
    “In a lot of ways none of us have gotten over losing him,” Pandora said, shrugging as though she had run out of explanations for Helen. “But my brother Pallas is the only one who can’t look at you and accept that you’re a different person, even though he knows it’s got nothing to do with you.”
    “I get it,” Helen conceded. “It’s not fair, and I still think he’s mean, but I get why Pallas hates me.”
    “Don’t worry, eventually he’ll get over it. Deep down he knows you didn’t choose your face. The Fates did,” she said. She gave Helen a cheeky smile. “And damn, girl! But you got a nice one!”
    “So did you!” Helen insisted, and she meant the compliment she gave.
    “Whatever,” Pandora said, rolling her eyes and shaking her tinkling wrists. “I’m probably one in a hundred who gets some stupid handmaiden’s face, or a vestal virgin’s from Troy, considering my luck with men!”
    Even while she laughed, Helen couldn’t quite shake a strange doubt. Finally, she gave into it and asked, “So who from Troy do I look like?”
    “Hell, no!” Pandora said, standing up. “I promised—we all did. You need to talk to Lucas about that one, Helen. Sorry, but I’ve already given you enough to think about for one night.”
    And with a considerable amount of jangling and sparkling, Pandora announced that she needed a glass of wine and disappeared in the mix of her family. Helen grimaced after her. She knew that Pandora had really opened up and entrusted her with an emotionally dense bit of information, but Helen still felt dissatisfied. She wanted to know what role the Fates intended for her to play. She was going to ask Lucas the second she got him alone.
    She looked over at him. All night she had felt him watching her, and the weight of his eyes had been like an encouraging hand on the small of her back. She didn’t have to slouch or pretend to be weak or less of a geek than she was. She simply fit in. She realized that this new ease with herself was partly due to the fact that for the first time in her life she was around people who were just as odd as she was . . . but it was mostly because of Lucas. He never stood next to her, but she could feel they were still tied to each other by the trust they had built during their flight. His gaze had such a positive impact on her that she felt unbalanced as soon as his eyes abandoned her. She looked around to see what had caught his attention and spotted him talking privately with Pallas.
    Helen did not approve of using Scion hearing to violate another person’s privacy—she and Hector had already had an argument about just that when she accused him of