Starcrossed

though he hadn’t seen the Furies when he first encountered her, he knew Helen wasn’t his cousin.
    There were rumors that a few Scions in the past had found a way around the Furies, and Creon believed Helen was one of them. His mother said it was impossible—that all the other Houses had been destroyed—but Creon had more to go on than a gut feeling. The traitors were guarding her like she was the last enemy Scion, and she was so untrained, so ignorant of who and what she was, it seemed obvious to Creon that she had been purposely hidden away from all the Houses, even her own. But above any of these other reasons, it was Creon’s body that told him she was not related to him. He had met dozens of his female cousins, all beautiful as the daughters of Apollo should be, but not one of them kept him up at night the way Helen did. He knew she was from another House.
    He was obligated by family duty to watch and wait for a few more days in order to remain true to the promise he had made his mother, but very soon he would prove himself. He was up to this challenge, and although there was an alternative for unification of the Houses other than combat, Creon forced himself not to think about it, no matter how tempting it was. This was his one chance at the glory he deserved, the last chance at this type of glory for any Scion. There was another Triumph waiting to be captured, and in his heart he knew that this Triumph would be the one to open the gates of Atlantis.
    Creon was destined to be the Scion to make his family immortal, and for that his father would honor him above all others.

Chapter Twelve
    H elen heard something up on the roof. She ran up the stairs to the widow’s walk and threw the door open as fast as she could, but the widow’s walk was empty. She sighed, relieved. She didn’t want any of the Delos kids sleeping on her roof anymore. She especially didn’t want Lucas listening to her while she had nightmares, and she had just woken up from another horrible one. She looked around at the empty widow’s walk, feeling desolate and lonely, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of a dream or because of her waking life.
    She went back down to her bedroom and forced herself to notice the writing on the mirror. Then she wrote I SAW IT AGAIN in Claire’s green eyeliner and made herself stare at the words. That was two nights in a row she’d seen the river she couldn’t remember. She was racking her brain trying to picture it, but her mind’s eye kept looking away. Suddenly, she spotted her own reflection in the mirror and gasped.
    Her cheeks were sunken in, her nightshirt was pulled out of shape, and her arms and legs were covered in icky black muck. River muck.
    She had seen a river with black banks and gray water. She could remember thirst and not being able to drink. But why was it such a struggle to remember anything else that had happened? She focused her thoughts to try and bring the memory back.
    Her thirst was tormenting her so she had gone down to the water. She leaned over the foul banks of black mud and saw pale, crippled fish bumping around clumsily, as if they had forgotten how to swim. She backed away from the river, refusing to drink that water even if she died of thirst with the sound of its current rushing in her ears. . . .
    Helen ran to the bathroom and threw herself into the shower, rubbing at the black mud and rinsing her mouth out with gulp after gulp of water. She felt polluted. She scrubbed until her skin turned red and her eyes were stinging from being open in the spray.
    When she got out of the shower, she dragged her sheets and nightshirt over to the washing machine. There was no blood this time, but Helen doubted she’d be able to get out that river mud. She put a half a cup of bleach into the washing machine and made sure the water was hot, hoping that she would be able to salvage something. Then she went back upstairs to clean all the dirty footprints she’d tracked through the house.
    It was early Saturday morning, and usually her father would be home during the day and working at night, but he had opted to work a double to give Kate the day off. Helen had a feeling that the two of them were avoiding each other. She had tried to talk to Kate about it the night before, after Claire left to go to the bonfire, but she just didn’t have the energy to push Kate to open up. Everything felt duller to Helen. Muffled, like her feelings were in storage, buried under mounds