He shifted off of her immediately, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. As they both sat up and faced each other, his eyes looked so confused, so wounded, that Helen’s eyes started leaking tears, even though she had promised herself the night before that she would never cry again.
“What is it?” he asked, bewildered and in pain.
“We can’t do this,” she said, shaking her head in a rapid motion.
“What are you talking about?” He tried to get her to look at him as he reached for her hands. “Helen, we’re free. There are two other Houses left to preserve the Truce. We can be together.”
“We can’t do this,” she repeated, balling her hands into fists so he couldn’t take them.
“Why?” he asked in a strangled voice, sensing that Helen was being honest with him, but still not understanding why. “Have your feelings for me changed so much in one night? Did you stop wanting me?”
“That’s not it,” she said, agonized. “I wish I didn’t want you.”
“How can you say that?” Lucas asked, relieved to know that at least Helen still felt the same about him. “I know you’ve been through a lot today, and maybe you’re not ready right this second. That’s fine, we’ll wait as long as you want....” He tried to pull her into his arms, just to hold her, but she pushed hard against his chest and turned her face away from his.
“We’re first cousins!” she cried out hopelessly, her shoulders beginning to jump up and down with uncontrollable sobs. “Jerry wasn’t my father, Lucas. Ajax was.”
Lucas’s whole body went still with fear. In the silence that followed, all Helen could hear was the sound of the rain on the glass roof.
“That’s not possible,” he whispered, even though he could hear that she wasn’t lying. He shook his head. “No. We saw the Furies when we met. We can’t be related.”
“Yes, we can,” Helen said, wiping one cheek, then the other, then back again to the first in what seemed like an endless procession of tears that needed to be wiped away. “The children of mixed lineage can only be claimed by one House, and I was claimed by the House of Atreus. It’s been happening like this from the start.”
“From the start?” Lucas asked, recalling Cassandra’s earlier statement. “Star-Crossed Lovers are repeated in the pattern. Howmanyother Scions of mixed lineage are out there in hiding?”
Helen sniffed and stared at him with a tiny smile. He was so sensitive, so quick to pick up on every detail she couldn’t stop herself from adoring him. There were an infinite number of ways for her to admire this one person, and because of that, there were an infinite number of ways for her to fall in love with him over and over again. She realized that she wasn’t going to have to give up Lucas just this once and be done with it; she was going to have to give up all the different ways she could have learned to love him every day from that day forward. The weight of all of those future heartbreaks pressed down on Helen until she had to drop her head, unable to look at him as she answered his question.
“Daphne calls us Rogues, and yes, there are quite a few of us,” she said quietly. “No one knows how many, but there are at least twenty that my mother can locate.”
“So if these kids can only belong to one House, but their parents are from enemy Houses, one side of the family...”
“Is sent into a Fury rage and hunts that baby down. Daphne said the urge to kill the newborn is almost irresistible, the same as it it for a newly made Outcast. One of the parents has to fight their family for their child, and it usually means that parent either dies at the hands of their own parents or siblings or they end up having to kill them.”
“That’s disgusting,” Lucas breathed. Helen nodded.
“It is disgusting. Babies shouldn’t be part of the blood feud. It’s just wrong. Daphne swore to get rid of the Furies so that Rogue babies like me can be with both of their families, and so that no one ever has to go through the horror of choosing between protecting their child and fighting their own brother or sister—or parent. In fact, she’s made it her mission in life to free the Scions from the curse of the Furies forever.”
Lucas nodded, finally understanding. He 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.
