Starcrossed

House of Thebes,” Daphne announced as she crossed her arms in an X over her breast and tilted her upper body forward, giving the suggestion of a bow.
    Castor and Pallas looked at each other. Whatever hatred they carried toward Daphne needed to be put down now, and they both knew it. Pallas swallowed hard and finally nodded.
    “You are welcome in this House and you have our hospitality,” Castor offered formally as he bowed, stepped aside, and let Daphne over the threshold as his sacred guest.
    The official meeting between the Houses took place in the library, with everyone arranged around Cassandra’s chair. Helen took her place next to her mother on the couch, and tried not to look at Lucas even though he was sitting directly opposite her.
    “First of all, I would like to make amends for the violation of your safety while you were a guest in my House,” Castor began humbly, but Daphne cut him off before he finished his thought.
    “Pandora was distraught. She and Ajax had a special bond, and because of that I could never hold a grudge against her for trying to avenge him, especially not now that she’s lost to us,” she said, waving a hand through the air as if to banish the thought. “As far as I’m concerned the laws of hospitality were not violated.”
    As she said those last words, Helen noticed Lucas’s eyes snap over to Daphne, and she knew that he had sensed a lie, but decided to overlook it for the greater good.
    “I called this meeting to address two very important matters that concern both our Houses,” Daphne continued in a smooth voice. “The first is Hector and his future, and the second is my daughter and her part in the prophecy.” Helen’s head spun around to face her mother.
    “My what?” she asked, completely at a loss.
    Helen wasn’t the only one in the room who didn’t understand. Castor and Pallas looked around, confused, and even Cassandra shrugged as if to admit she had no idea what Daphne meant.
    Jason stood up and took a stiff step forward.
    “Helen is the Descender that the Oracle mentioned in their prophecy—the prophecy that says that the Descender will free the Houses from the cycle of revenge,” he said from his place behind his father’s seat. “I only realized it this afternoon, when Helen described the dry lands so perfectly that I knew she’d seen them. That puzzled me at first because I know she isn’t a Healer. Then she told me that she would come down and drag both Claire and me out if I wasn’t strong enough to make the journey on my own. From her confidence, I knew she meant what she said, and I also suspected that she had physically been there more than once.”
    “The dust on your feet!” Ariadne exclaimed as she recalled Helen’s dirty feet and the mystery of the unrung jingle bells.
    “What about it?” Helen asked, looking around at everyone’s immobile faces.
    “The Descender doesn’t just dream about the Underworld, the Descender literally goes down into it in his or her body,” Ariadne answered with a shocked face. “You physically went into hell every night?”
    “Your nightmares,” Lucas said, looking at Helen as he began to understand.
    “You were with me in one of them,” Helen said back to him in a confused voice. “The night we fell, before we woke up on the beach, I went down to get you, remember? You were lost and blind and I made you to stand up and walk. I made you follow me out. . . .”
    Here, Helen had to stop. Forcing Lucas to walk through the Underworld had been like doing surgery on an animal without painkillers. He didn’t understand that what she was doing was for his own good, he only knew that she was hurting him.
    “That was real?” Lucas whispered.
    Helen nodded and reached out to take his hand, needing to touch him to reassure herself that he wasn’t afraid of her now, but Daphne stopped her hand in midair and pulled it back, shaking her head in disapproval.
    “You knew,” Lucas said, turning to Daphne.
    “Like Jason, I discovered Helen’s talent this afternoon,” Daphne replied. “That’s one of the reasons I asked for this meeting.”
    “And what are the rest of your reasons?” Cassandra asked coldly as flashes of the Oracle aura began to brighten the outline of her face. Daphne bowed her head reverently to the multiple presences that had begun to grace Cassandra.
    “Like Aeneas, my daughter will need Sibyl’s help in the Underworld,” Daphne said in a formal tone. “I ask that the