Goddess by Josephine Angelini Page A

kissed him in his bed that first night after they fell.
    Her brain filled with some other Helen’s memories of suffering because of their union. They were awful, but not even those borrowed memories of destruction and fire could bring Helen to break the contact between her leg and his.
    More memories flashed inside her head, like a movie reel played on fast-forward. Helen and Lucas had been married for decades. They had only met two months ago. They were sharing their first kiss. He made her laugh. He made her cry. They talked tenderly. They argued bitterly. Over and over the images rolled behind Helen’s eyes like giant waves. When they stopped, Helen could see everything clearly—like a beach wiped clean after a storm.
    She and Lucas were woven from the same cloth, cut apart, and then stitched back together from one cycle to another. The circumstances changed, but they were always intertwined, no matter what.
    The difference now was that in this life they were cousins. That had never been part of the deal before, and it didn’t feel right to Helen. Lucas, or Paris, or Lancelot, or any one of the hundreds of names she’d called him over the centuries had never been her cousin before. They’d always shared a doomed, starcrossed love, but they had never been related. What had happened this time to throw everything so far out of whack?
    I really don’t care if he’s my cousin anymore.
    As soon as Helen thought this, she remembered Aphrodite’s curse. If Helen didn’t have a daughter, love itself would be taken from the world. And Ariadne had once told Helen that close relatives like cousins almost always had insane children. Since Helen was quite sure that Aphrodite wouldn’t forget her 3,300-year-old curse, and since Helen could never bear the thought of damning an innocent child to insanity, there were no options for her and Lucas. She jerked her leg away and tilted her knees to her other side, toward Orion. Sensing her uneasiness, Orion looked over at Helen with concerned eyes.
    Setting aside her bias for Lucas, Helen had to admit that Orion was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. She smiledat him, and he nudged her elbow playfully with his before they both returned to devouring their food.
    Sometime later, Helen took her attention off her plate long enough to notice that Jason and Claire had joined them at the table. Claire had a newspaper with her.
    “She found something,” Jason said seriously.
    “It’s not good,” Claire warned. She opened up the paper and showed them an article. “Three volcanoes erupted last night in Europe.”
    “That doesn’t sound normal,” Kate said.
    “It’s not,” Jason replied. “Especially since one of the volcanoes had been extinct for thousands of years.”
    “Hephaestus?” Andy asked.
    “We think so,” Claire said, looking at Jason.
    “But why would he make volcanoes erupt? Just because he can?” Andy pressed.
    “No. So he can forge weapons for Olympus,” Lucas replied. Several people started talking at once. In the commotion, Helen saw the opportunity to talk privately with Orion. She swung her legs around and straddled the bench, gesturing with her chin for him to follow her out into the hallway.
    As she passed, she saw Lucas glance up at her. He looked at her like she was the big, blue sky, and he was watching it fall.
    Something bright and pretty inside of him seemed to burn up and turn to soot. Ashy-colored hurt smeared around Lucas like a fog, darkening the air and stinging Helen’s eyes.
    Helen clenched her jaw and forced herself to keep going, heading blindly for the front door. She felt Orion hook his fingers around her arm. They were by the coats hanging in the front hall when he finally nudged her around to face him.
    “What’s going on with you?” he whispered. “I could have sworn you just saw . . .”
    “Parts of Lucas’s insides burn up and come out of his skin ? Or are you talking about Hector literally glowing when he fell madly