Page 20 of We Are the Match

Of course Hana is suspicious. I was not a fixer until the engagement-party bomb, and it was only Thea’s word and Helen’s choice that made me one at all. But there is another story I can sell: one that begins and ends with Helen.

Hana arches one perfectly threaded eyebrow. “What do you want?”

“To hire you,” I say.

When Hana smiles, it is a deadly thing.

“Do you, then?” she asks. “Come in, Paris of the island.”

I follow her and her attendants down a long hallway to the back terrace, which overlooks the three cascading pools.

“Let us discuss, then,” Hana says gently. She gestures to the lounge chairs beside the pool and sits before I do. She is wearing some loose silk thing that opens to smooth calves and bare feet. She lounges back as if she is used to being this: magnetic, powerful, wanted.

But she is nothing like Helen, anxious, furious, damaged Helen with glass in her beautiful hair and distant, ravaged eyes.

Helen of the island, Helen of the gods.

Helen, tied up in my bed.

Helen, whom I intend to destroy.

“I look forward to our partnership,” I say. I sit down beside her before her companions have the chance to, which draws a raised eyebrow from Hana.

“You have confidence, child,” she says, glancing at my bandaged hand. “Zarek doesn’t like that, I’m assuming?”

“He and I ... have different approaches,” I tell Hana. “By the way, Helen wishes very dearly that she could be here. But she is a bit ... tied up currently.” Her eyebrow lifts higher.

“Oh,” she says. “ Oh. The princess has finally taken a lover, and decided to do so now , right before a marriage? And what is it about you that has so compelled her, when she has been locked up in her little tower these many years?”

I shrug one shoulder, the weight of Hana’s suspicion landing heavy on me.

“I am not here on her behalf,” I tell Hana. “Or on Zarek’s. I am here for me .”

This is a better story than a brand-new fixer: a story of wanting Helen. Of crossing whomever I need to in order to have her. Of course, it’s not entirely false, even if it is not true in the way that Hana might think.

Hana smiles, ever so slightly. “I wondered if you would be honest with me,” she says. “Or if you would try to play the game.”

From the queen.

And is there anyone else in the world of the Families as regal as Hana?

Helen. But Helen is back in my apartment, writhing in the ropes I left her in. My Helen.

“You don’t strike me as the type to start a war,” I tell Hana, my throat suddenly dry at the image of Helen spread on my bed. “You seem more like the type to finish one.”

Hana smiles again, full red lips pressed together. “Flattery will get you nowhere, my dear,” she says. “But come. Tell me what it is you wish to know.” She steeples her fingers, hands resting on her chest as she reclines against her lounge chair. “I am being interrogated, am I not?”

“No,” I say. “I want the kind of help you’re known for.”

Her round blue eyes narrow. “My help?” Her words drip with honey and violence, and the look she gives me is skeptical. “ Zarek wants my help? Or Helen?”

A shiver snakes down my spine.

“Helen and ... Helen and I would like your help. With a sensitive matter,” I say. “Regarding an upcoming alliance.”

“Ah,” she says. The wind whispers against us, gentle and warmer than this morning, just lifting her dark-brown hair. “Yes, of course. The marriage.”

“The marriage is an alliance, of course,” I tell her. “But we—I need to know if all parties can be trusted.”

“Are you asking me to learn something useful about Milos?” Hana asks, her voice gentle. “Something Zarek does not know?”

“Of course not.” I tilt my head, my gaze raking down her face. “I know you already have that . I’m asking about his brother Marcus.”

Something in her expression settles, and I can see it: the slight loosening of her shoulders, the way her steepled fingers relax against her chest. I have pacified her, passed the first part of her test, at least.

“What would you like?” she asks. “Do you have a preference if it is real or falsified?”

Marcus is the kind of man with blood on his hands going back years and years. Connections or not, he will be easy to find dirt on. And Hana is a master of her craft.

“I want whatever you can find,” I tell her.

“Well, you are in luck, child,” she says. “I do so like to be helpful when it comes to marriages. Come,” she says as she shrugs off her silk wrap. She is wearing nothing but some lace briefs beneath it, and she descends topless into the pool.

“Swim with me.”

It is an order, but nothing like the orders that Zarek gives.

I shrug off my jacket, and after a moment’s thought, I kick off my boots and black jeans. When I descend into the pool wearing only my tank top and briefs, her lips quirk into a smile.

Did she swim like this with Lena, when they were young, living on Troy? They were friends, once, from the sound of it. Are they still?

“Just a week ago you were no one, Paris of Troy,” she says. “Not a fixer, not a guard. Not a damn thing, no record to be found. And now Helen herself calls your name. What changed?”

I am being interrogated, too, and I am at least smart enough to know it.

“I was just a girl at a bar the other night,” I say. “She sat beside me.”

“I was there.” Hana moves deeper into the pool, to the edge where the water cascades down to another pool a few feet below. “I saw the two of you together. You must know Helen’s reputation. She gets close to no one.”

“ I get close to no one.” I smile slightly at her, let the silence hang there between us until she fills it herself.

“See that you keep it that way,” Hana says. “If you want to survive on this island.”

Oh, but I know more about survival than a queen born in a gilded castle.

I know about hungry nights, and just how cold pavement is beneath my back.

I know about loss, and I know what it is like to be the life that no one values.

I know about fighting just to survive, and about fighting for a place at the table, in a way that Hana, born to power, never will.

I think of earlier, swollen lips and fire in Helen’s eyes.

“When he took your finger,” Hana says, “did he promise to take your hand next, if you did not deliver?”

I smile at her. “Who are we talking about, Hana?”

The turquoise water ripples gently, warm against my skin. I am taller than Hana, if only slightly—the water just over waist high for me, though closer to her breasts. The wind gusts over us, and her nipples tighten, the small hairs on her arm standing up.

“The man who took your finger,” she says. “Who else?”

“It is a beautiful view,” I say. “On clear days, can you see Troy? Can you see the home he stole from you?”

Her expression darkens, and then she moves between me and the edge of the pool with the cascading water. A second later, she pushes me up against that wall, her body pressed against mine, her thigh edging between my legs. Her skin is smooth, flawless.

This kind of threat is much more enjoyable than Zarek’s.

I smile at her, all teeth.

“What are you saying?” she snarls, but the madness in Zarek’s eyes is absent in hers.

“Do you miss home?” I ask. It is a dance, a game, and I am pressed against every inch of Hana’s body. “Do you miss her ?”

It is a dance Helen wanted from me, too, because the gods are nothing if not hungry for those of us they see as playthings.

More, the thing inside me growls. More.

We are talking about Lena, even if we do not say her name. We are talking about Lena, something too dangerous to do anywhere on this island—because Zarek kills anyone who speaks of his great loss, and because presumably Lena would kill anyone who speaks of her survival.

Has she been rebuilding, all this time? Has Hana been helping her?

“Do you ?” Hana asks. “I know she funded your home. I know she would have been devastated to hear what happened to all those girls.”

I flinch.

It is the one blow I have never learned to brace for.

If Kore or any of them could see me now, in this lavish pool beside the god who owns it, what would they think of me?

“She had her favorites,” I say. “Were you one of them?”

It is true, that Lena’s Family funded our group home, a supposed act of generosity. It was full of girls who later joined her Family on Troy, before Zarek killed them off in one bloody weekend.

Hana’s eyes flick to my leather jacket, discarded on a poolside chair, and she does not answer my question. “ That looks like a Lena gift to me.”

I freeze, just for a second.

I have had the jacket, a flame-retardant leather jacket, since I was seventeen, since Lena—on one of her many charitable visits—stopped to greet me.

Me.

Shame curdles like sour milk in my belly at the memory of my excitement that Lena, Lena of all people, the god of the Trojan Family, had wanted to talk to me.

But starry-eyed adoration turns to ash when gods—Zarek’s bombs, but her match that lit this war—unmake your family.

“I was never one of Lena’s favorites,” I tell Hana. “Were you?”

Hana sighs. “We were friends, long ago,” she says, eyes distant with grief as she runs a finger over the locket resting against her throat.

Does she know that the person she speaks of with such veneration is still alive, her new empire rebuilt above the bones of my sisters? Or did Lena keep it from her all this time, no longer trusting a woman who had fled to Zarek’s side before the flames in Troy had even stopped burning?

I will not get that from Hana tonight, no.

But the only question that really matters, when it comes to Hana, is this: Will she stand in my way, or can she be used?

“So what do you want from this game, Hana of the gods? Because Zarek is on that hill just waiting for an opportunity to start a war with you.”

Hana’s eyes flash, heat and danger dancing there. “I like you,” she says. “You are strong. And you don’t take shit. But this was never a game. And if you forget that, you are going to die before you ever get to make your mark here.”

As if making my mark here would have ever been enough for me.

I tilt my head back and stare up at the stars. The night is cloudy, but the brightest stars are still visible in the night sky. “Hana,” I say gently. “May I be honest with you?”

She leans forward, close to me again, close enough to kiss me, close enough to cut my exposed throat. “Of course, darling.” Her dark hair brushes my bare shoulders, and she leans in, presses a kiss, featherlight, against my collarbone. “I was hoping you would.”

“I want Marcus to die,” I tell her. “Milos is weak—if he is my only barrier, I can have Helen whenever I want her. The only thing between me and Helen now is Milos’s guard dog.”

Hana’s eyes spark. “I see,” she says. “You want more than just a fling, then. You want her for your own, long after she is married. And is that all you want, Paris?”

“I want a world where I have enough power that this”—I extend my injured hand toward her—“never happens to me again.”

I want Zarek to die. I want Helen at my mercy. I want them all turned to dust.

The magnitude of what I will do weakens my knees.

A true smile uncurls across Hana’s face, a light in her eyes as if she has just won.

Hana trusts me now, or at least trusts what she thinks she knows about me. She believes I have told her the truth, and I have, in a way. I have told her enough.

Hana leans close, her locket brushing my skin. “Oh, Paris,” she says. “You are going to be so much fun .”

She kisses me then, tongue pushing between my lips, her hand splayed across my chest, sliding upward until her fingers are wrapped around my throat.

I kiss her back, just as slow and smooth and firm, though the only thing I can think about is that she does not taste and feel like Helen. No one can feel like Helen.

As Hana kisses me, I slide my hand up her arm, touch her throat, her jaw, until my fingers trail the back of her neck. The clasp on her locket slips easily, the small bit of metal falling into my hand.

And then I break the kiss, and climb back out of the pool, leaving her behind as I go. I stand dripping on her terrace, the wind ruffling my hair.

In the lounge chairs, Hana’s women look on carefully, their expressions guarded.

Neither of them is rushing to stop me, to peel apart my loosely closed hand, so they must not have seen me slip the locket from her.

She touched the locket as we spoke of Lena and Troy, of the gifts Lena gave us.

If there is some record of where Hana’s loyalties lie, it may not be in money trails or whispered secrets or any of the things I asked her to find on Marcus.

I hesitate, and then lift Hana’s silk wrap from the poolside and slide into it. I glance over my shoulder at her.

A small smile plays on her lips as she watches me. “Think of it as a gift.” She extends a hand toward her robe, now soft and warm against my skin.

I brush my hair over my shoulder with my good hand, my injured one still pressed against my chest. “Good night, Hana,” I tell her, as if we play on equal ground now. As if we ever did.

As if I were not here to topple them all.