Page 22 of We Are the Match

Paris

Helen stares at her mother’s symbol with awe. “Do you know what this is?”

Oh, better than Helen does. I grew up with the symbol emblazoned on the wall at the head of the table in our home. We were never allowed to forget who owned us.

“Lena’s,” I answer Helen, throat dry.

How could any of us have grown up anything but loyal to Troy, when it was drilled into us from our first moment there? Maybe that was why Zarek melted our doors shut with his bombs.

The memory of Lena in my home , where my sisters died is not enough, this time, to quench the guilt that stirs when Helen looks at me, bereft.

“Mama’s,” she confirms.

“Was Hana in love with Lena?” I ask, looking away from Helen’s grief and back to the locket, turning it over in my hand. “Did your mother have an affair?”

To my shock—and horror—tears spark in Helen’s eyes.

“If they did, I never knew of it,” she says. “I know they were friends, long ago. But Hana has always been so distant with me. I always thought ... I thought she could hardly bear to look at me, but maybe that was because I reminded her of who she lost.”

Lena is only lost because she chose to be lost, something Helen will learn eventually. Still, the tears on her face make my chest squeeze painfully.

I reach out, brush them roughly away with the pad of my thumb. “There now,” I say roughly, because if I do not, and the words come out soft—I do not know what I will do. “Come on, Princess. We’ll be all right.”

She nods, catching her breath. “I’ll keep this,” she says.

Not a question. A statement of fact, whether I like it or not.

“Oh, were you trying out a bit of bossiness?” I ask her, grinning at her as if she could not have me killed with a flick of her hand.

To my endless delight, she blushes again as she places the locket gently in the pocket of her dress.

“We should let Tommy know we’re done,” I tell her. “And then—you’ll take me to Frona’s on Saturday night.”

Frona’s is not a house, not like Hana’s.

Frona once lived on Troy but now lives full-time on her floating pleasure city, a massive gathering of yachts with a small, repurposed cruise ship at the center and bridges connecting all of them; they are usually docked far enough from the islands to be in international waters, rendering any activities that take place there harder for governments to regulate.

“Does Frona know this?” Helen cocks her head. “I can get us an invite, of course. But people will talk about the two of us visiting there . Maybe even to Milos. And nothing says an affair like visiting Frona’s pleasure city.”

Frona trades in sex and secrets; world leaders and celebrities vacation on her floating city, experiencing the beauty and discretion that Frona provides. And in return, Frona takes a secret from each of them.

“Call her.” I wave a hand at Helen, who bristles.

“Do you give me orders now?” she asks.

“Yes, Princess, that has always been the arrangement.”

“And do we have a lead to track down?” she asks. “Do we have a reason for this?”

I lean across the space between us, set one hand on her thigh. Squeeze tightly.

“The reason,” I tell her. “Is that I told you we were.”

I do have a lead, of course. A bomb-maker’s warehouse on an island past Frona’s floating city.

Red creeps up the fair skin of her neck until the blush has engulfed her.

“I—”

“Will have me killed, yes,” I repeat. I lean closer, my lips near her jaw as if I am about to kiss her. She stares at me, waiting, but makes no move—and if she will not make a move or even tell me what she fucking wants, then she can keep waiting for it, too.

Either way, watching Helen breathlessly stare at my lips is better than seeing the grief on her face when we talk about Lena.

I could tell her. Show her, even. Let the truth slip past my lips—but that would change everything.

She could tell Zarek, ruin the horrific surprise I have planned for him.

She could even run to her mother’s side, disrupting everything I’ve worked for.

I jump to my feet, snatching my jacket—something I will think twice about grabbing every time now, after what Hana said—and nod at her. “And to answer your question, bomb-makers used to use her space, and some of the islands adjacent, to gather materials and test them.”

Thea dabbled, back in the day.

And Cass was learning, under some unnamed benefactor, when she was still a teenager. Unnamed, but we all knew who.

Cass would return to us with ash on her hands and a wild light in her green eyes, until the day she didn’t. Until the day it all ended and the last I saw of her was her eyes, wide and staring as the ceiling collapsed in on top of her.

Helen nods, pulls her phone from her pocket. “Frona’s it is, then,” she says.

Tommy takes us Saturday night, in a large, stable catamaran that knifes through the cold water of the bay until we reach open waters, the turbulent waves comforting.

It takes two hours to reach Frona’s, though Tommy goes fast.

When we dock the boat, the floating city is alive, music spilling from cantinas, people dancing in the corridors of the small city.

There is sex and dancing and drinking, and any other day, any other lifetime, I would take the hand of the first beautiful person I saw and fall into all this pleasure.

But tonight the atmosphere feels discordant and harsh, in sharp contrast to the violence I am trying to survive and the violence I am trying to perpetrate.

Frona is waiting for us in the dark. The first vessel in her city of boats is smaller, quieter than the rest, and it is empty except for her.

The lights are not on, so we have only the dim glow from the lanterns outside, and there is no sound for a long minute besides the cry of seabirds and the slap of waves.

Frona is tall, willowy where Helen is curved, and if she were not standing beside Helen I would think of her as beautiful.

From the queen.

Was it this woman before us, pacing at the edge of the boat, her golden hair swept up to reveal smooth white shoulders? Does she fancy herself queen enough to vie for power against Zarek?

She is goddess of secrets and sex, and both are obvious in the tilt of her chin and set of her lips. She is beautiful, but never in a way that could have rivaled Helen’s.

“Helen, darling,” she says coldly, and then leans in to kiss Helen on both cheeks. “How can I help you?”

“Thank you for having us,” Helen says. “This is my ... well, you know Paris is investigating a matter for me.”

I nod to Frona, who nods in return.

“Tonight, of course, we’re not here on official business,” Helen continues. The blush that follows her words helps with the cover story: we are here for the same reason every other guest is.

Here at this oasis just for our own pleasure, paying in secrets.

“Oh?” Frona tilts her head. “You know the game, darling. You have a standing invite, of course.” She nods her deference at Helen. “But this one—” Her gaze falls on me. “Owes me a secret.”

Helen raises her hand, opens her mouth to speak.

But I step forward, lean close to Frona’s ear and whisper—

“I had Helen tied to my bed just two days ago.”

Her eyes widen, a glimmer there that was not present before.

“And?” she asks.

“And I’ll tell you the rest when I visit next,” I tell her, meeting her eyes as I shift back a little. “Perhaps I will even tell you what I am willing to do to keep her at my side.”

She smiles slightly. “Many have said the same, Paris,” she says, but she dips her head. “Enjoy your stay.”

She leaves us, and Helen turns to me.

“You’re laying it on thickly enough,” she tells me tartly. “This affair is becoming an absurd cover.”

Behind us, Tommy clears his throat.

“Tommy’s right,” I say, delighted when Tommy has to cough to cover his laugh behind me. “You wouldn’t sound that embarrassed if you thought what you were saying was true. And it wasn’t much of a cover when you were tied up in my bed.”

Helen gasps with indignation. “I—that’s not—”

“Let’s go,” I tell her.

Helen follows me, too shocked in this moment to do anything but follow my lead.

I know where we are going, but only because of my sisters. I lost Cass so long ago I cannot always remember the way her laugh sounded, but I could still recount the stories she and Milena and Eris told about working with their “benefactor.” Eris left before the bombs. Thea too, of course.

But when Cass and Milena and Eris were young, and still training with benefactors, first they were always taken to the city of boats, and then to a small raft that carried them to a nearby island.

They spoke of it as some grand, glittering adventure, and perhaps it was. Perhaps it always would have been, if Lena had cared to return for them. Cared to pull them from the wreckage instead of waiting for their bodies to burn before building her safe house.

The words emblazoned in my group home echo differently in my memory now: en morte libertas .

In death, liberty.

Our death.

Her liberty.

Tommy only protests a few times when I lead us from yacht to yacht, holding Helen’s hand in mine in front of patrons who are drinking and dancing and—in some cases—fucking, where anyone can see them.

Helen should not still be innocent, at this age, but her eyes dart away, her bearing breaking when confronted with the pleasures unfolding in front of her.

And because I have never missed an opportunity to add to her discomfort, I offer her a grin. “Would you like me to get you an audience next time?”

She gasps, trips over her own pristine little flats, clinging to my arm for support.

Tommy shakes his head at me. “Never ask a question like that in front of me again,” he says. “That’s not in my job description.”

Helen slaps my hand away, blushing furiously as we make our way over the last yacht toward a collection of small rafts and dinghies.

We take a raft, the way my sisters once did, Tommy accompanying us.

“You are sure about this?” Helen asks me.