Page 26 of We Are the Match

Helen

I wake to the house aflame with light and bustle and noise, heavy footsteps running and Erin’s hand, shaking me urgently awake.

They are both dressed, Erin in the gray trousers and blouse that most house staff wear, a poppy embroidered on one sleeve to signify her as my attendant, and Tommy in tactical.

“Get up, kid,” Tommy says roughly.

“What’s this?” I ask groggily. I am here and then not. I am in my body and then away, everything muted. “What happened? Is it Paris?”

What does it say about me that Paris has become the first name upon my lips when I wake?

“Your father received some information about Marcus,” Tommy tells me. “We’re getting you down into the bunker. Now. ”

They don’t wait for me to dress—though Erin does toss a few things for me into a bag—before they pull me to the trapdoor in my closet.

My father had this escape route built during the reconstruction after my mother died, when he first gave me the suite of rooms that once belonged to my mother.

Beneath my room, a long, narrow staircase winds down, the walls on either side still unfinished, solid rock.

It is lit only by a few hanging lights along the way, which flicker wearily as we descend.

At the bottom is—a bunker, it could be called, or a cave. It is a room hewn out of rough rock, complete with supplies and weapons and a hidden bay, big enough for not more than two boats, which rock idly in the night-dark water.

From the outside, it looks like unbroken rock—but the wall of the cliff opens inward with the push of a button. The only way to trigger it is my bracelet, an escape built just for me.

“What did Marcus do?” I ask again when we have settled in our little bunker, Tommy rummaging for more weapons from the case on the wall.

“Tommy? Tell me. Please tell me.”

I grabbed my phone, at least, the one thing I managed to remember.

I text Paris: They have me in a bunker. I don’t know what’s going on. Stay safe.

Stay safe?

What a meaningless thing to say when my father is on the rampage—it does not matter who was responsible, because once my father has decided someone will die, they will die.

The idea I had when Paris and I blew that bomb-maker’s warehouse to hell crystallizes further. My father should not be allowed to continue reigning like this, unquestionable and all-powerful and utterly bloodthirsty.

If Mama were here—if I was not trapped in my father’s house all this time—

I could be queen.

“Marcus had some materials,” Tommy tells me tersely, once he had strapped yet another handgun to his thigh. “In the car that brought him to your party.”

The text sends for what seems like ages.

And then delivered , and immediately Paris’s three dots, indicating her typing.

Congratulations to you, Princess. Got another secret admirer leaving you bombs?

Ah, at least Paris is safe enough to be ridiculing me. Strangely, it returns me to my body, the stone beneath me becoming real again. It is not ten years ago. It is now, here, as real as the smirk on Paris’s face when she typed that message to me.

Tommy snatches the phone from my hand. “Are you telling someone where you are?” he demands. “You don’t know what Marcus is doing, or what he is capable of. Kid, you cannot be serious.”

“Paris doesn’t work with him.”

“Jesus.” Tommy shakes his head.

“They’re investigating now,” Erin tells me, squeezing my hands. “They haven’t found him yet, which is why we need you down here.”

It takes the better part of the day to receive the all clear, by which time I am restless and tired but not otherwise the worse for wear.

My father refuses my request to meet with him, too busy to answer my questions about Marcus—or perhaps because he does not believe I can handle the answers.

Does he think, after all this time, that I will lash out the way I used to?

Lay explosives on his doorstep and take my revenge?

The first thing I do, of course, is call Paris.

She does not answer the way I answer her calls, at the first ring. She makes me wait, even in this.

“What’s up, Princess?”

“What did you hear about Marcus?” I ask.

Paris laughs. “Meet me at Altea’s tomorrow night,” she tells me. “And I’ll tell you what I’ve got.”

I may not know much, but I know my father has a standing meeting with the three queens on their joint interest in expanding the weapons trade.

It is always held at Altea’s, usually on her weapon range and sometimes in her office.

I only once had an invite, as a teenager accompanying my mother, but my own impulsivity on the gun range—asking a young guard if she wanted to have a shooting competition with me—put an end to that.

“How the hell did you get an invite to that?” I ask Paris.

“Charm,” she tells me, and hangs up.

The next night brings a sharp chill and news that my father has found Milos and Marcus and will be occupied longer as he ... does what he always does.

While I am no longer being kept in the bunker, I have been offered little freedom, the security in the mansion still rigid—so when it is time to leave for Altea’s, I am eager to go.

We take a boat, Tommy and Paris and I, and dock in Altea’s private cove under the watchful gaze of the armed guards above it. One of Altea’s attendants waits for us as we make our way up the stairs from the cover toward the cliff top where Altea’s house sits, a guard beside her.

At Tommy’s request, they show us upstairs to the rooftop garden.

Altea’s rooftop garden is not so lush as mine—more wind-battered, less tended, but I love the peace of it. Green vines sprawling across the whole of it, winding around the legs of the white outdoor chairs. Tommy wraps me in one of the throw blankets and leads me to the couch.

“Okay,” he says. “We should be safe here. No microphones.”

“Is this why you wanted the garden?” I ask Paris.

She nods once. “We can speak more plainly up here.”

Tommy ducks his head at me. “I’ll give you two some room to breathe.”

He will be just inside the doors, listening for threats, waiting for summons.

“Tell me, please,” I say to Paris as soon as the elevator doors close behind him. “No one will tell me anything, least of all my father. But I know he has Marcus and Milos now.”

She cocks her head at me, a smile unfurling I have never seen before—glee, almost, or joy. “Oh, does he?”

Paris drops into a chair near the elevator doors and puts her feet—still in their scuffed combat boots—up on the table.

“ Paris. ” I join her, drop into the chair next to her and glare at her.

“It worked, then.”

“What worked?” Realization settles coldly over me.

“I think it’s time we have a conversation about what we both want here, Helen,” she says. Her voice holds a dangerous chill.

No one has ever thought me anything more than a pawn. No one has ever looked at me and thought I might be something more than a pretty face.

But Paris of Troy is looking at me as if she sees me for all that I am.

It is a different type of cliff I stand on now. A different steep drop, a different danger.

A different freedom waiting for me here, too.

I take the plunge.

“My father is cruel,” I tell her. “And dangerous, and often unstable. The Family needs a new head.”

She tips her head back and looks at the sky, eyes sparking as she laughs, full-throated and bright. “And you want it to be you.”

I bristle. “And who else would it be?”

“Does it have to be anyone?” Paris is looking at me intently now.

I startle.

The end of the Families? The end of this industry that has funded half of this country’s politicians and much of those in Europe and beyond?

Who would smuggle drugs, or weapons, or steal secrets, or move behind the scenes of elections when necessary? Who would step into that kind of power vacuum, if not me?

“Oh, is ending their rule not something you even considered?” Paris gets to her feet, brow furrowed.

“I should not be surprised that you think you could be a lesser evil—that the problem is your father, and not the power itself. So that’s it, Princess?

Instead of helping you escape, I’m here to help put you on that throne? ”

I stand, too, facing Paris. Confusion stirs in my chest, replacing the excitement that had risen when we blew up the warehouse together.

“And why not?” I ask her. “You have no love for my father. No loyalty, either. You have not hidden that once.” My eyes flick down to her hand.

“I would be a ruler that ruled differently. I would not have—”

“You would have to grow a pair to be able to do that,” Paris says, dismissing me. “But very well. And what do you propose we do? Test Altea’s loyalty and see if she, too, misses Troy?”

My heart thunders against my ribs.

It is treason. The kind of thing that would get us killed. That may yet get us killed.

“Yes,” I breathe.

Find the queen, but not for my father.

Find the queen, so that we may see if, though her loyalty is no longer to my father, it may yet be to me. I am not just of this island. I am not just of Zarek.

I am Lena’s daughter, after all.

And that makes me a daughter of Troy.