Page 27 of We Are the Match

Paris

So the princess wants to rule now.

That was not entirely unexpected, though the disappointment I felt when she told me certainly was. Helen trying to dethrone Zarek will only help me in destroying him, her connections and money and power and access to weapons unmatched.

If only I can forget the light in her eyes when she told me she wanted to live, to rule, and she wanted me at her side as she did.

If only I could forget the way she looks when she grieves her mother.

Helen stares breathlessly up at me now. “What—where do we start?” she asks as the attendant dips her head and retreats, giving us space to talk in private as she waits by the elevator.

She stands again, wobbling a little before taking my hand.

“Do we try to gauge Altea’s loyalty? Because I can tell you Altea likes to interrogate people on her shooting range. ”

I tilt my head, looking at her until she explains.

“Not with us downrange,” she laughs. “That’s more my father’s vibe. She just likes to outshoot you and prove who she is.”

“So can you outshoot her?” I ask. “Because while you do that, I’ll have a look around.”

“You can’t,” Helen says. “She’ll catch you.”

I shrug. “And you’ll get us out of here. Make that name good for something, Princess.” I reach over and smack, my hand colliding with that ample ass.

I am rewarded with a little shriek. “I’ll go down first, while you ask to have your hair styled for the dinner party. The wind has taken it down, anyway, so it’s not a bad cover,” I tell her. “I’ll put Altea at ease, shoot with her for a little while. When you join us, I’ll take my leave.”

I bite back the last of what I wanted to say: that I like Helen’s hair, wild like this. That I like when she looks at me like I am an explosive she cannot wait to light.

When I tell the guard Helen will join us below when she is finished with her hair, he nods without a word—and if it is strange to him that a fixer gets a solo audience with a queen, he does not remark on it.

We walk in silence, down long, spacious hallways and empty, opulent corridors. Altea may not have Zarek’s power, but she is old money, old gods. Lena was like that in the heyday of Trojan power—her old money combined with Zarek’s growing power, and they were a new kind of god while they lasted.

Altea joins me on the north side of her home, almost at the cliff’s edge, and dismisses her guards with a nod.

“Paris.” She greets me with a smile, something hungrier than the other gods have shown me.

“Thea has always spoken so highly of you. And now look at you. A grenade, a few weeks, and you have the most powerful woman in Greece at your side.”

The memory flashes in front of me: Helen spread out on my bed, wrists bound to the headboard, mouth rounded into an O. Eagerness transforming into fury as I stepped away and left her behind.

“Is she?” I laugh at Altea’s words, the sound a cold, sharp burst. “The most powerful woman?”

She links her arm through mine.

“She’s certainly one of them,” Altea answers easily.

She is not like Hana, or Helen, women whose bodies are soft and supple even if their minds are sharp. No, Altea’s arm is lean, hard muscle, her grip tight. There is a reason she can wave away her guards without worry for her personal safety.

“I was delighted that you wanted to speak further,” Altea says. “Shall we step into my office? Or are you like me—I prefer to have my most important conversations on my shooting range.”

Perhaps this is a test, an attempt to divine if I am here as a fixer in some capacity, or perhaps just a test of what kind of woman I am. Can she see it in my eyes, that I am not here to make peace, or stop the coming war? That I am here to incite the violence they have brewed for years, if I can?

“Shooting range,” I answer.

Her grin broadens. “I thought as much.”

I follow her down a long, winding staircase.

At the base, set somewhere deep beneath the rock—close to the water, because I can hear the waves outside—is a long, open room with targets at one end and a wall of weapons at the other.

Mostly guns, of course, mostly rifles , because this is Altea, but in one corner, a javelin, a machete, and various blades.

“Ah,” Altea says. “That look Helen has when you touch her? You have that when you look at my weapons.”

She lifts a rifle with a long scope and holds it out to me. “This is a favorite of mine. The newest Barrett. You’ve heard of it?”

Heard of it, yes.

Held it, no.

It costs more than six months of my rent, but she must know that.

I take it from her, run my thumb reverently down the barrel, my rings clicking faintly where they touch it. “Thank you.”

She nods briskly and lifts another rifle—another Barrett, though I am not well versed enough in expensive long-range hunting rifles to know which mark. “Shall we?”

We shoot in silence, just the two of us, Altea in her gown and gold sandals, and me in my black jeans and combat boots. She shoots first, unerring, no trace of hesitancy.

When she replaces the paper target and nods to me, I place the rifle against my shoulder, its weight solid and comforting, step forward, and make a choice—a badly calculated, too-reckless, too-threatening choice.

Just like every choice I have made since I tackled Helen to the ground and saved her from the grenade.

I, too, am unerring, though I learned from shooting stolen shotguns and handguns that Milena smuggled into Troy when we were too young to be that close to bullets.

The first was when I was twelve: my small fingers curled around a handgun, Milena teaching Cass and I how to hold it.

I shoot high now, adjusting my angle just slightly with every shot.

Altea shoots like she knows she will not miss.

But she has never known scarcity.

I shoot like I know I must not miss.

When the magazine is empty, I set the rifle down and retrieve the target. I hand it to her wordlessly, flipped over so she can see the pattern that I shot into it.

It is an α—for her—overlaid with a T , the old symbol of the Trojan cartel she was once allied with, the remnants of which Zarek obliterated on Troy. Altea survived, adapted, allied herself with new power.

But if I am right, if she is like me—

She never stopped longing for home.

For a second, the paper trembles in her hand. Something flashes in her eyes, something dark and furious and damaged—

And then she steps away from me. Sets the paper down. Lifts her rifle.

“What do you want, Paris of Troy?”

“I want a new world,” I tell her. “And I want a piece of that world.”

Enough truth, just as I gave Hana when I said I wanted Marcus out of my way.

Altea is still facing away from me, her shoulders tense, one finger ghosting over the trigger of her rifle. “Who will you be in that world? Who will Helen be?”

“I will have her .” The words ring truer than I want them to.

I will have them all, and I will have them on their knees.

I will have my revenge on all of them, everyone from Zarek to Hana to Altea to Frona to—yes, to Helen, too, even if that last thought has begun to turn my stomach.

And when the power Zarek has collected around him is nothing but ashes, then—

Then he gets to die.

A tilt of the rifle as Altea checks the magazine. A click of the bolt sliding home. “And that is all, Paris of Troy? A piece of this, and Helen at your side?”

I need to know, too, if Altea grieves Lena and resents Zarek—or if she knows Lena is alive and is keeping that a secret. If Lena wanted to rebuild without Zarek knowing, she would need anyone loyal to her to keep that secret for her—and is Altea one of those still loyal?

“If Helen wants to take a more active role in this business,” I say finally. “We will need your help. Can we count on that?”

“If I say yes,” Altea murmurs. She slides the rifle to her shoulder. “That is disloyalty. That is something Zarek can kill me for. What could you and Helen possibly offer me to risk my life and everything I have built?”

I do not answer her, not with words.

Instead, I tap one finger on the paper target with her old Family symbol.

The room is so silent, so still, that the gentle brush of the paper against the table beneath it feels apocalyptic.

Altea has angled her body away from me, her face cast in shadow. “Call for your plaything, then, Paris of Troy,” she says finally. “Helen and I have much to discuss.”