Page 29 of We Are the Match

Paris

As soon as the doors have closed behind me, leaving Altea and Helen to the business dealings of the gods, I walk confidently down the hall with the key card I lifted from Altea, my hood up.

I make my way back downstairs, key card in hand. It will not be long before she notices it is missing, but until then—until then, I have unfettered access.

Altea’s office is just above her weapons range, and while she showed me up a staircase at the far end, there must be direct access from her office.

Which means there may be more—more hidden doors, more secrets here that could pit her firmly against Zarek, or Lena, or both.

Despite the revenge plan I have spun over many years, I do not particularly care which of them dies first.

If Altea is still loyal to Lena and the house of Troy, then they both are the reasons my sisters are dead.

If she is only loyal to whomever has the most money and power at any given time—Zarek when Troy fell—then she is an opportunist who profited from the death of my sisters.

So I will toy with each one. Make them all suspect each other. And when they are weary and weakened, when they have experienced what it is to be small and afraid—

I will burn them all to the ground.

Helen included. No matter how she may sometimes surprise me. And no matter how she looks in my bed.

I swipe the key card and shove open the door to Altea’s office, pushing aside the tangled thoughts of Helen.

Altea’s office is wide, the walls rounded, with windows opening toward the sea on one side and north toward the island and Zarek’s mansion—Helen’s mansion—on the other.

The office is strangely bare.

It does not seem like much for a woman who is attempting to expand across eastern Europe with a range of automatic weapons.

I pull open each drawer. None are locked.

I run my fingers just beneath the desk—I find the handgun first, and then a second handgun, stowed where she could access them in an emergency. And then, just past that, a small lever.

I push the lever, and the ceiling above me opens. The boards move back, and, slowly, a narrow spiral staircase extends downward.

I climb the spiral stairs. When I round the corner at the top, I find myself in a tiny round room with a desk, a laptop, and a row of rifles hanging behind the desk chair.

A shiver snakes down my spine.

Was the assault on Troy planned from a room like this? Did Zarek sit in a room like this one when the bombs melted the metal doors shut so we could not escape? Was he safely hidden in a room like this when I left behind Cass, her familiar green eyes staring, unseeing, as our world ended?

And Lena—did she know when she faked her death that the price would be so steep? Did she try to stop it, try to warn anyone? How could we mean so little to her that she let us all die?

I breathe deep and exhale. From here, I can see what Altea sees.

From here, I stand in her shoes. Through one window, she could see her home island on a clear day.

Altea’s longing is palpable in every inch of this home.

I know the vastness of that kind of emotion.

I have felt it myself. I have seen it in the way her eyes stray beyond the horizon.

I knew it when she stared at her old Family symbol and had to turn away to mask her feeling. She may have been only a satellite of Troy’s in the heyday of its power, but Troy was always better than Zarek at one thing: building loyalty.

And it seems Altea’s has never left her, something I knew when her eyes lit as I offered her a chance at going home.

The other window faces north toward Zarek’s mansion, visible in all its impenetrable marble glory.

In front of the north-facing window is a large object hidden beneath a blanket. My pulse is racing as I draw the blanket back. It is thunder beneath my rib cage as I see, for the first time, a weapon made to kill a god.

It is a gun, a big one, something long range. No, not a gun.

A rocket launcher, and Zarek’s mansion sits squarely in its scope. More than that: the scope rests directly on the level of the home and the side of the mansion where I know Zarek’s office to be.

Has she pored over copies of the floor plan as I have, deep into the night, hoping and scheming for something impossible?

Altea, queen of weapons, queen of war, has her sights on Zarek.

Helen is a few floors below me, and I am steps away from her, imagining blowing her home off the face of this island.

Instead, I record a video on my phone—the weapons, the secret room, the sights trained on the mansion. I send it to Helen, first.

She responds immediately. Dear god.

Just me , I text back. No gods here.

We’re headed to her office. Where are you?

Shit.

The sound of voices stops me, seconds too late to make my escape.

She must have entertained Zarek in the office below many times, the ceiling closed, the spiral staircase retracted. Did he stand beneath this room, never dreaming she had her weapons trained on him, just waiting to fire?

Altea’s voice is first, and then a man’s voice, his a lower rumble. I don’t hear Helen, not yet, but she will not be far behind.

I yank the lever, and the stairs rise slowly, slowly.

They click shut, conceal me away, just as the office door below opens.

I crouch at the floor, at a small gap in the floorboards, and peer down.

They enter together—Altea arm in arm with Zarek, who must have finished whatever godawful interrogation he was doing with Marcus. Tommy follows with Helen on his arm and takes his place at the door as they all sit down.

And then I am trapped, all the gods below, and death waiting for me if I am found.

Could Helen save me from this? Would she?

My chest aches strangely at the thought.

“Hana is on her way,” Zarek announces below me without preamble.

He does not need to dally on greetings and pleasantries.

As if on cue, Hana enters the small office, flanked by her attendants.

A shiver snakes down my spine. All these brutal women missing their home and hating the man who took it from them.

And me, shit from Troy, hiding in the wings, waiting to topple them all.

“Thank you all for coming,” Altea says, inclining her head to Zarek. “Frona sends her apologies. My attendants will have refreshments for all of you on the terrace afterward. I can send Saanva for drinks now if anyone would like?”

“It is our pleasure,” Zarek says. There is a smile on his face but nothing in his eyes. Nothing at all.

I will take your whole fucking hand.

I clench my injured hand so tightly that pain unfurls inside me, a grunt escaping before I can stop it.

Altea stiffens, but otherwise she does not react. “Will Milos be joining us tonight?” she asks smoothly.

Of course she pretends not to know: no one is supposed to know, but of course everyone does.

Helen, however, shifts in her seat slightly.

Zarek places his hand on her back, fingers splayed open possessively.

Helen is not mine, despite the little game we are playing for the benefit of the Families. Still, the sight of anyone touching Helen as if he owns her makes the knot in my chest expand so wide I can hardly breathe.

Perhaps I would have waited them out otherwise. Perhaps I would have made the rational, safer choice. But the sight of his hand on Helen’s back, the way she shrinks into her own body while still leaning into his touch—

That pushes me into action.

I have the small bag of solidox from the bomb-maker’s warehouse.

There is sugar beside the teapot on Altea’s desk.

My lighter is in my pocket.

So I crawl to the edge of the room, wait until the conversation below grows in volume, and then pry the vent off with a pop.

I shake the solidox and sugar together in the bag, and then crawl back over and peer between the slats of the floor.

I can see it all, the push-pull of power between them, the way they all seem to rotate on an axis around Zarek, as if they are planets in orbit and he is the goddamn sun.

En morte libertas .

In death, liberty.

The only way to escape the Families.

It was a saying the girls of Troy had, a foolish, morbid, furious thing we said to one another.

Cass had screamed it into the waves. Milena had it tattooed on her knuckles.

Even Eris used to say it to us before she, like Thea, left our home for whatever work awaited her. And Kore whispered it like a prayer.

I had said it to Helen, let it slip in a moment of weakness.

But once, surrounded by the girls I called my sisters, Kore had said en morte libertas and I had said:

In our death? I had asked her. Or in theirs?

Yes, Kore had said, and the girls had laughed, but I had not forgotten.

Not in my death.

Not in mine.

En morte libertas .

They are fascinating, opulent, untouchable.

I am a nobody, a forgotten girl, hidden in the ceiling.

I twist one of my rings, push my thumb hard against the flame engraved there. One for the girls I lost. One for the brutal will to survive that kept me here when I had not earned it. One for the Families—not gods, no matter what they think—whom I will destroy.

And then I drop the solidox mixture into the vent, wait for it to hit the bottom with a small thump, just next to the wall where Zarek is seated. Some of the mixture catches on an exposed wire on the way down.

Helen is below, smooth and unruffled and far from me even though we are separated by only a thin layer of floorboards.

And suddenly it is not enough. Not enough to blow apart a room. Not enough to cave a wall in, ruin a party, scare Zarek a little.

I sit down behind Altea’s desk.

I lift her phone, the encrypted line she uses, and send a message to anyone in her contacts affiliated with Zarek’s house.

Clear the house. Clear Zarek’s wing.

I wait, watch lights flicker and turn off in Zarek’s mansion. Below, his phone begins to ring, loud and shrill.

The voices below rise, too, fury and unease, but I do not hear them.

I do not hear anything but the sound of my sisters laughing as our boat cuts the waves, Cass holding tight to Milena as Kore drives. We are limitless. We are free. We are alive .

En morte libertas .

So I remove the safety mechanism. I pull the trigger.

I light the fucking match.

And Zarek’s house begins to crumble.