Page 3 of We Are the Match
Paris
I know the games that power plays, and I am furious with myself when Helen descends and I allow myself to be carried forward in the crowd, craning my neck like every other fool in this decadent ballroom.
Helen is tall, or perhaps just wearing heels that make it appear that way, her dark hair brushing past her shoulders in long, loose curls. Her gown, soft lavender silk, whispers against the smooth curve of her legs. She fills the dress, generous curves in all the places where I am sharp edges.
Everything about her is simple, understated, elegant, and not one person in this damn room can look away. There is a bright-red flower—a poppy, maybe?—pinned to her dress.
Her brown eyes are distant, sweeping the room as if she sees past us all toward something we cannot.
I let out my breath in a whoosh , loud in the sudden stillness, and for a second—just a second—I could swear her eyes meet mine.
She is distant again a breath later, as if she were never here.
When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she stretches out her hand, and a broad-shouldered man in a crisp suit takes it.
I suck in a breath, sharp and cold. The air tastes faintly of ash, though I know I am the only one—always—who can sense it.
Because this is him.
Zarek.
He is close enough that I can see him, can feel the heat of the flames of Troy around me, searing my skin but not destroying me. So close I could smash my glass on the bar counter and drive the shards into his chest.
They would kill me, of course. Probably before I reached him.
But the maybe —the maybe I could make it —haunts me, long game be damned.
Helen offers a small wave to Thea, who acknowledges it with a tight nod, and then the party lets out its breath.
Helen has arrived, and the music crescendos ever so slightly, a subtle change but a purposeful one. As the dancing begins again, the waitstaff floods the room with trays of brimming champagne glasses and hors d’oeuvres that probably cost more than I make in a month.
Zarek’s people begin mingling. The voices here sound refined, polished, haughty—some tinged with practiced French accents from expensive study abroad, others brushed with Swiss or Russian or Korean or wherever else gods send their children to study before they return to grow their family businesses.
Does anyone else see it? Do they notice who the music plays for?
And I am just shit from Troy, a glass of mostly empty cognac in front of me, a trail of brutality behind me, and another marked out for me on the path ahead.
I kick one combat boot against the bar, my glass clinking in response.
The bartender sighs and looks at me. “More cognac?”
“Whiskey,” a soft voice stops me. “On the rocks, please.”
An electric current jolts my body at the sound of her.
Helen.
Helen, here beside me at the bar.
She moved so quickly, so quietly, that I did not hear her approach.
And I always, always listen for threats.
“Helen.” The word escapes me before I realize I mean to say her name.
Up close, I catch the scent of her—whiskey and the softer note of vanilla.
She turns her head just slightly, her eyes slipping past me. “Yes?”
It is a trained expression, amicable but not personal. Friendly but distant. She gives me her attention while telling me I do not matter, not the way she does, not really, and I never will.
I see the game. I see the tilt of power, the force pulling me closer, and even though I recognize it, I am enthralled by her all the same. Behind her, a hulking man—probably her guard—moves closer.
He scans me from head to toe, searching for weapons, or perhaps he is the kind of guard who looks beyond that, who watches for suppressed anger in the position of my shoulders, the curl of my hands. He raises an eyebrow at me. “Who are you?” His voice is a dangerous sort of soft.
“Paris,” I tell him, with a shrug of one shoulder and a grin that is too bold for my own good.
With one finger, I twist one of the bands on my fingers, the cold steel, the raised indent of the flames engraved there, all of it a reminder.
That my own damn tenacity may have kept me from dying, but it cannot save me.
I am not the kind of woman who can be saved.
“Thea’s guest,” Helen says, her expression curious. “But how do you know her?”
Helen may be curious, but this guard is looking at me like he can see the fury I have been tending all these years.
My hand strays to my pocket, to the lighter I smuggled in. There is a comfort to it, a security in flicking the lighter open, the small flame reminding me of—so much. Of what was stolen from me, of what I will do to those who robbed me. Helen included.
“Did you hear her?” the bartender snaps when I don’t answer. He’s staring at me, incredulity in his blue eyes. “She asked you a question. Answer the lady of the house.”
Helen visibly recoils at the word lady , but her face smooths over a breath later. She leans slightly away from me, exposing her perfect white throat. The tip of my knife will sit nicely just there—above that thundering pulse point.
And for one mad moment, the truth is in my mouth. I am here to destroy you, I will tell her, watch her eyes widen, see her finally off-kilter. The flames engraved on my rings singe my fingers. I am here so that you do not forget.
“I’m an old friend,” I answer Helen finally, pulling the lighter from my pocket.
Helen arches a single eyebrow. “Oh, of course,” she says. She dismisses the bartender with a wave of her hand.
The bartender has not gotten my cognac yet, but he leaves because the princess tells him to.
I repress a curse.
“Some party.” I slam my empty glass down on the counter.
Helen arches both perfect brows now. “Tommy,” she murmurs.
The giant behind her steps a few paces away, and with a look from him, anyone in their vicinity moves back, including the guests who had pressed in toward Helen.
I flick the lighter open, flame in my hands as I watch them go.
“Why the lighter?” Helen asks me. Her voice is soft, a strange juxtaposition with me, all my sharp edges on display beside this woman with her soft dress and glowing makeup and full lips. Dangerous woman, she is, maybe more dangerous in the masking of it.
I meet her gaze as she reaches across the space between us, runs her finger down my hand and then down the lighter, her touch featherlight. I shiver, unsure whether to draw back or lean into the touch.
“A reminder,” I tell her.
“Do you usually refuse to answer questions?” she asks me. “You are not one of us, but you answer questions just as vaguely as we do.”
The question is so unexpectedly blunt that I laugh.
“Do you usually demand answers?” I return. Helen laughs, too, and then leans back, surveying me carefully. “It’s my party,” she says after a beat. “Did you know that?”
“Everyone knows that, Princess,” I tell her.
Her eyes snap to mine, finally, a bolt of electricity straight to my spine.
Her eyes are dark brown, deep as the storm. There is something uncontained there, something almost feral. Perhaps this is the one thing she cannot disguise, cannot bury despite the years she must have spent learning to rule with poise and grace.
“Tonight, at the most opportune moment,” Helen says. Her fingers stray farther down the bar, closer to mine. “When the guests are full but not quite sated, and happy but not quite ecstatic.” She pauses, her eyes boring into mine. “We will give them an engagement they could never have anticipated.”
“Yours.” I stare at her soft lavender dress, at the curves of her filling it, at the smooth line of her legs beneath it.
There will be pictures of her in this dress, looking perfect, smiling as she receives a ring that could buy whole islands or set a whole group home free from the poverty that dogged them.
“Don’t you want to know who the lucky man is?” she asks. Her head tilts, but again her eyes have left me. “Before anyone else?”
It is maddening to look at her and not be seen by her.
I saw that look in her eyes when she met my gaze earlier, a mesmerizing violence, and I crave another glimpse of it.
And that is the danger of Helen, after all, not the charm and poise and power.
But the raw, vicious look in her eyes that makes me want to look again and again and again.
“No,” I tell her, just to see if I can bring the flash of her eyes down upon me again like vengeance. “He’s not important, is he? Whatever alliance you make, you are doing it to shift more power into your own hands.”
“You speak as if I was making the choices.” Her laugh is soft, a careful, practiced thing.
I want to rip a real reaction from her throat. I want something real from her. She owes me that much, after so many of us died because of her family and the power she upholds. “The power in this room? It’s your father’s. And it’s yours.”
How can she not know this, swathed in silk and here to make someone else’s party her own? How can she not, when both her parents are tangled up in the war that destroyed my sisters? I shove my glass away from me, letting it tip over the edge of the bar top and shatter on the marble floor.
Behind me, Tommy surges forward.
He can see my violence.
They will kill me for it, too. Too soon, if I’m not careful.
But Helen waves him away. “You must be new to the game,” she tells me.
As if I have not been surviving her family’s games my whole life.
“And you are a fool if you think you have no power,” I tell her. “You are the power here. They bend to you. If you asked, this room would kneel for you.”
“You would not kneel,” Helen says. Her throat bobs, as if the breath is caught there.
My blade—her throat—I can hardly breathe. I am so, so close to her now.
I could do it here, instead of dragging her all the way to Troy. Set my knife just— there .
“Would you?” Helen’s chest heaves just slightly, the shallow rise and fall the only sign that she is as caught in this moment as I am.
“I kneel for no one,” I tell her.
Not since Troy.