Page 31 of We Are the Match

Paris

Helen will be the death of you. Thea told me that ages ago—or maybe only days ago.

Then Helen spoke to me of Troy tonight, as if she had any right.

And still, and still , I cannot let her go.

I must have paced the shoreline for almost an hour, long after Tommy took Helen home, before I call him.

“Tommy,” I say. “I need to speak to Helen.”

Tommy’s sigh is a blend of annoyance and resignation. “You two,” he mutters. “Did you not cause enough trouble together tonight?”

“We did,” I say. “But will you send a car for me anyway?”

He does, of course he does, and brings me to Helen’s rooftop garden without a word.

It is a different place at night: though I know it cannot be true, the plants look more tangled, the wind wilder, and—Helen.

Her hair curls, unbound, past her shoulders. “I am sorry,” she says, stopping still before me.

The silence is as long and dark and empty as all those nights after I survived the bombing, after Kore and Cass and Milena were gone and it was just me, sleeping on concrete beneath the stars. And because I cannot bear a silence that lasts that long, I do, finally, speak.

“I am sorry, too.” I have not said those words in years—not since before I lost my sisters. It was a part of me I cut away, because if I was sorry, I could not do what I needed to do to survive. Helen stretches out one smooth hand and takes mine.

My aching, bandaged hand.

And she is so gentle with it, so purposefully tender that tears bite at the backs of my eyes. Oh, Helen. Plaything and power. Mine.

“Helen,” I say, and then she is kissing me there in defiance of gods and families and every power that has ever bound the both of us.

It is brief, and it is wild, and the only taste I know is her lips.

And my plans for revenge be damned, there are no gods I would not defy to get another taste of Helen.

Perhaps her vengeance and mine are the same after all. Perhaps we do not have to be one another’s pawns or playthings.

Perhaps— perhaps .

My lips taste of Helen long after our kiss is past, and I am thinking about her concern for the innocents, about her dismay over the coming wars as I pace the worn floorboards in my apartment later that night.

Zarek will destroy Altea for this.

The weapon is in her house. Fired above his very head.

It will be over by morning, but I call her, all the same.

“What have you done, Troy?” Altea answers my call, her voice sharp as a blade.

“He knows what you long for,” I tell her. “What all of you long for.”

Home.

They have all built houses here, mansions close to Zarek’s.

But their islands—Altea’s homeland, Hana’s old place on Troy, Frona’s home before she lived full-time on the floating pleasure city—are far from this island, out past the bright-blue waters of the Mediterranean, far from Zarek.

And perhaps they all want their homes back.

Do they know that Lena is still alive? Do they know each other well enough to know that they all seem to share the same hatred of Zarek?

“Is this what you wanted?” Altea asks, voice soft as velvet. “Is this what you planned?”

From the queen.

Which of them was taunting him, at that party that feels like lifetimes ago? Which of them considers herself queen above all?

“No one planned anything,” I tell her. “I found an opportunity, and I took it.”

I want to be free.

“And this talk of an alliance? The message you left me on my shooting range?”

“I was honest with you,” I tell her. “I want Zarek to fall.”

Silence at the other end, for a long minute.

“Was it for Troy?” she asks softly. “For what happened all those years ago?”

For Troy. For the girls and the caved-in doors and our melted skin.

She is the first of all of them to guess the truth.

I twist the rings on my fingers.

En morte libertas .

“I call you as a courtesy tonight, Altea,” I say, though it is not to her that I offer it. “So you can get your innocents out before they bleed.”

She will; of course she will.

The alternative is unimaginable.

“And Helen?” Altea asks coldly. “What is she to you? No more games, Troy. You owe me that truth at least.”

I catch my breath.

And the memory: soft curves and full red lips and the sight of her, disheveled and joyful, crossing the wild rooftop garden toward me. My chest aches.

“Helen?” I say, and I am thinking of her lips, and her rage on the boat, and how I will lose her before all this is done. “She is nothing but a set piece to me.” And then I leave Altea to it, to plan and scheme and aim her weapons at Zarek.

I have walked their halls and played their games and survived their violence. And now?

I light the match. I light the match. I light the match.