Page 33 of We Are the Match

Paris

A car waits for me outside of my apartment, but I slip out a back entrance and make my own way to Altea’s.

Whether that car was sent by Helen or Zarek, I have no way of knowing—and this morning, I’m not sure I want to risk it.

I get her text when I am already on my way to Altea’s: destruction at Altea’s. My father’s men. And Marcus.

When I arrive at Altea’s, that is exactly what I find.

She had time, she had time , I gave her time. And she let them all die for her anyway.

I walk past fallen guards and gates blown in. I marvel at the courage, and it makes me furious, too.

That the gods let us bleed for them, let us be fodder in their endless, endless struggles for power.

That I have become a part of it, that I chose this and walked into it with my eyes wide open.

Still, I warned her so they would live . So that innocent maids and doormen would not be slaughtered.

Perhaps that has always been the difference between me and these gods: if someone had given me warning on Troy, I would have spent my last breath getting every single one of us out of there.

I walk toward the house, empty now.

The hit team is long gone—Helen’s text said Zarek sent Marcus with two dozen men. I know enough of Marcus to know he would want to be a part of something like this.

He wants what belongs to you.

I circle the house, stopping when I reach the terrace on the north side of the house. There are dead servant girls, bloodstained uniforms visible in the swirling red of the fountain. I stagger, my legs scarcely willing to hold me up in the face of such loss.

“I told you she was dangerous.”

I spin around. Thea stands at the north entrance to Altea’s ravaged house, her eyes narrow and furious and full of a wild grief that I feel like a blade between my ribs.

“She didn’t—” My voice catches strangely.

Because it wasn’t Helen who did this.

It was me.

“All because you wanted to fuck power.” Thea’s mouth twists. “You know, for all your talk about the Family not owning you, you ended up with them all the same.”

“Like you didn’t,” I snap.

“Do you think I had a choice ?” She throws the words at me across the bloodied ground between us. “Do you think any of the girls at Troy had a choice when the Families told us to come ?”

I stare at her. “You wanted—”

“I wanted nothing,” she snarls. “None of us did. It was no honor, like they told us it was to be chosen. They took the strong, they took the girls with an affinity for weapons and explosives.” She hesitates. “They took the beautiful.”

It was true.

“And now. These girls,” she says softly, extending her hand toward the fountain. “Altea and I stood side by side and those girls—they shot them, right there. We watched them die from the safety of her hidden office.” Thea’s eyes are haunted as she says it. “They were Troy girls.”

Girls who grew up with bars on the windows.

Girls who died in someone else’s war.

“They were mine ,” Thea says fiercely.

Tears are hot on my cheeks before I realize they are there. “They were ours ,” I say.

There are tears cutting lines down the sharp angles of her face, too, and she takes a step closer to me.

“And do you know what else I saw from that office window?” she continues.

“A girl on a motorcycle, trying to stop it. A woman in a black leather jacket, facing down a hit team. And I thought it was you at first, trying to save them. But it wasn’t, was it? ”

My body stills.

Helen.

And then it is too much for me to bear. Too much. Wars and gods and a woman who will change everything.

“Why did you warn Altea?” Thea asks. “And why did you warn her too late ?”

Helen on that boat, accusing me of being just like her father.

My hand around her throat, because the only thing unforgivable was that .

But she had been right, after all, and innocent people have died in a war I began.

“She could have saved them,” I say, but I am trying to convince myself of that, and it shows in the tremble of my voice. “She could have sent them away.”

But I wish I had, I wish I had stilled my trigger finger, I wish I had killed Altea and Zarek and Frona and Hana and Lena myself so that all the innocents would still be alive, but I did not.

Instead, I played games and told lies and spun stories and considered mercy too late, just like every other member of these Families.

Instead, I prepared myself for escape. Because where does my loyalty lie if not my own survival, first and last and always?

“You hate them,” Thea says, her voice cracking. “We all hate them. But we choose how complicit we are, Troy. You chose.” She jabs a finger against my chest.

I let her.

“You played the game of the Families,” Thea continues, voice barely a rasp. “And look at the mess you fucking made.”

There is nothing else to do. There is nothing left.

So I go to Thea’s, at the end of it all.

You played the game. Thea’s words echo in my head no matter how much of her bourbon I drink. No matter how roughly she and I touch each other, or how gently Perce touches us. No matter what we do to one another in Thea’s spacious king bed, the words echo and echo and echo.

Hours later, when we are all three of us spent with exhaustion, Perce pushes himself to his feet.

“I’ll make some tea,” he says, fingers trailing gently over Thea’s shoulder.

She catches his hand in hers, presses a kiss to his knuckles. “Beloved,” she says.

When the door shuts behind him, she sits up and pulls one of the blankets around her shoulders.

“Troy,” Thea says. “I have something to say to you.”

“Why were you there?” I blurt, pushing myself up, too, and I pull on my tank top, as if a layer of clothing can shield me from Thea’s sharp gaze.

Thea hesitates. “I would have saved them,” she says. “If I could. I was always trying to save them, Paris.”

“But why were you there ?” I glare across the bed at her. Are you part of them? I want to ask. And what else—who else—do you answer to?

“Because I have a husband I want kept safe,” Thea snaps. “Paris, how is this so impossible to understand? I worked in this Family to keep us both alive. I stood beside her today because when I follow their orders, my husband stays safe.”

“But why did she want you there?” I persist. “Why did she want you with her today?”

Thea shrugs one shoulder. “Why do they do anything? Maybe she wanted me with her because she wanted to know I was loyal enough to stay at her side until she could make her escape. Maybe she wanted something to hold over my head. I don’t fucking know, Troy.

All I know is that I keep their secrets to keep us alive. All of their secrets, Troy.”

I freeze. “All of them,” I repeat.

Years ago, when I first learned Lena was alive—and using our old group home as a hideout—it felt like a secret I had to carry alone. Because how could I have my revenge if Zarek found out first, and took his?

“I think you know,” Thea says. “I think you have known about Lena for a very long time.”

Even here, even in her bed, we have not always been honest with one another. We have not always spoken freely, because homes can be bugged and guards can talk. But on this bloody day at the beginning of a war, Thea gives me truth. A gift, after years of secrecy and planning.

I breathe in. Out again. And then I nod. “And you?” I ask. “Why didn’t you say?”

She shakes her head again. “Zarek would have tried to kill Perce if I left his Family,” she says. “And Lena would have tried to kill Perce if I told anyone her secret.”

“Thea,” I whisper. “I—I am sorry. That I did not trust you. That we could not be more honest with each other.”

She stares me down, the look on her face hard and unchanging. “And I told you ,” Thea says. “That you would die if you did this. And I thought you would, Paris. Long before you would cause this much wreckage.”

I open my mouth and then shut it again, shaking my head. “Thea.”

“No,” she says. “No, listen to me. You were reckless and stupid, and you wanted revenge above everything else.”

“No,” I stop her. “No. Not just that.”

The silence between us is heavy and final. Helen is in all the spaces between us, dark eyes and deadly power. Her pinkie brushing mine and changing everything.

“You cannot be serious,” Thea says. “Paris? After all this time?”

I have wanted revenge.

I have carried my rage like a banner. I have kept anyone from loving me. Kept myself from loving in return. Until—

“Helen,” Thea breathes. “Does she—do you—”

“I wanted revenge,” I tell her finally. “I always have. You know that. I wanted them all to die. I wanted them all to lose everything. And then—then I met her, and then I still wanted them to die, all of them but ... her.”

“So you kept going,” Thea says. “Because—”

“Because I didn’t care if it was the most reckless plan,” I whisper finally. “If it kept me at her side.”

“That’s not the only option you have. There’s the option where you run,” Thea tells me firmly.

She opens a drawer at her bedside table.

Inside are two passports and a small box.

“I know you have a fail-safe. I’ve been working on one for Perce and me for years.

So take Helen and run. Let her burn a thousand ships in your wake if they come for you.

But get out of here, Troy, and have a shot at living.

To do that you have to let go of that group home. ”

I stiffen. “They died,” I snap at her. “Every last one.”

“Not every last one,” Thea says. “Not yet. But they will. And you and Helen will be used and used, and the Families will keep solidifying their power, and nothing you do will change that. So run while you can.”

“But how?” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I look at her. “Thea, I—I don’t know if I can.”

But I know, now, that I should .

“Do you think you can convince her?” Thea asks, her expression shifting, the hard look in her face fading as she looks at me. “To go, and leave power behind?”

I am balancing on a knife’s edge. Revenge on one side. Life on the other. And Thea, the only real family I have left, is telling me go, go, go. Live.

“But Lena,” I say, meeting Thea’s dark eyes with mine. “She is building her empire there on our grave .”

Thea’s gaze flickers, and then she sighs deeply, as if she knows she has lost. “Not just Lena,” she says.

Again, my body is rooted in place. “You mean—”

Thea hesitates, and then nods. “Yes,” she says. “All of them. All three queens. They have been loyal to her all this time. Paris, I—”

But I am already pulling on jeans and my socks, I am already halfway gone, because if the queens are all using my home together—if they are all involved in building a war room on Kore’s grave—

Thea calls my name, and Perce, too, as he passes me, carrying tea in his gentle hands.

The knife tilts. I fall, again, toward vengeance.

The dead girls at Altea’s should have been protected—but I made choices, and they died.

And I know, even now, even with guilt clinging to me like a fine layer of ash, that I will make more choices like it before the end.

From the queen.

The girls of Troy are burning and burning and burning.

And this time it’s me who lit the match.