Page 35 of We Are the Match

Paris

I do not know if I will see them again, but we leave it there, Thea and I, between the blood-soaked fountain at Altea’s fallen mansion and the tangle of our limbs in her bed.

And I go to Helen.

After all this time? Thea asked me, and I had trembled and thought of Helen, lips parting, eyes sparking with joy.

My bag is packed—the fail-safe Thea talked about, the poppy Helen gave me at the party, a passport with a new name and enough cash to get me to freedom—when the knock comes. And with it, relief.

Because I was never going to leave. Not with the knowledge that the queens have been using Troy. Not with the knowledge that Altea knew her household would die for her and she let them. And not before I could tell Helen about Lena. Lena, who she still adores, despite it all.

Tommy is at the door, looking older than he had just days ago. “Helen,” he says, and that is all. Helen summons me.

“Did you?” I ask.

He does not have to ask what I mean. Perhaps the carnage is all he can see, too. His eyes are dark and lifeless, and he stares somewhere past my shoulder, as if, like me, he is seeing gates blown in and boys with holes in their chests and bloodstained fountains. “Yes,” he answers.

I hesitate, and then I step forward and wrap my arms around him.

He pauses, body stiffening, and then returns the hug, cupping my head against his broad chest for just a moment. “I don’t deserve that, kid,” he says.

I draw back. “None of us do.” I shrug on my jacket, shooting another glance at him. “What does Zarek want?”

Has he decided it is time to be rid of me?

Tommy’s eyes find mine, finally. “ Helen, ” he repeats. “Helen wants you.”

Helen wants you.

The words ache somewhere nameless beneath my ribs.

Would she let me die for her, the way those who loved Altea died in the carnage? Would she hold her head high afterward, because I am just another commoner and she was born to a throne? She accused me of being just like her father—but she is the one who wants to rule.

She is the one longing for a throne.

After all this time?

“What does she want?” I ask him. My heart is pounding—not from the danger closing in around me, but from the weight of what I have kept from Helen. The weight of what I am about to reveal, come what may.

Wherever Helen goes, whatever she chooses—I owe her this, at least.

Tommy has already turned to go. “Come on, kid,” he says. “Let’s go.”

I follow him, my footfalls heavy and slow and inevitable.

We are just two playthings of the gods, Tommy and I.

And we do as we are told.

He stops me before we reach Helen. His hand is on my shoulder, gentler than it has any right to be.

“I need to know, kid,” he says.

My own gaze snaps to his. “You need to know what?”

“Is it real?” he asks. “For you. Is it real for you?”

I am frozen beneath his hand. “Tommy.”

“I know what you are after,” he says wearily.

“Ten years ago, even, I would have believed it my duty to stop you. I would have believed my loyalty to this family. But there have been so many monstrous things. So very many. And now my loyalty is to the little girl I raised, and her only. So I need you to tell me, Paris.”

After all this time?

I flick my lighter open.

The flame trembles there.

“Yes,” I tell him. The word is raw in my throat.

Tommy leans back, satisfied. “Good,” he says. “Because I think it is for her.”

The silence hangs between us, and then he looks at my injured hand, still bandaged, and he shakes his head. “I am sorry,” he says. “That I did not protect you that day. That I lacked the courage to do what I should have done years ago.”

“Forgive yourself,” I tell him, even as the hand still aches. “I do.”

“Will you get her out of here?” he asks. “After all this?”

There’s an option where you run, Thea told me.

If Kore was here, would she be saying the same? Would she be telling me to live ?

Tommy looks far away, as if imagining the world that exists beyond these warring islands and their restless gods. As if imagining that beyond this boundless sea we could reach a place where Helen could be free, where I could be with her, where we could leave the violence behind.

He rests his hand on my shoulder a moment longer. The gesture is gentle. Familial.

Strange for a woman who has no one left.

“You take care of her, kid,” he says as he pushes the door open. “Promise?”

I nod. “Promise.”

There was a day a lifetime ago, where I was brought to the rooftop garden where the sun shone down and the wind ravaged our skin and hair, and Helen climbed across a stone table to reach me. To kiss me.

But today is not that day.

Today is gray and still and lifeless, cold in a way that reaches down to the bone. Today there is only carnage between us.

Helen sits upon the couch like a throne.

“Paris.”

The sound of my name in her mouth wraps around me, pulls me forward. Undoes me.

After all this time?

“Helen.”

I stagger on my feet, the ground itself unsteady after the monstrous things I have done.

Glass blown in.

Helen beneath me, soft skin and warm breath.

A grenade for a god.

“Paris, I told Tommy not to tell anyone I was bringing you here,” she says. “My father is gone today, meeting with Milos and Marcus, but we only have a little bit of time. He’s decided—well, he’s decided I care too much.”

I stare at her now, unsullied and perfect, her dark hair swept up into a loose knot, curls spilling over the curve of her neck. Soft scarlet gown, sweeping down to her feet. A flash of bare ankle beneath. The words barely register. “He’s decided it is time for me to die.”

Ironic, then, that I have decided this about him. A whisper of wind touches her, ruffling her hair, the folds of her skirt.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

She stands, scarlet spilling down over her curves.

I want to bunch my fists into the soft folds of her dress. I want us to be simple and unhurt, just us. Just Helen, just Paris.

But we were never just Helen, just Paris. God and commoner, and nothing to bridge the gap, no matter how desperate I am now.

“Walk with me,” she says.

Helen reaches out her hand and takes my arm, and I am trembling at the weight of this.

Helen and I.

Helen and I.

“Did you see—the men I killed?” she asks me finally. “At Altea’s?”

“I did.”

Next to the girls in the fountain.

And for a moment, Helen had been just another girl from Troy, taking her revenge.

Girls from Troy.

It comes back to this, always.

We pace together at the edge of the rooftop, Helen and I.

“I could not save them,” she says.

“I know.”

“I wanted to save them,” she continues. “For you . Because I am not going to rule like my father or the queens. And I want—I want to save the rest, if we can.”

I pause, wavering at the edge, staring down at the water that crashes against the cliffs below. “How?”

“I mean what I said,” she says firmly. “My father cannot be allowed to do this. Not again.”

No one, no one who came for Zarek has ever had a chance. But what chance does he have when the weapon in my hands is his own daughter—and the power she is now choosing for herself?

She is just a set piece to me, I told Altea. I had tried to mean it, even. She is a weapon I can use to unmake Zarek himself. Thea said I would be used and then killed. Thea said I had no chance against them. But with Helen beside me—

“What are you saying, Helen?” I step away from her, still my shaking hands when I clench them into fists. “What are you willing to do, and are you willing to do it with me?”

“I know you love them,” Helen says. “Your girls. I know you love them and grieve them and I know you’re not as hard as you let on, and I know that’s why .”

“Helen—”

“Let me finish,” she continues firmly. “I was wrong about you. And I think you were wrong about me, too. I think I can be better. I think I can rule better than they have, and I think we can do it—I think we can do it together.”

She sounds desperate, hungry, as if this is more than ambition. As if she needs this to live .

But I do not, do not want to rule.

“Helen,” I attempt. “Helen, I don’t think you can . In these Families, this world ... people always, always get hurt, even when you don’t mean for them to.”

Helen snatches my hand. “I need you to do this,” she says. “Paris, don’t you understand? If we don’t do this, he’ll kill you.”

I have survived him once, and Helen should not underestimate me now. “We have more options than just overthrowing him, Helen,” I tell her sharply. “There is no way to rule that saves the girls of Troy.”

“You’re wrong about that,” she argues. “About me. My mother was a better ruler than my father—her people loved her, were loyal to her.”

I was her people.

And she let us all die.

“Aren’t you listening to me? My father wants to kill you,” Helen continues. “Tommy is loyal to me. He could lead some guards, if I asked him, hold my father hostage in my study, and meet with the queens. We could make a bid for power, you and I—”

“Helen.” Her name comes out in a rasp. “I—I have something I need to tell you, too.”

Lena is alive, and she may have bombed your party.

Lena is alive, and she may be moving on the throne you want for your own.

Lena is alive, and will you still want me at your side when you learn what I once planned to do to you and your family?

But before I can find the words for any of it, the elevator doors open behind us.

I turn my head, and—it is too late.

Too late for us all.

Because there at the door is Zarek, flanked by all his guards, Milos and Marcus at his side, their guns trained on us.