Page 36 of We Are the Match

Helen

They are not supposed to be here, not yet—not until this afternoon. We were supposed to have time to plan , Paris and I, to make something out of this horror. To change things, just this once.

Milos is wearing his usual pressed shirt, but without the suit coat. He is deathly pale, the weapon in his hand trembling violently.

I can feel myself slipping away—away from the person I only ever am with Paris or Tommy. The mask slides back into place.

“Father,” I say, willing my voice not to tremble. “Milos, darling? What is the meaning of all this?”

“Helen, move,” my father says, waving his gun at me. “Paris. Tommy. Kneel.”

Tommy’s face is unreadable, but Paris’s expression is all rage.

Tommy moves past me, setting a hand warmly on my shoulder as he goes.

“Tommy,” I say. “Tommy, Tommy, no . This isn’t—Father, you can’t—”

“It’ll be okay, kid,” Tommy says. “It’s all right. It is.”

The smile he gives me is warm, after everything, and then he kneels on the windswept rooftop, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. Welcoming the inevitable.

Paris stands still, stance wide, scowl on her face. “Come and make me, then,” she says.

“Kid,” Tommy says gently.

This time he is not talking to me.

It is this—and not the guns—that makes Paris step forward, passing me without casting a look at me and kneeling beside Tommy. They face straight forward, their expressions calm in the face of all this.

Milos’s expression is unreadable as he takes my hand. It is cold and limp in his, and I do not feel it.

The sensation is gone from my body, hidden away.

I am somewhere above it all, pieces of me in the high marble ceilings and the ladder we could use to escape and the railing that juts out over the sea.

Part of me everywhere, in grains of sand and whispers of wind and the poppies, scarlet against the night sky.

And none of me is his.

Not when he takes my hand, not when he pulls me in for a kiss.

Milos, I would tell him if I were there. It’s time for you to leave. I don’t want you here.

“Are you ready?” Marcus asks me.

“Can you—can you tell me what is happening?” My voice carries so much weakness that I do not want Paris and Tommy to hear it, not when they kneel there with such unwavering courage.

Milos draws me closer to his side, still holding my hand.

We were meant to walk together, hand in hand, through marble hallways and through the years. We are every inch the king and queen.

I had thought I could rule. I had thought, even, that I could rule and do better .

But perhaps this is all that ever waited for me. Perhaps this is what it meant to rule.

My father draws closer. There is the fury of war in his eyes. I have seen it before, before he avenged my mother’s death, before he destroyed the whole island of Troy in his rage.

“Helen.”

“Father.”

“Milos, give us a moment.”

Milos drops my hand, and I return to my body, if only briefly.

My bracelet burns my skin, this homage to my mother. I rub my thumb along the thin band of metal, over and over and over again.

Méchri thanátou.

Unto death.

“What is the meaning of this?” I manage the words, manage to drag myself back into my body. Paris and Tommy, kneeling just there.

No.

No.

“Do not play coy with me, little girl. You have been knee-deep in this game with Paris,” he snarls. “Did you really think you could do as you pleased in my house?”

“Do not pretend you cared for my life,” I tell him coldly. “Do not pretend you care about any life when you treat them all as if they are at your disposal.”

He looks as if he wants to raise a hand to me now—but something stops him. Is it something he sees in my face? Is it the fact that after all this, I am still a bomb-maker, still my mother’s daughter?

“Am I a daughter?” I ask him again. “Or a bargaining chip? Which were you afraid to lose to Paris?”

“You are both,” he says. “Helen, you know that. You have always known that. I can love my daughter and value my business. I can care for you and value your contributions to our Family . Do not play, little girl. Not after all this.”

“How long will you keep me small? How long will you deny that I have the power to rule at your side?”

“At my side?” he asks. “Or in my stead?”

Paris and Tommy are kneeling there, guns trained on them, and I will do what I must.

I do not hesitate. “Together,” I say. “Family.”

My father pauses, considering me, considering my silence.

“Very well. I will make you a deal, then, daughter ,” he says.

He leans forward, violence in his eyes. “But you must prove your loyalty if you want your place here, if you want your guard and your paramour to survive this. You must earn it as your mother did.”

When my mother was young and newly married to him—nineteen, or perhaps twenty—he sent her off alone.

On what sort of mission, she never told anyone.

But Tommy told me she came back empty-eyed and haunted, with blood beneath her nails and ashes on her boots.

She spent long hours walking with Tommy along the cliffs, and if anyone left alive knows what she had to do to prove her loyalty, it is him, and his silence is unbroken.

“What would you have me do?” I ask him.

Who would you have me kill?

Because for Paris, I would. I would.

“You will marry Milos. Tonight. You will seal this alliance. You will prove your loyalty to me.”

My father must see the hesitation in my eyes, must see the fear and fury there, because he smiles.

“If you are thinking of killing me,” he says quietly.

“Know what it would do. Have you seen a power vacuum before, little girl? Have you seen the wars that will be fought? Do you know who would die, how many would die?” His hand closes over my bicep, fingers digging so hard I know they will leave a bruise.

“But in case the body count does not matter to you.” His breath is hot on my face.

“I will keep your insurance until this ceremony is done.”

He gestures toward Tommy and Paris.

Tommy.

Tommy, on his knees, hands woven together on the back of his head.

Tommy, with a handgun pressed to his temple.

Paris beside him, the fury of the last ten years flickering dangerously in her eyes.

“No.” I rip my arm from my father’s grip. “ No. ”

“It’s okay,” Tommy says quietly. “Kid—Helen, look at me. It’s okay.”

“Promise?” I whisper.

They hit him hard across his face with a pistol. The blood is immediate, pouring from a cut in his lip, and he does not answer me.

Milos is behind the circle of guards, face pale. “Helen?” he asks uncertainly.

After all of this, he remains the fool, shattered all over again at the knowledge that he and I will never be anything more than an alliance.

“We are getting married,” I say dully, but my eyes are on the barrel of the gun, at the smudge it has left on Tommy’s forehead. “Milos, we are getting married tonight.”

“Like this?” He gestures to the guns, to Tommy, to Paris, and he looks bereft, though the emotion evaporates a second later, and then he looks—

Then he looks furious.

“Like this,” I answer.

I turn to my father. “I will remember my place,” I tell him quietly. “I will play the game. I will rule at your side. But if anything happens—to either of them—”

I let the threat hang there, bolder than I have ever been with my father. The memory of laying explosives with Paris surges through me. The joy, the way it felt like my chest was expanding, the feel of her hand in mine.

I am more than Zarek’s timid daughter.

My father nods, just once. “And you,” he says. “Remember that there are things you love. That there are things you could lose.”

I dip my head in response, a gesture between equals, between rivals, between gods.

“Helen,” Milos says hesitantly. “Helen, I thought—”

I walk past my father toward Tommy, move the barrel of the gun from Tommy’s head. Take Tommy’s hand and pull him to his feet.

He stares down at me sadly. “Kid,” he says.

“No,” I say. “No, not anymore.”

“Paris stays there,” my father says.

I meet her eyes.

I am standing, and she is kneeling, but I feel smaller than I have in my entire life.

You are the power, she told me.

And I can feel it, pounding against my rib cage, begging to be released.

I kneel in front of Paris and cup her face in my hands.

“Whatever I must,” I murmur, and press a kiss to her lips.

And then I walk, hand in hand with Milos, to become his wife.

A man I do not know arrives to perform the ceremony, and Milos is quiet and Tommy is quiet and Paris is furious and the room is a tomb and Mama and everyone who died at Altea’s are here bleeding and all of it circles back around me, but still I stand, still I stand unshaking, and I do what I must.

Tommy takes his post beside me. He brushes hair from my face and looks down at me with an ocean of sorrow in his eyes, but he says nothing.

They keep Paris between two armed guards, flanking her but not touching her—if they touch her, if they touch her I will draw the knife from beneath my dress and cut their throats.

After our vows, Milos turns to me. His face is almost blank, almost empty. But not quite. “Helen,” he says. “Helen, I didn’t want to marry you like this. I thought we could be something .”

I cup his face with one hand. “I am sorry,” I tell him. “I am sorry.”

How can he have been so naive, to think this marriage could become something it was never meant to be?

“This is an alliance,” I tell him. “Our families are now one.”

“But—could we come to care for each other, do you think?” he asks me. “Does it always have to be this way?”

I pull enough of me back into my body to answer. To answer, but not to feel. Because after Paris’s hands, how could I ever want anyone else’s hands on me? How could I ever go back? “How could it have been any other way, darling?”

It is easier to look past him and pretend I am talking to Paris. She is watching me, her body still but her eyes blazing. I can use words like darling , and I can imagine it is her hands cupping my neck. Her hands, long, lean fingers with those rings that drive me mad, dancing across my skin.

And if after all this, I cannot save her—cannot save Tommy—

I turn to my father.

“Father, may we go?”

“Not yet.” His voice is sharp, dangerous. “Milos, in my family, loyalty must be proved.”

Tommy moves toward me, the gesture automatic. He can hear a threat in the change of tone, and he moves to protect me now, his body between mine and my father’s.

And I want to rewind it all, return to a time when I was a little girl and Tommy could just hold me close and call me kid and tell me to be better, but it is too late, too late for both of us, because—

They force him to his knees beside Paris again.

There is a gun in my father’s hand. He hesitates.

Not one of us moves.

Then he holds it, hilt out, toward Milos. “Your brother’s loyalty was brought into question,” my father says. “I do not tolerate disloyalty in any form. He has done his part. So pay your debt, Milos Vasieleiou. And buy your brother’s safety.”

The words hit Paris before they register in my own mind, because she begins to struggle against the guards that are holding her until they shove her to her knees beside Tommy.

“No,” I say numbly.

Milos does not look at me. Does not meet my eyes. Not even once.

I do not plead with him. I do not plead with my father. I know better than to ask for mercy, so instead it is Tommy I turn to, and for the first time in my life, I do not look away.

“It will be okay,” I say to him. “Promise.”

Even now, even here, the word comes out a question.

Promise?

Tommy is calm and still, his breathing even. Unafraid as he has always been. He meets my gaze and opens his mouth to answer as he always does, to say promise —

And Milos pulls the trigger.