Page 38 of We Are the Match

Helen

I lean my head against Paris’s chest, and she wraps her arms around me tightly.

“Stay with me,” she says tenderly. “It was like this, after Troy. For so long. But it won’t always be, Helen.”

Promise?

Promise. “I miss him,” I whisper against Paris’s hair.

“I know,” she whispers back. “He deserved better.”

He did.

My Tommy. Too gentle, despite it all.

Finally, Paris and I climb back up the long, winding stairs to my room, and it is wrong, wrong, wrong to be doing this without Tommy.

Promise? I keep asking and asking and asking. But he is cold and silent in the sea.

When we reach my room, I show Paris to the bathroom, where she strips and steps into the shower, Tommy’s blood running down off her into the drain below.

I leave her there and call for Erin, who brushes my hair and offers me a cloth for my face.

After Erin leaves to retrieve some food, Paris emerges from the shower and dresses in some of my clothes—the only jeans I had, and a tank top, both of which are too big for her, and then her worn leather jacket.

Then she steps forward without a word and pushes me against the wall, hard , and kisses me breathless.

“I am sorry,” she says between kisses. “I am sorry.”

“No,” I tell her. “You and I? We have nothing to be sorry for.”

It is not true, and never has been, but who is left to forgive or condemn us now? We are all we have.

I let my head tip back, thudding gently against the wall as Paris leaves a line of kisses down my jaw, my throat, my collarbone.

A knock interrupts us, sharp and persistent.

“Helen.” Milos’s voice sounds broken, fragile.

Rage floods me, so swift and immediate that I fling an arm out, sending the glass flying from my bedside table, shattering it against the wall. I look at Paris.

“I need,” I tell her. “To do this.”

“If he touches you,” she says. “I will kill him myself.” And then she withdraws into the next room, and I let Milos enter.

He has blood on his hands. Tommy’s blood. My Tommy.

“Helen,” he says brokenly. “I’m sorry.”

“Milos,” I tell him woodenly. “I have upheld my father’s alliance, and he will need you for whatever he is planning next. But you have killed the only family I had left.”

He is pale, eyes haunted. “All these years,” he says. “I have never killed. Not once. I know—I know my brother has, when it was necessary. But what would you have done? If it was your brother? What would you have done to save him?”

“I don’t care,” I tell him. I don’t care that he loves his brother. I don’t care that he thought he had no other way. I don’t care about my father’s Family and his games.

“What would you have me say?” Milos whispers. “That Tommy was killed for an alliance as much as he was killed for my brother? That it was worth it to me, if it means I have you ?” He reaches for me again.

I slap his hand away.

“You do not ,” I say. “Have me.”

You never will.

Something changes in his face. The softness, the longing, the hope there twists around, around. Around. And then rage is the only thing left.

“Do you think you can make me care for you?” I taunt him. My fingers inch toward the knife beneath my dress. “Do you think you could have ever made me care for you?”

“And what of this alliance?” he snarls. “What of the demands your father made?”

He reaches for me—though to what end I could not say—and then—

He is jerked backward, nearly off his feet, and Paris is behind him, holding his head back by his black hair, her knife pressed to his throat with her other hand.

A drop of blood has already appeared beneath her blade, and her eyes are as unforgiving as the storm outside.

“Lay a hand on her,” she hisses. “And I will bleed you dry.”

Something broke inside of me when Milos pulled that trigger—and whatever was left of me shattered just now when he demanded, after all he had done, that I would be his one day. “Paris,” I say. “Paris, help tie him up, please.”

For once, she does not argue about who gives the orders. Instead, she brings the hilt of her knife down on his head and he staggers. She shoves him through the balcony doors, binds him to the rail using his own belt to secure his wrists.

And then I crouch in front of him.

Because I have decided something, something that has been inevitable since we announced my engagement, since the golden apple that said from the queen , since Paris threw me to the ground to save me from a bomb. Powers and pawns. Kings and gods and girls.

And me, destroying the balance of power in the Family with a single choice—as if all it takes to start a war is a woman saying no.

I reach toward Paris, steady myself with one hand on her hip, and pull the knife from the sheath at her waistband.

She lets me, eyes raking up and down my face with curiosity and concern and hunger all rolled into one.

“Helen,” she says. “We could leave him and run.”

I shake my head.

Milos is staring at me, terror in his wide eyes.

“Your father will kill her,” he says. “You know that, Helen. I’m—I’m sorry. I am . I didn’t want to kill your guard. I didn’t—”

Paris rips cloth from his shirt unceremoniously and shoves it into his mouth. “If he doesn’t even know Tommy’s name,” she says. “We don’t need to hear from him.” She looks at me. “Helen,” she says, her voice coaxing now. “We can make it.”

“Paris,” I attempt, but I can’t get the words out. I am not sure, now, what is even left to say. My plans were shaky at best—Tommy helping us lead an insurrection, reaching out to Hana or Frona to forge a new alliance. And now they are shattered on the ground around me.

But without any hope at all, without any chance of survival, Paris reaches for me anyway and says:

“Run away with me.”

I start to weep again, fragile as I am after all I have lost today.

Milos writhes against his bonds, anger and fear fighting for dominance in his face.

“Helen.” There is urgency in Paris’s voice. “ Please. ”

But I am not a child, and I will not be coaxed any more than I will be coerced.

“We could make it.” Paris sounds more desperate, but when I look at her, it is just weariness on her face. “All this ... Helen, all this bloodshed. We can get you away. You could be free .”

We can get you away.

Does she not intend to remain at my side, then? Does she not intend to outlive this war?

The thought tastes bitter.

“Paris,” I murmur. “I will follow you where you go—to Troy, to the mainland. To freedom. But wait for me at the boat below? My attendant will meet you there after she gathers my things.”

Paris’s shoulders sag with relief, as if she had expected me to put up more of a fight about leaving, and then she leaves with one last nod at me.

I pull the gag from Milos’s mouth, alone with him at last.

“No one can hear you,” I say. “No one will come for you.”

“Helen, please .” Milos’s eyes are desperate, but how dare he be desperate, when Tommy was so calm?

“Yes, husband?” I tilt my head, watch him carefully.

“We were made to rule, Helen,” Milos attempts. “You and I. We were born for this. We are royalty .”

“Yes,” I murmur. “We are royalty.”

“You could embrace it.” Desperation colors his tone now. “You are as guilty as the rest of us. So lean closer to this world, wife. Rule with me. I will—I will do whatever you wish.”

I sigh, the release of breath a release of so much more.

“You were mine,” Milos whispers now. He raises his eyes to me, beautiful man, horrible man, ruler and god. “You were mine .”

I replace the gag, my hands gentle and sure, and his eyes go wide again. “I was always going to rule,” I tell him. “But not because of you, Milos. I have never once needed you.”

He had Tommy in front of him, and he pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger.

I crouch beside him. My dress is as red as the sunset sky.

“Milos,” I say gently. “It will be all right.”

He stares up at me, wide-eyed.

I cup his neck with one hand, so gently he relaxes beneath my touch. “I promise,” I say.

And then I draw my knife across his throat, and I do what Paris threatened to do. I spill his blood across the marble, let it flood him and surround him, and I watch his eyes until the last bit of fury and fear disappears.

This was not a fight. This was not an honorable kill, not the kind Paris or Tommy would have carried out. No, Tommy was a soldier, his kills clean, painless. Paris is a survivor, her kills in self-defense—or for Troy.

But I am not a soldier or a survivor.

No.

I am a god, and this was an execution.

And I am not sorry.

I hesitate, blood trickling across my golden sandals and bare feet. I crouch there a second longer, watch blood drip over the side of the balcony, slide down the marble toward the sea.

My husband is dead.

I reach out a finger, dip it in the blood, and then I write.

A message for my father, who used me to ensure his own power over and over again.

A message for Marcus, who threatened me on this very balcony.

Now it is my turn to tell a story, to break an alliance, to burn it all down. If I was never meant to take my father’s place, then at least he will know he has made himself a new enemy.

So I leave him a threat, my message in Milos’s blood. My bedroom a battlefield.

From the queen.