Page 39 of We Are the Match

Paris

When Helen arrives at the boat launch, she is not the woman I knew. She is someone else entirely.

She walks slowly, regally. My knife is bloodstained in her hands. Her dress—the new, soft one she had slipped into—is matted with gore. Her feet are bare and wet, as if recently washed.

She sees me staring and looks at me with dark, unworried eyes. “I made sure they knew,” Helen says, “who Zarek has made an enemy today.”

As if this answers my questions at all.

As if I want to understand anything but why Helen returns to me dressed in blood.

“Helen.” My voice cracks. “What did you do ?”

“He killed my family,” Helen says. “He deserved it, Paris. As they all do.”

This, then, is the kind of queen she would be.

“He did,” I say. “He took Tommy from you.”

But it sits heavy on my chest all the same: the knowledge that any chance we had of leaving quietly has evaporated before me—even without this, Zarek would have come for her. And now? What hope do we have of ever leaving this behind?

And still—I will take what slim chance we have.

“Are you ready, Helen?” I ask her. “To leave all this behind?”

“As soon as Erin joins us.” Helen turns her head.

Behind her, a woman wearing a maid’s uniform descends, and I startle again. Because behind a blood-drenched Helen is—

Eris.

My Eris.

Her honey-brown hair was almost black when I knew her, her voice loud instead of measured, but I—I knew her.

“Paris,” she says softly.

“Er . . . Erin?” I ask.

And how was it she ended up at Helen’s side, when every girl from Troy ended up in Lena’s employ, not Zarek’s?

“I should pay Marcus a visit,” Helen says, interrupting my confusion at Eris’s introduction. “Like his brother, he is guilty.”

She is fearsome now, eerily similar to her father in her mannerisms. Would this Helen burn down a home full of sisters just to be free? Is it a different thing, to kill for freedom and not power?

I do not know, I do not know , but I stretch out my hand toward her, offering help to board the boat.

Helen takes neither of our offered hands. Instead, she reaches down and dips her hands in the cold water of the cave, scrubbing at the blood. It unspools under the water, red leaching from her fingertips.

“Erin,” she says, her tone betraying no hint of whatever emotions must be raging inside her like the storm that raged the night we met. “Did you retrieve my kit?”

Eris—no, Erin now—holds up a small bag in response.

Helen continues scrubbing, the silence long, unbroken except for by the sound of the water. When she is finally satisfied, her hands are shaking. She stares at the knife she carried, and when she looks up at me there are tears in her eyes.

“I would do it again,” she says fiercely. “I will be free, or I will be nothing.”

I take her shaking hands and help her into the boat.

And then there is nothing more to say.

Helen of the gods.

Helen of the island.

Helen, who started a war, who bled a king dry for touching her.

Helen, who killed her husband to run away with me.

My Helen.

Zarek will shut down the harbors as soon as Milos’s body is found and it is clear that we have fled—the airport on this island, too, so Troy is our only chance at securing a bigger boat or plane, something that can carry us to mainland Greece and beyond.

It strikes me that I do not know what Lena would do if she learns Helen has run away—if she no longer cares for the daughter she left, or if she had plans for Helen’s future like Zarek always has.

“Helen,” I say, reaching for her hand as Erin charts a course to the marina on Troy.

Helen jumps at the touch. “Stop,” she says, just as suddenly, her voice hard and commanding—the queen, again. “We need to make a stop.”

Erin’s eyes flick to me and then back to Helen. “Where to?” she asks.

Helen lifts the bag—the one Erin had held up when Helen asked earlier. “My father’s marina.”

“That’s madness,” I tell her sharply. “It will be crawling with guards.”

“It’s dark,” Erin offers. “And we may have some time yet before they find Milos.”

Helen offers no explanation and no apology, a far cry from the woman I met at the engagement party.

“And what’s the goal?” I snap. “If we delay our escape by an hour to go to the marina?”

“To blow it all to hell.”

Our black ship is as silent and swift as Zarek intended when he built this wing into their home.

When we reach the marina, Helen climbs out without a word to me. And that is when I see what is in the dusty kit she brought with her—solidox and sugar, taken from the warehouse we explored together. Other tools, too, the kind Zarek must have in his personal stores.

In this moment, she is more Lena’s daughter than Zarek’s. All queen, all bomb-maker.

The question eats at me as Helen works, laying charges in boat after boat after boat, carefully covering them with rope or crates so they will not be immediately visible if Zarek commandeers these boats to follow us. Who will you be when you learn Lena is alive?

Erin watches Helen, and she watches me.

When Helen returns, blood still stained beneath her fingernails, the detonator slipping into her silky pocket, she says nothing at all.

She stares straight ahead as we pull away, the boat cutting through the waves, the weight of what she has begun as heavy as that weighty golden apple, blown open at the beginning of all this.

“Erin,” she says finally. “When we reach Troy, where do you intend to go? Or will you make your escape with us?”

Erin turns.

In the gathering dark, her gaze meets mine.

“I have the same question myself,” I tell Erin.

Erin’s face remains impassable as Helen’s eyes flick back and forth between the two of us. “I will remain on Troy,” she answers finally. “Helen, there is someone—there is someone there who wants to see you.”

Her words land like a blow, even though they are addressed to Helen.

Eris left our group home. Eris was skilled with both weapons and explosives. Eris was loyal to—

Lena.

Rage licks at me like a flame, white-hot and unbearable. Even from afar, Lena has made sure there was someone to watch her daughter’s every move—or even control her.

“Tell her,” I say to Erin. “Tell her who you are. Where you are from.”

Helen’s eyes seek mine. “You know Erin? Who is she to you?”

When Erin is silent, I take Helen’s gaze in my own.

“I knew her as Eris back then.” My voice is soft. A skill I have finally learned: the dagger wrapped in silk.

Erin’s shoulders jerk at the mention of her old name.

“I didn’t recognize the name when you mentioned her, didn’t realize who she was until I met her today.

But she was one of us, once. Bright and bold.

She was a girl who loved flowers and makeup and dresses, was damn good at them.

She was also a girl who loved rifles and bomb-making. And so they took her away to serve.”

Erin shifts and stirs, and then turns away from us, staring out over the sea. “I am a girl from Troy,” she says. “Taken from the group home, long before the bombs fell. Taken to be your attendant. Do you know why the island of Troy sings to you, Helen? Do you know what awaits you there?”

Helen’s wild eyes seek the horizon. “What has always awaited me?” she says. “War, and war again.”

“But this time,” Erin says, “you move the pieces.”

Erin’s words settle in my stomach with a weight I had not anticipated. Is this what is meant for Helen, to take her place as a god and a catalyst and a power too far removed from the violence to bleed like the rest of us? This is not what I meant by an escape to Troy.

It was meant to be a stepping stone, not a homegoing.

Will they rule, mother and daughter, on the bones of those I once loved?

Because I am not sure I love Helen enough to let that happen.

“Helen,” I say, turning all of it over in my mind. Can I trust her with this knowledge now? Or is it better to wait until we are safely away from all of this before I tell her, let her make her choice when the ground is solid beneath her feet and she is far out of both Lena’s and Zarek’s reach?

She lost Tommy today. Killed a husband. Ran away with me.

She will not meet my eyes.

“Come,” I decide. “Rest.”

She hesitates at the bow of the ship, her hands braced against the sides. And then she ducks her head and comes to me and stretches out beside me, her head resting against my thigh, her dark hair spilling across my lap.

“Paris,” she whispers as she closes her eyes.

I brush hair from her cheek, tuck it behind her ear, and wait.

“I just want to be free,” she whispers. “I just want to be free.”

And when she is asleep, and I move her so that she is pillowed on my jacket, I stand.

“When we reach Troy,” I tell Erin, “we flee. That is our plan. Do you understand?”

“You need to finish this,” she tells me. Her eyes fall to my jacket, the gift from Lena that kept me alive all those years ago. “You serve a purpose, too. Just like Helen does.”

My hand slides to my knife. “I have never been meant to fight for these Families,” I snarl at her, but the weight of it hits me.

Is that what Lena meant by the gift? And if she did, does that mean she knew something long before Zarek’s bombs ever fell?

But I have no time to ask any of it, because Erin poses an immediate problem. An immediate threat. “What is it you want?” I ask her.

Erin slows the boat until we are idling in the water. “I want to save Helen,” she says. “I want to save the Family I work for.”

She is looking out at the sea, hands resting on the wheel. She is not threatened by me. She is not afraid.

“Did you?” I ask. “Care about saving us?”

“I did,” she says softly.

“And did you know?” I push, though even asking these questions coats my mouth with ash. “Did you know what would be done to us?”

Did Erin make the kind of call I made to Altea, hoping someone would act? Or did she turn away from our destruction as if we never meant anything?

“Sometimes,” Erin answers me finally, her gaze flicking to Helen and then in the direction of Troy again. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made.”

And it is true. It is true .

Altea’s girls are bleeding in the fountain.

I am crawling over the remains of my burning sisters.

I am flicking open my switchblade and pressing it against Erin’s throat.