Page 42 of We Are the Match

Helen

Paris spends nearly an hour gathering our belongings from the churning sea—at least what she can salvage, including the worn leather bag that holds the supplies I brought with us.

Mama had that bag first, and then me, one of the only belongings of hers I have left.

After Paris salvages what she can, she finds us a safe house and her voice is quiet but firm, as if she knows the sound is the only thing keeping me from coming apart.

She killed Erin.

I stare at her hands, long, lean fingers, her three rings firmly in place. Fingers that could pull a blade across someone’s throat with no effort at all.

And yet fingers I still imagine on—

Me.

She said she had to carry me to shore.

That I capsized the boat.

I remember so little of it.

What I remember, I remember vividly, even though I know it is not, cannot, be true: Erin and Mama and Tommy bleeding on the pure marble floor in the palace at home. Erin and Mama and Tommy with their hands on me, pulling me under the sea.

Come with us, they whispered. For the queen.

And I went under, again and again.

Until Paris pulled me out of the sea.

Until Paris called my name.

My hands tremble violently.

I feel far, far away from my own body.

Paris does not tell me who the safe house belongs to, or how she came to know of it, but it is a well-furnished, two-bedroom cottage. There are clothes in the closet, and a hot shower waiting for me, and I could ask Erin—

I stagger, knees hitting the ground hard.

Paris is at my side instantly.

“ Paris, ” I say when I have my voice again. “What did you know about Erin? Who did she work for? Why did you kill my— ”

My what? Because what was Erin to me, really? We were not friends. She worked for me, and I never really knew her, that much is clear. But still, still , her life meant something to me. Even if we were not friends, not family, not anything more than employer and employee.

Paris closes her eyes, her face pale. “She helped to kill my sisters,” she says, and she cannot look at me. “Sit down.” Paris guides me to a love seat, keeps both hands on my shoulders as she does.

I lean into the touch, catching my breath as best I can. “Tell me what you know.”

She hesitates.

“Helen,” she says finally. “The Trojan family funded that group home—most of the Families have funded something like it, at some point. It is one of many self-serving things they do, but that one—mine—was a training ground for girls who would one day belong to Lena. Her symbol was above our door.”

She says my mother’s name in the same tone as she always says my father’s: with rage, unbending.

But why this much hatred for my mother ?

“Mama did not bomb your home,” I say. It is a futile fight, but I stand my ground the same. “That was my father. Not her.”

And how could Mama have bombed a group home after we lost her to a Trojan bomb? None of this makes sense.

Paris’s eyes are distant. “She visited us often.” She runs a thumb up and down the edge of her worn leather jacket. “This was a gift, the last time I—the last time she visited.”

I gasp for air, clutch the jacket with one trembling hand. “You knew my mother?”

“No,” Paris says, unequivocally. “No, we were nothing but her pawns. Even Eris—your Erin.”

“My mother has been dead a decade,” I say. I push myself to my feet, weak-kneed or not. “I won’t hear this, Paris. I won’t. ”

“All right,” Paris says gently.

“Erin worked for Altea, maybe,” I say. “Altea loves weapons. Maybe Erin was just another one of her weapons. Altea wants to move against my father, and she did, and—”

“And either way, Eris built the grenade used at your engagement party,” Paris continues.

“I should have seen it earlier. The solidox and the sugar. The warehouse on Frona’s island—it was where the girls of Troy were trained.

My friends spoke of it—Eris spoke of it, when I knew her.

A bomb-maker from the Family, they would have access to any resource they could want.

But a girl from Troy would be smarter, because she knew scarcity.

A girl from Troy would buy something you can get with cash, for minimal resources.

Untraceable and easy to make. I knew her, you know? We were—”

Her voice falters.

If Tommy were here, he would put a hand on her shoulder, would call her kid . Would tell us both to rest.

If Tommy were here, Erin and Milos would not be dead, because he would have stopped Paris, stopped me from doing something so monstrous.

But it’s just us, and we are alone, so I take Paris’s hand.

Paris sways—exhaustion and something more.

“We were children together,” she whispers, and then she stares down at her hands as if she can hardly believe what they have done.

But when she looks up at me, it is the look I saw when I first sat beside her at the bar.

Furious and unforgiving. Like there is steel in her, something unbendable, something no one can break, not even a god.

“You heard what she said—when I asked her about Troy. Sacrifices must be made. She sacrificed the wrong people, Helen—and then she set off a grenade beside you. So I killed her.”

The words echo in the small entryway.

The space between Paris and me trembles, and though we are inches apart, there is a gulf between us, as wide as the sea between my home island and hers. Even together on Troy, we are leagues apart.

“Tell me her name again,” I whisper. “Tell me. Tell me.”

Paris steps back, shaking her head, the gap between us widening.

Every centimeter of space between us makes me miss her, and how can this be? We both killed today. The blood is still hardening beneath our fingernails, still slicked on our blades despite the time we spent in the sea.

She took Erin from me.

And yet I have never loved anyone as much as I love Paris.

“How could I forgive you for this?” I ask her. And how could I not, when Paris is the other half of my beating heart?

Her lip curls, her loathing for us both. “There are things that can never be forgiven,” she says. “Do you think I will ever forgive myself ? She killed my sisters, and she was my sister. I will never forgive her and I will never forgive myself, Helen of Troy.”

“What is wrong with us?” I whisper.

And this, finally, is what breaks Paris. She barks out a laugh, something furious and guttural I have never heard before.

“What is wrong with us ?” she snarls, and then those strong fingers I have dreamed of are wrapped around my arms and she shoves me back against the wall.

“ You started this war. Don’t you see that?

You. Over and over and over again. You played god at an engagement party that wasn’t yours—your father killed two people in front of all of us and still you held up his rule.

You married a man to solidify an alliance and then made his death a message .

You blow apart everything you touch. And you like it. ”

And the laugh is a broken thing in her mouth, the jagged edge of our blades.

She is furious and grieving. She hates the Family, and she loves me.

And she is right . Even if it was not my hand on the trigger. Even if I killed Milos for a far more personal reason than power . Because it didn’t matter, did it?

I have run from the complicity that is part of the role I was born to. I have run from the bomb-making I learned at my mother’s knee. I have run from it all.

Until Paris.

“Oh, darling,” I say, and I bare my teeth as I smile at her. “But you like it, too.”

And then she is pushing me backward again, but this time one of her hands is between my legs, the heel of her palm spreading me.

The noise I make is not quite human, and I let her push me back through the open door, into the bedroom.

She kicks it shut behind us, and it slams so hard it shakes the house, shakes me, and then when she looks at me, she is positively feral.

I let out a breath, one ragged gasp.

She circles me, half a grin on her wild face.

We are still dripping wet, our clothes soaked with sea and blood, but she looks unbothered.

I shiver under her gaze.

“Paris,” I say. I try to make it sound like a command. “Touch me.”

The wicked little half grin splits into a wider, hungrier smile. “Oh, love,” she says, leaning in so her warm breath tickles my ear. “You don’t give the orders here.”

She circles me again, and I shiver.

She trails a finger down my bare arm, brushing water droplets off.

Yes.

Oh, gods, yes .

Yes, that is what I want.

Paris tilts her head to one side. “Helen.” Her voice is a soft growl. “What do you want?”

I feel the rush of wind, and suddenly we are on the rooftop at home, a platter of scones spilled between us.

What do you want? she had asked me, is asking me, though I had not had the courage to say the last time.

“You,” I whisper. “All of you.”

And then she reaches out both hands, gathers fistfuls of my dress at the shoulders, and tears it open. Top to bottom.

And when all the bloody fragments of cloth are on the floor beneath us, she takes my hands in hers. Fiery and gentle. Rough and vulnerable.

“What do you want?” she asks me again.

“You,” I tell her desperately, desperately.

“What do you want ?” she persists. She is asking me for more, demanding more.

“Everything,” I tell her. “ Everything. ”

And then I am on the bed beneath her, as I have been longing to be since she first threw me to the ground to protect me from the blast, all those weeks ago on the marble floors of my palace.

She sheds her own clothes with as much care as she used on mine, and then her fingers push between my thighs.

“What do you want?” she demands, and then she leans down and bites my lip, so hard I taste blood, so hard I feel , and I cannot stop feeling.

So that when I answer her, our eyes are forced to meet. So that she sees every inch of me.

“You,” I tell her again. “I want you .”