Page 44 of We Are the Match

Paris

Helen sleeps heavily, her head tucked against my shoulder. She is flushed and sated, and I ease her down onto her pillow before I slip out from under the covers.

I slide the bracelet back onto my wrist as I look down at her. Unto death , it says. Mine or hers or both of ours.

I stole Helen away. Helen, husband-killer, daughter of gods, bringer of war.

And then I fucked her until she screamed.

It was a different destruction than the one I had imagined once. The gods ablaze. Helen at my mercy. The Family in chaos.

Helen. Helen. Mine.

And come morning, we will have to reckon with this: both the love and the war.

For now, I brush hair from her face—hair I was pulling only hours ago. My hands are gentle, but she loved them when they were rough.

We have so much to explore, Helen and I.

I want a thousand nights like this one with her. I want to touch her a thousand times, in a thousand ways. I want to call noises from her she cannot contain. I want to see my ring on her hand for years yet.

I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, and she stirs. Sighs softly.

Helen. Oh, Helen.

There was never any chance for us.

I flick my lighter open and shut in my hand, just once, before slipping it into my pocket. I twist the rings around my fingers, just two of them now.

En morte.

In death.

I shrug on my leather jacket, pull the sleeve down past the bands.

It is a reminder, as always. I am a girl from Troy, but also a girl marked by Lena’s choice—like Eris was. Like Thea was. Like Cass was, until she burned.

I bend down, press a kiss to Helen’s forehead.

Whiskey and vanilla, poppies and rain.

Before I go, I pull the poppy from my pocket—it is crushed now, worse for wear from being carried in my pocket and then being capsized. It is still damp from the sea, a few petals lost on its journey—but it is ours all the same.

And then I slip out the window, shrugging my jacket up to obscure my face as I go.

Just a girl in the alley with a hood to hide her face.

I had planned to do exactly what I had told Eris: once we reached Troy, I would find a bigger boat that could carry us across open water and safely to the mainland.

But neither Zarek nor Lena will give Helen up without a fight—and if I am no longer willing to use her as my bargaining chip, I need something more.

And I can only hope it will be enough: the bracelet that will buy Lena entrance to Zarek’s fortress and—hopefully—Helen’s safety and freedom.

So I turn, at last, toward the house on the hill where my sisters died.

And I go to find the queen who killed them.

Helen

For the first time in all the years I can remember, I wake alone.

I do not want to wake up, because Paris is not beside me.

I do not know when she left, did not feel her sudden absence, but I feel the grief of it even before I am fully conscious.

I wake with my face wet with tears, though I cannot remember the dream. I wake and I look for her and I do not find her.

I want to walk through the doors and have Tommy waiting for me at the table, waiting to talk me out of my bad idea or tell me to take care or just hold me while I cry. But he is gone gone gone and so is Paris and Erin and Mama and everyone else I have loved.

And all that is left of me is grief.

En morte libertas .

The phrase on the three rings she has always worn.

I pull her ring from my finger and turn it over.

She left me libertas .

Freedom.

And then I see it, in handwriting neater than I would have expected from Paris—a note lying on her pillow.

I have one last thing to do. Don’t follow. Stay alive.

But I know where she has gone, even if I do not know what I will find there—because I know her . I have seen her rage and I have seen her joy and I have seen her love, all of it leading her back to Troy, this path as inevitable and brutal and beautiful as Paris herself.

And I know what I need when I follow her there:

A gown and a bomb.

I choose the gown first, from the safe house closet, something rose gold and silk that slides over my curves and hugs them exactly where I want them to.

Then I dig through the kit Paris salvaged from the wreck, and I build—a fail-safe.

Solidox and sugar, the weapon of a woman who now knows scarcity.

If I find three queens, united against my father, I can help them plan their next move. If, like Erin hinted before she died, one of them has been leading and that she has a plan for me, too, I can see what help I can offer.

And if it all goes to hell, I can clear a path to freedom with my grenade.

A flash of red catches my eye as I open the door. The remains of the gown Paris ripped off me only hours ago? I look closer.

It is a poppy on the nightstand, faded and drying there, wind ruffling the remaining petals. Has she preserved this since the party? Has she kept this flower since the night we met?

When the whole world was watching, and somehow she was the only one I could see.

When I stayed beside her all evening at my engagement party, when she threw me to the ground to save me from the blast, when she made me laugh for the first time in months.

When I pressed the poppy into her outstretched hand and changed her fate and mine.

Now, I pin the flower Paris left for me above my heart.

And I go to war.