Page 46 of We Are the Match

Paris

Helen arrives just minutes after I do, and I do not have time—not to beg for her safety, nor to sacrifice my old plans for revenge for a bid for both our freedom. I am too late, too, to protect Helen from this knowledge.

And when Lena opens the door for her daughter, Helen’s face is white as marble.

It is a cold realization in my stomach, dread and excitement mingling.

Helen, my Helen, what will you choose now?

Helen, my Helen, I am sorry.

Helen opens her mouth and closes it again. Just yesterday, she killed her husband and blew up a boat and fucked me in a bed that was not our own, but all the power I saw yesterday has vanished, and she is silent and still.

Be with me, I pray to her silently.

The way you would pray to a god.

When she finally speaks, it is a word that destroys all of us, a vulnerable, raw thing that bursts from her like she cannot stop it:

“Mama.”

Lena does not flinch, does not move at all. Something flickers in her eyes, just once, a flame she has long ago learned to control, and then it disappears.

“My darling,” she says, her voice as detached as Helen’s.

She holds out her hands to her daughter.

She is striking, this mother of Helen, the structures of their faces similar, though the queen’s eyes are harder and sharper, and a long scar slashes her face from above her right eye down her cheek. “May we speak in private?”

There is no hug, no welcome, no reunion, not even an acknowledgment that Lena has spent a decade pretending to be dead, even to the daughter she just called darling .

But Helen allows her hands to be taken.

Allows herself to be led away.

Helen. Oh, Helen.

Was it worth it, everything I have done to get this far? Everything I have done to bring us here ? I wish my sisters were here, that I could ask them. Would they have built an entire life on revenge, like I have? Or would they have moved on long ago?

The rest of us are left staring at one another in the entryway to my old home. My home .

If I were to look closely, I would see the echoes of the girls who died at the windows here.

Milena, a blue sash tied around her waist, twirling in the sunlight that filtered through the bars.

Thea’s first love, best friend, Jasmine, hogging the bathroom so she could look in the mirror as she twisted her braids up around her head like a crown.

Cass, slamming her fist against the door and demanding that Thea and Jasmine fucking hurry .

And Kore, sitting still as one of the older girls braided her hair into twists.

It hurts to think of Eris, here.

Were they yours? I had asked her.

She needed a place, Eris had said. As if we were worth nothing if it meant Lena could rebuild.

I make for the hallway, to follow Lena and Helen.

Altea blocks my path. “They need to speak first. Privately.”

“Fuck you,” I say. “I’m staying with Helen.”

Altea arches an eyebrow at me. “I can see why Zarek took your finger from you,” she says. “That isn’t my style, but if it was, I would have taken your whole hand.”

“I would have taken more,” Frona says. She is watching me coldly, cruelty in her eyes that reminds me of Zarek. “I might still if you are not careful, little one.”

Hana alone smiles at me. “I like it,” she says. “I like your spirit. Always have. Even when you stole my robe.”

“And your locket, too?” I grin at her. In another life, I would have liked her, too. In a life where she was not a god and a war criminal.

Hana freezes, a blush creeping up her face. “I liked you less for that.”

I push by Altea then, ignore the handgun strapped to her hip and the flicker of anger in her eyes. I find Helen in the old headmaster’s office, where I was often sent, Kore at my side, to be lectured or otherwise punished.

I shove open the door.

Lena stands where the headmaster always stood, hands still holding Helen’s. Lena is bent forward toward Helen, who is sitting in a simple wooden chair and making it look like a throne.

“Helen,” I say. “Helen, are you—”

It would be stupid to ask if she was all right, but it was on the tip of my tongue all the same.

Helen stares at me—past me, really, and I can see it in her eyes, the distance. She is far away from us, from me, from her own body.

I want to take her by the shoulders. I want to put my hands all over her until she cannot help but be present in her body, to feel everything she wants me to do to her.

Lena stares at me in disbelief. “You may leave now. I need to speak with my daughter.” Her voice is so gentle, so deadly.

I can see why Zarek loved her.

“I think I’ll stay, thanks,” I tell her, and I show my teeth when I grin.

“Paris,” Helen asks numbly. “Did you know?”

She stares at me as if she has never seen me before.

Lena’s gaze changes, just subtly, tilts toward anger—or even fear.

“She was gone,” Helen whispers. “I thought they killed her.”

“I must ask for privacy, Paris,” Lena says gently, squeezing Helen’s hands and then releasing them. “We have guards that will keep her safe, if it is her safety that concerns you.”

Helen gasps when my fingers brush her bare shoulders.

“Lena will tell you what she knows of me, I am sure,” I tell her. “But I would like to tell you what I may, first.”

Helen freezes. “You knew,” she whispers.

It is the worst kind of betrayal, as I knew it would be. I had hoped I could tell her away from all this, in some little cottage on the coast of a different country, far from the mess of the Families, safe.

But instead I am here. Home.

Lena holds up her hand for me to stop, and Helen’s gaze snaps to her.

“Mama,” Helen says, her voice faltering. “Mama, you died .”

Lena shakes her head, eyes softening. “No, my love,” she says. “I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry. It was the only way to protect you. If your father knew I was alive—if he knew I wanted to be with you—he would have used you as a pawn in a war against me.”

Like she is using Helen now.

Like I intended to use Helen when I first met her.

“Helen, please,” I attempt again.

But just like when I tried to tell Helen about her mother, Helen cannot hear me.

“Why?” A tear spills down Helen’s marble cheek as she stares at Lena. “Mama, why did you leave me? Why did you leave me? ”

My hand tightens on her shoulder, fingers digging in. Stay here with me, I am telling her. Do not go back. Do not lose yourself to her.

This time, pain cuts Lena’s face as surely as the scar reaching down her cheekbone does. “Baby,” she whispers. “My baby .” And then she is holding Helen tightly, pulling her away from me.

When Helen finally draws back, her body trembling, I surge forward to join her again, despite Lena’s glare.

“But why?” Helen whispers again, despite their embrace. “Why did you leave me with him? Was it because I was impulsive and bad at ruling and because I did not want to touch bombs after I thought I lost you forever? I would have learned, Mama. I would have tried .”

“Oh, my daughter,” Lena says. She sinks down into her chair again. “All of this was for you. All of it. I hope you see that, sooner rather than later. But I could not be his wife any longer. I had to build on my own, and he would never have let me go.”

I had to build.

Not survive.

Not be free.

No, she left to build an empire she would not have to share.

“No,” I say.

Lena starts, and then stares at me. “No?” she says. “ No? ”

Helen stares up at me.

Come back, I want to beg her. Come back to your body and to me.

“And what would you know of any of this?” Lena’s voice is ice.

“You faked your death,” I say. “You will not lie to Helen. Everyone lies to Helen. She deserves the truth from you, at least. You faked your death, and used ours to house your new empire, away from Zarek’s eyes.”

“Pray tell.” Lena’s fingers close over the edge of the desk, white at the knuckles with the effort it takes not to rise and strike me. “What truth would you like me to tell Helen next?”

“I will tell you the truth,” I say. I am looking at Helen, and only Helen. “But I want you to know that—I tried, Helen. Before your wedding. Before Tommy. I tried to tell you. I am sorry I did not.”

Helen’s hands are trembling.

“I would have to start from the beginning. You know some of it already. I do not have your way with explosives,” I tell her.

“But I had the will to live, and I did. I pushed my sisters out of the way, Helen. I crawled over them and shoved my way through the doors, the last person through before it melted shut. I did not save them. I saved myself.”

Helen reaches for me with the hand that bears my ring, but I step back, shake my head. “You don’t have to,” she says. “Paris, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to relive it.”

“The bombs fell,” I tell her. I am staring straight into Helen’s strange, magic brown eyes.

I am falling into them. “Your father bombed all of Troy, and for a time I thought he took his vengeance on our bodies, too, because we were one of Troy’s group homes.

Because girls from Troy always served the Trojan Family. So we burned. We burned.”

“But not you,” Helen whispers. “You survived.”

“I survived,” I tell her. “And this jacket—your mother gave me this jacket. It’s the reason I made it out.”

Behind her, Lena smiles, her teeth unnaturally sharp. Her eyes flicker as she watches me.

“I crawled over them as they screamed. As they died. I tried to carry some out. I could not carry them all.”

I twist the rings on my fingers. Three flames. No—only two now. One for those girls I lost. One for my will to survive—and the jacket that kept the wrong girl alive. One for the Families, who thought themselves gods, a ring for those I would hunt down and kill.

I brace myself against the wall, but I could not fall now if I wanted to.

I am as iron as the bars on the window, unmeltable, unbreakable, unburnable. Unbowed.

“Do you know what it is like to smell burning skin?” I ask Helen. “Do you know the smell of charred flesh?”

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”

We are only a meter apart.

We are a thousand kilometers away from each other.

“And that is all there is to tell,” I say finally. “The fire was cruel, but it could not kill me. Nothing could kill me. I crawled out, and I decided to survive.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Lena reproves gently, her fingers ghosting over the dagger I know is concealed at her hip.

“Do not forget the rest of it, Paris of Troy. You had a purpose, once. I gave you that jacket, and I expected loyalty in return. But instead you never sought out a single job with the Families. You never joined us. And if I could not have the loyalty I am owed for saving your life, I will at least have the truth for my daughter.”

“Oh, the rest?” My laugh is coated in ash as I twist the rings on my fingers, around, around, around.

“That I grieved, and I waited, and when I realized your mother was alive, I began to plan. Did you know, Helen?” I ask.

“Did you know she bombed us? Your father bombed Troy, and at the time I thought the group home was just a casualty of it. But Lena was the one who needed a hideout where Zarek would never look. And Lena and her bomb-maker—Erin—made sure she had one.”

Helen gasps. “That’s not true,” she says. “Paris, you can’t—that’s not true.”

“You heard what Erin said,” I tell Helen.

Because after all this, even if I do not have my revenge, even if I lose Helen because of this, I need her to know exactly who Lena is.

I need her to believe me. “ She needed to build. Erin wasn’t talking about Altea, or Frona, or Hana.

I know you wanted that to be true. I know, Helen. I know .”

“That’s enough,” Lena cuts me off. “Helen, she lies and manipulates just the way your father always did. I want the whole truth, Paris of Troy. Did you not realize I was watching you all these years? Did you really think I would give you a gift like that if I did not think you would be of use to us? No, Paris. No. Tell my daughter what you were planning to do with her.”

“When I knew your father was responsible for what happened to my sisters,” I finish slowly.

I meet Helen’s gaze again. There is an ocean of grief and loss between us.

“I knew your mother had rebuilt on my sisters’ grave.

So I began to look for a way. A way to get to Helen of the gods, the best bargaining chip Zarek and Lena have ever had.

Because one day, I would bring her here to Troy, and kill her in front of them both, and on that day I would give all the burning girls of Troy their revenge. ”