Page 47 of We Are the Match

Helen

I have long known that Paris wanted revenge. I had known that she hated our Families. I know she was furious, I know she grieved.

But we were more than these games, and she loved me.

Maybe not at first, but now.

Doesn’t she? Was I ever—

“She wanted to kill you,” Mama tells me. “Do you understand that, my love? It doesn’t matter what she has told you since. She was planning to hurt you.”

Paris wavers on her feet for the first time since I have known her. “No,” she says. “Helen, I tried to tell you—”

It is hard to know who is lying to me now, when so many have. It is hard to know if I can trust Paris when she told me something so gutting, so cruel, that I cannot bear it. My father, responsible for bombing young girls? That I could believe. But my mother? It is unthinkable.

But there was truth in the way Paris touched me last night, and I no longer know what to believe.

“I did come to your party to kill you,” Paris tells me. “But I did not—I did not expect ... this. Us.”

She was there to kill me.

And I was there to die.

There was never any other ending for us.

I laugh, the sound a detached, strange thing I scarcely recognize.

“You have always been a threat to me,” I say. My hands are trembling, but I scarcely feel it. “But Tommy couldn’t do anything, I wouldn’t let him, because you were a threat I—”

“Loved,” Mama finishes the sentence. “Paris was a threat you loved.”

Loved.

Loved.

Past tense.

Because it has to be this way, doesn’t it? Because I was a piece in her games, and in my father’s? Because she was a piece in mine, and in my mother’s?

Because the only one who has not played with me was my mother, who faked her own death to protect me from all of this.

“ Helen, ” Paris whispers.

“Don’t,” I say. A sob catches in my throat.

“This isn’t new ,” Paris says, her voice harder now. She stands, too, though I cannot see her face behind my mother. “You know what I am. You know what I have wanted. But I—things changed, Helen. Things changed because of you .”

“She came to me today,” Mama interrupts. “To make me a bargain, and to bring me your access code—that bracelet—so she could have you for herself and let your father and I destroy each other.”

And I gave it to her. I can hardly breathe.

Paris’s intake of breath is sharp as she looks down at her wrist. “No,” she says, but her voice is too shaky to be believed. “That isn’t why I came this morning—it isn’t, Helen.” The look in her eyes is soft with regret.

So much I am drowning in it.

“Then go,” I say numbly. “I knew you wanted your revenge. I did. But I did not plan to be your fool, Paris of Troy. So go and kill him, then, and spare me any more lies.”

“Helen,” Paris says at last. “Helen, I’ll leave. If that’s what you want. But will you give me five minutes? Not to explain. Not to change your mind. But to show you.”

I look at Mama, who sighs, but nods her head.

“Five minutes,” I tell Paris coldly.

We step outside the office together.

Paris looks so very, very tired. “Helen,” she says gently. She turns my bracelet on her wrist, slow and deliberate.

She says my name the way she said it last night, when her hands were rough the way I wanted them to be, but there is an ocean of tenderness in her eyes.

“I do not want you to play with me,” I say sharply. “I am through being toyed with, Paris.” Paris nods. Regret and grief and violence in her face. She is everything I wanted. Everything I was never meant to have.

“Can I show you something?” she asks.

Not an order, not this time.

I follow her, and when she reaches out a hand, question in her eyes, I take it, my hand cold in hers.

She leads me up a flight of stairs, and she tells me their story. She shows me their pain.

“It does not matter if I am sorry or not,” Paris says. She is looking past me at a hundred ghosts. “It does not matter if I justify it to myself or if you think it was unjustifiable. It is done. It cannot be undone. And here we are. But at least—at least, maybe, you can understand why.”

A single tear tracks down her cheek.

If I were tender the way she is with me, I would reach out and wipe it away. But, instead, I pull my hand from hers, draw back.

“This room belonged to my friend Cass.” Paris opens the door.

Inside, now, a man is cleaning a rifle with a long scope, its components laid out beside him.

“She and Milena slept there,” Paris continues, shutting the door gently. “Cass threaded ribbons through Milena’s hair. That is how I recognized Milena’s body. The bright-red ribbons were charred, Helen.”

I do not make a sound.

This, this is history no one else has. Paris has carried it alone, has carried it for so long.

“Paris,” I attempt, but her name does not quite reach my lips.

“This one was Thea’s room, when she was here.” Paris’s voice is hollow as she pushes this door open. “Only Jasmine slept here, after Thea left. If anyone talked about taking Thea’s place, Jasmine would break noses. She was vicious, and she was beautiful, and she died like all the rest.”

“And this—” She chokes. “This was mine . Three of us in this room, because we were the youngest ones.”

And only Paris left alive.

“This was ... this was where I was going to bring you,” she says.

“I was going to take you to Troy, your father’s ships behind me, and drag you up these steps with my knife at your throat.

I wanted your father to see that his wife had left him—that she had played him for a fool.

I wanted to see his rage, and hers. And I wanted them both to see you die. ”

It is a plan as brutal as it is bold, and I should have expected this of her. All that she has done, and I never imagined this.

“No more games,” Paris says, in that hoarse, hollow voice. “Just truth. We have all manipulated you. And I am sorry that I was ever one of them. But I need you to know—everything between us. That was real, Helen. All of it.”

“Paris,” I say at last. It cannot be true, after all these lies. And I will not be taken in by one more.

Her gaze meets mine. “Burn me,” she says.

“What?”

“Lay your charges,” Paris repeats, and now her face is blank and cold, a mask of what it was. “Burn me, Helen, if that’s what you want to do. Kill me, before either of your parents have the chance.”

I stare at her. We are both trembling.

“ Burn me, ” Paris repeats when I say nothing. “If you want me gone, destroy me. Finish what your father and mother began, Helen of the gods.”

Instead, I open my hand, place it over hers.

Palm to palm.

My breath releases, something deep and aching, and Paris—

Paris’s hand is trembling, but the look in her eyes is steady.

I stagger on my feet.

“What can you ever know of a woman like me?” she asks, so gently it is almost tenderness between us again. “What could I ever be to you? Choose Lena, then, if you must. But you will never be free if you do.”

“Paris,” I whisper. “You used me.”

“And you and your family used us all,” she says. “We are all guilty. We are all complicit. But you must decide to be free, Helen of Troy. No one can do that for you.”

“This.” I hold up the ring on my hand. Libertas. “Paris, was this—”

Her face twists with pain. “Real,” she says. “All of it real, Helen.”

“I cannot believe you,” I tell her, my words slow and measured. “My father used me all my life. Milos would have used me, too. But the difference is that I knew when I was being used as a pawn and you, Paris, you almost made me believe I was something more.”

That is the danger of Paris of Troy, that she made me nearly believe I could be something more than that.

“Helen,” my mother calls across the house to me. “Helen, your father has your location, and is sending ships for you. Come. We need to prepare.”

I look back at Paris.

“Go,” I tell her, and it tastes like ash on my tongue.