Page 49 of We Are the Match

Helen

Paris is gone, and Mama is here, and everything I thought I knew has shifted under me.

Paris, at that party, fiery charm and sharp edges.

Waiting for the right moment to kidnap and kill me.

And how much after that was real? How much after that was just a tool to get close to me until I handed her the key to enter my home and kill my father?

But why— why , did she save me from the bomb? Why was the shrapnel buried in her shoulders instead of mine? Why did she have glass from the windows in her hair, and not me?

Confusion swirls around me, potent and powerful and terrifying.

“Helen?” Mama jars me from my thoughts. “What can you tell me about the explosives you laid in the boats?”

“I did not want my father to follow us,” I tell her. “I laid charges on most of the boats in the harbor—not all, I did not have enough for that. But most. The detonator will need to be used when they are close to shore, though.”

The explosions will not be controlled, or precise. Most likely, they will be bigger blasts than I intend for them to be.

All I am truly confident of, in the end, is that I can pull apart the ships and keep us all safe.

“I know, dearest.” She pats my shoulder gently, and I flinch.

I am not ready for touch. I have not been ready for touch in so long, except for Paris’s hands.

Paris’s hands were somehow different, even if I know how vengeful they are.

“There is so much I want to know about you, love,” my mother says to me. Her hands are so tender, so violent, so unexpected on my shoulders.

I withdraw again, curling inside of myself.

“But today,” she says. “We will protect each other, my child. There are snipers on the roof, and they can take out the first boats. I do not want you to move until all of Zarek’s boats are within range. Would you like me to decide when to use the detonator? I can take it from you now if you like.”

I am to unmake my father’s boats.

It seems so simple. It is simple. I have done it before, made the kind of explosives that could unmake mansions and men.

But all those people on all those ships.

My body shudders, but I do not feel it.

Erin is dying at my feet.

The walls of the ballroom warp with the heat, and I am giving the poppy to Paris.

“Mama,” I say, twisting Paris’s ring around my finger. “I want Paris kept safe. If she is kept safe, I will burn the ships.”

“Darling, we need you to destroy the ships regardless,” Mama says. “I know this is difficult. But I know you can do this. And once you do, your father’s empire will be weakened—weakened enough you can be free of his violence. We will all be free.”

“Except for the ones who die,” I tell her. “They will not be free.”

“ En morte libertas , ” Mama says. “We will all be free after today, dear one. You can do this. You were born for this. And afterward, you will rule at my side.”

Because Paris will kill my father, and Mama and I will burn the ships, and then we will rule in his stead.

That was what I had told Paris I had wanted. It was what I had wanted.

Until they killed Tommy in front of me.

Until Erin died, too, all for this.

Until Paris left.

And what good is it to rule, if I end up alone?

“I do not want—” I stop the words, kill them on my tongue, bitter as ash.

I do not want to rule.

Maybe none of us should rule.

“It hurts,” Mama says. There is something raw in her face suddenly, a pain older than I am. “I know it does. I loved him. Like you loved this Paris. But you will live, and you will be stronger, and you will rule. You will recover, when all this is done.”

“I will not recover from any of this,” I snap. Not from Paris, not from this life I have lived or the violence I have done.

“You will ,” my mother says. Lena. Lena, my mother. Lena, who wants me to destroy every living soul on the fleet that comes for me. “You will survive, and you will rule, because you are Helen, my Helen. You came from me, and I know you.”

Not like this.

It beats in my chest, as sure as anything I have ever known.

As sure as I was last night when Paris asked What do you want?

And I answered you. You. You.

A sharp rap at the door interrupts us, and I rise, my legs still weak from adrenaline. I know what I must do.

Paris’s ring is cold on my finger.

“The first boats are on the horizon,” Altea says.

“Good,” Mama says. “Helen? Are you ready?”

I can see them now—burning girls, and the mother I thought I had lost and Erin and Tommy, his face weighted with sorrow when he looks at me. They are all around me.

You are the power, Paris is telling me. She is killing my father. She is kissing me. She is leaving me behind.

I am meant to uphold Mama’s rule.

I am in the ballroom, speaking gently to survivors of a queen’s grenade. I am taking a husband. I am solidifying someone else’s alliance.

I am meant to support Mama.

You are the power.

“I will,” I promise them. I promise Paris. “I will make sure we are free.”