Page 52 of We Are the Match

Paris

The guards are surrounding Zarek now, protecting him, one wrapping the stump of his arm, and I think as I kneel there that maybe I survived just for this—maybe I survived the bombs so that I could be a grenade unto myself, breaking apart the people and systems that killed us.

A guard presses his handgun to my temple.

The barrel is cold, the hand that holds it steady.

But I am not afraid.

“Shall I, sir?” the guard asks.

“No,” Zarek snarls. “No, I want her to die slowly.”

Beside me, Helen is quiet, steady, the way Tommy was on the rooftop. She is holding fast to my hand.

I grin at Zarek, sharp teeth and cold, sated fury.

“Who are you loyal to, Troy?” he asks me. “Who sent you? Do you work for my wife, too?”

“ I sent me,” I tell him. “I am the girl you could not burn. And I come on behalf of my sisters.”

Does it matter which of them laid the charges, in the end? Zarek bombed the rest of Troy. We were all collateral to them. We were all disposable.

“Bring down her gas can.” Zarek stops, tilts his head. He looks hungry now. “Pour the gasoline over her.”

Helen squeezes my hand, cold metal there.

My lighter returned.

Helen, my Helen, telling me to end him.

And this is his undoing, that he wants to see me suffer, that he thinks he has any power to make me suffer. That he has not felt, or suffered, or burned and burned and burned just to stay alive.

And so he does not understand the way I smile at him, does not understand that I am not here for their wars or their power. I am here for Helen, but more than anything I am here for me .

If he will not let us go, then I will end what he began.

One guard—just a boy, just a boy, like all of them, I realize—sloshes the gasoline. It soaks my jacket, soaks my boots and my hair and my skin, every inch of it. I let them take my knives, and I do not struggle.

So when I stand and step forward slowly, they do not think to stop me.

I am not a threat anymore; of course I am not.

I am a girl, I am shit from Troy, and it is only as I embrace Zarek, wrap my arms around him as if he is a long-lost family member and I am but coming home, that they realize what I intend to do.

The gasoline I am covered in soaks his clothes, soaks him and me and everything, everything, everything.

Beside me, the burning girls are smiling, skin dripping from their exposed jaws.

My rings must feel cold on the back of his neck when I pull him close. One for the girls I lost. One for my forceful will to live. I whisper in his ear: “ En morte libertas .”

I look to Helen. She is standing, too, her eyes flickering as she looks at me.

“Helen,” I say.

She nods.

“No—” Zarek says, and there it is, there it is , the whimper of fear in his voice and—

I flick my lighter open.