Page 53 of We Are the Match

Helen

My father’s men run while he burns.

He takes a flaming step toward the water, and he is screaming, and he calls my name—and he falls.

I grab Paris’s hand, the flames licking at me, and we plunge into the cold water, together.

When we finally emerge, holding fast to one another’s hands, Paris leans her head against me. She pushes the lighter into my hands once more.

“Keep it,” she tells me.

And I do.

She is hurt, badly enough that I half carry her up these marble stairs where Tommy once had to carry me. Where Paris and I once carried Tommy.

I lay her on my bed, peel the flame-resistant jacket from her body, clean the burned patches of skin on her legs and neck.

“I will go for the doctor,” I tell her. “Now that my father is dead, his physician has nothing to fear if he treats your injuries.”

“Together,” she says wearily. “We go together.”

And she is right. Despite it all, Paris and I?

Where we go, we go together.

There is screaming below, and gunfire, so when I help Paris down the corridor, I cut away from the sounds of it, toward the ballroom.

If Mama is here—

“Forget my injuries,” Paris says firmly as we reach the top of the stairs.

The doctor is only one floor away, and he can see to Paris’s injuries. We need to—

“We need to go now ,” Paris says. “Before it is too late.”

But it is already too late.

Perhaps it has always been.

Because there, below me in the ballroom, the queen has returned home. Lena, flanked by Altea and Frona and Hana. Mama’s face is furious, her weapon on her shoulder.

Like Paris, I can smell it before it fires—not just gunpowder. Acrid and sweet, sharp and brutal. Solidox and sugar, the weapon of a bomb-maker. The tidying of a loose end.

I am moving before I can call it out; I am moving on instinct and instinct alone; I am faster than any god who has walked these islands.

I am hurtling straight into Paris of the island, Paris of Troy, my Paris, my body colliding with hers, covering hers, as my mother’s final weapon finds its mark.