Page 54 of We Are the Match

Paris

The blast hits Helen.

That is the cruelty of it.

A weapon meant for me—Lena’s weapon. But it does not matter now. It will never matter.

Because Helen is slumped over me, and she is bleeding, and burned from the flames and—

“Paris.”

She smiles up at me, wearily. So wearily. “Paris,” she says. “Listen to me, my love.”

“No,” I say, because the sound of her voice is goodbye , and I had only snatches of time with her, rooftop gardens and warehouses crumbling and one perfect, perfect night. “ No , Helen.”

“Move,” she tells me, and then she coughs, and there is blood spilling over her lips and down her chin. “They will fire again. Unless you go and finish them.”

The tears are hot on my face, and I pull her close to me, cradle her against me as she cradled Tommy. “Helen.” I am begging, I am begging, but she just shakes her head.

She coughs again, weakly this time, but her eyes are bright. “Paris of the gods,” she says. “Will you let me watch?”

More blood is running down her jaw now.

And something settles within me.

“After everything,” Helen says, holding out her hand to me. “I want to see you finish what we began.”

There is something gold in her hand. Something round and smooth and beautiful.

The weapon of a queen.

Helen

The queens do not deserve a warning. Not even my mother.

When Paris rises, pulling me with her, I see their faces. Their waiting weapons.

I descend.

There is silence, and beside the glittering, living souls who are here to rule stand the dead.

There is glass shattered across the floor, strewn in bloody fragments. Tommy is there at the center, empty-eyed and bleeding. The soft clink of ringed hands is the gentlest kind of violence.

I descend.

I am a sharp shard, the bent metal of the doors blown in, blood spilled across the killing fields of Troy beneath my mother’s feet. I am the glittering shrapnel they forgot to sweep up.

I descend.

The room is a mausoleum to me, and still they do not see the threat, not until I pull the pin in my gold-plated grenade, hold it in my hand a moment too long as I have always done, so that by the time it bounds down the stairs to reach them, it is too late.

Too late to run. They do not see the threat, not until the queens crumble before me, one by one by one.

I descend.

I am Helen. I am half god, half girl, half fury, half grief.

I am the one who will be free.