Page 55 of We Are the Match

Paris

In the end, it feels as if we both are burning.

The ballroom where we met crumbles around us.

The windows shatter first, and then Lena is begging, and then she is nothing.

Then she is dust, and they all are dust, weapons and silk and sharp, merciless, beautiful dust. The Families are dust. The gods are dead.

In the end, it is just Helen and me staggering out of the husk of their empire and plunging into the cold, cold sea as it all crumbles before us.

En morte libertas , I tell her, and she smiles.

Méchri thanátou, she answers me.

In the end, it all falls, ash and dust and ash. In the end, the chains of Troy no longer bind me. In the end, Helen leaves the Families behind.

The sea is bright blue, and I cannot feel its cold. Just Helen’s hands, warm where she holds me to her chest.

I tore them down. Every god, every queen.

And the only one left standing—well, she wears my ring now.

We take the boat as far as we can, until we are somewhere in frigid blue waters halfway between Helen’s home and mine.

It is enough, as the world gets dark around me, that I hear the roar of a boat and Thea’s voice and Perce’s mingling with Helen’s.

I will not leave behind another sister, Thea tells me as she hauls us to safety, and then Helen and I are at the bottom of her boat, numb and cold but alive, our bodies curled together as the islands that were once our homes and our prisons fade into memory behind us.

Thea does not say much more to us, and Perce is crying as he presses something against Helen’s wound.

She is not dissociating this time, my Helen. She is here, she is mine, she is holding fast to my hands, and there is pain now on her face. We are damaged and furious and brutal, gods in our own right, though we chose not to be queens.

It is done, and she is mine, and we are free.

The waves lull us, rocking Thea’s boat with a gentleness I do not recognize.

It is enough, to lie in the ashes of Troy and know that this time I was not left behind.

It is enough, that Helen is the last thing I see when I fade from consciousness, that she will be the first thing I see when I wake next.

Helen. Oh, Helen. Whiskey and poppies and rain.

A love that will always burn.

It was never too late for us.