Page 8 of We Are the Match

“Someone blew up your party and you’re desperate to—”

I am propelled backward off my feet until I am pinned against the wall, my head slamming into an oil painting of Lena.

Zarek holds me there, one hand around my throat, my feet dangling above the ground.

His face is expressionless, almost calm, but the flicker in his eyes betrays him. “You will show me respect ,” he hisses. His breath is hot on my face. Perhaps it is only my imagination, the fear and fury tricking my own brain, but in this moment his breath smells of ash and burning flesh.

“You will follow orders,” he continues. “And if you fail, I will send your head back to Troy and leave the rest of you for the crows.”

He releases me.

My knees buckle when my feet hit the floor, and I stagger.

A smile flickers across Zarek’s face but does not linger.

“I have already had Marcus and Milos investigated,” he says conversationally, as if he had not just pinned me against the wall by the throat.

“They are under surveillance even now, but they are no threat to my power, and there is no chance my daughter will have loyalty to them over me. My daughter ... my daughter is largely uninterested in the power we hold. But she is loyal to me . She has no one else.”

The truth burns in my throat, the ache of withholding the truth: that it is not as true as Zarek believes. That there is someone else, and if Helen knew—well, she might not be so easy to use.

“But you sent them away anyway,” I rasp. “To talk to me alone.”

Surprise flashes in his eyes.

I do not show fear. I do not feel fear.

If I practice this enough, it will be true.

“You fascinate me, Troy.” Zarek surveys me, head tilted. “I had you pinned to the wall, and you only looked angry . Is that why my daughter spoke to you tonight? Did you fascinate her, too?”

He makes me sound like someone’s toy. Someone’s object.

All of us on Troy were. It was the smallest of the islands, never much of a city even in its most prosperous days. But Troy was the home of a rival, so when he was furious, his violence consumed it. Even the group home. Even the girls inside.

“I think Helen was just bored,” I tell him.

“Yes.” Zarek’s tone is frigid. “Well, you have already wasted enough of my time. Be on your way, and be discreet, little fixer. Find me this queen.”

From the queen.

It is all pretentious bullshit—the party, the gold-plated modified grenade, the type of woman who labels herself a queen. But when it is time, this work I am doing will bring me their heads on a fucking platter.

I nod. “I’m sure you already know where to find me,” I tell him. I shove one hand into my pocket and find the poppy there. My fingers linger.

Helen.

Oh, Helen.

“I do.”

I am not afraid. My fingers clench around the poppy.

“Would you like the doctor to attend to you?” Zarek asks. “You look a bit ... scraped.”

It’s an understatement: I look like shit. Absolute shit. There is glass in my arms, and my pride wants me to stalk out of this room and ignore his offer, but years of paying my own bills stills me.

“Yes,” I say.

“As thanks for saving my daughter—”

“Didn’t you already thank me?” I gesture to the fingerprints around my throat, already purple.

There is a small smile on his face.

The gods like when their playthings fight back. It amuses them.

“You have boldness, Troy,” he says. “You remind me of a woman I once knew.”

The doctor patches up my injuries, and then leaves me. I have memorized the floor plan, so now I walk the halls. I can feign confusion when a guard finds me. I can pretend I am lost.

I have enough favor, for saving Helen, to talk my way around a guard.

I am going to die tonight.

En morte libertas .

I still have her poppy in my pocket, the memory of us tangled up on marble, limbs crashing together, glass shattering. We were a damn cacophony. And what was it Helen knew, moments before a bomb went off? Does she know the queen? Is she making a move to become one in her own right?

She was famous, once, for the explosives she and Lena made together, though it was said Helen stopped making them altogether after the Trojan bomb destroyed her home.

The mansion, the party, the grenade, Helen—all of it runs through my mind on a loop. It would take a dozen of my tiny studios to fill one room in Helen’s mansion. I imagine what her bedroom must look like for the briefest of minutes before I stop myself.

I find my way to the floor below her wing of the house, a long, mostly empty room with an easel and paints that are covered in dust, a lounge chair, a long mirror. Someone’s studio, once.

I am not directly below; her balcony is several rooms over, partially visible from where I stand.

I push back the curtain so that I can see her balcony, the length of it extending out from the house, over the white cliffs and the raging blue waters below.

Helen stands there, curves barely concealed by a black silk dressing gown. She is barefoot, lips slightly parted, gazing out at the sky.

I can imagine her room, even if I cannot see more than the balcony and the window into the room.

Silk that smells of whiskey and vanilla. Glass skylights and rain. Poppies at the bedside.

Bare skin, tangled sheets.

Hot breath against my neck.

I crumple the poppy in my fist.

Damn all the gods.

Especially the beautiful ones. Especially the one that’s mine .