Page 9 of We Are the Match

Helen

The sea is a siren below me, calling for me as I stand on the balcony far above the raging water. The doctor has left, Erin has left, and I am finally, blissfully alone.

Could I jump from here? Make them think I had fallen, make them wonder why?

My father would tie up loose ends with Paris, of course, and that bothers me more than it should.

I can still go, after her investigation concludes. And she is not connected to the Families, has no loyalty to any one of them in particular, so maybe—with the right money, the right leverage—I can even convince her to help me disappear.

I close my eyes and I feel it. I feel the way the water thunders against the cliff, feel it thundering in my chest. I can feel the cold of the guardrail against my bare arms, the firm, smooth marble beneath my feet.

What spell did Paris cast on me that sensation has rushed in like a wave and demands my presence here?

It is disorienting, deeply, but so is everything about Paris.

I can feel the silk robe against my legs, smooth and recently shaved. I can feel the bruises, too, on my back, my arms, where Paris knocked me to the floor to shield me from the glass, the bomb. I can feel the raised welt that her knee left in my thigh, and I want more .

And more than anything, I can feel the warped, round metal in my hand that says from the queen .

My father’s investigators collected most of the pieces and took them downstairs to start the work of tracing the materials, to follow the dark paths they must walk to find answers for him.

But this fragment, with its beautifully carved letters. This fragment I keep for myself.

I press my body harder against the railing. I feel. I feel .

I can just barely see the nearest island in the distance.

Twin islands, they called us.

My island, and Troy.

One for the gods and one for the monsters.

And it is where Paris—drink-stealer, investigator, savior—is from. It is my mother’s home island, but I have never visited—not before the violence, and not after the skirmishes that obliterated most of the city.

I turn from the balcony. An idea pulls at me, sharp and ugly.

I retreat from the balcony momentarily. The guard outside my suite is young, sandy-haired and too nervous to look directly at me.

“Is Marcus still in the house?” I ask him.

“Marcus?” the guard asks blankly. “Not Milos?”

I bristle. “ Marcus, ” I repeat. “Send him here. I need to speak with him.”

The guard nods as I shut the door, and I return to the balcony, watching the waves and wondering, wondering just what Marcus would do if he thought I was a threat to his brother.

Waves crash below me as I pace, hand on the guardrail until I stop again, leaning out to look on the night-dark water below.

“Careful.”

I whirl around. Marcus. Marcus, the younger brother, the violent one, the brother of my fiancé. He is owed my civility, my smiles.

I must not bare my teeth.

I must not snarl.

I must not lose control, not now that I have laid a trap as surely as if I had set a tripwire at the door.

“Are you advising yourself?” I ask coolly, but I wear the smile that I must as I slip the piece of the grenade into my pocket. There is an idea burning there, something snagged on the sharp edges, the gold plate to the grenade. There is something to the smell of this that is familiar, that is—

“My brother is looking for you,” Marcus says, but his smile is a sharp, waiting thing. He places a hand on the guardrail, too close to me. “Your father asked us to see to you. But when your guard found me, he said it was me you asked for.”

I do not flinch or move away. I stand tall, meet him eye to eye. He must know I would throw him into the sea before I would allow him to touch me. It is not this kind of meeting between him and me, not tonight and not ever.

“Kind of you to help your brother.” I gentle my tone. “I hope you are well after the disturbance this evening?”

It is a challenge, but he does not see it.

When Mama was alive, she taught me how to conceal a knife beneath my robe. When she was alive, she taught me how to use it.

My hand moves slowly down to the gap in my robe, the gentlest tilt toward violence. If I can no longer bear to use the explosives I once loved, then at the very least I can use this knife.

And now, if Marcus touches me, I will take his hand from him.

For a second, he leans closer.

I pull the knife free of its sheath, still tucked beneath the folds of my robe.

Just right to center of the chest, upward angle beneath the ribs. And then twist, my love. Always twist the knife.

And then Marcus steps back. “Of course,” he says. “I wanted to congratulate you, Helen. My brother ... my brother is a good man.”

“He is.” I wait, lengthening the pause, my eyebrows rising just a hairline.

Not enough to be openly rude, just enough to make him feel like I am waiting for him to continue.

Because I want more. I want to know , to know exactly what Marcus thinks of me.

To know if he, perhaps, is making his own moves to clear the playing field, to ensure I have no living allies once I have married his brother.

To set up Altea or Hana or Frona for something he has done.

“My brother,” Marcus repeats. “Helen, my brother loves you. Do you know that?”

He should not. If Milos were from this world, he would not have hopes that an alliance could ever be more.

“Of course,” I tell Marcus.

“Milos deserves—well, you know,” he says. “I am ... protective. Of my brother, of our family. Of our interests .”

“As you should be,” I murmur, leaning in a little as he spills more of himself in front of me. “We are all protective of our families, Marcus.”

“Ah,” he says. “Yes. This is the part where my brother would say to keep things civil, pretend we are talking about our kin when I am talking about threats. Your father’s fixers will look outside of his family for a threat.

But if I find you staged any part of this—that you are planning to overthrow your father’s rule and use my brother as a plaything along the way—”

He steps closer, and my knife flashes in the dark between us.

I hold it the way Mama taught me, fingers wrapped around the hilt, tip of the blade just under his throat. “The only one looking for a plaything is your brother.”

So it was not Marcus playing with my life and the lives of all the partygoers, then. Unless he is more skilled at this game than he lets on.

Marcus’s intake of breath is sharp, his broad chest rising and falling, corded muscle beneath his tailored suit. He is smiling now, an expression as beautiful and dangerous as us both. “Well,” he breathes. “There is more to you than the pretty plaything, then.”

“Get out of my room, Marcus.” I press the knife in just slightly, a bead of blood appearing at the end. “I have learned all I have wanted.”

He does not flinch. Instead, he smiles back at me, looking at the blade as if death is a companion he is well used to.

Finally, he takes a step back. “Good night, Helen,” he says, and then he is gone.

When he leaves, I call for the guard outside my door. It is on the tip of my tongue to send for Tommy, but he would not approve of me playing this game with Marcus, so I do not call for him, after all.

“Can you get me out of this house undetected?” I ask the young guard standing in my doorway.

He opens his mouth and then shuts it again, and then nods.

In the early days after my mother’s death, bold recklessness drove me more than it does these days: I would sneak out at night, down through the passageway beneath my room, to the boat in the hidden cove that only Tommy, my father, and I know about.

But this is simpler: many cars are coming and going tonight. I will not be noticed.

“Yes?” the boy-guard answers faintly. “I think I can?”

“Go and get a car ready, and then come back for me,” I tell him.

I call Tommy as soon as the boy is gone. He answers on the second ring.

“Kid,” he says.

“I’m sorry to bother you—”

“Skip the apologies,” Tommy says. “I figured you’d be shaken up tonight.”

“Keep an eye on Marcus,” I say.

“Already doing that,” Tommy says. “Any particular reason why?”

I cannot lie to Tommy, so the news that Marcus was in my room will not be kept forever, but at least—for tonight—I will keep him at bay.

“I don’t know what his angle is,” I say. “And I need to. He’s volatile, and he might pose a problem.”

My father used to say that to my mother—but about me.

Volatile, he called me, because I was emotional where they were both controlled.

Once, when a girl I had been dating had been killed in an attack by a small rival Family, I had laid charges at the Family’s marina and blown it all to hell.

There was more along the way, of course. More volatility. More death. More loss.

My parents were only annoyed that my recklessness cost them trade partnerships.

Tommy was the only one who seemed to care about the humanity of it—who cared to teach me any different.

“I’ll do my best,” Tommy tells me now. “But we should talk about your investigator.” The warmth returns to his voice as he talks about Paris.

My cheeks are strangely hot. “What about her?”

“Are you going to have her chase after Marcus, too?” he asks. “Or are you just going to keep giving her flowers?”

I choke and then cough. “That was—Paris saved my— Tommy .” I shake my head even though he cannot see it. “I’ll tell her. I think.”

“Don’t trust her too fast,” he says, his voice heavy again.

“She is dangerous. You know I’m not wrong about that, Hel.

So give her flowers all you like, but don’t trust her until I find out more about her, you hear me?

She’s too young to really have connections to the old cartels, but let me make certain before you get in too deep. ”

If he had given orders to me like this in front of my father, my father would have made him bleed for the insubordination.

But Tommy is right.

And Paris is dangerous. She looked at me with violence in her eyes when she stole my whiskey, with fury when I pressed the poppy into her hand. Even when she saved my life, she stared down at me with fire in her gaze.

So no, I do not trust Paris. Even if she mesmerizes me.

“I trust no one,” I tell Tommy. “Except for you.”

“All right,” he says finally. “Are you going to be okay tonight? Do you want me to come up?”

“No,” I say, a little quickly. “No, no, get some sleep.”

“Night, kid,” he says. “You call me if you need anything.”

Soon after I hang up, the young guard returns.

“There’s a car downstairs, ma’am,” he says, ducking his head. “Where to?”

Everything blurs, pain pounding at the edges of my temples like a drum.

Mama died today. Paris tried to shield her from the blast with her body, and the glass got stuck in her dark hair.

Father started a war. I am eighteen, cowering in fright as bombs go off throughout my home.

I am twenty-eight and Paris is saving my life.

I am then and I am now. I am Helen and the memory of her. I am Helen and the idea of her.

I am no one at all.

The glass shatters.

I give the poppy to—

“Paris,” I tell him. “Find me Paris of Troy.”