Page 10 of We Are the Match
My own heart thunders against my rib cage, so hard it is almost painful.
“And who would dare kill the princess?” I ask.
Because shecan’tknow.
Can she?
Helen is still smiling, but the look in her eyes is distant now. She is far away from me, far out over the stormy blue sea beyond the windows.
“What is ityouwant, Paris?” she asks.
You,I almost answer.At my mercy.
“An introduction,” I tell her after a beat. “To your father.”
Disappointment flashes in her face, sharp and clear before her expression smooths over, and then she steps back toward the great windows looking out over the sea, alone on the symbol carved into the marble floor, a Z and an L, tilted and interwoven. Zarek and Lena. Their family, their godship, their love for each other, immortalized in marble.
How fitting that Helen will die on the anniversary of the bomb that started it all.
They will crowd Helen soon, but now, just briefly, she stands alone, framed by windows that open to the yawning mouth of sea and storm. She looks almost wistful.
I am going to die tonight.
What is it you are planning, Helen of the gods, or what is it you have learned? What bloody nightmare will these families unleash tonight?
It is the right moment for something, though. The moment Zarek will call for everyone’s attention, when Milos will descend the steps and kneel in front of Helen, ring in hand. When she will pretend to be surprised, ecstatic, perhaps a little teary but still somehow perfectly composed. She will smile for the first time tonight—other than the smile she sneaked me when I stole the whiskey from her soft, perfect hand—and the guests in the room will fall even more in love with her than they already are.
It isZarek’smoment.
Except it is alsoHelen’s.
Except Helen is alone for a breath of time that lasts too long, and I smell something faint, something out of place, something devastatingly familiar.
I flick my lighter open out of habit, but the soft comfort of its click cannot calm me. Because this smell, it is an acrid smell, like flame, like—
bomb.
I am moving before I can call it out; I am moving on instinct and instinct alone; I am faster than guard and god alike. Because Helen ismine.
I am hurtling straight into Helen of the mansion, Helen of the island, Helen of the gods, my body colliding with hers, just as the windows behind us explode in a shower of glass.
Chapter 4
Helen
The woman is on top of me, and the shards of glass are in her back and her neck and her head and in my bare arms and I am bleeding and I feel it. Ifeelit.
I feel, for the first time in years.
I feelher.
Paris on top of me, her body covering mine in a wall of lean, hard muscle. Her hands are braced on either side of my head, her knee digging into my thigh, pinning it to the marble floor beneath her.
There is screaming, incoherent and distant. The only thing in the world is Paris, is me, is glass on the floor and the storm outside now audible, now raging at us for believing we could keep it out.
Her eyes are blazing.
She isfurious.
