Page 100 of We Are the Match
I stare at her hands, long, lean fingers, her three rings firmly in place. Fingers that could pull a blade across someone’s throat with no effort at all.
And yet fingers I still imagine on—
Me.
She said she had to carry me to shore.
That I capsized the boat.
I remember so little of it.
What I remember, I remember vividly, even though I know it is not, cannot, be true: Erin and Mama and Tommy bleeding on the puremarble floor in the palace at home. Erin and Mama and Tommy with their hands on me, pulling me under the sea.
Come with us,they whispered.For the queen.
And I went under, again and again.
Until Paris pulled me out of the sea.
Until Paris called my name.
My hands tremble violently.
I feel far, far away from my own body.
Paris does not tell me who the safe house belongs to, or how she came to know of it, but it is a well-furnished, two-bedroom cottage. There are clothes in the closet, and a hot shower waiting for me, and I could ask Erin—
I stagger, knees hitting the ground hard.
Paris is at my side instantly.
“Paris,” I say when I have my voice again. “What did you know about Erin? Who did she work for?Why did you kill my—”
My what? Because what was Erin to me, really? We were not friends. She worked for me, and I never really knew her, that much is clear. But still,still, her life meant something to me. Even if we were not friends, not family, not anything more than employer and employee.
Paris closes her eyes, her face pale. “She helped to kill my sisters,” she says, and she cannot look at me. “Sit down.” Paris guides me to a love seat, keeps both hands on my shoulders as she does.
I lean into the touch, catching my breath as best I can. “Tell me what you know.”
She hesitates.
“Helen,” she says finally. “The Trojan family funded that group home—most of the Families have funded something like it, at some point. It is one of many self-serving things they do, but that one—mine—was a training ground for girls who would one day belong to Lena. Her symbol was above our door.”
She says my mother’s name in the same tone as she always says my father’s: with rage, unbending.
But why this much hatred for mymother?
“Mama did not bomb your home,” I say. It is a futile fight, but I stand my ground the same. “That was my father. Not her.”
And how could Mama have bombed a group home after we lost her to a Trojan bomb? None of this makes sense.
Paris’s eyes are distant. “She visited us often.” She runs a thumb up and down the edge of her worn leather jacket. “This was a gift, the last time I—the last time she visited.”
I gasp for air, clutch the jacket with one trembling hand. “You knew my mother?”
“No,” Paris says, unequivocally. “No, we were nothing but her pawns. Even Eris—your Erin.”
“My mother has been dead a decade,” I say. I push myself to my feet, weak-kneed or not. “I won’t hear this, Paris.I won’t.”
