Page 108 of We Are the Match
Helen, my Helen, what will you choose now?
Helen, my Helen, I am sorry.
Helen opens her mouth and closes it again. Just yesterday, she killed her husband and blew up a boat and fucked me in a bed that was not our own, but all the power I saw yesterday has vanished, and she is silent and still.
Be with me,I pray to her silently.
The way you would pray to a god.
When she finally speaks, it is a word that destroys all of us, a vulnerable, raw thing that bursts from her like she cannot stop it:
“Mama.”
Lena does not flinch, does not move at all. Something flickers in her eyes, just once, a flame she has long ago learned to control, and then it disappears.
“My darling,” she says, her voice as detached as Helen’s. She holds out her hands to her daughter. She is striking, this mother of Helen, the structures of their faces similar, though the queen’s eyes are harder and sharper, and a long scar slashes her face from above her right eye down her cheek. “May we speak in private?”
There is no hug, no welcome, no reunion, not even an acknowledgment that Lena has spent a decade pretending to be dead, even to the daughter she just calleddarling.
But Helen allows her hands to be taken.
Allows herself to be led away.
Helen.Oh, Helen.
Was it worth it, everything I have done to get this far? Everything I have done to bring ushere? I wish my sisters were here, that I could ask them. Would they have built an entire life on revenge, like I have? Or would they have moved on long ago?
The rest of us are left staring at one another in the entryway to my old home. Myhome.
If I were to look closely, I would see the echoes of the girls who died at the windows here.
Milena, a blue sash tied around her waist, twirling in the sunlight that filtered through the bars.
Thea’s first love, best friend, Jasmine, hogging the bathroom so she could look in the mirror as she twisted her braids up around her head like a crown. Cass, slamming her fist against the door and demanding that Thea and Jasmine fuckinghurry. And Kore, sitting still as one of the older girls braided her hair into twists.
It hurts to think of Eris, here.
Were they yours?I had asked her.
She needed a place,Eris had said. As if we were worth nothing if it meantLenacould rebuild.
I make for the hallway, to follow Lena and Helen.
Altea blocks my path. “They need to speak first. Privately.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “I’m staying with Helen.”
Altea arches an eyebrow at me. “I can see why Zarek took your finger from you,” she says. “That isn’t my style, but if it was, I would have taken your whole hand.”
“I would have taken more,” Frona says. She is watching me coldly, cruelty in her eyes that reminds me of Zarek. “I might still if you are not careful, little one.”
Hana alone smiles at me. “I like it,” she says. “I like your spirit. Always have. Even when you stole my robe.”
“And your locket, too?” I grin at her. In another life, I would have liked her, too. In a life where she was not a god and a war criminal.
Hana freezes, a blush creeping up her face. “I liked you less for that.”
I push by Altea then, ignore the handgun strapped to her hip and the flicker of anger in her eyes. I find Helen in the old headmaster’s office, where I was often sent, Kore at my side, to be lectured or otherwise punished.
