Page 111 of We Are the Match
“Ah, ah, ah,” Lena reproves gently, her fingers ghosting over the dagger I know is concealed at her hip. “Do not forget the rest of it, Parisof Troy. You had a purpose, once. I gave you that jacket, and I expected loyalty in return. But instead you never sought out a single job with the Families. You never joined us. And if I could not have the loyalty I am owed for saving your life, I will at least have the truth for my daughter.”
“Oh, the rest?” My laugh is coated in ash as I twist the rings on my fingers, around, around, around. “That I grieved, and I waited, and when I realized your mother was alive, I began to plan. Did you know, Helen?” I ask. “Did you knowshebombed us? Your father bombed Troy, and at the time I thought the group home was just a casualty of it. But Lena was the one who needed a hideout where Zarek would never look. And Lena and her bomb-maker—Erin—made sure she had one.”
Helen gasps. “That’s not true,” she says. “Paris, you can’t—that’s not true.”
“You heard what Erin said,” I tell Helen. Because after all this, even if I do not have my revenge, even if I lose Helen because of this, I need her to know exactly who Lena is. I need her tobelieveme. “She needed to build.Erin wasn’t talking about Altea, or Frona, or Hana. I know you wanted that to be true. I know, Helen. Iknow.”
“That’s enough,” Lena cuts me off. “Helen, she lies and manipulates just the way your father always did. I want the whole truth, Paris of Troy. Did you not realize I was watching you all these years? Did you really think I would give you a gift like that if I did not think you would be of use to us? No, Paris. No. Tell my daughter what you were planning to do with her.”
“When I knew your father was responsible for what happened to my sisters,” I finish slowly. I meet Helen’s gaze again. There is an ocean of grief and loss between us. “I knew your mother had rebuilt on my sisters’ grave. So I began to look for a way. A way to get to Helen of the gods, the best bargaining chip Zarek and Lena have ever had. Because one day, I would bring her here to Troy, and kill her in front of them both, and on that day I would give all the burning girls of Troy their revenge.”
Chapter 40
Helen
I have long known that Paris wanted revenge. I had known that she hated our Families. I know she was furious, I know she grieved.
But we were more than these games, and shelovedme.
Maybe not at first, but now.
Doesn’t she? Was I ever—
“She wanted tokillyou,” Mama tells me. “Do you understand that, my love? It doesn’t matter what she has told you since. She was planning to hurt you.”
Paris wavers on her feet for the first time since I have known her. “No,” she says. “Helen, I tried to tell you—”
It is hard to know who is lying to me now, when so many have. It is hard to know if I can trust Paris when she told me something so gutting, so cruel, that I cannot bear it. My father, responsible for bombing young girls? That I could believe. But my mother? It is unthinkable.
But there was truth in the way Paris touched me last night, and I no longer know what to believe.
“I did come to your party to kill you,” Paris tells me. “But I did not—I did not expect ... this. Us.”
She was there to kill me.
And I was there to die.
There was never any other ending for us.
I laugh, the sound a detached, strange thing I scarcely recognize.
“You have always been a threat to me,” I say. My hands are trembling, but I scarcely feel it. “But Tommy couldn’t do anything, I wouldn’t let him, because you were a threat I—”
“Loved,” Mama finishes the sentence. “Paris was a threat you loved.”
Loved.
Loved.
Past tense.
Because it has to be this way, doesn’t it? Because I was a piece in her games, and in my father’s? Because she was a piece in mine, and in my mother’s?
Because the only one who has not played with me was my mother, who faked her own death to protect me from all of this.
“Helen,” Paris whispers.
“Don’t,” I say. A sob catches in my throat.
