Page 115 of We Are the Match
Girls who burned.
Girls I crawled over to escape and survive.
Girls and girls and girls.
The marina should be empty, but two people wait for me on the long dock, two people framed against the gray-blue water and grayer sky. I brace for a threat—and then I cannot catch my breath, because after all this time, my family did not leave me behind.
It is Thea at the marina, Perce beside her.
“Troy,” she says.
“You—”
I stare at her.
“Yes,” Thea says. “Where are you going?”
“Are you getting out?” I ask her. “The ships are coming.”
“We know,” Perce says. “We’re trying to evacuate the island.”
“The wholeisland?” I ask them.
“It’s a small island. And not many of them left. All the same, you could stay and help,” Perce says.
Thea shakes her head before I can.
“She has business with the man on the hill,” she says, resignation mixing with the sadness in her voice.
Helen of the gods will be the death of you.
But I had never cared much about that, had I?
Had never cared much if I made it through any of this alive. I had imagined stealing Helen from that party, dragging her to Troy and watching Zarek and Lena crumple as I killed their favorite bargaining chip. But I had not planned for anafter.
I twist my rings on my fingers. Only two rings, now. It is a different grief, a different hollowness in my chest that spurs me on now.
Thea’s face twists. “You know, don’t you? That I grieve them, too?” she asks. “Our girls. I wanted to take them all with me. I wanted to save them. I wanted to saveJasmine. And I didn’t. But I can’t bring them back. I can only live, and hope I honor them by remembering them.”
“And by the way you cared for the living. Like me. I know you looked out for me,” I say. “I know you tried to warn me—about all of this. I wish I had seen your kindness for what it was.”
There is no anger in her eyes when she looks back at me. Just sadness, a decade of it. “I always thought if anyone could make it this far,” she says softly. “It would be you.”
“Live, Thea,” I tell her finally, stretching out my hand toward her.
She clasps it, her grip firm. “You too, Troy.” She hesitates, and then pulls me in, her hug fierce.
Family, after all this time.
Chapter 42
Helen
Paris is gone, and Mama is here, and everything I thought I knew has shifted under me. Paris, at that party, fiery charm and sharp edges. Waiting for the right moment to kidnap and kill me. And how much after that was real? How much after that was just a tool to get close to me until I handed her the key to enter my home and kill my father?
But why—why, did she save me from the bomb? Why was the shrapnel buried in her shoulders instead of mine? Why did she have glass from the windows in her hair, and not me?
Confusion swirls around me, potent and powerful and terrifying.
