Page 42 of We Are the Match
Kill him.The thing inside me roars.Kill him here.
Not yet,the whisper that follows, the logic, the thing that has helped me survive.Take her first.
I straighten my shoulders.
I bleed.
I have felt pain worse than this before, pain unimaginable to a man like him. I have felt worse, and I havesurvived.
I press my free hand around the bloody stump of my finger to stanch the bleeding. Spine straight. Bloody, unbowed.
He leans back in his chair, his expression calmer. No, more than calm. Sated, as if he has just eaten a meal, as if I was the feast.
I bleed.
I lean forward, closing the gap between us again, closer. Closer.
I bleed.
How do you rip power from the hands of a god?
“You will have a name,” I say, closing my hand over my severed finger.You will bleed.
You will lose all of this.
And then you will bleed.
And then I stand, bleeding, unwavering, and stalk out of the room without waiting for a dismissal.
I take my severed finger with me.
Tommy follows, catching my good arm without speaking. He helps me into the elevator and then down to the doctor, the same silent man who checked me over for injuries after the party.
I clench my free hand into a fist, and I do not scream when the doctor begins his work.
I let pain roll over me in waves, and I plan until the pain—or whatever pain meds the doctor gave me—takes me under, until blackness opens up and swallows me whole.
Zarek cut off my finger.
Before I end him, I will take his whole fucking hand.
Chapter 14
Helen
Tommy takes me aside on the rooftop garden and tells me, in a few words, about Paris. About what my father did to her.
Her finger, just her finger,he tells me, but everything is suddenly muted—Tommy’s voice, the wind, the crash of the surf below.
Paris. Brave, brutal Paris, who compels me even as I do not fully trust her.
“Come back to me, kid,” Tommy is saying gently. “Come back.”
I think, for a moment, of what I could do. If, instead of running, I took my father’s place on the throne. I could do it. I could lay the charges. Hide the explosives, the way my mother taught me. That I could lay waste to anything, even something that is supposed to be a home. He puts his hand on my arm, and I jerk backward. “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t be gentle with me right now.”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I will always be gentle with you,” he says.
I am trembling as he guides me to one of the chairs.
