Page 93 of We Are the Match
I crouch beside him. My dress is as red as the sunset sky.
“Milos,” I say gently. “It will be all right.”
He stares up at me, wide-eyed.
I cup his neck with one hand, so gently he relaxes beneath my touch. “I promise,” I say.
And then I draw my knife across his throat, and I do what Paris threatened to do. I spill his blood across the marble, let it flood himand surround him, and I watch his eyes until the last bit of fury and fear disappears.
This was not a fight. This was not an honorable kill, not the kind Paris or Tommy would have carried out. No, Tommy was a soldier, his kills clean, painless. Paris is a survivor, her kills in self-defense—or for Troy.
But I am not a soldier or a survivor.
No.
I am a god, and this was an execution.
And I am not sorry.
I hesitate, blood trickling across my golden sandals and bare feet. I crouch there a second longer, watch blood drip over the side of the balcony, slide down the marble toward the sea.
My husband is dead.
I reach out a finger, dip it in the blood, and then I write.
A message for my father, who used me to ensure his own power over and over again.
A message for Marcus, who threatened me on this very balcony.
Now it is my turn to tell a story, to break an alliance, to burn it all down. If I was never meant to take my father’s place, then at least he will know he has made himself a new enemy.
So I leave him a threat, my message in Milos’s blood. My bedroom a battlefield.
From the queen.
Act Three: Torch Song
Chapter 33
Paris
When Helen arrives at the boat launch, she is not the woman I knew. She is someone else entirely.
She walks slowly, regally. My knife is bloodstained in her hands. Her dress—the new, soft one she had slipped into—is matted with gore. Her feet are bare and wet, as if recently washed.
She sees me staring and looks at me with dark, unworried eyes. “I made sure they knew,” Helen says, “who Zarek has made an enemy today.”
As if this answers my questions at all.
As if I want to understand anything but why Helen returns to me dressed in blood.
“Helen.” My voice cracks. “What did youdo?”
“He killed my family,” Helen says. “He deserved it, Paris. As they all do.”
This, then, is the kind of queen she would be.
“He did,” I say. “He took Tommy from you.”
