Page 96 of We Are the Match
Helen’s wild eyes seek the horizon. “What has always awaited me?” she says. “War, and war again.”
“But this time,” Erin says, “you move the pieces.”
Erin’s words settle in my stomach with a weight I had not anticipated. Is this what is meant for Helen, to take her place as a god and a catalyst and a power too far removed from the violence to bleed like the rest of us? This is not what I meant by an escape to Troy.
It was meant to be a stepping stone, not a homegoing.
Will they rule, mother and daughter, on the bones of those I once loved?
Because I am not sure I love Helen enough to let that happen.
“Helen,” I say, turning all of it over in my mind. Can I trust her with this knowledge now? Or is it better to wait until we are safelyaway from all of this before I tell her, let her make her choice when the ground is solid beneath her feet and she is far out of both Lena’s and Zarek’s reach?
She lost Tommy today. Killed a husband. Ran away with me.
She will not meet my eyes.
“Come,” I decide. “Rest.”
She hesitates at the bow of the ship, her hands braced against the sides. And then she ducks her head and comes to me and stretches out beside me, her head resting against my thigh, her dark hair spilling across my lap.
“Paris,” she whispers as she closes her eyes.
I brush hair from her cheek, tuck it behind her ear, and wait.
“I just want to be free,” she whispers. “I just want to be free.”
And when she is asleep, and I move her so that she is pillowed on my jacket, I stand.
“When we reach Troy,” I tell Erin, “we flee. That is our plan. Do you understand?”
“You need to finish this,” she tells me. Her eyes fall to my jacket, the gift from Lena that kept me alive all those years ago. “You serve a purpose, too. Just like Helen does.”
My hand slides to my knife. “I have never been meant to fight for these Families,” I snarl at her, but the weight of it hits me.
Isthat what Lena meant by the gift? And if she did, does that mean she knew something long before Zarek’s bombs ever fell?
But I have no time to ask any of it, because Erin poses an immediate problem. An immediate threat. “What is ityouwant?” I ask her.
Erin slows the boat until we are idling in the water. “I want to save Helen,” she says. “I want to save the Family I work for.”
She is looking out at the sea, hands resting on the wheel. She is not threatened by me. She is not afraid.
“Did you?” I ask. “Care about saving us?”
“I did,” she says softly.
“And did you know?” I push, though even asking these questions coats my mouth with ash. “Did you know what would be done to us?”
Did Erin make the kind of call I made to Altea, hoping someone would act? Or did she turn away from our destruction as if we never meant anything?
“Sometimes,” Erin answers me finally, her gaze flicking to Helen and then in the direction of Troy again. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made.”
And it is true. It istrue.
Altea’s girls are bleeding in the fountain.
I am crawling over the remains of my burning sisters.
