Page 99 of We Are the Match
The sister—the bomber—I did.
Helen and Paris, running away to Troy and leaving destruction in our wake.
And what was it all for, if it was never Zarek to blame for the murder of my sisters?
And what does it say that despite this new knowledge, I still want to take his hand from him for what he did to me?
It takes nearly an hour to swim all the way to shore, and Helen does not move, not even when my muscles are aching and I shout her name in frustration.
Nothing.
Eyes wide, staring at the sky. Her lips move, as if in prayer, but she makes no sound.
But I didn’t start the war, Helen.
I was just tired, so tired, of dying in them.
I left Erin’s body behind where the boat capsized, and I wonder if it floats there still. If it sank, weighed down by the leather she wore. I wonder. I wonder until it claws at the fraying edges of me, the wondering and theifs.
We reach land at last, a narrow strip of it covered in underbrush and broken glass.
I pull Helen to shore, and she shudders. She sits up, but her eyes focus far beyond us, unseeing, and then she stands, staggers back toward the sea as I clamber out, exhausted, dripping.
She does not see me.
She does not see anything.
The ground beneath her feet seems to shake, her first footsteps on Troy already destructive. But no, no, that is just the vertigo from being violently capsized when Helen slammed into the edge of the boat. Still, it feels like an omen of worse ahead of us, this feeling of the earth shaking and spinning when we arrive on Troy.
“Helen.” It is my voice that stops her, splits the air like a gunshot.
She pauses, and then finally, finally, her eyes find me.
We are facing each other, two killers, and we are blazing, faces inches apart.
“Paris,” she whispers. “What did youdo?”
Helen is dangerous,Thea had warned me, just weeks ago. Centuries ago. Eons ago.
Helen is as she was then: dressed in luxury, smelling of rain.
Blood and beauty. Grace and grief.
I am the one who is different: bloody hands, sister-killer, loving the god I swore to kill.
It has always been too late for me.
Chapter 36
Helen
Paris spends nearly an hour gathering our belongings from the churning sea—at least what she can salvage, including the worn leather bag that holds the supplies I brought with us.
Mama had that bag first, and then me, one of the only belongings of hers I have left.
After Paris salvages what she can, she finds us a safe house and her voice is quiet but firm, as if she knows the sound is the only thing keeping me from coming apart.
She killed Erin.
