Page 11 of We Are the Match
All the chaos around me, and that is the only thing real, the only thing I am sure of. That Paris is as furious as I am, and that she is furious withme.
And then hands drag Paris from me, Tommy’s hands. Tommy tosses her aside carelessly, as if she is nothing, this woman who stole my drink and laughed at my Family and saved my life.
He kneels over me, hands gentle as he checks each place the glass has marked my skin. “Kid,” he says. “You okay?”
I nod my head.
My neck is sore, a bit of glass has scraped my arm, but there is no head wound, no scorch marks, no jagged gash in my chest.
No blood spooling across the floor where Mama died. Where, tonight, I was meant to die—and not the false death I had planned, the escape to freedom.
I become conscious of the rest slowly:
The guards are holding the crowd back, weapons drawn. They are keeping the peace with the threat of violence, my father’s usual solution. And then Father is rushing down from the dais, arms outstretched to me. My almost betrothed, Milos, is behind him, concern flashing in his blue eyes.
Paris is on her feet, staggering but still standing. I look at her there, wavering, bleeding, and I get the distinct feeling that she would still be standing even if her wounds were much deeper than the surface injuries she sustained. Blood runs down the sharp line of her jaw, but she barely grimaces.
“You okay?” she asks. Her voice is unrefined, a jagged thing that does not belong in a place like this.
I stand.
I am still the one they all came to see.
Every head turned to me, all eyes on me.
Your place,Father said to me.
If my mother was here—well.
If my mother was here, the air would not smell like ash and soot and destruction. As long as she was alive, it was only ever our enemies who suffered like this. It was only ever them who burned.
Now, I lean hard on Tommy’s arm, and I do not tremble. “I’m fine,” I tell Paris, because if I look at my father or if I look at the man he’s marrying me off to, everything in my perfect facade will crack.
But Paris.
Paris, the woman who met my eyes and did not look away. Paris, who told me exactly what she thought of me, of all of us. Paris, who does not belong at this party and walks like royalty despite that.
Paris, with the lighter in her hands and the smirk on her lips.
I am going to die tonight,I had told her.
My gaze falls on the shattered glass, the windows wide open. I could pull away from Tommy and step through them now, waver at the cliff’s edge and then fall.
Few could survive that kind of fall, butIcould. It is a hard dive, but not an impossible one. Not if you know there is a gap between the rocks below, where the landing will just be the hard slap of water and not the breaking crush of the rocks.
And it is the only way I will ever be free.
“What thehellhappened?” Milos asks my father, who looks to Tommy and then me and then Paris.
There is a hole in the wall, and the storm is still raging, rain and hail falling through the gap in the glass, the floor slick as blood. The metal bars that held the windows are bent outward, warped from the heat of the bomb.
My father has that look in his eyes, that barely caged thing in him that came out when the blast killed my mother ten years ago, a mixture of raw violence and determination.
“I intend to find out.” He wheels on another guard, one holding an assault rifle. “No one leaves,” he hisses. “Not until you have searched and questioned every single person.”
I place a hand on my father’s arm, firm and calming. I can feel that, too. I can feel every sensation in my body. I have been able tofeelever since Paris touched me, tackled me to the ground and covered my body with her own.
It was her touch that shocked me back into my body, and I am not sure yet if I missed feeling or if I would like, now, to return to its absence.
