Page 101 of We Are the Match
“All right,” Paris says gently.
“Erin worked for Altea, maybe,” I say. “Altea loves weapons. Maybe Erin was just another one of her weapons. Altea wants to move against my father, and she did, and—”
“And either way, Eris built the grenade used at your engagement party,” Paris continues. “I should have seen it earlier. The solidox and the sugar. The warehouse on Frona’s island—it was where the girls of Troy were trained. My friends spoke of it—Eris spoke of it, when I knew her. A bomb-maker from the Family, they would have access to any resource they could want. But a girl from Troy would be smarter, because she knew scarcity. A girl from Troy would buy something you can get with cash, for minimal resources. Untraceable and easy to make. I knew her, you know? We were—”
Her voice falters.
If Tommy were here, he would put a hand on her shoulder, would call herkid. Would tell us both to rest.
If Tommy were here, Erin and Milos would not be dead, because he would have stopped Paris, stoppedmefrom doing something so monstrous.
But it’s just us, and we are alone, so I take Paris’s hand.
Paris sways—exhaustion and something more. “We were children together,” she whispers, and then she stares down at her hands as if she can hardly believe what they have done. But when she looks up at me, it is the look I saw when I first sat beside her at the bar. Furious and unforgiving. Like there is steel in her, something unbendable, something no one can break, not even a god.
“You heard what she said—when I asked her about Troy.Sacrifices must be made.She sacrificed the wrong people, Helen—and then she set off a grenade beside you. So I killed her.”
The words echo in the small entryway.
The space between Paris and me trembles, and though we are inches apart, there is a gulf between us, as wide as the sea between my home island and hers. Even together on Troy, we are leagues apart.
“Tell me her name again,” I whisper. “Tell me. Tell me.”
Paris steps back, shaking her head, the gap between us widening.
Every centimeter of space between us makes me miss her, and how can this be? We both killed today. The blood is still hardening beneath our fingernails, still slicked on our blades despite the time we spent in the sea.
She tookErinfrom me.
And yet I have never loved anyone as much as I love Paris.
“How could I forgive you for this?” I ask her. And how could I not, when Paris is the other half of my beating heart?
Her lip curls, her loathing for us both. “There are things that can never be forgiven,” she says. “Do you think I will ever forgivemyself? She killed my sisters, and she was my sister. I will never forgive her and I will never forgive myself, Helen of Troy.”
“What is wrong with us?” I whisper.
And this, finally, is what breaks Paris. She barks out a laugh, something furious and guttural I have never heard before.
“What is wrong withus?” she snarls, and then those strong fingers I have dreamed of are wrapped around my arms and she shoves me backagainst the wall. “Youstarted this war. Don’t you see that?You.Over and over and over again. You played god at an engagement party that wasn’t yours—your father killed two people in front of all of us and still you held up his rule. You married a man to solidify an alliance and then made his death amessage. You blow apart everything you touch. And youlikeit.”
And the laugh is a broken thing in her mouth, the jagged edge of our blades.
She is furious and grieving. She hates the Family, and she loves me.
And she isright. Even if it was not my hand on the trigger. Even if I killed Milos for a far more personal reason thanpower. Because it didn’t matter, did it?
I have run from the complicity that is part of the role I was born to. I have run from the bomb-making I learned at my mother’s knee. I have run from it all.
Until Paris.
“Oh, darling,” I say, and I bare my teeth as I smile at her. “Butyoulike it, too.”
And then she is pushing me backward again, but this time one of her hands is between my legs, the heel of her palm spreading me.
The noise I make is not quite human, and I let her push me back through the open door, into the bedroom.
She kicks it shut behind us, and it slams so hard it shakes the house, shakes me, and then when she looks at me, she is positively feral.
