Page 104 of We Are the Match
I go silent and still, waiting for Paris to tell me it all. “Thank you,” I whisper against her. “For telling me.”
Kore.
The name is a gift, a piece of vulnerability, a piece of Paris she has never shared before.
“Our birthdays were the same week,” Paris tells me, running her fingers up and down my shoulder absentmindedly. “We snuck out together every Friday night and borrowed a boat and cruised around the harbor until we ran out of gas, and then we swam to shore.”
The laugh bursts out of me. “Have youevertaken the subtle approach?”
Her fingers wander lower, trailing a line down my stomach to my entrance, which is still slick with pleasure and tender, too. “You wouldn’t want me to be subtle,” she says.
“Tell me more?” I ask after she lapses into silence.
“She died on a Thursday,” Paris says. “We were going to take a speedboat the next day. We were going to bring her favorite chips, and do our nails bright red, and after we went out on the boat, we were going to one of the bars.”
I have never seen Paris cry. Never imagined I would, or that she could, even.
But one tear snakes a line down her face, dripping off her jaw before I catch it.
I hold her, until she sits up, taking my hand. “Years ago,” she says. Her voice is impossibly tender. “When I had lost everything to the flames, I had three rings made. I melted down a fragment of the bomb that killed us, and I made them from that.”
En morte libertas.One word on each ring, a flame within each band.
“One for myself and my will to survive,” she murmurs, twisting the first. “One for the sisters I could not save.” She twists the second, and then looks at me. “And one for the gods I hated.” Paris pulls the third ring from her finger, the one that readslibertas. Her dark eyes are impossibly soft.
I inhale, sharp and sweet. “Paris.”
Paris hesitates until I hold out my hand to her.
“Wait.” I pull the bracelet from my wrist,Méchri thanátouand hold it out to her. She slides her hand through, eyes shining brightly.
My father gave this to me, after our home burned. I thought, then, that he was right for fighting back, for doing what he did on Troy.
But I know another side to this now. And I know my father cannot be allowed to do what he has done.
“Paris,” I tell her softly. “It has my mother’s slogan on it:Méchri thanátou. Unto death.”
“Helen, I—”
“Let me finish,” I tell her. “It is also the access code. Theonlyaccess code to the cliffside entrance beneath my quarters.”
Recognition flashes in Paris’s eyes as she runs her finger along the edge of the bracelet I have given her, and then she places her ring on my finger, her hands devastatingly gentle where they touch mine.
Paris of Troy has wanted to kill my father since the day he rained down fire and fury upon her sisters.
And I have just given her the key to do it.
Chapter 37
Paris
Helen sleeps heavily, her head tucked against my shoulder. She is flushed and sated, and I ease her down onto her pillow before I slip out from under the covers.
I slide the bracelet back onto my wrist as I look down at her.Unto death, it says. Mine or hers or both of ours.
I stole Helen away. Helen, husband-killer, daughter of gods, bringer of war.
And then I fucked her until she screamed.
