Page 110 of We Are the Match
“But why?” Helen whispers again, despite their embrace. “Why did you leave me with him? Was it because I was impulsive and bad at ruling and because I did not want to touch bombs after I thought I lost you forever? I would have learned, Mama. I would havetried.”
“Oh, my daughter,” Lena says. She sinks down into her chair again. “All of this was for you.Allof it. I hope you see that, sooner rather than later. But I could not be his wife any longer. I had to build on my own, and he would never have let me go.”
I had to build.
Not survive.
Not be free.
No, she left to build an empire she would not have to share.
“No,” I say.
Lena starts, and then stares at me. “No?” she says. “No?”
Helen stares up at me.
Come back,I want to beg her.Come back to your body and to me.
“And what would you know of any of this?” Lena’s voice is ice.
“You faked your death,” I say. “You will not lie to Helen.Everyonelies to Helen. She deserves the truth from you, at least.Youfaked your death, and usedoursto house your new empire, away from Zarek’s eyes.”
“Pray tell.” Lena’s fingers close over the edge of the desk, white at the knuckles with the effort it takes not to rise and strike me. “What truth would you like me to tell Helen next?”
“I will tell you the truth,” I say. I am looking at Helen, and only Helen. “But I want you to know that—I tried, Helen. Before your wedding. Before Tommy. I tried to tell you. I am sorry I did not.”
Helen’s hands are trembling.
“I would have to start from the beginning. You know some of it already. I do not have your way with explosives,” I tell her. “But I had the will to live, and I did. I pushed my sisters out of the way, Helen. I crawled over them and shoved my way through the doors, the last person through before it melted shut. I did not save them. I saved myself.”
Helen reaches for me with the hand that bears my ring, but I step back, shake my head. “You don’t have to,” she says. “Paris, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to relive it.”
“The bombs fell,” I tell her. I am staring straight into Helen’s strange, magic brown eyes. I am falling into them. “Your father bombed all of Troy, and for a time I thought he took his vengeance on our bodies, too, because we were one of Troy’s group homes. Because girls from Troy always served the Trojan Family. So we burned. We burned.”
“But not you,” Helen whispers. “You survived.”
“I survived,” I tell her. “And this jacket—your mother gave me this jacket. It’s the reason I made it out.”
Behind her, Lena smiles, her teeth unnaturally sharp. Her eyes flicker as she watches me.
“I crawled over them as they screamed. As they died. I tried to carry some out. I could not carry them all.”
I twist the rings on my fingers. Three flames. No—only two now. One for those girls I lost. One for my will to survive—and the jacket that kept the wrong girl alive. One for the Families, who thought themselves gods, a ring for those I would hunt down and kill.
I brace myself against the wall, but I could not fall now if I wanted to.
I am as iron as the bars on the window, unmeltable, unbreakable, unburnable. Unbowed.
“Do you know what it is like to smell burning skin?” I ask Helen. “Do you know the smell of charred flesh?”
“Yes,” she says. “I do.”
We are only a meter apart.
We are a thousand kilometers away from each other.
“And that is all there is to tell,” I say finally. “The fire was cruel, but it could not kill me. Nothing could kill me. I crawled out, and I decided to survive.”
