Page 113 of We Are the Match
It is a plan as brutal as it is bold, and I should have expected this of her. All that she has done, and I never imagined this.
“No more games,” Paris says, in that hoarse, hollow voice. “Just truth. We have all manipulated you. And I am sorry that I was ever one of them. But I need you to know—everything between us. That was real, Helen. All of it.”
“Paris,” I say at last. It cannot be true, after all these lies. And I will not be taken in by one more.
Her gaze meets mine. “Burn me,” she says.
“What?”
“Lay your charges,” Paris repeats, and now her face is blank and cold, a mask of what it was. “Burn me, Helen, if that’s what you want to do. Kill me, before either of your parents have the chance.”
I stare at her. We are both trembling.
“Burn me,” Paris repeats when I say nothing. “If you want me gone, destroy me. Finish what your father and mother began, Helen of the gods.”
Instead, I open my hand, place it over hers.
Palm to palm.
My breath releases, something deep and aching, and Paris—
Paris’s hand is trembling, but the look in her eyes is steady.
I stagger on my feet.
“What can you ever know of a woman like me?” she asks, so gently it is almost tenderness between us again. “What could I ever be to you? Choose Lena, then, if you must. But you will never be free if you do.”
“Paris,” I whisper. “You used me.”
“And you and your family used us all,” she says. “We are all guilty. We are all complicit. But you must decide to be free, Helen of Troy. No one can do that for you.”
“This.” I hold up the ring on my hand.Libertas.“Paris, was this—”
Her face twists with pain. “Real,” she says. “All of it real, Helen.”
“I cannot believe you,” I tell her, my words slow and measured. “My father used me all my life. Milos would have used me, too. But the difference is that I knew when I was being used as a pawn and you, Paris, you almost made me believe I was something more.”
That is the danger of Paris of Troy, that she made me nearly believe I could be something more than that.
“Helen,” my mother calls across the house to me. “Helen, your father has your location, and is sending ships for you. Come. We need to prepare.”
I look back at Paris.
“Go,” I tell her, and it tastes like ash on my tongue.
Chapter 41
Paris
The ships are coming.
The ships are coming, and I must go.
“Helen,” I tell her. “Stay alive.”
She nods once, index finger tapping the ring on her left hand. “Paris—do you want it back?”
I look down at my own hand, at the two rings remaining.
