Page 22 of We Are the Match
My father’s investigators collected most of the pieces and took them downstairs to start the work of tracing the materials, to follow the dark paths they must walk to find answers for him.
But this fragment, with its beautifully carved letters. This fragment I keep for myself.
I press my body harder against the railing. I feel. Ifeel.
I can just barely see the nearest island in the distance.
Twin islands, they called us.
My island, and Troy.
One for the gods and one for the monsters.
And it is where Paris—drink-stealer, investigator, savior—is from. It is my mother’s home island, but I have never visited—not before the violence, and not after the skirmishes that obliterated most of the city.
I turn from the balcony. An idea pulls at me, sharp and ugly.
I retreat from the balcony momentarily. The guard outside my suite is young, sandy-haired and too nervous to look directly at me.
“Is Marcus still in the house?” I ask him.
“Marcus?” the guard asks blankly. “Not Milos?”
I bristle. “Marcus,” I repeat. “Send him here. I need to speak with him.”
The guard nods as I shut the door, and I return to the balcony, watching the waves and wondering, wondering just what Marcus would do if he thought I was a threat to his brother.
Waves crash below me as I pace, hand on the guardrail until I stop again, leaning out to look on the night-dark water below.
“Careful.”
I whirl around. Marcus. Marcus, the younger brother, the violent one, the brother of my fiancé. He is owed my civility, my smiles.
I must not bare my teeth.
I must not snarl.
I must not lose control, not now that I have laid a trap as surely as if I had set a tripwire at the door.
“Are you advising yourself?” I ask coolly, but I wear the smile that I must as I slip the piece of the grenade into my pocket. There is an idea burning there, something snagged on the sharp edges, the gold plate to the grenade. There is something to the smell of this that is familiar, that is—
“My brother is looking for you,” Marcus says, but his smile is a sharp, waiting thing. He places a hand on the guardrail, too close to me. “Your father asked us to see to you. But when your guard found me, he said it wasmeyou asked for.”
I do not flinch or move away. I stand tall, meet him eye to eye. He must know I would throw him into the sea before I would allow him to touch me. It is not this kind of meeting between him and me, not tonight and not ever.
“Kind of you to help your brother.” I gentle my tone. “I hope you are well after the disturbance this evening?”
It is a challenge, but he does not see it.
When Mama was alive, she taught me how to conceal a knife beneath my robe. When she was alive, she taught me how to use it.
My hand moves slowly down to the gap in my robe, the gentlest tilt toward violence. If I can no longer bear to use the explosives I once loved, then at the very least I can use this knife.
And now, if Marcus touches me, I will take his hand from him.
For a second, he leans closer.
I pull the knife free of its sheath, still tucked beneath the folds of my robe.
