Page 26 of We Are the Match
But her loyalty to Zarek is as fragile as my temper.
“Why would you ask me before going to Zarek?” she asks. “If we are not even people who can be honest with one another?”
Why would I?
We all claw our way upward.
“We are friends from Troy,” I say. “Even if you wanted to leave us all behind.”
Thea snorts. “What?”
I open my mouth, but she holds up her free hand in one commanding motion. She holsters the gun and shoves dark-brown hair behind her ear. “Sit down, Troy,” she says. “And spare me your self-righteous bullshit. I took my sisters with me when I left, the ones who wanted to come. You ran for yourself and yourself only, didn’t you? What did you do for any of the girls left behind?”
I open my mouth and close it again.
I carried the ones I could,I want to tell her.I went back for all of them.
And I was too late.
It sits there in the air between us: I would not have survived at all if not for Thea.
“I gave them a home,” Thea snaps when I don’t answer. “I kept them safe. I gave them work when they wanted it.”
“This isn’t just about Troy,” I say.
“It’s always about Troy,” Thea says softly. “You’ve been carrying Troy around with you for years. And we would have—Perce and I, we would have—”
I hold up my hand, stopping her words. They would have let me talk about it, if I had wanted to. They would have let me say the names of the girls who died, and rage about the Families who let them. They would have listened, even, to the story of my singed flesh and the goddamn stubbornness that would not let the fires consume me.
Something flashes in her eyes, and she nods, just once. “All right, Paris. Have it your way. I don’t know the bomb-maker,” she says. “I didn’t see anyone. A shard of the grenade went through my arm.” She holds up her left arm, which is bandaged along the forearm. “If it’s a queen you’re looking for, you’ll have to look higher than me.”
Perce shifts beside her, and then he looks at me. “Won’t you come in, Paris?” he says gently. “You can sit down. I’ll get some food. We—”
“Weare not friends,” I tell him, and hurt flashes across his face, because I am telling the truth.
We used to be friends, Perce and I. When he was just a baker and Thea and I were just girls in secondhand donated clothes hanging around his family’s shop. Before Thea fought her way up through the Families.
Before a bomb in the mansion blew open a path for me to take my revenge.
BeforeHelen.
“Stop being an asshole to my husband for no reason,” Thea says icily.
I don’t have a way to respond to that, don’t quite know how to back down or apologize. So instead, I smirk. “Did you sayhusband? Thought tonight was your engagement party.”
Thea’s face reddens.
Perce’s slight smile confirms my guess.
“Was it private?” I ask them. “How did you keep it a secret?”
Perce’s smile saddens, just a little, and he places a hand on my arm. “It was just us and a priest on the mainland,” he says. “We would have had you there, Paris. We invited you for drinks—a few months back?”
I shake his hand off. “I’m not bothered,” I tell him. Thea has chosen her path: a place among the Families, a piece of their power. A husband to protect.
And I have chosen mine.
I scuff my foot against her rug.
