Page 49 of We Are the Match
“Swim with me.”
It is an order, but nothing like the orders that Zarek gives.
I shrug off my jacket, and after a moment’s thought, I kick off my boots and black jeans. When I descend into the pool wearing only my tank top and briefs, her lips quirk into a smile.
Did she swim like this with Lena, when they were young, living on Troy? They were friends, once, from the sound of it. Are they still?
“Just a week ago you were no one, Paris of Troy,” she says. “Not a fixer, not a guard. Not a damn thing, no record to be found. And now Helen herself calls your name. What changed?”
I am being interrogated, too, and I am at least smart enough to know it.
“I was just a girl at a bar the other night,” I say. “She sat beside me.”
“I was there.” Hana moves deeper into the pool, to the edge where the water cascades down to another pool a few feet below. “I saw the two of you together. You must know Helen’s reputation. She gets close to no one.”
“Iget close to no one.” I smile slightly at her, let the silence hang there between us until she fills it herself.
“See that you keep it that way,” Hana says. “If you want to survive on this island.”
Oh, but I know more about survival than a queen born in a gilded castle. I know about hungry nights, and just how cold pavement is beneath my back. I know about loss, and I know what it is like to be the life that no one values. I know about fighting just to survive, and about fighting for a place at the table, in a way that Hana, born to power, never will.
I think of earlier, swollen lips and fire in Helen’s eyes.
“When he took your finger,” Hana says, “did he promise to take your hand next, if you did not deliver?”
I smile at her. “Who are we talking about, Hana?”
The turquoise water ripples gently, warm against my skin. I am taller than Hana, if only slightly—the water just over waist high for me, though closer to her breasts. The wind gusts over us, and her nipples tighten, the small hairs on her arm standing up.
“The man who took your finger,” she says. “Who else?”
“It is a beautiful view,” I say. “On clear days, can you see Troy? Can you see the home he stole from you?”
Her expression darkens, and then she moves between me and the edge of the pool with the cascading water. A second later, she pushes me up against that wall, her body pressed against mine, her thigh edging between my legs. Her skin is smooth, flawless.
This kind of threat is much more enjoyable than Zarek’s.
I smile at her, all teeth.
“What are you saying?” she snarls, but the madness in Zarek’s eyes is absent in hers.
“Do you miss home?” I ask. It is a dance, a game, and I am pressed against every inch of Hana’s body. “Do you missher?”
It is a dance Helen wanted from me, too, because the gods are nothing if not hungry for those of us they see as playthings.
More,the thing inside me growls.More.
We are talking about Lena, even if we do not say her name. We are talking about Lena, something too dangerous to do anywhere on this island—because Zarek kills anyone who speaks of his great loss, and because presumably Lena would kill anyone who speaks of her survival.
Has she been rebuilding, all this time? Has Hana been helping her?
“Doyou?” Hana asks. “I know she funded your home. I know she would have been devastated to hear what happened to all those girls.”
I flinch.
It is the one blow I have never learned to brace for.
If Kore or any of them could see me now, in this lavish pool beside the god who owns it, what would they think of me?
