Page 63 of We Are the Match
“You can’t,” Helen says. “She’ll catch you.”
I shrug. “And you’ll get us out of here. Make that name good for something, Princess.” I reach over and smack, my hand colliding with that ample ass.
I am rewarded with a little shriek. “I’ll go down first, while you ask to have your hair styled for the dinner party. The wind has taken it down, anyway, so it’s not a bad cover,” I tell her. “I’ll put Altea at ease, shoot with her for a little while. When you join us, I’ll take my leave.”
I bite back the last of what I wanted to say: that I like Helen’s hair, wild like this. That I like when she looks at me like I am an explosive she cannot wait to light.
When I tell the guard Helen will join us below when she is finished with her hair, he nods without a word—and if it is strange to him that a fixer gets a solo audience with a queen, he does not remark on it.
We walk in silence, down long, spacious hallways and empty, opulent corridors. Altea may not have Zarek’s power, but she is old money, old gods. Lena was like that in the heyday of Trojan power—her old money combined with Zarek’s growing power, and they were a new kind of god while they lasted.
Altea joins me on the north side of her home, almost at the cliff’s edge, and dismisses her guards with a nod. “Paris.” She greets me with a smile, something hungrier than the other gods have shown me. “Thea has always spoken so highly of you. And now look at you. A grenade, a few weeks, and you have the most powerful woman in Greece at your side.”
The memory flashes in front of me: Helen spread out on my bed, wrists bound to the headboard, mouth rounded into an O. Eagerness transforming into fury as I stepped away and left her behind.
“Is she?” I laugh at Altea’s words, the sound a cold, sharp burst. “The most powerful woman?”
She links her arm through mine.
“She’s certainly one of them,” Altea answers easily.
She is not like Hana, or Helen, women whose bodies are soft and supple even if their minds are sharp. No, Altea’s arm is lean, hard muscle, her grip tight. There is a reason she can wave away her guards without worry for her personal safety.
“I was delighted that you wanted to speak further,” Altea says. “Shall we step into my office? Or are you like me—I prefer to have my most important conversations on my shooting range.”
Perhaps this is a test, an attempt to divine if I am here as a fixer in some capacity, or perhaps just a test of what kind of woman I am. Can she see it in my eyes, that I am not here to make peace, or stop the coming war? That I am here to incite the violence they have brewed for years, if I can?
“Shooting range,” I answer.
Her grin broadens. “I thought as much.”
I follow her down a long, winding staircase.
At the base, set somewhere deep beneath the rock—close to the water, because I can hear the waves outside—is a long, open room with targets at one end and a wall of weapons at the other. Mostly guns, of course, mostlyrifles, because this is Altea, but in one corner, a javelin, a machete, and various blades.
“Ah,” Altea says. “That look Helen has when you touch her? You have that when you look at my weapons.”
She lifts a rifle with a long scope and holds it out to me. “This is a favorite of mine. The newest Barrett. You’ve heard of it?”
Heard of it, yes.
Held it, no.
It costs more than six months of my rent, but she must know that.
I take it from her, run my thumb reverently down the barrel, my rings clicking faintly where they touch it. “Thank you.”
She nods briskly and lifts another rifle—another Barrett, though I am not well versed enough in expensive long-range hunting rifles to know which mark. “Shall we?”
We shoot in silence, just the two of us, Altea in her gown and gold sandals, and me in my black jeans and combat boots. She shoots first, unerring, no trace of hesitancy.
When she replaces the paper target and nods to me, I place the rifle against my shoulder, its weight solid and comforting, step forward, and make a choice—a badly calculated, too-reckless, too-threatening choice. Just like every choice I have made since I tackled Helen to the ground and saved her from the grenade.
I, too, am unerring, though I learned from shooting stolen shotguns and handguns that Milena smuggled into Troy when we were too young to be that close to bullets.
The first was when I was twelve: my small fingers curled around a handgun, Milena teaching Cass and I how to hold it.
I shoot high now, adjusting my angle just slightly with every shot.
