Page 72 of We Are the Match
Do they know that Lena is still alive? Do they know each other well enough to know that they all seem to share the same hatred of Zarek?
“Is this what you wanted?” Altea asks, voice soft as velvet. “Is this what you planned?”
From the queen.
Which of them was taunting him, at that party that feels like lifetimes ago? Which of them considers herself queen above all?
“No one planned anything,” I tell her. “I found an opportunity, and I took it.”
I want to be free.
“And this talk of an alliance? The message you left me on my shooting range?”
“I was honest with you,” I tell her. “I want Zarek to fall.”
Silence at the other end, for a long minute.
“Was it for Troy?” she asks softly. “For what happened all those years ago?”
For Troy. For the girls and the caved-in doors and our melted skin.
She is the first of all of them to guess the truth.
I twist the rings on my fingers.
En morte libertas.
“I call you as a courtesy tonight, Altea,” I say, though it is not to her that I offer it. “So you can get your innocents out before they bleed.”
She will; of course she will.
The alternative is unimaginable.
“And Helen?” Altea asks coldly. “What is she to you? No more games, Troy. You owe me that truth at least.”
I catch my breath.
And the memory: soft curves and full red lips and the sight of her, disheveled and joyful, crossing the wild rooftop garden toward me. My chest aches.
“Helen?” I say, and I am thinking of her lips, and her rage on the boat, and how I will lose her before all this is done. “She is nothing buta set piece to me.” And then I leave Altea to it, to plan and scheme and aim her weapons at Zarek.
I have walked their halls and played their games and survived their violence. And now?
I light the match. I light the match. I light the match.
Chapter 26
Helen
I leave the bunker in the early hours of the morning, and I fall into a restless sleep at last. My father came to my chambers, only briefly, to tell me that his belief in Marcus’s loyalty has been restored.
He does not say Altea’s name.
The rest of the house is livable; the only wing destroyed my father’s.
We are safe, he tells me.
I do not tell him he is not, not anymore.
