Page 82 of We Are the Match
“I know what you are after,” he says wearily. “Ten years ago, even, I would have believed it my duty to stop you. I would have believed my loyalty to this family. But there have been so many monstrous things. So very many. And now my loyalty is to the little girl I raised, and her only. So I need you to tell me, Paris.”
After all this time?
I flick my lighter open.
The flame trembles there.
“Yes,” I tell him. The word is raw in my throat.
Tommy leans back, satisfied. “Good,” he says. “Because I think it is for her.”
The silence hangs between us, and then he looks at my injured hand, still bandaged, and he shakes his head. “I am sorry,” he says. “That I did not protect you that day. That I lacked the courage to do what I should have done years ago.”
“Forgive yourself,” I tell him, even as the hand still aches. “I do.”
“Will you get her out of here?” he asks. “After all this?”
There’s an option where you run,Thea told me.
If Kore was here, would she be saying the same? Would she be telling me tolive?
Tommy looks far away, as if imagining the world that exists beyond these warring islands and their restless gods. As if imagining that beyond this boundless sea we could reach a place where Helen could be free, where I could be with her, where we could leave the violence behind.
He rests his hand on my shoulder a moment longer. The gesture is gentle. Familial.
Strange for a woman who has no one left.
“You take care of her, kid,” he says as he pushes the door open. “Promise?”
I nod. “Promise.”
There was a day a lifetime ago, where I was brought to the rooftop garden where the sun shone down and the wind ravaged our skin and hair, and Helen climbed across a stone table to reach me. To kiss me.
But today is not that day.
Today is gray and still and lifeless, cold in a way that reaches down to the bone. Today there is only carnage between us.
Helen sits upon the couch like a throne.
“Paris.”
The sound of my name in her mouth wraps around me, pulls me forward. Undoes me.
After all this time?
“Helen.”
I stagger on my feet, the ground itself unsteady after the monstrous things I have done.
Glass blown in.
Helen beneath me, soft skin and warm breath.
A grenade for a god.
“Paris, I told Tommy not to tell anyone I was bringing you here,” she says. “My father is gone today, meeting with Milos and Marcus, but we only have a little bit of time. He’s decided—well, he’s decided I care too much.”
I stare at her now, unsullied and perfect, her dark hair swept up into a loose knot, curls spilling over the curve of her neck. Soft scarlet gown, sweeping down to her feet. A flash of bare ankle beneath. The words barely register. “He’s decided it is time for me to die.”
