Page 83 of We Are the Match
Ironic, then, that I have decided this about him. A whisper of wind touches her, ruffling her hair, the folds of her skirt.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
She stands, scarlet spilling down over her curves.
I want to bunch my fists into the soft folds of her dress. I want us to be simple and unhurt, just us. Just Helen, just Paris.
But we were never just Helen, just Paris. God and commoner, and nothing to bridge the gap, no matter how desperate I am now.
“Walk with me,” she says.
Helen reaches out her hand and takes my arm, and I am trembling at the weight of this.
Helen and I.
Helen and I.
“Did you see—the men I killed?” she asks me finally. “At Altea’s?”
“I did.”
Next to the girls in the fountain.
And for a moment, Helen had been just another girl from Troy, taking her revenge.
Girls from Troy.
It comes back to this, always.
We pace together at the edge of the rooftop, Helen and I.
“I could not save them,” she says.
“I know.”
“I wanted to save them,” she continues. “Foryou. Because I am not going to rule like my father or the queens. And I want—I want to save the rest, if we can.”
I pause, wavering at the edge, staring down at the water that crashes against the cliffs below. “How?”
“I mean what I said,” she says firmly. “My father cannot be allowed to do this. Not again.”
No one,no onewho came for Zarek has ever had a chance. But what chance doeshehave when the weapon in my hands is his own daughter—and the power she is now choosing for herself?
She is just a set piece to me,I told Altea. I had tried to mean it, even. She is a weapon I can use to unmake Zarek himself. Thea said I would be used and then killed. Thea said I had no chance against them. But with Helen beside me—
“What are you saying, Helen?” I step away from her, still my shaking hands when I clench them into fists. “What are you willing to do, and are you willing to do it with me?”
“I know you love them,” Helen says. “Your girls. I know you love them and grieve them and I know you’re not as hard as you let on, and I know that’swhy.”
“Helen—”
“Let me finish,” she continues firmly. “I was wrong about you. And I think you were wrong about me, too. I think I can be better. I think I canrulebetter than they have, and I think we can do it—I think we can do it together.”
She sounds desperate, hungry, as if this is more than ambition. As if she needs this tolive.
But I do not, do not want to rule.
“Helen,” I attempt. “Helen, I don’t think youcan. In these Families, this world ... people always, always get hurt, even when you don’t mean for them to.”
