Page 86 of We Are the Match
I do not hesitate. “Together,” I say. “Family.”
My father pauses, considering me, considering my silence. “Very well. I will make you a deal, then,daughter,” he says. He leans forward, violence in his eyes. “But you must prove your loyalty if you want your place here, if you want your guard and your paramour to survive this. You must earn it as your mother did.”
When my mother was young and newly married to him—nineteen, or perhaps twenty—he sent her off alone. On what sort of mission, she never told anyone. But Tommy told me she came back empty-eyed and haunted, with blood beneath her nails and ashes on her boots. She spent long hours walking with Tommy along the cliffs, and if anyone left alive knows what she had to do to prove her loyalty, it is him, and his silence is unbroken.
“What would you have me do?” I ask him.
Who would you have me kill?
Because for Paris, I would. I would.
“You will marry Milos. Tonight. You will seal this alliance. You will prove your loyalty to me.”
My father must see the hesitation in my eyes, must see the fear and fury there, because he smiles.
“If you are thinking of killing me,” he says quietly. “Know what it would do. Have you seen a power vacuum before, little girl? Have you seen the wars that will be fought? Do you know who would die, howmanywould die?” His hand closes over my bicep, fingers digging so hard I know they will leave a bruise. “But in case the body count does not matter to you.” His breath is hot on my face. “I will keep your insurance until this ceremony is done.”
He gestures toward Tommy and Paris.
Tommy.
Tommy, on his knees, hands woven together on the back of his head.
Tommy, with a handgun pressed to his temple.
Paris beside him, the fury of the last ten years flickering dangerously in her eyes.
“No.” I rip my arm from my father’s grip. “No.”
“It’s okay,” Tommy says quietly. “Kid—Helen, look at me. It’s okay.”
“Promise?” I whisper.
They hit him hard across his face with a pistol. The blood is immediate, pouring from a cut in his lip, and he does not answer me.
Milos is behind the circle of guards, face pale. “Helen?” he asks uncertainly.
After all of this, he remains the fool, shattered all over again at the knowledge that he and I will never be anything more than an alliance.
“We are getting married,” I say dully, but my eyes are on the barrel of the gun, at the smudge it has left on Tommy’s forehead. “Milos, we are getting married tonight.”
“Like this?” He gestures to the guns, to Tommy, to Paris, and he looks bereft, though the emotion evaporates a second later, and then he looks—
Then he looks furious.
“Like this,” I answer.
I turn to my father. “I will remember my place,” I tell him quietly. “I will play the game. I will rule at your side. But if anything happens—to either of them—”
I let the threat hang there, bolder than I have ever been with my father. The memory of laying explosives with Paris surges through me. The joy, the way it felt like my chest was expanding, the feel of her hand in mine.
I am more than Zarek’s timid daughter.
My father nods, just once. “And you,” he says. “Remember that there are things you love. That there are things you could lose.”
I dip my head in response, a gesture between equals, between rivals, between gods.
“Helen,” Milos says hesitantly. “Helen, I thought—”
