Page 91 of We Are the Match
“No,” I tell her. “You and I? We have nothing to be sorry for.”
It is not true, and never has been, but who is left to forgive or condemn us now? We are all we have.
I let my head tip back, thudding gently against the wall as Paris leaves a line of kisses down my jaw, my throat, my collarbone.
A knock interrupts us, sharp and persistent.
“Helen.” Milos’s voice sounds broken, fragile.
Rage floods me, so swift and immediate that I fling an arm out, sending the glass flying from my bedside table, shattering it against the wall. I look at Paris.
“I need,” I tell her. “To do this.”
“If he touches you,” she says. “I will kill him myself.” And then she withdraws into the next room, and I let Milos enter.
He has blood on his hands.Tommy’sblood. My Tommy.
“Helen,” he says brokenly. “I’m sorry.”
“Milos,” I tell him woodenly. “I have upheld my father’s alliance, and he will need you for whatever he is planning next. But you have killed the only family I had left.”
He is pale, eyes haunted. “All these years,” he says. “I have never killed. Not once. I know—I know my brother has, when it was necessary. But what would you have done? If it was your brother? What would you have done to save him?”
“I don’t care,” I tell him. I don’t care that he loves his brother. I don’t care that he thought he had no other way. I don’t care about my father’s Family and his games.
“What would you have me say?” Milos whispers. “That Tommy was killed for an alliance as much as he was killed for my brother? That it was worth it to me, if it means I haveyou?” He reaches for me again.
I slap his hand away.
“Youdo not,” I say. “Have me.”
You never will.
Something changes in his face. The softness, the longing, the hope there twists around, around. Around. And then rage is the only thing left.
“Do you think you can make me care for you?” I taunt him. My fingers inch toward the knife beneath my dress. “Do you think you could haveevermade me care for you?”
“And what of this alliance?” he snarls. “What of the demands your father made?”
He reaches for me—though to what end I could not say—and then—
He is jerked backward, nearly off his feet, and Paris is behind him, holding his head back by his black hair, her knife pressed to his throat with her other hand.
A drop of blood has already appeared beneath her blade, and her eyes are as unforgiving as the storm outside.
“Lay a hand on her,” she hisses. “And I will bleed you dry.”
Something broke inside of me when Milos pulled that trigger—and whatever was left of me shattered just now when he demanded, after all he had done, that I would be his one day. “Paris,” I say. “Paris, help tie him up, please.”
For once, she does not argue about who gives the orders. Instead, she brings the hilt of her knife down on his head and he staggers. She shoves him through the balcony doors, binds him to the rail using his own belt to secure his wrists.
And then I crouch in front of him.
Because I have decided something, something that has been inevitable since we announced my engagement, since the golden apple that saidfrom the queen, since Paris threw me to the ground to save me from a bomb. Powers and pawns. Kings and gods and girls.
And me, destroying the balance of power in the Family with a single choice—as if all it takes to start a war is a woman saying no.
I reach toward Paris, steady myself with one hand on her hip, and pull the knife from the sheath at her waistband.
