Page 1 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

TIME DID NOT exist. It ruled the world, counted every heartbeat in her chest, but here, right now, it did not exist.

The early morning was miraculous in that way.

Ana watched the dawn fog. It drifted off the face of the pond, summoned by the fingers of the sunrise as they reached through the trees. A hedge of elegant pines was painted in the light and circled her cabin. They stood high and wide like golden gates, blocking out the rest of the world.

She shrugged a green knit blanket over her bare shoulders, fabric huddling against her neck as her black hair billowed out in loose, chaotic loops. She took in the forest air—air that tasted like it had never been breathed before, and her soul was at peace.

When the world woke up, Ana would surrender again to the clutches of time. She’d submit to the schedule she’d set for the day, for schedules, to any real Statesman, were comparable to an act of daily worship. In the State, the religion of time was ultimate, its edicts immovable and its rule unquestionable.

Ever since the world was first plagued by strange anomalies, or mutations, as they were now called, nothing but time seemed to work with any comforting predictability.

It ran at different rates in every country, but people didn’t panic—no, because time could still be measured. No one really cared that ten years in En Sanctus had been a century here in the State. No, because they’d broken it down to a formula. Every second that passed in En Sanctus was 9.96 seconds here, and ten times as much in the Mystics.

She had observed that to most Statesmen, measuring something felt somehow like controlling it, and few things contested that comfort.

As a soldier of the State, she respected that.

Unless it was morning.

In the morning, she’d sit outside on her porch like a statue, a stone carved through a lifetime of friction, now abandoned in the middle of the woods to become just a stone again. She yearned to become just a stone again.

But the moment was finite like everything was, and all at once, the world awoke.

Squirrels rummaged.

Birds chirped.

Ana reached past her blanket, tilting her finger against one of the red tulips nestled at the edge of her porch. A drop of dew slid off a weighted petal onto her fingertip, and she rolled it over her finger as she brought it to her face. She lifted it to the light, watching the sun through it before drawing it to her lips and kissing it off her knuckle in an act of gratitude. Hoisting herself to her feet, she felt the ache of past injuries and the resistant joints of her metallic, prosthetic arm.

She turned into the house, scarred hand grazing the iron handle of her teapot before removing it from the coals of her fireplace. A spider web flickered on the windowsill. She poured the hot water into a clay mug on the nightstand she’d made into her kitchen table.

Her mind lingered on that spiderweb and then on the subtlest creak from the porch.

Rolling the blanket off her shoulder, she slipped it through the back of the chair before glancing at the knife lying on the kitchen counter.

She adjusted her watch, her metallic fingers clicking against the watch’s surface as she turned it around her wrist.

Tick.

The porch creaked again, louder.

Tick.

Her grip tightened on the teapot.

Tick.

Ana swung her arm sideways, directing the pot toward her would-be intruder before stepping toward the kitchen. She adjusted the swing in just enough time as she recognized the face standing at the threshold. The pot sailed through the air and collided against the doorframe before rolling off the counter through a river of hot water. The streams of water dribbled off the counter and kissed the boots waiting at the threshold.

John Hailey lifted a finger up to the edge of his black uniform, rubbing a spot of hot water that had landed over the clock stitched into the breast, the symbol of the State military. Such a casual, relaxed motion betrayed his nature.

To every man, woman, and child in the State, John Hailey was the grim reaper.

The hot water steamed in the ensuing silence as it rolled over the floorboards. Ana couldn’t resist the symbolism in it, because in that moment, she felt like that iron teapot. It had the strength to withstand the coals and yet there it lay, opened up and spilled out at the base of Hailey’s boots.

Her deepest fears shouted that they knew why he’d arrived.

“Hello, Ana,” he said.

For a moment, she struggled to believe he was there. He stood in black like a panther, with cool, immersive eyes. The blue in them broke against skin deeply tanned by the sun. Years isolated in her cabin had not spared her the stinging memory of those eyes, bright like glaciers and still just as cold.

He knelt, picking up the teapot by the handle. “Imagine the miracle,” he said. “In this very moment, you and I have something in common.” He picked up the lid, slipping it back in place with a gentle clink before setting it on the kitchen counter. “We are both surprised that I am here.”

She resisted the urge to step back as he walked inside. He turned his back to her as he closed the door, giving it a subtle push to ensure the haphazard latch had taken.

“You must be wondering what brought the State’s Sub-Var all the way out to your secretive…” His hand glided over the wet countertop, and he rubbed the water in between his fingers. “Humble home.”

The Var, much like a king, issued orders to the entire State. The Sub-Var enacted the Var’s will, and his own—every detail, no matter how glamorous or how black.

“I retired from the Numbers two years ago,” she said, her first words not just to him but to anyone in weeks. Speech almost felt unnatural to her in a world where the trees and birds hadn’t needed it.

She was concerned he might find her peculiar behavior suspicious, perhaps her degree of surprise or uneasy words, but she had one advantage. John Hailey didn’t know her, not well enough to measure her nervousness. She’d like to imagine he didn’t know her at all.

“I’m aware,” Hailey said as if it irked him that she felt compelled to remind him of her retirement. “I signed the paperwork.”

He perused the room, reaching out and tapping the counter. He grazed the wall, touching with all subtlety the glass in the window. The casual nature of his exploration captured a deeper part of his psyche. In his mind, she knew, this house was his too.

“You don’t keep a calendar,” he said with a degree of interest. When she didn’t reply, he faced her. “I can tell you aren’t accustomed to having guests. Though, I prefer that the water stay in my cup. Would you mind?”

She folded her long, wild hair over her shoulder opposite him as she passed by to retrieve the teapot. “Have a seat.”

He relaxed back into the chair, one hand on the table, busy fingers tracing the scratches in the wood.

She filled the teapot with a pitcher of water and set it back on the coals before preparing a cup with tea leaves. Despite her nervousness, her hands were steady. She seldom showed her nerves. She seldom showed anything. It was a disposition that had earned subtle jabs from her military peers who had once called her the Iron Maiden.

She didn’t argue.

Her body was her knife, shell, and hammer, and like the ancient device, the Iron Maiden, sometimes she still felt trapped inside it.

“Have you found what you’ve been searching for out here? Seclusion does wonders for a busy mind, and I can only guess your mind is.” He tilted his head as she brought the empty cup and set it before him. “The sun has treated you well,” he noted. “Your hair has gotten so long, and it has a pleasant, almost reddish tint now. I like it. Reminds me of my dear aunt, rest her soul.” He leaned back, surveying the room.

She remembered his aunt, as most did, headless on the executioner’s stage. She remembered the old woman’s blood splattered high on his shoelaces. Ana had been ordered to help collect the bodies and heads that month. Empty-eyed and silent, she’d carried the pieces off, knowing John Hailey hadn’t even noticed her.

She hadn’t minded collection as most had. Though gruesome, the bodies were still people to her, more so to their families when she delivered them. She always assembled the parts again, adamant that there was still room for kindness, even in Hailey’s aftermath.

She wasn’t so confident now, the moment hanging between them. She waited for some justification for his visit, her hands by her side.

“Your last mission…where was it again?”

Ana had no doubt that he already knew the answer.

“Dal Hull, sir,” she said, standing by the warmth of the fireplace. Her eyes focused on the beautiful spider web now broken from the windowsill, Hailey’s doing. It was doubtful that he had an eye for natural beauty.

“Ah. The Dal Hull calamity.” He moved his fingertips off the table. The chair creaked as he leaned back into it. “You were injured pretty badly, weren’t you?”

“It retired me,” she said. She’d suffered several broken bones, a metal rod had pierced through her left arm, and that was the least of it. She had been grateful then for the State’s complex, metal prosthetics, mirroring the movements of real limbs. Her right arm, so often a burden, had ultimately become her last and most decisive weapon.

A rumored discovery deep inside a mine had drawn her to a remote town near the En Sanctan border. Also investigating the rumor, several of Hailey’s henchmen had been dispatched to the same location. Events had escalated rapidly and violently. Now, she was still in her twenties and her career was already over.

“The mine collapsed. You saved quite a few civilians before you were pinned under some rubble. My team died inside.” Hailey reflected on the event. “The only survivor who’d witnessed the events inside the mine, Pat McHedon, was put in a coma when a beam broke from the ceiling and hit him.”

Pat McHedon, the witness. She’d remember that name as long as life permitted. She’d visited him every few months since the tragedy two years ago. She refused to bring him flowers—hated to see them picked—but she’d found a beautiful glass globe to rest on his windowsill.

She waited until it was time to remove the pot and then filled the mug of tea. The steady stream of water swirled into the bottom.

“He woke up this morning,” Hailey said, eyes set on the pouring water.

The stream of water flickered as her fingers shivered with the revelation. Hailey’s eyes moved from the water that read like her pulse, meeting her gaze as she pulled the teapot to her chest.

He gestured to the seat across from him, and she returned the teapot to the fire before sitting down.

“The first name he mentioned when he woke up wasn’t his wife or his child. He asked for you.” He swirled the water in the mug, lifting the steam to his face with a wave of his hand. “Do you have any sugar?”

She shook her head evenly, fighting her fear as it churned and twisted in her stomach like a wounded snake.

“Honey, then.”

She stood, moving to the kitchen to remove a small pot of honey.

He kept talking, her back to him as she reached the top shelf above her teas.

You knew this day might come, she thought, rolling through the words as they stroked her terror back into submission. And you made your choice.

“According to your report, you happened to be passing through the town and saw my officers enter the mine. Wanting to offer your support, you joined them, and then as tragic fate would have it, the mine collapsed, killing some of my best officers and injuring Pat. So, you can imagine my surprise,” he said, “when Pat McHedon claimed that not all of that was exactly true.”

She returned to him with the honey, setting it down in the center of the table. Taking her seat again, she watched as he opened the pot, stirring the spoon inside. Now, she saw herself in the honey, stretched and stirred under Hailey’s manipulation.

The golden strands streamed down from the spoon.

He allowed it to linger in the air for a moment, turning it. “You’ve always been a barely adequate soldier. I double checked your file before I came to be sure.” He chuckled at his own joke. He flipped the spoon over the tea, allowing a golden web to sink through the steam, dissolving in the water.

He dipped the spoon back into the honey, returning the lid with a clink that snapped her attention back to him, her eyes hypnotized by the motions.

“But then, I think I’m losing my mind, or maybe that Pat was losing his when he insisted—insisted very passionately—that after you followed them into the mine, you engaged some of our finest Numbers in hand-to-hand combat, picking them off, one by one.”

She trained her eyes on his, forcing herself to hold his gaze that burned with accusation and excitement, like a predator with its claws sunk in.

The scenes flashed back to her from the incident. The waving lamps, the shouting, the breath and fury as she fought through the panic of her enemies. The other Numbers thought nothing of her joining along on their expedition into the mine. They thought of her like an inconsequential detail, and had things turned out well, that’s all she would have been. She badly wished the mine had been empty after all.

“In the onslaught, a metal rod impaled your arm, and so,” he chuckled, “you choked a man with your legs—now that! That!” Hailey’s voice rose, a rare, painful sound.

She exhaled a slow, hidden breath, unflinching in the wake of his excitement.

“—is unbelievable, and still then! Pat said you knocked him unconscious with the metal rod you’d pulled out of your arm. You were lucky the chaos caused the mine to collapse and cover up your treachery. This reads like a novel, Ana. What a story. I must admit, compared to your report, the tale of the traitor who fooled the Sub-Var is much more exciting.”

He shook his head at her, eyes wide, arms outstretched.

The silence lingered like a hovering gavel.

“It’s unbelievable.” She kept her tone even, voice flat. “Sounds like a completely different person.”

“It’s outrageous. You’re right.” He nodded in agreement. “Your story of the opportunistic heroine saving people from the wreckage makes much more sense than an admittedly impressive killer hiding her talents all these years,” he said, returned to his collected nature. His fingers tapped across the table like an instrument he was playing. He stood and approached the window, folding his hands behind his back. “My question now is, what did you all find down there?”

That was the question.

Hailey must know, Ana thought. He has to know.

The rumor had been that deep in the mine, the workers had stumbled upon a cavern, hidden since the end of The Ocean’s War against the Strike. The workers had all evacuated, all aside from their guide, Pat.

Ana recalled walking through those dark tunnels as if it were yesterday, peering over the shoulders of the other soldiers as they bumbled through the blackness, gasping as they walked into the cavern.

There, under layers of dust, dirt, and cobwebs, was the ornate coffin of a Strike. No doubt ferried out of En Sanctus upon the war’s end. It loomed there, surrounded by piles of skeletons that had once been the Strike’s worshippers.

Time ran the slowest in En Sanctus, and it had only been a few years since the war had ended there. Despite that, artifacts like a Strike’s coffin were extremely rare.

Thrilled by the discovery, Hailey’s men were determined to bring the coffin back to the State’s lab where it could be screened for anything that could then be weaponized. The State did love its weapons, after all.

Ana had no choice but to act.

“It’s unfortunate. It will take months to undo what you’ve done,” Hailey continued.

And even if you find the cavern, everything is crushed to dust, Ana thought to herself. She’d made sure of that.

“It’s tragic, really,” Hailey said. “I’ve run into groups sabotaging our efforts to recover war secrets. I’ve executed my fair share, but I never imagined they’d come from inside the State. I imagined we would have trained those En Sanctan superstitions out of you.”

With his tone, she almost thought he was disappointed, but his eyes always told the real story. They were distant, as if the world to him was nothing more than manikins draped in a patchwork quilt.

Hailey stared out the window for a long time. Ana knew that her judgment was imminent. He’d taken his time to set the stage, say all he could say, and pave the path of her wrongdoings.

“I have reinstated you. I’m sending you to kill Ares,” he said after a long while.

Ana felt terror coil silently in her stomach, her insides twisting as her body remained in perfect stillness.

He looked over his shoulder when she didn’t respond.

How could she?

Ares was now a traitor to the State, but once, he’d been a legendary general of the Numbers military, and with more documented kills than any Statesman in history, he’d become a symbol of death. She could be dangerous, but Ares was death. In sending her off, Hailey was disposing of her quietly.

She’d once been touted as a hero, commended even by Hailey himself in a public setting. He couldn’t execute her publicly. What would people say about the woman who’d tricked the Sub-Var? What would people then say about the Sub-Var?

“I have a contact in the town of Richter, Evira Beaumont. She will tell you how to find him.”

Ana continued to stare forward. So, is this how I’ll die? One of Ares’s bullets through my head? It would be painless, at least.

Hailey continued speaking, but Ana felt withdrawn, as if she were watching the scene from a distance. Her eyes drifted to the kitchen counter, where a tiny figurine was inconspicuously lined up beside a jar of whole walnuts and a small spool of twine. She pretended that the figurine was a dancer.

As a girl, she’d loved dance—much preferred it to fighting. It had seemed so elegant, something she had imagined she was learning instead of mastering her body for violence.

Unfortunately, dancing couldn’t save people. She’d once dreamed of a world where maybe it could. Peace could be earned through dance instead of bloody noses, cracked skulls, and broken bones. It had been a silly notion of a girl trying to be something different from what she’d needed to be. It was almost comical now as she thought of taking a bullet, a justifiable punishment, perhaps, for letting a mine cave in on soldiers she’d called comrades.

She hadn’t intended for them to die. But I let it happen, didn’t I?

Lost in the moment, she didn’t react when Hailey snapped toward her, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her against the wall behind her.

“Look at me,” he hissed. And she did, watching those eyes that were simultaneously angry and dead. She’d just done something she’d been guilty of plenty of times before, escaping into her mind and out of the other person’s control.

People never liked that. Hailey, she supposed, least of all.

With his next words, he enforced his authority again, hands coiling around her gown, knuckles pressed into her upper thigh like a threat that he could go further. He turned her chin as he twisted her throat, staring her down as if to assure himself he once again had her full attention.

“You’re almost beautiful,” he said, forcing her head back as his lips lingered near her temple.

She didn’t flinch.

I dare you, she thought, but Hailey seemed to know better. Not because she would fight him. More because she would not. A body was just a tool, just skin and bones and sinew. That’s all he could ever touch. He could never reach her soul with his fingertips, never grip her spirit in his hands.

However, Hailey was a quick learner of people’s vulnerabilities, and as if sensing the lack of fear his attack stirred, he struck elsewhere.

His other hand traveled down to the hem of her shirt, and he grazed the old brand seared into the skin over her collarbone. It had aged since childhood, but even though she was now free, it hadn’t lost its meaning. “Beautiful for a slave,” he whispered. “You might have come to the State, but you’ll always be an En Sanctan slave. Tell me, Ana. What did the Strike do to you? How were you forced to serve them?” His words burned. “What kinds of things did they make you do?”

Ana’s eyes fluttered to Hailey’s, and without fear, she whispered, “They taught me how to see monsters.”

She knew Hailey sensed the insult in her eyes.

“Don’t forget you have friends,” he said, his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath.

She did indeed have friends. No doubt he had a list of their names already.

“You leave tomorrow morning,” he whispered, shoving her once more against the wall and then turning to walk away.

The door shut behind him.

Ana stood there in the silence as Hailey left, more than one of his guards bustling about outside. Her eyes drifted back to the table where they’d been sitting.

Hailey’s mug of tea still waited there.

He hadn’t taken a single sip.