Page 19 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

EVIRA HAD GIVEN them a briefing of their planned journey to a mountain range along the border of En Sanctus called the Dragon’s Spine. Lethe knew it well. He’d lived there with the last outpost of the ROSE.

Dressed in plain brown travel clothes with a shawl over her head, Evira almost looked natural, but her black eyes still seethed with an otherworldly glean.

Ana, Jasper, and Cal were all dressed in crisp uniforms to match the brisk morning air.

As they started off on their ride, Evira led, Lethe following close behind with Cal.

Ana and Jasper stayed a decent distance behind him, talking quietly with each other for much of the day’s ride until Cal unabashedly started asking about the war.

Evira, in all of her wisdom, shared her knowledge, and Lethe bit his tongue.

“So, the Strike came from the North? What’s up there now? Just the Mystics forever?”

Evira looked over her shoulder when Cal asked this, so loudly that Ana and Jasper fell silent behind them.

“The Eating Ocean shattered our world in an instant,” Evira began.

“As entire continents vanished and the laws of science dissolved, civilization screeched to a halt. Refugees hemorrhaged from the East, West, and South, establishing the sanctuary of Saint East, but only nine survived all that transpired in the North.”

“Those were the original ROSE,” Lethe interrupted her, hating the sound of his people’s story on Evira’s lips.

“They rode to their deaths only to deliver three warnings about what would soon follow them. First, they told of The Eating Ocean, then the Strike, then the war that would ultimately happen for the soul of mankind. Through their message, they evangelized the next generation of ROSE who then turned the sanctuaries of the East into En Sanctus.”

“You’re awfully talkative,” Evira teased.

“I owe him. I promised him truth in exchange for your head.”

“You seem so sure you’ll get it.”

“There isn’t a single doubt in my mind,” he replied simply.

The horse’s hooves clapped on in the silence. No one spoke for a moment.

Not surprisingly, Cal was the first to start the conversation again. “So, there isn’t anything beyond the Mystics?” he asked, looking between Evira and Lethe.

“Who knows, dear.” Evira chuckled. “You’d die of old age before making it back. It’s best not to push back the borders marked by our ancestors.”

Lethe ran his hand through his hair, bored.

He scanned the planes to the right and left of the road, hoping to see mountains somewhere and then checked his flask but resisted the urge to drink it.

He needed to reserve it for when he really needed it.

He had more Snake Bite tablets packed away, but there was no telling how long this trip would be.

Ana rode up beside Cal, replacing the spot where Evira once was.

“We have some very good guesses,” she corrected.

“The Strike destroyed civilizations to the north and when they were done, they came south and brought Madness with them. Cal, at the end of the day, you need to remember that the war heroes have their secrets and they’ll distort the truth to keep them.

You’d be better off studying at the museum. ”

“Is that what you did?” Lethe asked with an edge.

He’d been thinking about their interaction last night; he’d been on edge all morning.

He hadn’t slept well and listening to her and Jasper as well as Evira and Cal talk all morning had put him in a sour mood.

He should’ve been back in En Sanctus by now, but here he was with this group for the next week at least.

“I did,” Ana confirmed, warm brown eyes calm amidst an obvious tension among the travelers. He looked for a challenge in her eyes, anything really, but saw nothing.

Lethe glanced back over at Jasper, noting his apparent interest in the topic. “He seems surprised.”

“I didn’t advertise it,” Ana responded firmly.

“Because it’s personal,” Lethe said. “The State history, as they call it, is a past you lived. You’re En Sanctan. The Strike, The Great Light, it’s their heritage, but your life.”

“She’s a proud member of the State,” Jasper interrupted. “That’s our history.” He gestured to Ana.

“Barring The Great Light, Lethe’s right,” Ana said, her expression not faltering. She was all stone now, despite Jasper’s reaction. Or perhaps it was because of Jasper’s reaction? Lethe hadn’t quite finished his evaluation of their dynamic, at least not enough to start poking holes.

“Wait.” Lethe raised an eyebrow. “You don’t believe in The Great Light?”

Ana didn’t reply. Jasper rode up on Lethe’s other side.

Lethe leaned back in the saddle and examined Jasper. Sitting between them, he almost felt like he could reach out and tug on the strings, some sort of connective net he felt trapped in as they rode up on either side of him.

“Ah,” Lethe said, leaning forward as he nudged his horse onward. He caught up beside Evira, glancing back. “Cal, stay there.”

“What? Why?” Cal said, obviously flustered.

Jasper and Ana exchanged glances.

“Your new parents are worried,” Lethe continued. “They know you’re young and impressionable and want to make sure we aren’t filling your head with En Sanctan stories.”

Lethe started digging around for his cigarettes. “Very subtle,” he muttered, finding one. He held it out to Evira, who lit it with a lighter from her belt. He put the cigarette in his mouth.

“They still have your knife?” Evira asked. “Looks like Cal isn’t the only one they want to babysit.”

“Claws in, Evira, or I’ll tell everyone about what you did to that refuge in San Sell,” Lethe shot back without pause.

Lethe’s threat silenced Evira for the rest of the ride.

“You know, one of my instructors at the academy always used to say friends are like lifelines,” Cal started with confidence. He then began a monologue about the value of friendship in teams, and how in life and death situations, friends saved lives.

Lethe tried to think through what threat might silence Cal for the rest of the ride, but soon determined that Cal didn’t have enough context in life to find anything truly frightening. When he noticed everyone else’s misery under the speech, he then relished letting the boy talk.

* * *

The journey took the group through scenery as varied as their dynamic. One day, they rode through a historic town that inspired an informative, and painfully dry lecture from Jasper. Another day, they found themselves navigating a burned forest that was likely as gnarled and dead as Evira’s soul.

Jackson had been sure to let her know.

A week in, they camped along the coastline again where Cal had eagerly collected seashells and then lost his Atlas in the sand. Luckily, Ana had patrolled the beach with him until he found it.

Jackson knew the mountains on the horizon reflected his own spirit, and so he attributed the pine forests they now camped in, to Ana.

There was a serenity to them that seemed to put the group at ease.

Even Evira seemed to change her approach of intimidation, though Jackson knew this was a strategy, apparently targeted at Jasper.

She started sharing personal details about her life.

She asked Jasper questions, intellectual questions that he would answer with hesitation at first and then, as the days passed, with eagerness.

Ana seemed to ignore most things Evira did, but this, she appeared to notice, if only in the slightest way when they were all tired, and conversation was sparse.

Lethe stayed out of the stirring pot, knowing that Evira might soon turn the ladle in a different direction and cause conflict. Watching her bad behavior kept him in strict tow of his own. You could only really have one bad actor in a team at a time, at least that was his personal philosophy.

The group stopped for their last night when they saw the Dragon’s Spine on the horizon, the sun starting to set beyond the jagged mountains. En Sanctus’s border could be seen in the distance, the clouds alternating with the change in time, creating a simmering line of color in the sky.

Jasper was quick to snap into action preparing camp under the cover of the trees, an apparent characteristic of his restless nature. Lethe could only imagine the man had a rotating to-do list rolling through his head at any given moment.

As they settled in for the night, Evira broke away from a conversation with Jasper and strolled back over to Lethe, smiling. Sitting next to where he leaned against the saddles, she looked at him and said, “I’ve got him.”

Lethe smirked. “I don’t think so,” he replied.

“Talk to Ana,” Evira replied, gesturing back at Ana, who’d only just returned from gathering firewood with Cal.

Her hair was tied back, the outer layer of her uniform peeled down to reveal the subtle shimmer of sweat on a conditioned body.

She kept something like a cloth cast on her left arm and fingers, possibly for her joints from past injuries. Lethe wasn’t sure.

“Come on, Lethe, how long has it been?” Evira whispered.

“Since I’ve destroyed someone, like you’re planning to?” Lethe replied, looking over at Evira, who was lying down like a lioness beside him.

She smiled mischievously, that hungry glint in her eyes. “The war had no heroes. We were strong enough to make it out. We deserve this. They owe us.”

“Owe us,” Lethe repeated.

“Anything we want. They’re just mice. Weak. We give their lives meaning. You know I’m right.”

Lethe had made a similar statement to Manaj several years ago when he’d gone through a bit of an entitlement phase.

It was easy to think the world owed you when you gave everything up for it.

Justice was strange like that. The idea that the scales had to be equal often motivated people to commit crimes they felt were justified.

The only way to maintain order and justice seemed to be to let go and admitthat the world wasn’t fair at all. It was a little ironic.

It had taken Lethe all of ten minutes to reach that conclusion from the moment he’d voiced his entitlement to the moment Manaj grabbed his favorite kitchen ladle and hit him senseless with it.

The old man had claimed very loudly that stupid ideas wouldn’t be tolerated in his household.

Of course, that had been only the beginning of several years’ worth of stupid ideas.

“Lethe,” Evira hissed, snapping her fingers to reclaim his attention.

“She’s gladly avoiding me,” Lethe said, talking about Ana again. He hoped that would be enough to deter Evira, but of course, it wasn’t.

“Don’t act like you haven’t been watching her.”

“I’ve been watching everyone. You especially.”

“You could earn Jasper’s trust, use Cal’s admiration to your advantage.

I could say a few words. Imagine her slowly starting to trust you—how good that would feel.

” She leaned closer to him and murmured, “Do you know what it’s like to take someone who thinks they’re so good and show them how bad they can really be?

You change their entire identity and then they’re marked by you forever. ”

Lethe looked over at her. “Like what Strike Amiel did to you?”

Evira hesitated, swallowing briefly and then flinching as if stifling the urge to look away. At last, she relented, leaning away from him again.

“I’m not going to help you reel in Jasper just for the sake of feeling a fleeting sense of power and control,” Lethe replied, knowing Evira’s true motivation was really to peel Ana away from him—and use Lethe to do it.

She wanted Jasper for herself, for no other reason than to take him from someone else.

“You’re still trying to get back what the Strike ultimately took from you. You won’t.”

“Not everything is as much of a lost cause as the inglorious Emma Shepherd was,” Evira hissed.

“I don’t discuss Emma,” Lethe said sharply, catching her eyes now with the threat. “Say her name again. I dare you.”

Emma Shepherd. He shoved the name as far from his thoughts as he could manage. That was one face he never saw in the flames. He never saw her face anywhere. He never wanted to.

Cal walked up, chewing loudly on something.“Hey,” he announced as Evira skirted off like a cat. He watched her go for a moment and then looked at Lethe, who shrugged it off.

Plopping down in the grass, Cal continued chewing, oblivious to the currents at work around them all. It wasn’t lost on Lethe that the boy seemed perfectly content that way.