Page 26 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

IT FELT LIKE her world had ended.

Seeing Evira’s body, tied up and burning like a torch in the cave, awakened something in Ana she had no control over. Years of self-discipline and frustrating inner struggles seemed to collapse into this single moment where none of it mattered any longer.

She dropped her Atlas, and it rolled toward Lethe’s feet. He looked over his shoulder at her, but there wasn’t any surprise. His eyes were even, and she felt his apathy to her core—recognized a version of it in herself, and she couldn’t come to terms with that.

The fight started without any physical provocation from him. She moved first, and not with her Atlas, but with her hands. She wanted to use her hands, and in the moment, she felt more like an animal than a person.

He redirected the force. She dug in her heels and soon they were on the ground, rolling through the rain.

He flipped her hard, her lungs seizing with the force as her body clapped against the pooling water.

She hooked his leg, using the momentum to roll him away from the cave.

They slipped off a nearby ridge and hurtled down a steep slope.

The rocks sent jolts of sharp pain into every surface of her body until they crashed hard onto another overlook.

The fall separated them, Ana’s temple seeping blood as she scrambled up against the stones.

She collided with Lethe as he started to sit up, forcing him up against a large boulder as her hands curled into his clothes.

She panted with rage, straddling him. Her body throbbed, clothes sopping wet, a hole torn through the fabric on her thigh and arm. She had old military fatigues. She hadn’t seen the need to get new ones, not for this mission—not for what this mission was supposed to be.

Lethe’s expression showed her nothing and there was no wolfish smile, no chaos in his eyes.

In the wake of his treachery, he seemed empty.

She searched his gaze in hopes of finding evil as the rain streamed through his hair, tracing the sharp angles of his nose and the ridges of his brows.

She wanted to shout, she wanted to roar, but as her spirit bucked against its restraints, no words could do her justice.

There were no words at all.

There were no questions to ask. She knew all of the answers. She knew what it had meant for Evira to die—justice, an ideal she claimed to love. An ideal he claimed didn’t exist.

She shook her head, shoving him back, knuckles ramming into his collarbone as she stumbled away.

She found her footing on the plateau, a lucky landing that had saved them from the drop off a severe cliff.

She ran her hands through her hair, parts of it slicked down with mud.

The feelings continued to roll through her, wave after wave of emotion that boiled inside her without outlet or voice.

She tried to reel back into the iron mold she’d made for herself, but her spirit couldn’t fit any longer.

She snatched the nearest rock and stepped forward, shouting as she hurled it through the air.

It spiraled through the rain, clashing into other rocks on the adjacent mountain and rolling with a few other small stones it had knocked loose.

She sank into a crouch, her fingers pushing through her hair again to massage the torment from her brain.

Lightning cracked the sky.

In that moment, she felt desperately alone and desperately afraid.

She straightened, looking over at Lethe as she wiped the rain and dirt from her face with the back of her hand, her fingers and palm cut from her scramble and printed with dirt.

He was still sitting against the boulder where she’d set him.

One of his knees was drawn toward him as a rest for his elbow.

His other leg lay bent and relaxed to the side.

His clothes were in similar condition, a fresh cut bleeding on his shin.

“Who do you think you are?” Ana asked brokenly through the storm. “Are you a hero?”

Lethe didn’t reply.

She faced him. “Answer me!”

“You were there, weren’t you?”he asked.

She stayed standing as straight as an arrow, chin up.

“The Burning of the Strike. You were there. I knew it the first time I saw you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I know everything that really matters about you.”

She laughed, tilting her head back to the sky as she closed her eyes. Feeling the rain between her shoulder blades, she wanted to melt into it—disappear from the moment.

“I do,” he reaffirmed.

“You don’t know anything,” she said, back still locked, eyes wincing against the rainfall as she panted into it. “I bet you’re looking forward to killing that Strike just so you can feel alive again. You can’t live without them.”

“You’re right,” he said.

She lowered her head and looked at him.

“But you were there, weren’t you?” he asked again. “The Burning of the Strike. You know what we lost.” His voice lifted with emotion. “You know what The Great Light did. All of that battle, and sacrifice and death. We thought we’d finally won and then—”

“Don’t you da—”

“What?” he challenged as he started to stand. “Don’t I dare what? Tell me.” He approached her, and she met him, up for the challenge.

Face to face, he glared, lowering his voice. “Come on, Ana. Let’s talk. You really think saying the words will change anything?”

They held one another’s eyes, and Ana measured his resolve. She’d seen Riders do blindly violent things, but now she wished he’d try.

She stepped to the side, noting a path up the ridge behind her. He followed her. They circled one another closely, Ana unsure if she would strike him or run. When given the chance, she did neither, and stopped. The path of escape now at her back, she knew she had to make a choice.

His eyes flickered behind her as if only to tell her he knew her thoughts.

“You won’t,” he said with an angry, challenging smile. “You can’t get away from the truth. You’ve been trying your whole life.”

“You love that, don’t you? A good struggle.

” She backed away, prepared to diffuse the tension between them, convinced that leaving him would defeat him in its own way.

She was certain she’d run out of time, and by this point Crow would be doing her a favor by releasing a bullet in Lethe’s direction.

She stepped back and he snatched her wrist, igniting a reflex of rage. Released and unbalanced, she struck back, and they were on the ground again in seconds.

They were like the storm, and the boiling movement of their struggle splashed through the rivers now pouring down from the adjacent hill. Ana landed a punch, hearing a crack as lightning flashed across the sky. She knew she’d broken a bone in his face.

She gasped when her shoulder crashed into a rock, pain grabbing into her joint as if she’d nearly dislocated it. He held her down, her other shoulder pushing over the cliff with a steep drop below.

Without thinking twice, she started to dip back, but Lethe jerked her away from the ridge.

She used the movement to sweep him, pushing her hips forward and riding the momentum as she flipped him onto his back.

She drew the blade attachment to his lighter, pressing it hard across his throat.

Her body weight rested over him as they both breathed heavily.

Her hand bled with the raw blade. Not attached to its handle, it cut into her fingers as she pushed it down.

“You’re going to want to light it first,” he challenged between breaths as she kept the knife hard against his throat.

“You really think either of our lives is a good enough ransom, Ana? Take mine. It’s all yours.

Can you really say you’d stop me from doing the same thing to you?

It’s why you gave up on life, isn’t it? Why you were so quick to spend it away? ”

The thunder churned and then he spoke the words she never thought she’d hear outside her own head.

“You don’t know if you’re even really alive,” he said.

She gritted her teeth, pressing the knife harder into his skin as she held his eyes.

“The Great Light is an illusion,” he said as if determined to voice the whole truth.

“It covered over the broken buildings and damaged world, brought back trees and clean water, but it brought back dead people too. Not all of them, but just enough. We win the war, and I wake up the next day to find out that I can’t even be sure I survived it, and neither can you.

The illusions don’t know they’re illusions.

Their children don’t know they’re illusions.

Everyone in the State might not even be real. ”

Her grip loosened on the blade, the revelation releasing the anger and energy in her.

The Great Light had ruined the world.

The Strike’s final curse had somehow claimed their victory forever. In taking away people’s certainty of death, he’d taken away their certainty of life.

And that was why En Sanctans avoided discussing it. Desperate to give the world some semblance of life, they had to hide that not everyone was really alive. It was the unspeakable, ugly problem that no one knew how to solve.

The war had cost them absolutely everything.

Ana felt a sudden outpouring of grief, completely drained of her rage. She watched Lethe through the rain, noting the bruising on his face where she’d perhaps fractured his cheekbone. It was already healing.

She eased off of him as he leaned back against the boulder again. She fell back beside him, their shoulders touching as they sat there in the rain.

For a while, neither of them said anything.

“I’m sorry.” She stared forward, replaying her own rage in her head. Her apology wasn’t solely about her outburst.

She was sorry for all of it—the war, the suffering, the horror of The Great Light. Finally, it was acknowledged and yet strangely, for the first time, it felt truly livable.

“I’m sorry too,” he said, followed by a breathy chuckle. “Feels kind of good to hear that.”