Page 32 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

LETHE AND CAL prepared the horses in silence, Lethe wrestling with a storm in his mind as Cal worked nervously beside him.

“I’ll just be dropping you off? That’s it?” Cal asked as he finished tightening the girth on the saddle.

“That’s it,” Lethe replied, inspecting his bags and removing his old clothes.

Filthy as they were, they would be better to fight in than what he had on now.

He checked through his things, restlessly filing through all of his possessions before stopping and arresting the horse’s saddle in his hands, staring at the smoothed leather.

When he’d kissed Ana in the mountains, he’d imagined finally connecting to that fire in her.

He’d never imagined that he’d be the one left shaken by it, reminded of feelings he’d once been capable of feeling.

Embracing her in the wake of Evira’s death had reached something inside him he thought he’d lost a long time ago.

Perhaps it was because Evira and Ana were, in their own ways, characters from The Ocean’s War.

In such prolonged interaction with both of them, he was alive again, and not in the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-washed sense of the word.

He felt like the fully human Lethe Shepherd from ten years ago.

That was a problem, because the Lethe from ten years ago wanted more than just to bury himself in the thrill of things. The Lethe from ten years ago had things to lose, and that wasn’t a good thing when preparing to face a powerful Strike alone.

To make things worse, Ana had said those words, near clones of the reminder he’d heard a hundred times in his last year as a ROSE, a hundred times as they had all planned the Burning of the Strike.

He could still hear Emma Shepherd’s voice, echoing from the past.

There has to be a better way, even if it’s just having faith that there is something else to be done.

Emma had spoken through Ana there in the kitchen and brought him back to the past, to a time when he’d been preparing to risk it all, when he had risked too much, to save the world he loved.

Now, here he was again, and despite agreeing to fight Ivan Rowe, in a dramatic turn of internal events, he no longer wanted to go. He now knew the battle might cost more than just his life, or this small, flickering figment of it he’d only just regained.

He rummaged through his things again, searching for his Snake Bite tablets. He checked every pocket with progressive haste, tearing things out of his pack and laying them over the saddle. They were nowhere to be found.

He paused, wiping his face before bracing the saddle once more. He exhaled. Where else would I have put them? He always kept them in the same spot.

Closing his eyes, he remembered Manaj’s mantra, a mantra that supposedly had the power to keep the demons away when he needed more than just Snake Bite.

Rubbing his face, he rolled through the lines emptily in his mind, at last mumbling aloud, “On the most fragile flower.”

Without Manaj’s voice to echo the words, they felt powerless.

“Is something wrong?” Cal asked.

Lethe exhaled from deep in his chest, leaning back as he released the saddle. “Cal,” he asked, “has anyone moved the bags?”

He walked over to Ana and Jasper’s bags, searching them fruitlessly.

“Ana and Jasper never really touched your things. Only me when I helped with the horses, and maybe Evira,” Cal said, and Lethe promptly approached Cal’s bags and rummaged through them.

Nothing.

“You said maybe Evira?” Lethe asked.

“Well, yeah,” Cal said, searching Lethe’s face. “Just a bit. I thought she was looking for something. I think they were her bags though. She took something.”

Lethe’s eyes narrowed. “Were they hers or were they mine? Think, kid. Think hard. This is important. Her bags were dark leather. Mine are lighter. Think hard.”

He knew the differences because he’d gone through her things too.

Cal kept glancing back at Lethe’s things and swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“What did she take?”

“I don’t know—I’m not even sure she took something. It was quick. Whatever she took would have been small anyway.”

“When?” Lethe said forcefully as Cal fiddled with hands nervously.

“Y-Yesterday, just after we unsaddled all of the horses. She was moving things around. I thought maybe she was helping or just organizing things.”

Lethe cursed and walked away running a hand through his hair.

It was Evira . Of course, it was her.

She’d known more than she’d let on, observing him just as he’d been observing her.

He closed his eyes tightly and exhaled as he looked up at the mountain range. Snow and ice were crisp against a bright blue sky, in sharp contrast to the darkness boiling inside him.

He looked up at those peaks longingly as he lowered his hands by his side, taking a deep breath as he looked out at the valleys of lush grasses, grown up around old ROSE cabins.

He hadn’t found anything in Evira’s bags before he’d burned them.

In all likelihood, she had kept the tablets on her person.

He remembered her laughter before she died, that absurd, knowing laughter.

His folly had not been killing her; it had been in burning her.

In the end, she too had known that. In seeking to appease his demons, he’d destined himself, perhaps, to become one.

The small flicker of renewed life inside him was just a candle against the sea of darkness he needed to keep at bay.

He lifted the flask from his belt and measured the weight of what Snake Bite remained inside.

“Is everything okay?” Cal asked behind him.

Lethe put the flask away.

“It’s time to go,” was all he could muster.

Time.

Suddenly, he had so little of it.