Page 33 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

JASPER LEANED BACK in his chair, fingers resting against the edge of his plate. Ana could tell he was deeply dissatisfied with the events to come.

And why not?

How could any of them be satisfied? Nothing was right—the world had flipped on its head in a single conversation, and who could say what would be left when it was all over?

Relations between the State and the Mystics had been tense, but never had Ana imagined the Mystics diving so deep inland toward the capital, leaving their families lost in time as years passed in their home country. This move on their part was historic if not desperate.

And it was desperate because of the State.

That was an entirely new frontier in her mind that Ana didn’t want to explore. She felt betrayed, not by Hailey or her government but by fate. Governments and people failed, but she hadn’t realized until now how much she’d expected of fate.

She’d given a lot in her life. She thought she’d given enough, as if fate had a quota and took a designated sum from everyone.

Justice isn’t real. Lethe’s words echoed as clearly as if he’d said them to her face.

And that brought her to the issue of The Great Light.

“Let me go talk to Ares,” Ana said out loud to stop her thoughts from reeling further. She walked to the staircase.

“Ana.” Jasper rose, a warning in his voice.

“We have the same goal. I just need him to trust me.” She had to fix this. She had to fix something.

Jasper didn’t argue, and Ana proceeded up the stairs. Spotting a cracked door at the end of the hall, she followed the sound of movement.

Nudging it open, she stepped into a room filled with painted canvases. The greatest, nearly as large as the wall itself, was positioned opposite her.

The canvas was smeared with images of carnage and screaming, burning faces.

People with twisted hands reached from the painting as if calling out to Ares, who sat on his legs in front of them like he was making peace at an altar.

He watched the faces, hands glistening with red paint as if he’d been the one to kill them.

In a way, he had.

She recognized one of the faces in the top left corner. It was a Numbers soldier, one who’d tried to defect to the Mystics. She’d trained with him at the academy. Ares had been sent to kill him when he tried to defect years ago.

If his face in the painting was not a confirmation of his death, what else could be?

She didn’t look at the other faces, having a sense that she’d see more people she recognized, previously presumed to have died in battle. Ares had followed orders without qualm, until the day he didn’t.

“Familiar, isn’t it?” Ares said. He didn’t look back at her.

She slid down the doorframe until she sat as he did. “Somehow.”

“When murder is the purpose for which you were made, you think about it differently. You’ve killed.”

“Yes.”

Ares reached for the black paint pooling on the tarp to his left.

He marked across the canvas, deepening the painting.

He then wiped off his hands, drying off the brushes he’d previously used as he looked out the window.

A bird was perched on a branch outside. Ares held one elbow in his palm and used the hand to tuck some hair behind his ear.

In this moment, and with such a delicate gesture, he looked like a woman to her rather than a man, though Ana knew Ares was neither.

“We’re going soon,” Ana said.

“Good,” Ares said. “You know, the State doesn’t deserve you or Jasper. It does, however, deserve me.”

“Deserve,” Ana repeated, staring out the window. “I’m having a hard time understanding what that means these days.” Not eager to dive into philosophy, she added, “Maybe not Hailey, the Var, or whatever other leaders you hate, but I’m not doing this for them.”

“Then it’s for the people? The people elected them, Ana,” Ares responded, not looking at her.

“And you served them for years.” In the midst of this crisis, she was starting to feel a bit more like her old self.

It was a comforting, steady feeling, as if it was crisis itself that now soothed her and made the world familiar again.

“You’re giving yourself a chance to change your mind, but no one else gets that chance? They have to die?”

“I am different. I give myself different choices,” Ares replied.

“You’re off-color. You’re not as different as you think.”

“Off-color,” he repeated as if she’d been the only other person he’d heard say it. “The armies are already in place. I will not urge them to withdraw. I planned their route, ensured they’d go unnoticed, diverted all Numbers away from them. It’s already done.”

“But you don’t have to go with them.” Her tone was as calculated and severe as his. “You can withdraw from all of this.”

Ares didn’t reply, and for a while they waited there together in front of the paintings. He watched the bird sitting on a limb outside with the same intense, open eyes that he’d used to watch the painting. “It’s a beautiful day,” he remarked with a smile.

Ana didn’t move, not for a long time.

Ares moved to the corner of the room and picked up a bucket, walking past her before casting the bucket forward, dousing the painting in black.

He handed her the handle, black paint dripping down the sides.

Ana watched the painting, taking the soiled handle as black paint slid over the grotesque images. She stood up, finding her place beside him.

“I was born to be a murderer, but I don’t create these pictures to punish myself. I create them to release those feelings that might otherwise poison me,” Ares said.

Bucket handle in her fingers, Ana saw how it stained her hands.

“Paint over the black.” He grabbed the cloth and dried off his fingers again, walking toward the door.

“Each piece of art is a smattering of the soul. We cannot create that which is not inside us, and in that, our art reflects the innermost parts of ourselves. We create wherever we go, painting people with our impressions, our soft and subtle actions that ripple out in ways we will never understand.”

“Ares.”

He turned in the doorway, still holding the cloth.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Ares tossed the cloth back on the stool. He gestured to another painting hanging on the wall, one Ana hadn’t noticed yet.

She faced it, her expression faltering. “Setting Sail,” she whispered, tentatively reaching a hand up to it. The vast array of rich blues almost glowed in the morning light. “Is this…?”

“The original? It is,” Ares said, folding his arms. “The one thing I ever stole but didn’t need, I’d say. You gave it to Evan Gilbe, if you recall. Now, if you can turn my devastation into something like that, I will be truly impressed.”

Ana turned back to Ares’s painting. She reached out with bare fingers, covering the canvas until it was completely black. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine the faces beyond it.

She sat there in silence for a while.

Ares spoke for a final time.

“Our creations surround us, reflect us, and in such a way, they judge us. We are enslaved by the fates, which we dictate. Kings caged—at the mercy of the kingdoms we unwittingly create. As such, looking to the frightening challenge ahead of me, I brace myself with the truth that I am the State’s creation and its fate must soon become my creation.

This dilemma is years in the making. Decades. ”

“Then break that cycle,” Ana whispered. “Paint something else.”

A minute passed, perhaps more. When Ares didn’t elaborate further, Ana turned, but he was gone.

She looked back at the painting, mulling over their conversation and wondering if he’d consider her proposal at all. He had, after all, kept Setting Sail, perhaps a way for him to imagine a different future for himself.

She hoped that’s what it meant.

“I’m leaving now,” another voice said after a minute. She turned to see Lethe leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed. He glanced past her at the painting but didn’t ask about it.

“Ares give you an answer?” he asked.

Ana set the paint bucket down. “I’m not sure.”

They both stood there in silence for a moment, Lethe’s eyes observing the paintings. His eyes lingered on Setting Sail, and for that one moment, Ana felt exposed.

“The last Strike,” were his next works, sending an uncomfortable stripe of tension up her spine.

“Do you really think you can kill it?” she asked as he walked into the room.

He walked along the walls, still looking at the paintings, and she was acutely aware of how he slowly came closer to her as he circled. He stopped at a painting near her, attention focused on it.

“Not any more than you think you can stop Ares, but hunting Strike has never been about thinking you’ll win.” He lingered there for a moment before facing her. “What is it about the State that you love so much?”

“It’s my home,” she asserted, and to her surprise, he didn’t challenge her answer. Rather, he kept her eyes as if watching something swimming beneath the water’s surface—as if he were still watching art, looking for the message in it.

“I’ll do my best,” he said. She was surprised at his conviction, and by his somber behavior.

As he passed her on the way to the door, she asked, “Why?” But she was unsure what exactly she was questioning.

He was fine, suddenly? Not bringing up their interaction in the mountains, not addressing the abrupt change in their circumstances?

They were parting ways, possibly to never see each other again, and this was it?

Or had she been fooling herself all along?

Was he still more an enemy to her than she had the good sense to understand?