Page 34 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

Lethe turned in the doorway, and he seemed to understand that her “why” was not isolated to his previous statement, because he lingered on it.

He scanned the paintings a final time before looking down at his hand.

Out of character, he started moving his fingertips around the beginning of his ring finger on his left hand.

Almost a nervous gesture, Ana found herself fixated on it as he spoke.

“I understand it now,” Lethe said. “It took me a while since the mountains, but you reminded me that I used to care very much about some things.”

Sensing he wasn’t done, Ana didn’t fill the silence.

Lethe continued to move the invisible ring around his finger.

“I used to avoid thinking about those things. I used to know someone. Emma Shepherd. I think you might have too.”

Ana kept very still for a moment. “Emma Shepherd,” she whispered, struggling to understand if the name was familiar.

“‘There is always another way of doing things, even if it’s just having faith that there is something else to be done,’” he repeated her words from earlier, the words that had startled him. “Where did that come from?”

She hadn’t realized it had come from somewhere specific until he asked the question.

It had felt natural to say at the time, but only as he questioned it did she realize its source.

“I—” Ana paused, struggling to piece together a coherent story, to tell of a time she’d sworn never to speak of at all. “I,” she started again.

Lethe didn’t rush her. He waited there as if they had all the time in the world.

“I was injured during the Burning of the Strike,” she said and even that statement was a confession. It was confirmation that she had, in fact, been there at the end.

Lethe didn’t react to this but allowed her to continue.

“I don’t remember it well, but I remember that I felt scared and alone. There were many others there, trapped inside the Bleeding Grin when all of the fire still burned outside and the ROSE stormed the interior.”

He nodded as if waiting for her to tell the rest of the story.

Ana reached for the cloth Ares had held, cleaning off trembling fingers as she spoke.

“A woman held me. I remember her as barely more than a shadow. Everyone else ran past us, trying to save themselves. I was young and children often didn’t have good chances of surviving anyway, but this woman kept me into her arms, and just kept…

saying that. I didn’t understand it at the time.

She kept saying it to herself, over and over again, until she couldn’t anymore, but she held me.

I was hurt badly, but I wasn’t alone. It was a chaotic time, but I never forgot that.

I used to think about those lines a lot, trying to decipher why she’d said them.

Admittedly, I haven’t thought about them in forever, but I guess without even realizing it, I’ve found my own meaning in them. ”

“She used to say that a lot,” Lethe said. “She objected to the idea of the Burning of the Strike. I bet in the end, she kept repeating it to remind herself that she had never wanted to play a part in it. She was often prone to fits of instability and rumination but had a lot of her own wisdom too.”

“Who was she?” Ana asked.

“Her name was Emma,” Lethe said. “She had a rare mutation like mine. She could transform. She could change parts of herself into other people. It was a critical advantage for us, but the side effects were ultimately madness anytime she completely transformed into someone else. Similar to Chronos not working with combining peoples’ time, Emma struggled with combining identities.

There was always a risk she wouldn’t be able to find her way back.

She’d forget herself, her mind trapped between multiple people, and eventually all of reality would shake loose.

She’d get lost for days, sometimes weeks before becoming lucid again.

Each transformation cost another piece of her, and the pain of the war seemed to make her always more reluctant to come back to herself. ”

He paused for a long moment. “A few weeks before the Burning of the Strike, I was captured. She tried to come after me, and they captured her too. She was tortured in their experiments. I heard her beg for hours, but I couldn’t talk.

I was trapped in another cell and eventually they disposed of me when they were confident I was useless and beyond my healing abilities. ”

He retold the events with obvious reluctance to feel their sting.

“As you can see. I lived, and I came back with a vengeance, eager to set her free. By then, their experiments had twisted her far beyond herself. By the time the Burning of the Strike started to reach its close, prisoners broke loose. In her profound suffering, Emma had transformed into something horrible. I nearly died trying to stop her. In the middle of it all, she wounded a young slave girl. At the time I thought the wound had been deadly. It was the only thing that brought Emma to some recognition of herself. She grabbed the girl and ran off into the flames to die. I thought she died a monster…burned like one in the chaos of it all.”

Ana could not resist the profound guilt that she felt because in remembering anything about her past life, she remembered, always, how she’d served the Strike.

Even as a slave, she did not feel absolved of the role she’d had to play in the world around her.

Having the horrors exposed so blatantly made the guilt widen like a blackening yawn in the pit of her stomach.

She realized at last that Lethe only represented an oppressor in that he represented a victim of the system she’d supported.

She remembered Evira’s body in flames in the cavern and wondered what her judgment would be.

His next words surprised her.

“I’m glad she found you,” Lethe said. “Her death ripped every feeling I had left out of me, but it makes it a little better to know that in her final moments, there’s a chance she found her way back to some version of a human being again. It’s good to know that she died that way.”

A long silence stretched out between them.

“How did you know her?” Ana asked the question that made her most uneasy.

“She was my wife,” he replied.

Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The clock was racing now, it seemed like.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say, and he lingered there, hands by his sides, no expression on his face. For a moment, it was as if he was trying to figure out what to do.

He walked forward again, and she startled to find the wall already at her back. She eased her shoulder blades against it as Lethe neared, brows furrowed, searching her face.

When he was within feet of her, she was completely still, barely a breath in her lungs. A crushing weight pushed into her chest.

“You escaped to En Sanctus after it was over and grew up here, in the State,” Lethe said.

His expression darkened suddenly, and they stood face to face. He lifted a hand to her face, and she closed her eyes, nearly flinching at his touch.

She pressed her palms hard against the wall behind her, holding her breath as she felt his hand on the other side of her face.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

And then she felt his lips on her forehead.

Startled, she opened her eyes as he leaned away.

The ROSE kiss. It was a gesture to other ROSE, often as a greeting or departing salute, which said that beyond all experiences and differences, I see your soul, and I recognize it.

The gesture from him left her speechless in the ensuing silence, Ana still able to feel the imprint of his lips on her forehead as she recognized the familiar pain of loss in his eyes.

“She loved kids and had wanted so badly to set the slaves free,” he said softly.

“She would have done anything to keep even one of you alive.” His hands fell back down by his side.

“I’m glad you survived. Her death was not good, but if you’re a piece of her legacy, then that means… something.” He stepped away from her.

Ana’s mind raced to absorb and understand the words.

“I know I said justice is an illusion, but illusions are still powerful things,” he said.

“My past is just a ghost, but you give me this little glimpse of it again, and somehow, I want to fight for it too. That feels good.” He stepped away from her.

“Even if the feeling isn’t real, if feels good.

” He turned before walking out into the hallway.

Shocked, Ana stared as she listened to his footsteps. A single tear loosened from her eye, running down her check. She wiped it with her fingertip, staring as it reflected the light from outside.

She hadn’t cried in years.

She slid down against the wall, staring out the door. Another tear escaped. Ana wiped her face again before another came.

She gritted her teeth as her chest heaved, pressing her palms against her eyes. She tried to breathe, but her breath caught, again and again.

When she finally regained composure, she knew she had to talk to him again. She didn’t know what she would say, but she had to say something—anything.

She stood back up, rushing out of the room and down the stairs. She stopped short at the end of the stairway, searching the house.

“Lethe?” she asked, and heard something outside.

She burst through the door, nearly running into Jasper as she scanned the surrounding area.

“Ana,” Jasper said, calling for her attention as she scanned the valley and mountains.

Cal, Lethe, and Ares’s horses were all gone.

“Where is everyone?” Ana said, turning toward Jasper.

“Gone,” he said, seemingly startled at her urgency.

“Gone?”

“Yeah, Ares has been gone for about half an hour, said he wanted to clear his head and went for a ride. Lethe and Cal set off about ten minutes ago. What have you been doing?”

Ana stepped toward the end of the porch, swallowing hard as she set her hand up against one of the porch posts. Her eyes drifted over the mountains and the remainder of the valley with its abandoned cabins

She inhaled the brisk mountain air, fingers moving to her forehead where Lethe had kissed her.

Now, it felt as if the breezes could move right through her. No longer made of iron, she felt like air.

“What did Ares say?” Jasper asked after a while. “Is he going to attack the State?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, swallowing as she still stared off toward the horizon.

“You aren’t sure? What did the two of you end up talking about up there?”

“That people will ultimately get what they deserve. Justice.”

“And what do you think of that?” Jasper asked, guiding her eyes back to him.

Strengthened with a new, different, resolve, she removed her Atlas. Lifting it to the light, she watched the rays of sun bend through it.

“For the first time in a long time,” she breathed, “I’m determined to prove that wrong.”

The light through the Atlas told her that she had nine months left.

She was going to make every day count.