Page 35 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

THE TREES IN the Mystics were keepers of time, ancient a hundred times over with the majesty to speak for it.

The wide, beaten roads told stories of civilizations built, ravaged, and rebuilt again.

Lethe felt immortal when he looked at them, knowing that in his years of existence, he’d lived through the nation’s history.

As he and Cal rode through the territory, he couldn’t help but think of the ROSE who had ventured this way before him.

In the spirit of their predecessors, they had selected designated survivors of The Ocean’s War to venture south into the Mystics, beyond any chance of return.

Their sole mission was to warn any civilizations to the south of what had transpired in the North, to pass along their history along with the same warnings that had braced them years ago for the coming of the Strike.

Lethe found his mind caught in many similar thoughts. To him, this was a somber occasion. Cal, on the other hand, was enamored by it all. His fingers kept reaching out to graze the bark and tree leaves; he nearly slipped off his horse in his attempts to pick a keepsake.

Lethe watched a tree limb pull and then whip back against itself as Cal took a leaf.

He cradled it in his hand, inspecting its veins as if it might be very different from the leaves in the State or En Sanctus.

Cal had combed his sandy blonde hair and tidied up his uniform, as if presentation had any sway over the fate of their journey.

Taking in Cal’s lanky figure and frail, curious eyes, Lethe decided that this venture would need to be quick for Cal.

He’d send him back to the State shortly.

In its own way, this venture might be quick for him too.

“What’s wrong?” Cal asked when he noticed Lethe staring at him.

“Nothing. Why do you keep asking me that?” Lethe replied.

“It’s that look on your face, like someone’s died and you want to hit me.”

“Maybe that’s just my face.”

Cal offered him the leaf.

“I said I’m fine.”

“All right,” Cal replied, withdrawing it.

“Why are you so dead set on making a name for yourself?” Lethe asked before Cal could pursue the topic further.

Cal looked through the trees, shrugged, and then started to fold the leaf in his hands.

He folded and unfolded it like paper. “I want to be in the books, you know?” he said after a while.

“Everything is changing so fast. It seems like the only thing we really care about is the past. I’d like to be a part of it. ”

“Dead?” Lethe asked.

“I want to be like the Riders of Saint East. I failed my tests, you know. The only reason I’m a Number is because we started losing so many to the Mystics. I’m not the best at anything, but I want it more than anyone else. That’s got to mean something.”

Lethe withheld his cynicism, trailing behind Cal as the pathway narrowed. They started uphill. Cal’s expression changed as he reached the top of the hill.

“Are we close?” Lethe asked.

“That’s it,” Cal said in amazement. “Xal Xel.”

Lethe rode up, examining a fiery reflection from beacons sitting on the towers inside a grand city. He’d seen depictions of the grand Mystics cities, but there was something different in the experience of one of them.

“It’s a fortress,” he noted, examining the great stone walls behind the first series of huts and fields. Rows of towers and buildings built a honeycomb of elaborate residences within, the tops of the walls lined in grand statues.

“You see those?” Cal asked, pointing to the beacons. There were four of them in total, positioned equidistant from each other just inside the city walls. “They’re made of glass from the Atlases of soldiers. They’ve put them up there like trophies.”

“And they’ve just let a couple of us walk right up to it.”

“They never have to worry about Statesmen trying to cross the border. We’re too far and few between, and their strongholds here are too big.

Our best defense is the fact that many of them don’t want to cross into the State because their families will be dead by the time they get back to their homes in the deep Mystics.

Time here goes faster the deeper in you go, and of course, the core of their civilization is the most developed after all these years. ”

“Well, I’m glad I brought an expert with me,” Lethe said, taking in what he could of the great city. “So, the fact that an entire army has left to hit the State’s capital is a pretty dramatic move on their part.”

“The Mystics hate The Great Light,” Cal said.

“In their world, the mutation is a serious legend, something that’s haunted them forever.

This war has got to feel like a holy cause to them, especially now that they have evidence that the State has The Great Light.

The Numbers aren’t even seen as human to them.

The Mystics see an Atlas activate, give it a decade our time, and in their century or so, we’re suddenly monsters of time, guarding The Great Light. ”

“Time turns everything into a legend, I guess,” Lethe said.

They sat there in silence for a moment, Lethe’s mind, now of all times, escaping back to the cabin, back to Ana, back to the past.

He rubbed his chin, feeling for a moment he’d left too soon. He already felt strained, one restless part of him had wanted to leave, the other wanting to stay and talk to her.

But what could he say?

Like a message from beyond the grave, the coincidence of meeting Ana was jarring, for a reason he couldn’t quite place.

His wife’s painful death would always be a crime—a wrong in the universe that in his mind could never fall into place as part of some plan. It didn’t need to. He’d accepted the direction of things.

He’d seen the pain in Ana’s eyes like a canyon between them and felt that release of forgiveness when he’d kissed her forehead.

The idea that he could offer that release to anyone amazed him.

Why look for his forgiveness, knowing what he’d done in the Burning?

She’d just been a child when she’d served the Strike, but he’d been well aware of the crime he was about to commit at the Burning.

Now, a woman with her own rules and ideals, she was striving to put the past behind her. He admired that. Admiration is all it is , he told himself as he dampened down every other feeling.

The situation suddenly seemed very fragile. It would only get worse as the days ticked by.

Lethe felt his flask in his hand, measuring the weight of what Snake Bite remained. He only had enough Snake Bite to sustain him for a few more days, barely enough to get back to En Sanctus already.

The best-case scenario used to be that Madness in his blood would drive him into isolation in the mountains. The impulses and sensations around him would feel too intense and cluttered. Without any grounding force, he’d isolate.

He couldn’t be certain he would behave the same way this time. He could make his moves on this side of sanity, but the hunger in his head would always get a say.

There was a lingering itch in the back of his mind, that eating darkness and wrestling human soul inside him both aching for some level of stability.

He’d enjoyed being with Ana, Jasper, and Cal.

If The Ocean got the best of him, he’d go right back to them.

Ana especially. He resisted the idea of it, but he couldn’t deny the truth that when he imagined feeling grounded, centered, and focused, he imagined being with her.

If he lost sight of those principles Manaj had trained into him, this time, he knew he wouldn’t be going to the mountains.

The weakness of every Strike was the people they attached themselves to.

He wondered if he’d already found that weakness through Ana.

He wasn’t sure what that meant for either of their fates.

The stakes of the game were getting higher, and the higher the stakes got, the more the Strike in him wanted to play.

“You can’t expect me to let you go down there alone,” Cal said.

Jolted back into action, Lethe removed his lighter and bottle of oil, fixing it onto his belt. “I can expect you to slow me down if you don’t.”

Cal hopped off his horse, and Lethe followed suit. “Didn’t you used to be in teams?” he said. “How many of you survived something like this?”

“That’s exactly my point,” Lethe shot back. “Best-case scenario, there is a negotiation and I won’t risk you being offered up as collateral.”

“I thought Riders don’t negotiate with Strike,” Cal said. “That’s unusually…civil of you. Wait, what are you doing?”

Lethe undid the fold of his boots, pulling the fabric up over his knees before syncing the ends through his belt like riding chaps. “My fire-workers. Chances are things are going to get hot.”

“I thought you were going to negotiate?”

“I am,” Lethe said, lifting his lighter up to the sun to check the fluid before adjusting it on his belt. He adjusted the metal plates on his gloves, stretching his fingers through them.

“You can’t just leave me waiting up here.”

“Then go back.” Lethe replied.

“You promised me something I could take with me.”

Lethe didn’t respond, drawing his knife. He ran the blade over his arm and snatched his stopwatch.

He observed the stopwatch, counting the seconds as the wound healed on his arm.

It healed slowly; Lethe checked the stopwatch impatiently.

Taking a notepad from his belt, he wrote down the number, one in a series, marking his rate of healing.

It seemed there was still quite a bit of Snake Bite in his blood.

It kept his other nature at bay, but it also meant that his rate of healing was slow since it also restrained his mutation.

“What is it?” Cal prodded.

Lethe glanced at the Atlas on Cal’s belt before returning his stopwatch and blade to their rightful places.

“I can’t stop you from following me, but you’ll probably die,” Lethe said flatly.

Cal didn’t seem to absorb the reality of what Lethe was saying.