Page 45 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

A STEP FROM the darkness into the Xal Xel throne room assured Lethe they’d passed the test.

Empty-eyed soldiers, eaten of all traces of soul and thought, lined the walls. The doors creaked closed behind him as he stepped through, surrendering him to a tomb-like silence.

Cal was at his wit’s end, standing near Lethe, but locked up by the accumulated shock of it all. When Lethe entered, he pushed Cal back behind a column and sat him down.

“Stay down,” Lethe whispered. “You did good, kid. I’ll take it from here.”

He walked between the next set of columns, placing himself in the center of the walkway, the throne at the end.

Ivan Rowe was waiting for him with ice-blue rings in his dark eyes.

He had his heel crossed over his knee, fingers folding into a steeple in front of his face.

His skin was almost radiant, a characteristic of most Strike.

His dark-brown hair was combed back, graying at the temple from several centuries of age.

He was dressed like a Mystic, the intricacies of their black clothing a match for his fingertips.

“You’ve lived a long life here—had plenty to drink from the Mystics,” Lethe said. “Maybe enough for you to drown out the shame of abandoning the other Strike at the Burning.”

“I don’t pick sides, Lethe. It’s why I’m here today,” he said, opening his arms as if he were on display, inviting eyes to the white marble columns and ivory throne.

The evening light that drifted in from the skylights created a completely different scene than all of the others they’d just traveled through.

Oil lamps burned in whispers across the walls.

“You picked John Hailey’s.” Lethe drew his dagger. “What is it the two of you are up to anyway?”

Ivan laughed, running a thumb over one brow, before combing his fingers through his hair.

His free hand played with a glass that sat on the armrest. Remnants of a blue liquid sloshed back and forth inside.

Judging by the consistency, Lethe guessed it was a mixture of human memory and perhaps the emotion of bliss.

“Ah. That,” Ivan said, leaning his head back. “John Hailey has found himself in a desperate pinch and needs my help.”

“He must be desperate,” Lethe replied coolly.

“He has the devastating illness of caring—about the fate of the world, I mean. Our letters capture the least of it.”

“John Hailey. Caring? That’s believable,” Lethe said, fixing the blade on his lighter and allowing the oil to flow through the metal.

Ivan swirled the liquid in his glass, watching it evenly. “I’m afraid that’s all true, my old friend.”

“That’s too bad.” Lethe lit his knife.

Ivan stood up.

“So,” Ivan said. “This is it. Before the world ends. Survivor against survivor.”

“I never liked that term,” Lethe replied.

“You won’t have to live with it much longer.” Madness rose like mist from Ivan’s shoulders and then his sleeves.

It was in a single moment that Lethe’s fear dissolved. All of his feelings did.

It wasn’t a revelation. It wasn’t clarity. It was a silencing of the human spirit in the presence of the animal.

He started to walk forward.

Ivan moved down the stairs, each step radiating the mist of Madness and transforming him into a less visible version of himself in the smog.

For the first time in a very long time, there were no ploys or politics. It was the Strike against the Riders, refined violence pitted against its crude counterpart—the scalpel and the saw.

Lethe picked up his pace as Ivan neared the last step. He exhaled a steady, measured breath, his pulse a rhythm in his ears. His feet moved to it.

As Ivan’s foot descended off the last step, the smoke around him billowed and his human shape collapsed inside of it like a sheet of sand. Jaws like a shark’s burst from the smoke, long claws, curving into hooks, extending toward Lethe.

Lethe rolled out of the way as a monstrous crash echoed throughout the room.

He drew the flaming cherry knife through the smoke in one stroke.

Fire cleared it and it recoiled, Lethe pursuing the density of it and ducking away from a blade like a scythe that emerged from the smoke and dissipated once it missed him.

He leapt back as a spear of smoke shot up from below him, a solid weapon for a moment before dissolving.

They followed his feet, Lethe stepping quickly back as they shot up only seconds after each heel hit the ground.

He coiled back toward the throne room wall when a black guillotine came down from above him.

He intercepted it with the flaming dagger, the guillotine shattering before it burst into a swarm of wasps.

Lethe drew a sword from one of the silent guards and struck a hanging oil lamp nearby with the sword, scattering it across the air before lighting the wet blade with his knife.

The wasps caught flame. Lethe drove through them to the heaviest point of the smoke.

He heard a shriek and a roar as he broke into the smog, driving away one beast with his knife before another latched onto his arm and rolled him out of it with searing pain.

It tried to drag him away with steel hooks for legs, and a head of a bear latched around Lethe’s shoulder.

The hooks in the beast’s legs ejected, digging into nearby columns before retracting again, trying to pull Lethe away from the smoke and the essence of Ivan’s soul.

Blood poured from his wounds as Lethe slammed the sword up through the base of the skull, and the creature threw him with a violent swing of its jaws.

Lethe felt the skin tear as his body spun through the air, colliding hard into a wall before falling back toward the floor.

Something like a lion caught him in the air, jaws like a steel trap locking into his ribs and hurling him across the room.

Lethe fell and rolled at the feet of the guards, losing his knife a few feet away.

He could hear The Eating Ocean.

He pulled his arm over the stone, pushing up against the bloodstained floor. His body shook against the pain, but that was his body’s response, not his mind’s. Now wasn’t the time to stop.

Give me your fear , The Eating Ocean chided. Let me have your revenge .

The black waters started to surface between the cracks in the stone.

Something like the claws of a giant bird clamped down over Lethe’s back, forcing him down and nearly causing him to crack his skull against the floor.

Give me your skin.

He pushed himself up, intensifying the depths of the wounds on his back as the claws dug in.

Let me have your spirit.

Inch by inch, he separated himself from the stone floor. The Eating Ocean’s waters started to pool in a hallucination around his hands, dripping now from the walls.

He cursed.

He rotated his body hard, turning into the claws and feeling the skin and muscle give way as he rolled toward his knife, drawing it up fast and slamming it through the coming smoke.

The smoke dispersed and recollected behind him.

Lethe pulled the nearest sword from another guard in time to block something like a mechanical vice that shot from the smoke and closed in around it, snapping the sword blade.

He pulled back toward the wall, drawing up another sword before the smoke billowed and converged toward him.

He thrust the sword up into another oil lamp, pulling it down off the wall and disappearing into the smoke before lighting it.

It exploded, and he heard shrieking like broken music. The smoke dissipated around him. Searing pain eased the breath from his lungs, and he stood there, sword and hand alight with the fire.

The smoke completely dissolved. Ivan was nowhere to be found.

Lethe turned slowly as he searched the room. The pain lit up his brain, his pulse still drumming. “I’m not a survivor!” he shouted to the rows of dead-eyed guards, the rage a roar in his voice, his body covered in blood. “They picked me!”

A guard stirred to his left and lifted his head. The bodies around the room started to move. They drew their weapons and straightened.

The bodies charged. Lethe was taken back to another time. Between the flashes of spears and knives, he saw shadows of his fellow Riders.

They fought with him. Though they too were empty like the rest, those faces he saw in the fire, always in the fire, fought with him again.

He caught sight of movement and saw the walls bleeding with The Eating Ocean.

It started to pour down like a waterfall, pushing through the room, between the feet of the guards.

Nothing stopped the empty guards. The blows he dealt lingered, but only for a moment. They kept coming and then Ivan burst from among them, engaging Lethe directly. Ivan drove a spear past his side, slicing a cut across his ribs.

Lethe grabbed it, yanking Ivan forward and driving the cherry knife directly toward his sternum.

Ivan vanished, his spear vanishing with him.

Give me your hands , The Eating Ocean said. Let me have your truth.

Lethe’s eyes remained open despite the blood that threatened to blind him. His wounds continued to heal. He clenched his teeth against the pain. The Eating Ocean kept whispering.

Give me your pain, it said, Let me have your revenge . Its requests now aligned more with his desires as if The Eating Ocean could see him with all the clarity of divine insight.

Lethe stumbled back against one of the walls.

“How do you expect this to end, Lethe? You can’t kill me!” Ivan appeared again, feet away from him. All of the guards fell around Ivan’s feet, dolls emptied of their handler.

Lethe charged him again and they collided. Ivan blocked his first attack, and Lethe retaliated with his cherry knife, cutting a mark across his collar bone.

Ivan recoiled. Lethe struck again, reminding himself to lean on the power of the knife.

He cut Ivan’s shoulder. Ivan struck out again. Lethe accepted the blow to his chest, using the opportunity to drive the knife into Ivan’s stomach.

Ivan doubled over and then dragged Lethe onto the ground, flipping his back against the stone with black nails, like steel, hooked into his chest. Lethe coughed against the wound in his chest, still holding his knife.

He felt the blood pooling over the hilt of his dagger.

He stopped pushing up against Ivan, allowing the Strike’s talons to sink into his chest. Blood poured into his lungs, but he used the proximity to slam the knife deeper into the Strike.

He choked and saw the smile on Ivan’s face.

“Let go,” Ivan whispered.

Adrenaline and exhaustion tugged back and forth. Lethe’s vision blurred.

Lethe withdrew the knife as if in surrender, and in a final moment, slammed it through the second oil canister on his belt, drew it between them, and pulled back the lighter.

It hissed but refused to light against the blood that coated it in his grip.

Lethe’s hand moved shakily to the back of Ivan’s collar as the man’s talons cracked his chest.

Lethe pulled the lighter back again.

A metallic click sounded. It lit.

Ivan’s expression faltered.

An Atlas activated. The device whirred, trapping Ivan’s body.

Ivan attempted to withdraw, but the radius of the Atlas slowed him down. He reached a hand into the orb as if to close the wound over his chest and withdraw the dagger, but his hand was caught in the orb, pinned by time.

In those extended moments, Lethe watched the fear wrestle into Ivan’s face at the realization that time had finally found him, neutralizing Madness in his system, making him mortal again.

Lethe’s head tilted to the side to see Cal standing at the edge of the room, feet spread apart, shaking.

Ivan’s arm stretched his claws deeper into Lethe’s chest, drawing his eyes back to the Strike’s face as he cried out in pain.

The Strike’s talons prepared to deal the final blow, as if to rip out Lethe’s heart.

Ivan’s eyes emptied, and his grip loosened.

Cal ran forward, yanking Lethe’s lighter free from the Atlas’s time and tossing it. It exploded around them and ignited the room.

Cal released his Atlas, shaking wildly as he fumbled after it.

Lethe rolled Ivan’s body off him and then fell back, eyes to the ceiling. He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to cough. The smell of oil was thick in the air. When he opened them again, he saw his fellow Riders, standing in a circle around him.

They all stood in the surrounding fire that hadn’t existed a moment ago, watching him wordlessly. Among them, again, he saw himself.

He closed his eyes again, waiting for them to ferry him off. The Eating Ocean chided, like a droning in the back of his skull.

“Lethe!” Cal cried, “We have to get out! Get up!”

Drapery fell down from the ceiling in ashes, and a hanging chandelier crashed into the stone. Lethe hadn’t realized how much the fire had spread during their fight.

Cal called louder, trying to fight through the heat, but the smoke thickened, black and boiling as it filled the room.

Beads of blood shivered on Lethe’s forearm as his body convulsed with the subtle tremors of adrenaline.

The flames crackled, hissed, and barked, and he noted a sense of panic in Cal’s next cries.

Through a fog, he slowly turned his head, watching as a flaming piece of debris fell and hit Cal hard on the shoulder, knocking him to the ground.

His body lay there for a moment, a quiet mass among corpses.

The ashes swirled, the heat billowed, and the room cooked.

It was in these moments that Lethe thought of god.