Page 48 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

Ah, the foot broke off again. Lethe. She’s going to hate this.

Emma ran two hands through her hair, long blonde waves that glistened over her shoulders.

She propped one cheek up on her hand, the rows of names tattooed on her arm visible past her sleeve.

Emma had been part of the first wave of ROSE, the ones who had protected people.

She nudged him with her foot. Lethe had been lying on the floor, his hat over his face, sleeping off the fatigue from a mission the night before. A light breeze drifted through the window.

Hey. You. Get up. Help me. Barlow is bringing her over soon.

“Jackie won’t care. She’s five. She won’t care. She’s five, all right?”

I need her to like me. I want to have kids and I can’t do it while the world’s like this. Think of this as adopting.

Lethe groaned. “Great, you’ve gone maternal.”

She said something back, something quick and sharp that had made him laugh, but he couldn’t remember it.

Why couldn’t he remember it?

He’d genuinely laughed.

The memory began to feel distant, and then it was on repeat, like a broken tape.

We can have these big family-style get-togethers. Make new—

She went silent.

“Emma,” he said. “Where did you—”

The memory of her sobbing in pain flashed into his mind, blood and sweat on her skin, Strike hovering over her, those red eyes in the dark. She screamed.

Lethe shot up, groaning as he rolled back onto his stomach, cursing as he pressed his face back into the dirt. He slammed his fist into the earth.

Then she was back again, lying next to him on a blanket in the grass. She ran her finger from his forehead down his nose, smiling mischievously as she stopped there. She pressed his nose and chuckled to herself.

“What are you doing?” he asked, moving his face.

He’d forgotten that memory somehow too, but the recollection of lying there beside her filled him with a deep sense of longing and freed a sorrow in him that felt old and frustrated.

Another conversation.

“I’ll forget about it anyway,” he said, packing one of his saddle bags as she scrubbed something over a bucket of water. “It’s not worth getting angry over.”

If you block out the bad, you’ll block out the good too, she said. It’s all life, you know.

“I’m listening,” Lethe spoke aloud in response to the memory, rubbing his eyes.

And there he saw her, lying on those stone tiles, bleeding as Strike Haulud dragged him away to isolate him. She wasn’t crying any longer, sprawled out naked at Peter’s feet.

He was too tired to protest—nearly dead, staring at her as those doors closed, blocking her broken body from sight.

And then he remembered lying in bed, his fingers tracing her shoulder.

The curve of her waist as her chest rose and fell with each breath in the morning light, her hair lying in chaotic curls over his arm.

She’d fallen asleep next to him as he recovered from a particularly painful mission.

He’d kissed her temple tenderly, stealing that moment for himself as she slept.

Back in the present again, he opened his eyes to the blue sky of the Mystics.

I’m just one person, Lethe. Her voice echoed as if she were lying beside him. You need to live for more than just that.

He clenched his teeth, covering his eyes with his hand. For the first time in years, he wept. Lethe’s body heaved with the memories as if after all these years, his heart had come back to him, a final confirmation that Emma didn’t have it any longer.

When it was done, he felt exhausted, heavier than he’d ever felt, but with all of the devastation of it, at last he had the vibrant images back, the times they’d laughed together.

He remembered her, all of her.

I know they’re our friends, but if you start smoking like a Rider, you better stay in the mountains!

He smiled, rubbing his face, covering his eyes.

We should get up to see the sunset tomorrow.

He inhaled.

I keep stepping in that hole in the grass and getting my foot wet. Will you fill it in already? I hate it. It’s hard to see. I keep forgetting it’s there.

He exhaled.

I love you.

He held his breath.

I love you so much.

He let the emotions go, waiting for the happiness that would follow. He waited for some sense of peace, but in the absence of those feelings, he didn’t feel anything.

Narrowing his eyes, he lifted a hand to his face. There were no darkened fingertips, but in the absence of resentment, anger, and sadness, he felt nothing.

He thought back on his life with Emma. He thought back on his life in the ROSE. Neither aroused any feeling at all. Slowly, he sat back up, still looking at his hand. He clenched and unclenched his fist, and then at last, it occurred to him.

He wasn’t Lethe Shepherd anymore. He wasn’t a ROSE. Whatever he’d just let go of, he was suddenly aware that it hadn’t been a burden. The tragedies of his past had grounded and defined him. And that definition, as thin and fragile as a balloon, was gone.

He searched the sky, feeling just as fast and limitless. For a brief moment, he wanted to laugh at the humor of his past self, who only a few minutes ago had thought so gravely of history.

No specific thought triggered him to move other than the sense that it was time to go. He sat up, forcing himself back to his feet as he returned his glove to his hand. His business was done in the Mystics.

It was time to return to the State, to the Capital, to Ana.

* * *

When he arrived back at camp, he and Cal quietly saddled up and took a day’s ride back toward the border.

At nightfall, they both sat near the campfire in the thick of the dense woods, a starlit sky barely visible above them. Cal watched as Lethe heated his knife, empty of oil, over the coals. When it was hot enough, he removed it, pressing it against Ivan Rowe’s name on his arm.

Cal watched without any apparent feelings on the matter. Lethe noticed that he continued to stare long after Lethe had put away the knife and met his eyes.

“What is it?” Lethe asked.

Cal didn’t speak for a long time. For a moment, Lethe assumed he wasn’t going to reply at all. Cal coiled his arms around his knees and rested his chin on them as he looked back at the fire.

“I’m sorry I said those things,” Cal said.

“It’s fine, kid. I don’t care.” Lethe stood up and started to stow his things for the night in his saddle bags.

The silence lingered longer this time.

“You need to get some rest. I know you didn’t sleep any last night,” Lethe said.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Not sitting up like that, you won’t. Don’t feed into it. Try and sleep if you can.” Lethe returned to the fire. “You should be proud of yourself. You helped kill the last Strike, and I’m pretty sure you have enough gold in that bag of yours to set you up for life.”

Cal smirked.

“You could officially be a Rider now,” Lethe added with a yawn.

Cal yawned too, smiling now as he lay down by the fire. “Nah,” he said, closing his eyes. “I think I want to be my own thing.”

Lethe chuckled. “Arrogant kid.”

“I’ll be able to fight well but then maybe have social skills too. Improved Rider.”

“Well, in that case, I should tell you that cutting your hand and shaking it isn’t really what we did to initiate people,” Lethe muttered.

“Wait, what? That was fake?” Cal sounded genuinely offended.

“Yeah. You need a Dear Anne. I couldn’t just say that, though. You were being brave. You put me in a tough spot.”

“Wait, so you’re kicking me out?”

“You were never in.”

“Can I be in? Officially?”

“Sure. Officially. Welcome to the Riders of Saint East.”

“No, thanks. I want to do my own thing.”

“Go to sleep,” Lethe grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Before I beat you.”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Shh.”

Lethe watched the fire, throwing in a few twigs.

“Do you miss Ana?” Cal asked.

“No.”

“You miss her, though, right?” Cal said, blatantly ignoring his response. “I pay attention.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to concern me what you choose to pay attention to,” Lethe replied.

“There’s this girl that works in the State capital. She’s a farmer, but like, a clean one.”

“A clean one?”

“She does her hair and stuff. The Numbers will always go and buy stuff from her even when they don’t need it.”

“By Numbers, you mean yourself?” Lethe raised an eyebrow.

“I’m going to talk to her when I get back.”

“Talk to her?” Lethe snorted. “Give her a good talkin’ to then.”

“I will.”

“Good. Do it.”

“No one can stop me.”

“I’m sure.”

Cal’s eyes were open now; he was clearly more awake than Lethe was.

“I think Ana is really pretty,” Cal said.

“People are usually soft, but they try and act tough.” He propped his chin up on his palm.

“But she’s tough but tries to be a nice person.

I always thought she was nice, but I was always afraid to talk to her.

I’ve really liked traveling with all of you…

” He continued talking for several minutes, running off of nervous energy.

Lethe’s eyes were trained on the fire. At last, he lay down beside it, clenching and unclenching his left hand before zoning back in on Cal.

This time, he paid great attention to the boy’s words as he spoke about their adventures, summarizing them, rehashing his experience of Lethe’s fight with the Strike.

“You know, Ivan Rowe was one of the weaker Strike,” Lethe cut in at one point.

“That smoke he started off with…it’s functional fear,” he said, speaking of things he hadn’t spoken of in years.

“They borrow the forms and mechanics of things both in nature and that have been invented to create their own, frightening attacks.”

“Really? Yeah, that bear machine thing was pretty scary.”

“Yeah.” Lethe chuckled. “You have to keep running into the smoke. Lean into the fear. It will take new forms to protect itself, but it reflects how much power a Strike is capable of harnessing all at once. If you manage to beat through the monsters, you can land a killing blow. It has to be with a cherry knife, though. You need fire,” he explained.

And from that point, he shared more that he knew of the Strike than he ever had.

Feeling the coolness in his own fingertips, he shared all of the ways to kill them.