Page 52 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

She rubbed more tears from her face. “From the burden of questioning myself every second of every day, from the burden of being a ghost. I felt so trapped in life, trapped without any remedy, Lethe. I am so lost and the only way out I had is gone now. This is torture.”

Lethe approached, concerned as he searched her face, guiding her up to him.

He wrapped her back into his arms and whispered her name as he looked into her eyes.

He wasn’t sure which nature spoke for him.

As he watched her soul, he saw that strange and familiar thing nestled and hidden beneath all of her emotions.

He spoke to that, and with frightening ease, confessed a truth that he accepted only as he revealed it to them both, “I would love even the ghost of you.”

Her expression faltered, and he saw in her an invitation, his affections finally given passage by an unburdened secret.

He kissed her again.

She jolted as if the sensation shocked her and then her hand moved into his hair. He leaned forward, kissing her neck as he hoisted her closer to his body, one hand circling her thigh.

He followed her breathing like a map, the subtlest changes voicing a turn in her feelings as she shook against the sensations he played through her.

He swept her down into her small bed near the fireplace.

For a beautiful moment, she was nothing but warmth in his arms and he coiled them both in a blanket.

She unraveled beneath him, but he held fast to her with the truth that he was the one hanging by a thread.

Evira had been right.

One glimpse into Ana’s soul and he found himself a subject of it, able to fight and suffer at the hands of the Strike empire, and then laid bare in worship at the mercy of this tender and infinitely rich woman.

He was swept up in the solace of her spirit and the tangle of her form, and it felt all-encompassing, like he’d been lost in a sea of fire for a decade and at last had come home.

His mind and body were for a moment empty of their demons, and in the warm shelter of Ana, he thought of Emma Shepherd.

The sensation of her was so striking that he hesitated, drawing away from her lips, hands poised against her skin beneath the dress.

As if his pause had been a conscious and necessary thing, Ana embraced him a final time, chest to chest, before easing out from under him. A single tear trailed down her face. He watched her eyes, mesmerized by a building realization as a soft smile tugged at her lips.

Adjusting her dress, she looked over at him with the warmth of gratitude.

“We have to finish this,” she whispered, the decision firm and light in her eyes, given new spirit by a renewed courage and direction.

He realized then he had treated her symptoms, but not the condition, when she added with a now emboldened, almost grateful breath, “Let’s break The Great Light. ”

He wanted to ask her what she was running from, but reminded himself that he had been the one to draw back from her.

Why?

The thought of Emma hadn’t felt shameful or wrong. It had felt strange, the Strike and human part of him conversing in a passionate dialogue as he’d been so determined to have Ana close, to savor the respite of her body.

As Ana walked to the door and leaned against the doorframe, Lethe watched her shape from the bed, and like the smallest whisper in his mind, he understood at last what he had seen and felt in her. He recognized that strange, familiar thing in the depth of her soul.

Ana had a mutation.

She was like him in more ways than either of them could have ever imagined.

“Illusions aren’t bad,” was all Lethe could say. “We need them to stay alive.”

Ana turned her head and looked over her shoulder at him. She didn’t disagree, but not because she didn’t have anything to say. Indulging in the senses of a Strike, he was now able to see the words float through her mind.

But what kind of life is that?

He disagreed with the sentiment behind it. She had a thought that she was better off dissolving in the vacancy of the universe.

“There has to be a better way,” he said. “Even if we can’t see one. Even if the other way is just having faith.”

Ana seemed amused that he’d recited Emma’s words. She looked back outside, and as he watched her, those words danced between them like a single thread, tying her heart to his. He didn’t realize until he said them what they might mean.

“You were with Emma Shepherd in the end,” Lethe said.

“Yes,” she responded.

“And you remember the death of the young girl Emma held in her arms.”

Ana didn’t seem bothered by how he suggested that she was not, in fact, that girl. She thought she was an illusion of that girl, who just so happened to remember her own death.

“Emma always wanted children. She loved them. She would have done anything to preserve the life of one, even to just preserve the memory of one,” Lethe continued.

“In her mind, her ability to transform into people was a holy practice. When she lived within the persona of another person, she did her very best to honor them while she was there.”

“She sounds like an amazing woman,” Ana continued thoughtfully, but didn’t look back. She still waited in that wrinkled white dress, thick, black curls streaming down her back in waves.

“She was kind,” Lethe replied, “just as kind as I was capable of cruelty. I helped ruin a city. She would have done anything and everything to preserve one, just like you are now with the State.”

The space between them felt endless, each floorboard a piece of glass that might shatter if he tried to approach. He felt her every reaction to his bones, the air like a force field that divided her reality from his.

Oblivious to his thoughts and his experience, Ana simply looked over her shoulder, smiled, and said, “You’re saying I’m like her?”

He was saying much more than that.

Lethe didn’t smile, examining her with painful intensity.

“I’m saying that sometimes illusions are the most effective tools to heal our past wounds, to express our struggles, resolve guilt for things we’ve done, and accept tragedies we’ve witnessed.

Sometimes, when we can’t cope with the past, we recreate it and try to give ourselves a second chance to fix things and redeem ourselves. ”

Everyone did this in one way or another. Maybe, after all this time, it’s exactly what Emma Shepherd had also done, through the life of another who had died in her arms.

Ana smiled again and looked away, still a thousand miles from him.

Lethe wasn’t sure if his theories about Ana’s identity were right, but he knew one thing for sure.

Until he knew the truth, he would risk everything to preserve The Great Light, and preserve this ghost before him.

It was true that Ana may very well be a figment of the past as she claimed, but as Lethe watched her in that doorway, he imagined that she may also be a path to his future.

It took everything in him not to approach her, grab her by her shoulders and confess his suspicions then. She was fragile, a mask cracked into a thousand pieces, but not yet ready to break.

If he was right, then he had already lost this woman once.

He would never do it again.