Page 59 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

“Manaj,” she said, sensing familiarity in the word. “Isn’t that—” The door opened wider, and Ana turned as Lethe walked in.

Their eyes caught immediately.

“He’s alive!” Cal announced, throwing his hands in the air.

Ana only stood there frozen.

“Looks like there was some miscommunication,” Lethe said, traversing the room. “I had to leave for En Sanctus in a hurry to check on things after The Great Light. Apparently, it wasn’t passed along in all the chaos that I wasn’t an illusion.”

You shouldn’t have expected me to do that , she thought, wondering if he could read it in her eyes. I wasn’t completely sure you weren’t one after all.

Were you hoping I wouldn’t come back, or did you actually think I’d vanished? he replied as he watched her, and, though she could have guessed he might, it still jolted her. You know I couldn’t have stayed. Not like I was.

What are you doing here? she said back, sternly.

“Ana?” Lethe asked as he stood in front of her. He passed two fingers back and forth in front of her face. “Hello?”

She wanted to hit him.

“I guess she didn’t miss you that much,” Diane said, crossing her arms. “She didn’t complain to me at all that you were gone.”

“Diane,” Ares said calmly, flipping through the papers of a book on his desk. “Mind your manners.”

“Why don’t the two of you go for a walk?” Manaj suggested, drawing the attention of the room.

As if it were more of a nudge than an open suggestion, Lethe stepped back toward the door. Ana nodded, scanning the room one last time before they walked out.

Neither of them spoke until they’d left the building and found their way to the vacant streets leading away from the government buildings.

Ignoring the most obvious question, Ana addressed her own curiosities first in a whisper.

“So, this is it. You’re a Strike, walking around with the rest of us?”

“This is it,” Lethe replied as they turned onto a dirt path farther from town.

Soon they were walking under a canopy of trees outside what remained of the city walls.

The sun was setting brilliantly over the trees, and the animals could be heard rummaging out in the evening, but the State was still somewhat quiet. She imagined that wouldn’t change.

Walking beside Lethe, she didn’t feel afraid. In fact, she felt compelled to ask him something. She tried to sort through her own feelings. She wrestled with them.

She had both missed him and feared the implications of his return.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“This is it,” he replied, walking side by side with her.

“But don’t Strike want different things?” she asked, more urgently.

“They want what people want, Ana. They just want it differently. You know that. As long as I have Snake Bite, it will never be worse than what you’ve already seen. It just has to be…managed.” He didn’t elaborate further, and they kept walking.

Ana watched her feet under her, boots marking across the road. She turned, walking off into a nearby field and not wanting to risk others overhearing their conversation if they passed by. Lethe followed.

She looked over at him and he met her gaze curiously, like he was waiting for her to say something. At last, they stopped in a small clearing, behind the cover of a thin row of trees. Ana faced him.

“Did you know that I would still be here if the shell broke?”

“No,” he replied firmly.

“Do you know why I am still here?” she asked.

Immediately, she saw he had an answer, and she leapt for it.

“Why?” she asked sharply.

Lethe winced as if the question wounded something in him. “Ana,” he started. “I had no idea at first. Even now, I only have a theory.”

“What is it?” she pushed. Something in her was dying to hear him say the words—she was convinced that he and only he had the answer.

“I shouldn’t say anything,” he said. “This is something you need to explore on your own. I gave us the space that I did in hopes that maybe that could happen.”

“Tell me,” Ana demanded.

Lethe looked away, and she wondered what could cause him to have so much hesitation. Slowly, he moved to his neck and removed his stopwatch. He offered it to her.

Ana took it and moved her hands along the smooth surface.

It felt strangely familiar. She wanted to ask him why he’d handed it to her, but she was drawn in by the object.

Her fingers traced the edges, the front, the back.

She flipped it open and even the subtle click of it opening resonated strangely through her.

She was fixated on the glass, the numbers, the engraving of two initials on the interior. E.S.

All the while she could feel Lethe’s eyes focused intently on her like she was the only living thing in the world.

This was his theory?

What theory could ever jar him so deeply and—

She stopped.

She looked away from him, shocked as she scanned the ground. The truth settled inside her like a key, unlocking something deep that felt as if it had waited for years to be given a voice. The words came, echoed since childhood:

You’re an illusion.

But now, they finished their claims.

This isn’t your life.

Ana slowly sat down in the grass.

In the minutes that followed, she tried to consider the concept, consider it even though already it rang true.

Lethe knelt in front of her. After a few minutes, he said, “You gave her the life she never had,” he whispered. “She will always be remembered now. People will always remember her as the girl who broke The Great Light—the girl who set everyone free.”

The words settled. Lethe didn’t speak again for a long time.

“You were there when Ana died—you saw her die. It was too much for you. You couldn’t let her life end that way.

You had to carry it on for her, make up for the losses you witnessed.

You set out to help build a city that I burned, and Emma, you did more than either of us could have ever anticipated. ”

Ana shook her head, the use of Emma’s name bringing tears to her eyes. She couldn’t trace the feeling, only that something—someone inside her was crying.

Every word he brought invited a stronger torrent of emotion.

“It’s time to come back,” Lethe said, eyes pleading as he reached toward her face. She grabbed his hand, stopping him.

“You did what you set out to do,” he whispered. “Fought her fears, lived her life, carried her pain, and you beat her enemies. You won.”

She slowly released his hand, allowing it to touch her face. That similar sensation, her buried soul rising to the touch of his fingers, swam through her.

Lethe pulled her close into his chest as she cried, gripping his clothes as at last the pieces came together.

The torrent of emotions overwhelmed her, and the memories divided themselves from her.

And for the first time, she remembered Lethe in pictures rather than in feelings alone.

Every early morning and late night, battle and argument and celebration.

Every grief they’d ever shared. His body shook as he held her tightly to his chest in a long-awaited reconciliation.

There, through the haze of tears, over his shoulder, she saw the sunset, and for the first time, she didn’t feel like it was leaving her behind.