Page 61 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

TIME DID NOT exist here.

The morning was miraculous in that way.

Ana watched the light filter in from the sunrise as she rested in Lethe’s arms. Curled in the cover of their room, she listened to his breathing as she traced circles on his hand.

After a few minutes, Lethe shifted, leaning forward to kiss her before he rested his head over her shoulder.

“Good morning,” he whispered, and she turned in his arms and smiled.

“Morning,” she said as she moved her hand across his bare chest. They kissed a moment longer in the quiet of the early morning, and eventually, she asked an unavoidable question.

“What time is it?” She glanced back out at the sunrise that broke through thin white curtains over an open balcony. “My watch broke.”

Lethe smiled and leaned past her to the bedside table, returning as he placed his stopwatch in her hand.

She turned it once, running her fingers over the worn and scratched metal before she opened it. “Hmm,” she said. “Clever, but you know this is a stopwatch?”

Lethe smirked, moving his fingers through her hair and then down her neck. “People keep telling me that.” She rolled her shoulder away from his fingers as she smiled.

“So, what do you say?” She clicked it open and closed, over and over as she looked up at him. “You just make your own time?”

“That’s the idea,” he whispered.

She started it and stopped it, watching the small silver hand tick away inside.

“You should take it,” Lethe said. “Use it for your big talk today. Make sure you talk more than five minutes. I know that will be hard for you.”

Ana chuckled. “I’ll be fine. I’ve practiced too many times to count.”

She had. Today was an important day. This afternoon, she would deliver an address to the city regarding the efforts accomplished so far at unifying the three countries. It was strange being such a public figure, when she’d existed so privately for so long.

She went about her day like everyone else, but none of the townspeople could see her that way any longer.

She wasn’t used to the attention—pointed out now in public places, watched or approached as if she were an alien on a foreign planet.

Luckily, her friends still recognized her for the normal person she was, saving her from the isolation of the world’s celebrity.

“Since I broke The Great Light, everyone thinks I need to be the one giving the public statements,” Ana said. “I hate public speaking, but apparently that’s not very symbol-of-unity like. You should go out there for me. They like you.”

“Hmm,” Lethe replied, watching her play with the stopwatch. “I’m a symbol of the past. You’re a symbol of unity, to lead the people toward a perfect future.”

Ana chuckled. “Sure.”

They kept talking for a while longer before they each had to get ready for the day. As Lethe left, Ana stayed behind, walking to the balcony of the villa and looking out at the world beyond.

Ares had claimed that people were trapped in the fates they unwittingly created, but maybe, as Lethe had said, the fates people created for themselves were not cages at all, but intricate paths to freedom.

Ana reached her hand out, squinting as she reached to grasp the sun. She pinched it in between her fingers and smiled.

She took a deep, clear breath and exhaled.

The sky was bright and blue. Ana lifted Lethe’s stopwatch to the sun as she opened it. The hands were still now, fixed in their latest positions. The sun glimmered past it.

Time. Maybe that was the biggest illusion of all.

Everyone thought they had it, or not enough of it.

They shaped and melded and measured it, but maybe time was just a vessel, a pregnant pause between a question asked and answered, between being born and dying.

And the life in between, however short or long, was an opportunity for each person to give their answer.

Ana savored the quiet. There was no tick, tick, tick of her watch.

Maybe time stopped when you came to the answer, when you knew you were no longer missing something.

She had the strangest realization then. Looking at the stopwatch, she recognized what Lethe, in his patience, hadn’t wanted her to rush to understand.

The stopwatch had been Emma Shepherd’s.

With the recollection of that memory came the vaguest notion of its lesson.

Maybe people weren’t born to discover anything new at all. Maybe life was about accepting what was already true.

Ana closed the silent stopwatch with a loud click.

Maybe life was about coming home.