Page 104 of Love, Nemesis
“Lethe,” she said, steering him toward her. “Please know that I wanted to die quickly. Please know that I wasn’t trying to hold on.”
Lethe’s expression faltered.
“I don’t want them to use me against you. The idea of that, that’s the real torture,” she said. “If you were trying to save me…you didn’t fail—don’t think that for a second. I’m going to make—I made my own choice. I needed to let go so that you didn’t hold on, do you understand?”
Lethe searched her eyes and opened his mouth to say something.
“And listen.” She raised her voice, cutting him off. “The fact that you’re standing here right now and you’re still human is proof that everything I did or didn’t do was worth it. If they kept hurting me, you would have done anything to stop them. I might have lived, but you’d be a Strike and then what was it all for? You would have slipped into The Eating Ocean and sold it all on a whim.”
Neither of them spoke. Lethe listened to the city burning.
He was lying to her.
No.
He was lying to himself.
Emma was dead. This was nothing but him having a discussion inside his own head.
“You didn’t die quickly,” he corrected. “You suffered until you couldn’t any longer. But they didn’t kill you.”
Her brows furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her again, forcing the words out.
“You turned into so many different people, over and over again as if each new person would be an escape from the pain.” he said, “Eventually, you changed into something that couldn’t feel the pain you felt.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered, searching his eyes frantically. “Who did I change into?”
The silence lingered. She swallowed, lowering her head. She twisted her hands in front of her, growing progressively nervous.
“The only person that ever could have set you free from that lab,” Lethe answered. “You transformed into one of the Strike, and then you lost control. You couldn’t stop yourself from changing and you were in so much pain. You lashed out at everything and everyone. You killed several of the other prisoners, and even a couple of the Strike.”
She looked out at the chaos around them, tears welling up in her eyes. Lethe refused to look away, bracing himself in the face of the truth as it settled in the passing minutes.
“You nearly killed a slave girl, a young one, and that’s what finally started to bring you back. You took the dying girl and ran off, leaving me behind. In the final hours of the Burning, it took everything I had left to fight you back.”
“Everything you had,” she exhaled, and then her eyes flashed to his. She grabbed his hands again, inspecting them. She looked him in the eyes.
“Snake Bite?” she asked, but he knew she already had her answer.
Her hands withdrew from him.
“I did this to you?” She backed away. She turned, stretching her arms out to the fire. “I helped do this?” she exclaimed. “Me?” She gestured to her chest. “I—” Her voice broke. “I died in such a horrible way?” She began to pace back and forth. Her skin fluttered with color as she changed into someone Lethe didn’t recognize. She kept pacing, longer and longer, until her foot stepped off the path and into coals.
She seemed to ignore the sensation of heat on her bare feet, each step bringing with it another version of herself.
He watched Emma pace, seemingly oblivious to him now. She argued with herself. “There has to be a better way,” she said passionately, her speech pressured with urgency. “Even—even if we can’t see one. Even if the other way is just having faith that there is another way!”
She walked off the path again, into the coals, farther each time as he backed away into the dark of the Bleeding Grin.
“Even if the other way is just having faith!” she shouted, walking farther and farther across the burning landscape.
Lethe placed his gloves back on his hands as he walked through the doorway. He glanced back a final time.
Love. He remembered love. He’d loved her, but he did not tell her the whole truth. He didn’t tell her that in the end, she’d comforted the suffering girl through the pain. He didn’t tell her that in the end, she’d found Ana, and even in the insanity of her last moments, had managed to offer the girl hope.
Emma Shepherd’s dark silhouette was stark against the burning city beyond. She walked through the marsh of devastation, an angel of madness in a field of embers, whispering to herself.
Love failed Emma Shepherd, because in the end, he’d walked into the Eating Ocean to never experience that feeling again.
