Page 123 of Love, Nemesis
What was she not telling him?
Ana held her breath as the dark blue thing that coiled in her stomach and ribs twisted up.
Her muscles relaxed now, but not with any sense of ease. Her bones grew dark, full of a heavy feeling, and she seemed to surrender into that.
His eyes remained trained on hers, seeing the notions in her mind, wrestling and tired and translated into words he understood. She’d wrestled this thing before, perhaps all her life, and had submitted helplessly to it over and over again before picking up the fight once more.
He reached out toward her stomach and the coiling blue grief, but hesitated, reminding himself that she couldn’t see it. He leaned forward slightly, wanting to pull her deeper into his arms.
His hand lifted to her face, grazing her cheek. Her face grew the slightest bit heavier in his hand, and she closed her eyes like it hurt.
“Why am I making it worse?” He lowered his voice, watching as the creature only coiled tighter, deeper under her ribs now as if for shelter. She didn’t look at him. He knew she couldn’t see the blue creature, but she responded as if she could.
“I’m going to go back,” she whispered. “I’ll do it alone. You risked your life to pull me out of the city. I’m grateful. I’ll do what I need to do.”
As she looked up, he kissed her.
Her breath and body seized up. Sparks of surprise dissipated and then he witnessed a sharp, reflexive flash of release, a memory perhaps of having kissed him before, and he seized that memory.
Reaching into it, he reminded her of those feelings of comfort, and he drank the grief off her lips with the flavor of a thousand words she’d spoken.
Her pulse was a drum, body and mind wrestling with color as he pushed his hand up the small of her back, and she arched her body against him as if he’d guided pain out of her.
His fingers replaced the vines of sadness across her ribs, and unlocked at last, she breathed. He felt and heard and chased it, pursuing that gasp like an invitation into her soul.
He relished that invitation, wrapped in the warmth of her spirit. Grief tasted like full wine, evidence that she’d loved something—evidence of life.
He relished the sensation of sharing it with her, entangling himself in that longing she had to be free of the feelings as he removed them from her. In this way, he couldn’t help but sense that Strike and humans seemed destined for one another
His hands coiled into her hair as he deepened the kiss, leaning forward and pushing her into the doorframe to intensify the pressure between them. One hand coiled her dress in his hands, hoisting her onto his lap as she wrapped her legs around him.
In feeling her legs draw him in, a rush went through his blood. He could sense the intensity of her experiences, her thoughts and feelings evaporating as he drew the cold from her blood and filled her with fire.
He drew away for a pause, unable to resist the temptation of looking into her eyes. He searched them, verifying in a vivid display the effect he had on her as he saw the cocktail of feelings stir and boil inside of her. He caught a glimpse of something that was both familiar and strange, nestled in the orb of her feelings like the eye of a hurricane, but before he could understand it, her dark, blue grief was back.
That wound was back, the heaviness inside her growing with so much speed as if it fed off of any feelings of relief he’d managed to coax forward.
One of his hands grazed her chin, catching a tear as it fled down her cheek. His touch now stirred that darkness violently, and shescrambled away from him as if she couldn’t bear another second in his arms.
“Ana,” he called in question as she stumbled deeper into the room.
“I can’t,” she choked, looking away from him.
“Ana, come back,” he urged, seeing the faintest glimpses that beneath it all she wanted to be back in his arms.
Her feelings only darkened further, and he thought the darkness would kill her, until she exclaimed at last, “You don’t understand!”
She faced him now, backed against the wall like a caged animal as she shouted with all of the suffering of a burdened soul, “I’m already dead!”
He searched her eyes, glancing down at her metallic arm before he said, “Ana, Chronos doesn’t have to be a curse.”
“No,” she choked, tears flooding down her cheeks as she shook her head. “I’m already dead.”
Lethe understood then what she meant.
She didn’t say another word to help the truth materialize, because as he watched her in her suffering, the picture formed all on its own.
Ana had never truly denied the existence of The Great Light.
