Page 125 of Love, Nemesis
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.
Chapter 31: The Great Light
ANA HAD EXPECTED Lethe to argue with her more. She knew in her renewed convictions she’d wounded him, but for the first time in her life, she’d known without a doubt the right way forward.
In many ways, he was to thank for that, but judging by the way he’d recoiled at her statement in the cabin, she knew she couldn’t tell him that, not yet.
She was so grateful to him. Grateful in ways she could not express. Unwittingly, he’d released her from the burden of her own life simply by witnessing and absolving her of her shame and her guilt. Now, she did feel like a ghost, but not one who haunts.
She felt ready at last to move on to whatever waited behind The Great Light.
She was tempted to express this on their way back to the city, but the silence was raw between them. Lethe, so often a man of quick and sharp commentary, showed great pain in the simple act of his silence.
I am so grateful, she kept waiting to say, kept wanting to take the feelings and infuse them into him, so he could understand the depth of what he’d done for her, but maybe that was selfish.
He’d made it very clear that the illusion of her existence still captivated something in him, and maybe for that reason, more than others, she knew it was okay for her to let go of this life atlast. In the end, she really had meant something to the world, real or not.
Ana expected more obstacles on her way to Hailey’s office. She knew she’d be the primary suspect in Hailey’s death, and had expected to face a full force of Numbers upon her return. The city and government had been in a scramble, not only in light of Hailey’s death but also due to the emerging threat of the Mystic army that had been spotted only a few miles away.
The offices of the Var and Sub-Var had been evacuated to safer quarters, which made their passage easier. It also helped that Lethe had been keen on their route to Hailey’s office, and seemed to have a distinct sense of the movements of people within the capital. Strange as his uncanny sense of awareness was, Ana couldn’t help attributing it to his past experiences functioning in obscurity as a Rider of Saint East. His confidence now was, however, an odd change from his uncertainty back at the cabin. Now, it was almost as if he wanted to find The Great Light as much as she did.
