Page 142 of Love, Nemesis
A light knock echoed from the door. A small man enteredwith a ragged robe covered in green stripes and a halo of gray hair around his head.
“Ana,” Ares said from behind her, “meet Manaj. He arrived only recently from En Sanctus.”
Manaj shuffled forward, and offered his hand to Ana, shaking it with a wide smile as if he’d been eager to meet her.
“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?”
