Page 49 of Love, Nemesis
“I don’t discuss Emma,” Lethe said sharply, catching her eyes now with the threat. “Say her name again. I dare you.”
Emma Shepherd.He shoved the name as far from his thoughts as he could manage. That was one face he never saw in the flames. He never saw her face anywhere. He never wanted to.
Cal walked up, chewing loudly on something.“Hey,” he announced as Evira skirted off like a cat. He watched her go for a moment and then looked at Lethe, who shrugged it off.
Plopping down in the grass, Cal continued chewing, oblivious to the currents at work around them all. It wasn’t lost on Lethe that the boy seemed perfectly content that way.
Chapter 13: Lifelines
SEVERAL MORE DAYS of the journey yielded much of the same, only with the increasing tension that they were growing closer to the conclusion of it all. If Evira was right, Crow was camped out in the Dragon’s Spine, and every mile closer increased their chances of finding him. The mountains loomed ominously in the near distance, filling the horizon like a cresting tidal wave of sheer rock and stone.
Lethe observed that everyone seemed to handle it in their own unique ways.
Evira had started keeping her distance from him, knowing perhaps that once he had access to Ares, he wouldn’t need her anymore. Cal, on the other hand, stayed attached to his hip, his current positioning a perfect example as Cal sat in the grass next to Lethe at their latest camp near the foot of the mountains.
In the regular spirit of things, Evira announced she was going to scout the area and hopped on her horse before riding off. One day soon, he knew, she wouldn’t come back.
Lethe leaned back on his elbows, watching as Jasper directed Ana toward a possible site for a campfire. She started gathering sticks as he unsaddled her horse, giving it grain before moving to his own.
“You see that,” Lethe said, lifting a finger in their direction.
“What?” Cal asked, looking past a leaf he was now balancing over his stomach. He always needed some trinket to play aroundwith—leaves, pinecones, sometimes one of Lethe’s things. Lethe never minded it, as his fingers were just as fidgety, though he had to direct Cal to leave his Snake Bite tablets be. He wasn’t exactly ready to risk anything happening to those. It wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“Have you noticed how he asks her to do something but he’s just distracting her from the things he wants to do for her? He’s taking care of her,” Lethe said.
It was one of many observations he’d picked apart. Jasper and Ana were a fortress, and pushing on them only tightened their ranks. However, in the presence of peace and silence, their dynamic unfolded organically.
The ROSE had come to worship many things. Spirituality had been the ever-present counterbalance to the violence their cause demanded. Some ROSE even worshiped the essence of different emotions, revering and idolizing spirits of happiness, sadness, rage, and grief because Strike struggled to feel these things. Emotions became a hallmark of the human experience, and the ROSE bowed at their feet. Unanimously, the ROSE revered the Sanctus Ghost, which was the essence of faith and spirituality itself, but Lethe’s personal goddess was silence.
Everything began and ended with silence. Everything that was ever truly meant to be ran its course in silence, and he had the feeling that there was something between him and Ana that was meant to be. They’d interacted very little, but he could feel strings tugging in that vacancy, and patiently, he waited for the right moment to pull them harder.
“I don’t see it,” Cal said, glancing between them. “But I mean it makes sense, I guess.”
“Does it?” Lethe asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know a lot, but people know about Ana because of her early retirement. I think she and Jasper have been friends for a long time,” Cal said, lifting the leaf in front of his face, twisting it still. It was browned at the edges, touched by the fall air ushered in from the mountains. “They entered the Numbers together.”
“But they aren’t lovers?” Lethe asked, already making his own assumptions and partially just wanting to prod at Cal’s reserved sensibilities.
Cal shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. As far as I know, she doesn’t really have those, and people talk.”
“Really?” He raised his eyebrows, looking back over at Cal.
Cal shrugged. “She’s not really the type, I guess.”
“The type? The type for what?”
“I don’t know. Anything serious, I guess. They call her the Iron Maiden,” Cal replied, staring at his leaf as if it were the most important thing in the world.
“The Iron Maiden? Like the torture device?”
“What?” This caught the boy’s attention.
“Like a shell with spikes on the inside. They used to lock people in them,” Lethe explained, gesturing with his hands as if that might help paint the picture.
“What?”
“Never mind. It’s way before your lifetime…or world…I guess. Keep going. You said something about Ana.”
