Page 58 of Love, Nemesis
She wasn’t afraid of persecution or derision. In fact, she dreamed of consequences, hoped that behind the door to death was a judge who would deliver judgment on the life she’d lived.There had to be justice paid for all of her wrongs, because if she could be released from this life without consequences, then so could anyone else—anyone worse.
Lethe had seen it; Jasper didn’t want to accept it.
She would give this mission everything she had, like the good soldier she was, but she was done with her life.
She didn’t resent the hand she had been dealt. Many people had been dealt worse, but every inch of it had been a struggle, and though she was grateful to have lived, she was ready to rest.
She was pleased with how the final act of her story seemed to be written so far, but then there was Lethe. She was still struck by the image of him in the smoke of Evira’s tent, surrounded by all of those artifacts from The Ocean’s War. He was just a man, but all she could see was this ghost from her past, this frightening, promising, terrible force that she realized for the first time she didn’t want to let go of.
It was a part of her, a part she didn’t like being reminded of, and as Lethe knocked on that door, there was something inside her knocking back.
It knocked still now, and she couldn’t drown out the sound.
The past was alive and well, haunting her because it still had something to say. She just wasn’t brave enough to ask the right questions.
It astounded her how afraid she still was. She’d fought it all her life, but every new level of victory kept confronting her with new fears. And it seemed Lethe could see that fear, smell it in the air as if it were something cooking. She imagined he treated human emotion the same way he treated food, wanting to use his hands and make close contact no matter how inconvenient or strange. It was lust of an emotional kind.
She hadn’t said anything to him that evening, but she knew his vulnerabilities too.The ravenous nature that drove him was born out of a deep and gnawing numbness. Many men and women had sold their sensitives in the war. Evira had a point. It was complete and utter peace that murdered men like Lethe, designed to live life at high volume.
No doubt it was why Lethe had seemed to gravitate toward her. It wasn’t just that she was an En Sanctan. Most En Sanctas shunned war heroes. Lethe was drawn to her because of her torment. By the very look in his eyes, she could see the hunger for it, the desire to draw it out, have her collapse in his hands, and like a twisted kind of chemistry, she sensed herself resonating with the invitation.
It was a hassle for her to swim through emotions, and control felt like a burden. Lethe wanted to experience every emotion and seemed to love the tension of control.
She turned her head and watched him as he slept across the fire. His sandy-brown hair framed his tanned face in the darkness. He was a giant of a man, imposing in every way, and yet he rested like a stone, oddly harmless under the slumber of night.
The last thing she wanted was to get drawn into Lethe’s twister of fiery chaos, all roaring winds and heat, pulling everything apart just to relish the sensation of having it burn.
Yet even as she ached to get out of this life, another part of her imagined what it would be like to be on fire. In the heat and windy roar of his energy, she imagined that she wouldn’t hear anything else. The entire world would fall away, and the static his touch left on her skin wouldn’t be a memory.
Ana took a deep breath, centering herself back in reality. She didn’t like what was happening to her, finding comfort, at least, in the fact that Lethe was oblivious to it. Ana was a tombstone, Lethe had said so himself, and the wind couldn’t throw stones.
Stone didn’t burn.
The thought gave her some sense of peace, and at last, she lay back down and closed her eyes. For a moment, she savored the silence, the commotion in her mind growing quiet.
This time, her memory of Ares returned, but she was comfortable sitting in it. She imagined the air that day, brisk through the bell tower. Even with the death in the fields, the sunrise had still been beautiful.
“You take your thumb, like this, and you press into the middle,” Ares had said, and this time she finally listened. “That will open it up. Don’t just go through the peel. You get to the soft spot and work outward. The peeling is there to protect the orange. Takes much longer that way. Everything, by its very structure, has a soft spot. It’s the same with—”
She opened her eyes.
War.
She searched the campsite again, easing up this time.
Jasper had been gone too long.
Cal had been on watch.
Cal of all people. The soft spot.
She started to stand up.
Click.
She stiffened at the metallic sound. She held her breath as her stomach dropped in horror.
“I see you’re out of retirement,” Ares’s soft voice murmured from the darkness.
