Page 76 of Love, Nemesis
“Easier said than done,” Jasper breathed, pushing his palms over his forehead.
“Feel free to take what you want from the kitchen.” Ares stood as well as if the session had ended. “I’ll give you your space to discuss,” he said before excusing himself. “Ana, come see me when you’re done.” He proceeded upstairs, throwing back what remained in his glass and drinking it. Everyone watched him ascend the stairs, the room falling into silence as he left.
“I didn’t agree to take Lethe to the Mystics yet.” Cal was the first to speak again. “I think—”
Lethe put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “You’ll just be dropping me off.”
Lethe ushered Cal outside, and Ana and Jasper sat in the ensuing silence as the room emptied around them.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
She could hear her watch again in the silence.
“We always believed the State was the world’s best chance,” she said.
Jasper released a deep sigh. “You know this is transparently insane. It’s why Ares isn’t trying to stop us.”
“I know,” Ana replied. “Final mission?” she asked.
Jasper held her eyes, something like sadness flickering across his face. For a moment, it seemed like he had so much more to say, but then it dissolved into just two words, repeated back to her.
“Final mission,” he replied, Ana ignoring the itch in the back of her mind that told her the words weren’t genuine.
Chapter 20: Fate
LETHE AND CAL prepared the horses in silence, Lethe wrestling with a storm in his mind as Cal worked nervously beside him.
“I’ll just be dropping you off? That’s it?” Cal asked as he finished tightening the girth on the saddle.
“That’s it,” Lethe replied, inspecting his bags and removing his old clothes. Filthy as they were, they would be better to fight in than what he had on now. He checked through his things, restlessly filing through all of his possessions before stopping and arresting the horse’s saddle in his hands, staring at the smoothed leather.
When he’d kissed Ana in the mountains, he’d imagined finally connecting to that fire in her. He’d never imagined that he’d be the one left shaken by it, reminded of feelings he’d once been capable of feeling. Embracing her in the wake of Evira’s death had reached something inside him he thought he’d lost a long time ago. Perhaps it was because Evira and Ana were, in their own ways, characters from The Ocean’s War. In such prolonged interaction with both of them, he was alive again, and not in the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-washed sense of the word.
He felt like the fully human Lethe Shepherd from ten years ago.
That was a problem, because the Lethe from ten years ago wanted more than just to bury himself in the thrill of things. The Lethe from ten years ago had things to lose, and that wasn’t a good thing when preparing to face a powerful Strike alone.
To make things worse, Ana had said those words, near clones of the reminder he’d heard a hundred times in his last year as a ROSE, a hundred times as they had all planned the Burning of the Strike.
He could still hear Emma Shepherd’s voice, echoing from the past.
There has to be a better way, even if it’s just having faith that there is something else to be done.
Emma had spoken through Ana there in the kitchen and brought him back to the past, to a time when he’d been preparing to risk it all, when he had risked too much, to save the world he loved.
Now, here he was again, and despite agreeing to fight Ivan Rowe, in a dramatic turn of internal events, he no longer wanted to go. He now knew the battle might cost more than just his life, or this small, flickering figment of it he’d only just regained.
He rummaged through his things again, searching for his Snake Bite tablets. He checked every pocket with progressive haste, tearing things out of his pack and laying them over the saddle. They were nowhere to be found.
He paused, wiping his face before bracing the saddle once more. He exhaled.Where else would I have put them?He always kept them in the same spot.
Closing his eyes, he remembered Manaj’s mantra, a mantra that supposedly had the power to keep the demons away when he needed more than just Snake Bite.
Rubbing his face, he rolled through the lines emptily in his mind, at last mumbling aloud, “On the most fragile flower.”
