Page 78 of Love, Nemesis
And why not?
How could any of them be satisfied? Nothing was right—the world had flipped on its head in a single conversation, and who could say what would be left when it was all over?
Relations between the State and the Mystics had been tense, but never had Ana imagined the Mystics diving so deep inland toward the capital, leaving their families lost in time as years passed in their home country. This move on their part was historic if not desperate.
And it was desperate because of the State.
That was an entirely new frontier in her mind that Ana didn’t want to explore. She felt betrayed, not by Hailey or her government but by fate. Governments and people failed, but she hadn’t realized until now how much she’d expected of fate.
She’d given a lot in her life. She thought she’d given enough, as if fate had a quota and took a designated sum from everyone.
Justice isn’t real.Lethe’s words echoed as clearly as if he’d said them to her face.
And that brought her to the issue of The Great Light.
“Let me go talk to Ares,” Ana said out loud to stop her thoughts from reeling further. She walked to the staircase.
“Ana.” Jasper rose, a warning in his voice.
“We have the same goal. I just need him to trust me.” She had to fix this. She had to fix something.
Jasper didn’t argue, and Ana proceeded up the stairs. Spotting a cracked door at the end of the hall, she followed the sound of movement.
Nudging it open, she stepped into a room filled with painted canvases. The greatest, nearly as large as the wall itself, was positioned opposite her.
The canvas was smeared with images of carnage and screaming, burning faces. People with twisted hands reached from the painting as if calling out to Ares, who sat on his legs in front of them like he was making peace at an altar. He watched the faces, hands glistening with red paint as if he’d been the one to kill them.
In a way, he had.
She recognized one of the faces in the top left corner. It was a Numbers soldier, one who’d tried to defect to the Mystics. She’d trained with him at the academy. Ares had been sent to kill him when he tried to defect years ago.
If his face in the painting was not a confirmation of his death, what else could be?
She didn’t look at the other faces, having a sense that she’d see more people she recognized, previously presumed to have died in battle. Ares had followed orders without qualm, until the day he didn’t.
“Familiar, isn’t it?” Ares said. He didn’t look back at her.
She slid down the doorframe until she sat as he did. “Somehow.”
“When murder is the purpose for which you were made, you think about it differently. You’ve killed.”
“Yes.”
Ares reached for the black paint pooling on the tarp to his left. He marked across the canvas, deepening the painting. He then wiped off his hands, drying off the brushes he’d previously used as he looked out the window. A bird was perched on a branch outside. Ares held one elbow in his palm and used the hand to tuck some hair behind his ear. In this moment, and with such a delicate gesture, he looked like a woman to her rather than a man, though Ana knew Ares was neither.
“We’re going soon,” Ana said.
“Good,” Ares said. “You know, the State doesn’t deserve you or Jasper. It does, however, deserve me.”
“Deserve,” Ana repeated, staring out the window. “I’m having a hard time understanding what that means these days.” Not eager to dive into philosophy, she added, “Maybe not Hailey, the Var, or whatever other leaders you hate, but I’m not doing this for them.”
“Then it’s for the people? The people elected them, Ana,” Ares responded, not looking at her.
“And you served them for years.” In the midst of this crisis, she was starting to feel a bit more like her old self. It was a comforting, steady feeling, as if it was crisis itself that now soothed her and made the world familiar again. “You’re giving yourself a chance to change your mind, but no one else gets that chance? They have to die?”
“I am different. I give myself different choices,” Ares replied.
“You’re off-color. You’re not as different as you think.”
