Page 87 of Love, Nemesis
Strike Peter was dressed in a light blue shirt that matched the stark blue sky behind him, his blonde hair cut so that it barely dusted the shoulders of a long black coat. The coat was a matching adornment to his fingertips, exposed in a demonstration of his power. He didn’t flinch at the crowd’s insubordination. His expression seemed vacant, his green eyes moving over the faces before him with the patient examination of a scientist.
Behind Peter were the Strike who led the Bleeding Grin, four of them, shadowy conductors in the play performed at their feet.
In an interruption of Peter’s calculated analysis, his gaze flickered straight to Lethe’s.
They locked eyes, Lethe remaining completely still. The cheering around them, in his mind, fell silent, and even from this distance, Lethe could see the glowing red rings of Peter’s irises.
He remembered those eyes, so strongly associating their ever calm with the infliction of pain. Those eyes had seen through him, and he wondered what Peter saw now.
Lethe breathed in steadily through his nose and out through his mouth, balancing his pulse as he watched his torturer.
Peter leaned away from the banister, the longest of his fingers still lingering over the stone. He looked down at the stage where Amiel watched, hidden in black.
Peter offered a subtle, upward nod of his chin, and the Strike slit the woman’s throat. The dirtied beggar gasped as she bled.
The crowd roared with a mix of excitement and rage.
Amiel let the woman fall to her knees, tossing the knife up to Peter. It spiraled up toward the balcony. Peter extended a hand only quick enough to catch it before his eyes searched the crowd again. He turned back into the Bleeding Grin, pinched fingers moving along the blade of his knife to clear off the blood. Amiel evaporated into a black vulture and flew after Peter.
Peter disappeared in the darkness of the doorway and was replaced by the four leaders, who presented themselves to the crowd with a cheer. Lethe read off all their names in his mind as he watched them on the balcony. He remembered burning each one, marking off the ledger on his own skin.
Black ash and embers filled the air from bonfires nearby. The sky morphed to an empty gray as if it were made of smoke. Other objects flickered like they were unable to retain their shape at the exact time of Lethe’s memory.
Like a wave, quiet broke across the crowd. Lethe stood in that same awe, reliving the memory as the newly executed Anne Rue crawled slowly to the base of the Bleeding Grin. These details he remembered in complete perfection as she painted the base of the structure with her fingers in bright red strokes.
The still human followers of the Strike stood there in silence, looking down at her as if unsure what she was doing, unsure if they needed to stop it.
The pattern made no sense in logic or beauty, but as her hand fell limp against the stone, a single finger trailed down the base of the stone structure. It completed some bright, red act of desperation, small lines of human blood at the feet of a symbol that filled any onlooker with a primal fear.
She’d crawled to it willingly.
“This was the moment,” a man said coolly from beside Lethe, making Cal flinch.
The stranger was dressed in a heavy brown cloak with a hood over his face. Lethe didn’t have to look over to know who it was. Ivan Rowe.
“Most of us felt a sense of accomplishment and pride at seeing someone like that bleed out, but when I see you in this memory…” Ivan shook his head under the hood. “You have this look in your eyes. It was like you’d fallen in love.”
Lethe continued watching the scene ahead. The crowd still stood in silence as if the echo of Anne’s desperation was vibrating through them.
“She was a beggar,” Lethe said.
“I know,” Ivan replied with a scoff. “You said the same thing then. She was a beggar who defied the regime with her own blood, which we’d spilled. When we captured you, this was the first memory of yours I looked into. I had to understand the moment when you chose them. The ROSE… I just…I just will never understand it. You could have been a lion but you consented to being a lamb. I didn’t know why.”
“This was when the Strike finally started showing their true colors, offering great things until one day you come and collect in blood and bodies,” Lethe replied. “Kind of like you ended up doing with Xal Xel.” He watched as the followers of the Strike started scattering the people, pushing them away from the scene of Anne Rue.
“I didn’t do it at first,” Ivan replied, still concealed in the memory. “But boredom is hungry work.”
“You ate their minds when you were tired of their souls. They’re nothing but empty husks. Is the State your next target?” Lethe responded firmly. “Were you the one who gave them The Great Light?”
The people had dispersed. It was just Cal, Ivan, and Lethe standing in the city square at the base of the Bleeding Grin, its doors high, dark, and wide.
Cal kept looking between Lethe and the hooded figure. Lethe caught Cal’s eyes a second before stabbing his knife through the cloak. The knife made contact; the figure gasped for breath and stumbled back.
Now, it wasn’t Ivan at all, only a bystander, a ruddy man with long, black hair.
The man fell as he took his final breath. Lethe spun around, searching the area.
“I wouldn’t start hacking away at your memories just yet,” Evira said, Ivan Rowe speaking through Lethe’s memory of her. She was suddenly sitting on the edge of the stage, her chin propped up in her hand.
