Page 98 of Love, Nemesis
Diane walked up to the window, close enough to almost press her nose to the glass.
“You want to go down with this shipwreck?” Diane asked as she fished something out of her pocket, another letter.
Ana recognized it as one of the letters Ares had intercepted between Ivan Rowe and the State. Jasper must have mailed it directly to Diane with the other letters he’d sent. Ana thought it odd, though perhaps she understood Jasper’s reasoning in contacting Diane beyond any State officials.
“You’ll be dead in a couple of days,” Diane said.
“I know,” Ana replied.
“It’s going to take more than just me to build up a case against Hailey, even with evidence like this,” Diane said, waving the letter.
“I know, but if we hand Hailey over to the Mystics, it might just end all of this.”
“Avoid a final showdown? If all the Mystics want is Hailey, then maybe so, but what if the rumor about the State owning The Great Light is true? What if that’s what they want?” Diane reasoned back, crossing her arms as she turned away from the window.
“Hailey will know where the object is that The Great Light is attached to. We put him in prison. We get him to speak,” Ana urged, hopefully. She sat up more with every point she made, hoping Diane would accept it.
“Not to mention, according to Jasper, you’re betting on a single ROSE to kill the Strike. You always make this stuff sound so simple,” Diane said, inspecting the letter in her hands.
“You’re an Hour, Diane. You’ve done harder things and you have the connections,” Ana replied firmly.
Diane tucked the letter back into her pocket, crossing her arms again. After a few moments, she sighed after a few minutes. She rubbed the back of her neck as she scanned the room as if to ensure herself that it was still just the two of them there again.
“I’m so tired of playing this game,” Diane mumbled, oddly out of character. She walked back to the edge of the bed, sitting down on the end. “I’m tired of feeling things out and trying to get an idea of how you’ll react and what you feel like. You’ll be gone soon, and you’re my friend, Ana. I can’t keep doing this. We wanted to keep you out of this, let you live out the rest of your days in that peaceful cabin in Satellite.”
“We?” Ana leaned back against the wall, giving Diane room where she sat. “Diane, what are you talking about?”
Diane proceeded to list off a series of familiar names and groups, finishing with, “and this includes Jasper and Ares.”
Ana’s brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“The movement is big, still underground, but coming to the forefront with the help of the Mystics. Ares wasn’t the only one driving this. He’s just now heading up the operation.”
“What are you talking about?” Ana repeated, raising her voice.
Diane glanced back at the door and then lowered her voice. “We’re overthrowing the State government. We’re several groups across the continent now. People out there have known about the State having the item that The Great Light was attached to, the experiments with Black Breeding, the relationship with Ivan Rowe. You weren’t the first one to hear this from Ares. His letters, they’re copies that have been passed around for years. We debated telling you. We knew how you’d react, hard-pressed to save the State, not wanting to believe The Great Light existed and not wanting to break it if it did. Above everything else, we knew you’d want to keep the peace.”
“You’re all a part of this,” Ana said in awe. “And Jasper?”
“He’s not an enemy to the Mystics. We’ve all been helping them get through the borders. He was trying to make contact with them and keep, well, this”—she gestured to Ana in the bed—“from happening.”
Ana leaned back in her bed. Now, Jasper’s behavior made sense. He’d been trying to talk her into Ares’s motives not because he might agree with him—he already had. Jasper hadn’t been taken hostage. His tension around Ares was not because he was wary of Ares’s reaction.
He was wary of hers.
“I’m the enemy,” she whispered, staring forward as she shook her head. “And to all of my friends?”
“It’s not like that, Ana,” Diane said. “We know what you want, what you really want to stand for. And we wanted to tell you, Jasper especially. We argued and argued about it, especially considering your role in all of this.”
“My role?” She slid her legs off the side of the bed, tempted to stand.
“There were a lot of things that put this in motion. There’s been a lot of unrest about the State for the past decade or so. You’ve known that. When Hailey got elected, it got worse, but no one would fight back, and then there was you.”
“At Dal Hull,” Ana breathed.
“An En Sanctan-born State soldier, betraying Hailey’s direct orders at the risk of other Statesmen, and for what? You tried to stop a war artifact from falling into the government’s hands. We knew what the official report was, but people also heard the truth.”
Ana shook her head. “It wasn’t political,” she pressed her hand to her chest. “I didn’t see myself as an En Sanctan. I was just trying to stop something terrible from happening. I wasn’t trying to make a point about En Sanctus and Hailey. It was personal.”
