Page 113 of Love, Nemesis
“Why should anything mean that much?” he asked, pointing to the city. “Why does that happen? Why do the Strike even exist? Where did they come from? Did we—” He choked for a moment, holding his breath as he steadied his breathing. “How can they come from us?” He walked over to a nearby tree and leaned against it, staring forward. He turned his forehead into the tree. “I don’t want to go home.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Lethe said, standing up.
“I feel disgusting.”
“We’ll get you cleaned up,” Lethe said, picking up his saddle. He started preparing his horse.
“On the inside,” Cal said.
Lethe paused when he set the saddle on the horse. He looked down at it for a moment before glancing back over at Cal, who was now sitting by the tree. His eyes were closed.
Lethe continued to saddle up the horses, kneeling in front of Cal when he was done.
“Hey,” Lethe said.
“Hmm,” Cal replied with a quiet grunt.
“I need you to watch the horses.”
Cal looked up at him.
“I need to go get my flask. Can you watch things?” Lethe asked, setting a hand on his shoulder.
Cal nodded. “There’s none left.”
“Even a few drops helps. I’ll be back,” Lethe said, setting off for the city.
“I don’t know what kind of alcoholic you are, but you need to get that problem checked out, big time,” Cal called after him.
“It’s under control,” Lethe said, waving back. He wandered back through the streets. Bodies lay everywhere in heaps, not yet dead, but not alive without Ivan’s manipulations.
He moved back through the castle to the throne room, reimagining the memories Ivan had reacquainted him with as he did. He eventually found his flask in the throne room and was disappointed to discover that any remaining liquid had evaporated in the heat. He cursed, pocketing it as he approached Ivan’s burned body.
Watching the corpse, he marveled at their victory, and felt unsettled by a persistent question he’d asked, but perhaps not cared enough about before. Ivan had not been the strongest or the most clever of the Strike. How had he survived the Burning of the Strike in the first place?
Lethe started toward the door and down the hallway, checking through several rooms on his way. It was unlikely that the Mystics produced anything similar to Snake Bite. It was the product of a specific type of mutated plant, but his options were limited.
His fight with Ivan had nearly killed him, and the Strike had fought back in protest. Strike weren’t fond of the concept of death. It wasn’t a part of their natural life cycle as far as Lethe knew.
He headed back out into the streets, making his way back to the city gate after a fruitless search. He contemplated what strategy would suit him best. Ideally, he’d have enough time to make it back to En Sanctus.
An attack, like a sharp twisting in his chest, seized him.
He threw himself against the nearest wall, shrinking down against it as he felt a flash of cold emanating from his chest. His heart pounded erratically, a searing pain sinking into his left arm. He buried his forehead into the ground.
He pressed his body tight against a nearby wall as everything around him began to shake. Cracks started to crawl over the stone beneath his hand. A house nearby caved in. A wagon down the street snapped in half.
Suddenly, it stopped and he was able to exhale.
He lifted his head, ripping off his left glove in just enough time to see darkness spread like bruises on his fingertips. Like the tide withdrawing, it then started to recede.
He rolled onto his back as the pain faded, staring up at the sky.
He looked for that red balloon, soaring adrift in the skies, subject to the winds. There was only a thin line separating the air inside from the vast world around it, vulnerable to the slightest prick of a needle.
Out of some foreign place, he heard Emma’s voice in his head.
You joke you don’t have a soul and…The rest of the sentence was lost, her words light with humor.
