Page 128 of Love, Nemesis
Educated guess, she could almost hear him saying and looked away.
“I guess there is no turning back now,” Ana breathed and walked through the door. They navigated the halls again, Ana leading them both to the great, locked doors of the science unit.
She inserted the key into the door. If she merely broke the blue shell, the entire conflict would come to an end. The world would breathe its first breath of truth in a long time.
Feeling Lethe behind her, she tried to resist thinking about the implications of anything else. Would all of them understand her reasoning when she, too, disappeared? She was determined to make her choice, but that didn’t stop the intrusive questions from bubbling up the closer they seemed to get to success.
Her life had seemed easier to let go of when her time had run out. When she could count down the seconds of her life, see the minutes and the hours, she could measure everything, detach herself from all that she loved in preparation for that moment.
Life had been easier to let go of because it had been out of her control anyway. Now, it wasn’t dying anymore that she faced. It was disappearing—a different and unquestionably more permanent end. More than that, she was starting to realize thatby sharing her secret with Lethe, she’d become more connected to the world again.
There were still things she had to clear up with Jasper. She wanted to thank Ares. She wanted to get to know Lethe. She wanted to peel open that second page of her life.
Holding the key in the door, she felt the first real wave of hesitation.
Hesitation? No. She’d made her decision. Just a few minutes ago she’d been determined to move forward.
Lethe’s large, calloused hands moved from behind her, holding hers over the key. She expected him to turn it, usher them onward, but he simply held it there.
His touch felt strange, like an odd kind of light capable of making her reservations grow. He combed her hair back with his other hand, kissed the nape of her neck and whispered, “You don’t have to break it.”
His words were strange and out of place. She knew that. He was helping her, wasn’t he? Why of all times would he hold her hand with such gentleness, pull her back against him and whisper with such tenderness against the nape of her neck that it gave her chills.
Stranger yet, it worked. His words washed over her like a spell, and the depth of his whisper seemed to suggest that he knew that they would. Here they were, in the middle of this tense, urgent, moment and she didn’t want to move. With every passing second, she wanted to turn around and go with Lethe whereverhe wanted to go, abandon this entire ordeal, abandon the State and simply be.
Frightened that a few short seconds could change her mind so quickly, her mind jolted and she shoved the key forward. The door gave before she turned it. Ana eased back as it was a clear indicator that it had already been unlocked.
Lethe backed away, and she exchanged glances with him. There were two questions.
The first asked what all of this meant.
The second asked how he’d managed to be so suddenly convincing.
To her relief, he offered no answers in the silence, but her mind seemed to clear as she eased away from him and leaned back against the adjacent wall.
“You know why we’re here,” she said, objecting to his previous comment which she now questioned if he’d said at all.
You don’t have to break it.
She half expected him to repeat those words.
“I do,” he whispered back in the darkness of the hallway, and for a moment she thought she saw something flicker in the hazel mixture of his eyes. Something told her to question him further, suss out his intentions, but she disregarded the strangeness she felt between them.
Hailey had somehow predicted the relevance of this day. Lethe acting the slightest bit suspicious should be the least of her worries.
She pushed the door open slowly and peered through.
It was quiet.
She slipped inside. Lethe closed the door behind them with a soft clink.
From her point of view down the narrow hallway, it was empty.
She paced carefully through the walkway, eyes focused on the room ahead with a variety of dim lights illuminating her path.
The walls opened up into rows of tall tubes, long, white tables, and walls covered in inscriptions of curses.
All at once, the sins of the State were unveiled to them both.
