Page 65 of Love, Nemesis
“You don’t know anything,” she said, back still locked, eyes wincing against the rainfall as she panted into it. “I bet you’re looking forward to killing that Strike just so you can feel alive again. You can’t live without them.”
“You’re right,” he said.
She lowered her head and looked at him.
“But you were there, weren’t you?” he asked again. “The Burning of the Strike. You know what we lost.” His voice lifted with emotion. “You know what The Great Light did. All of that battle, and sacrifice and death. We thought we’d finally won and then—”
“Don’t you da—”
“What?” he challenged as he started to stand. “Don’t I dare what? Tell me.” He approached her, and she met him, up for the challenge.
Face to face, he glared, lowering his voice. “Come on, Ana. Let’s talk. You really think saying the words will change anything?”
They held one another’s eyes, and Ana measured his resolve. She’d seen Riders do blindly violent things, but now she wished he’d try.
She stepped to the side, noting a path up the ridge behind her. He followed her. They circled one another closely, Ana unsure if she would strike him or run. When given the chance, she did neither, and stopped. The path of escape now at her back, she knew she had to make a choice.
His eyes flickered behind her as if only to tell her he knew her thoughts.
“You won’t,” he said with an angry, challenging smile. “You can’t get away from the truth. You’ve been trying your whole life.”
“You love that, don’t you? A good struggle.” She backed away, prepared to diffuse the tension between them, convinced that leaving him would defeat him in its own way. She was certain she’d run out of time, and by this point Crow would be doing her a favor by releasing a bullet in Lethe’s direction.
She stepped back and he snatched her wrist, igniting a reflex of rage. Released and unbalanced, she struck back, and they were on the ground again in seconds.
They were like the storm, and the boiling movement of their struggle splashed through the rivers now pouring down from the adjacent hill. Ana landed a punch, hearing a crack as lightning flashed across the sky. She knew she’d broken a bone in his face.
She gasped when her shoulder crashed into a rock, pain grabbing into her joint as if she’d nearly dislocated it. He held her down, her other shoulder pushing over the cliff with a steep drop below.
Without thinking twice, she started to dip back, but Lethe jerked her away from the ridge. She used the movement to sweep him,pushing her hips forward and riding the momentum as she flipped him onto his back. She drew the blade attachment to his lighter, pressing it hard across his throat. Her body weight rested over him as they both breathed heavily.
Her hand bled with the raw blade. Not attached to its handle, it cut into her fingers as she pushed it down.
“You’re going to want to light it first,” he challenged between breaths as she kept the knife hard against his throat. “You really think either of our lives is a good enough ransom, Ana? Take mine. It’s all yours. Can you really say you’d stop me from doing the same thing to you? It’s why you gave up on life, isn’t it? Why you were so quick to spend it away?”
The thunder churned and then he spoke the words she never thought she’d hear outside her own head.
“You don’t know if you’re even really alive,” he said.
She gritted her teeth, pressing the knife harder into his skin as she held his eyes.
“The Great Light is an illusion,” he said as if determined to voice the whole truth. “It covered over the broken buildings and damaged world, brought back trees and clean water, but it brought back dead people too. Not all of them, but just enough. We win the war, and I wake up the next day to find out that I can’t even be sure I survived it, and neither can you. The illusions don’t know they’re illusions. Their children don’t know they’re illusions. Everyone in the State might not even be real.”
Her grip loosened on the blade, the revelation releasing the anger and energy in her.
The Great Light had ruined the world.
The Strike’s final curse had somehow claimed their victory forever. In taking away people’s certainty of death, he’d taken away their certainty of life.
And that was why En Sanctans avoided discussing it. Desperate to give the world some semblance of life, they had to hide that not everyone was really alive. It was the unspeakable, ugly problem that no one knew how to solve.
The war had cost them absolutely everything.
Ana felt a sudden outpouring of grief, completely drained of her rage. She watched Lethe through the rain, noting the bruising on his face where she’d perhaps fractured his cheekbone. It was already healing.
She eased off of him as he leaned back against the boulder again. She fell back beside him, their shoulders touching as they sat there in the rain.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
