Page 92 of Love, Nemesis
He nodded. “Yeah.” They exchanged a final glance, and Jasper nodded once more before darting off to the right. Ana watched him go until she could see him no longer. She then traveled to the left.
She waited at the edge of a hill, watching the encampment carefully by the light of dusk. Confident that Jasper was in place after several minutes, she proceeded down the hill on her own, pacing out into a clearing near the campsite. She placed herself farther in the field. Removing a Numbers flare from her utility belt, she aimed it up at the sky.
She pulled the trigger.
A hot red ember shot with a screech into the sky and exploded. The campsite swarmed like a beehive, warriors rushing out and searching the perimeter. Ana continued walking forward into the open field toward them.
She heard shouting in Mystic when they spotted her uniform and charged. First, there was one. She moved quickly. He was on the ground. Two more came at her, and then four. When the numbers became muddled, she sprinted back into the trees. Some followed her; others started forming a line near the trees in anticipation of a larger force.
Ana hid behind some of the trees, peeking past them in hopes of seeing smoke rising up from the camp.
Nothing.
She disarmed a Mystic soldier who moved past a nearby tree. She searched the rest of the woods, catching sight of two more as they withdrew from the forest. They shouted something in Mystic to the group waiting just beyond the tree line. Soon they’d discover there was no army lying in wait.
“Come on, Jasper,” she whispered.
The Mystics had to be getting suspicious.
She saw one of the bowmen glancing between the woods and camp. He called something, and several ran past him back toward camp.
Ana sprinted deeper into the woods to find her and Jasper’s designated meeting place.
He wasn’t there. She waited for several anxious minutes.
“Jasper,” she whispered. Then she called a bit louder, “Jasper!”
No response.
She rushed back to the edge of the woods and looked at the camp. No smoke. By now, there should at least be the vaguest sign of it. Ideally, the entire encampment should be smoking. There should be shouting and efforts to retrieve water.
Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good.
Horrors of Jasper’s fate pressed into her conscience. Mystics could be brutal, most brutal to anyone who betrayed their culture.
Ana only had a few months left. Jasper had his entire life ahead of him.
The guilt that had only just been relieved by Lethe returned in full force at the realization that Jasper’s death would be on her conscience. Soon after came the shattering realization that she couldn’t tolerate that. Not Jasper. Not the man who had done so much for her, meant so much to her.
She had to act.
Jasper had told her to wait, no matter what. She agreed to that plan, but not seriously, not with any notion that he’d truly be lost to her, not when she could still do something about it.
Ana counted the small group still waiting near the forest’s edge where she’d been.
Five soldiers and one bowman. Other groups were huddled at other points on the edge of the clearing surrounding the camp. A man on horseback could be seen riding off through the woods, no doubt to inform the other hidden camps of the brief attack they’d experienced.
Ana’s hand gripped the bark of the tree where she waited.
She straightened, backing away from it in the dark.
She heard her watch.
Tick.
Tick.
She loaded another flare into the flare gun, stopping when she saw her fingers, dyed black.
