Page 137 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“I think you know why I asked you to stay?” Hogan says.

“I can’t speak to the prince that way?” Desdemona answers, and it is clear from her tone that she does not care for the topic.

“We welcome debate, but?—”

“But what? I can’t make a solid point because, well, I’m septic,” she says, all too sarcastically. “Right? Well, get this. I’m a little tired of kissing everyone’s asses around here. I know where I stand. You made it abundantly clear. So if you want to send me back, take it up with the headmistress. But I’m done.”

Then she storms right out, stopping in the hallway when she sees me. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were obsessed with me, Aibek.”

But she doesn’t walk away.

“I don’t think you should speak to a prince in that way,” I mock. “Perhaps titles are in order.”

I take a step away from her and smile to myself when she follows.

“Yeah? Well, my apologies. Which one should I use? Prince? Or pathetic?”

I shrug. “You could have called me yours.”

Desdemona sticks out her arm in front of my chest, stopping me, walking around me, her finger grazing over me. Even with the layer that is my shirt and coat between us, I imagine she loathes and loves this sensation as much as I do.

“I’d like to call you dead,” she whispers, in front of me now, looking up at me.

Temperamental little thing.

Is it depraved to enjoy when she talks to me like this?

It’s equal parts alluring and aggravating. Alluring because no one else would say what she dares to. Aggravating because it can’t be alluring.

“All right.” I grab her wrist, put her hand to my throat, and say, “Kiss or kill me then. Your choice.”

Her chest rises and falls and her eyebrows crease together, but she says nothing. I imagine this is the face of hatred, and if it is, I feel the same. Distrust her even more.

But keep your enemies close, right?

She yanks her hand back. Love and loathe, indeed.

“I’d like to smack that smirk off your face,” she finally says.

“Is that what your insults have been delegated to? How very puerile. And anyway,” I smile more, “you love my face.”

Her hand reaches for my forehead, where she tousles loose tendrils of hair. Then her eyes fall to mine. “Your nose is crooked and one of your eyebrows is higher than the other,” Desdemona says in the most monotone voice I could ever fathom. “One night, I thought that said something more about your character than it truly does. But you are exactly who I thought you’d be.”

“Who is that?”

“The spoiled, pompous prince, who gets everything he wants and doesn’t care about the lives he ruins in the process.”

This time, I touch her hair. Wrapping an orange strand around my finger. Her breath still catches, much to my amusement. “You have thirty-three freckles on your cheeks and specks of gold in your eyes. But I never thought your appearance had anything to do with your character.” I drop my hand, meet her eyes. “You’re the modest, humbled girl from the septic.” I shrug. “Who happens to murder people as a pastime.”

Desdemona recoils as though I’ve struck her. Her eyebrows crease together, and she looks at me with absolute disdain. “Breck is dead,” she says, somewhere between a statement and a question. “You told Eleanora.”

“I told no one.”

She chuckles dryly. “Right.”

“Half of the hall is burnt to a crisp and smells like ashen flesh,” I point out.

She looks away from me, exhaling shakily. When she turns her head back, her eyes are vacant shells. If I were to open the doors, I don’t know I’d find anything beyond their threshold.

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