Page 140 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Turning to Calista, I see she’s already alert to the problem too.

“Bad timing,” she says, surprisingly calm, walking to the entrance and kneeling in front of the fallen woman. I follow.

“Princess Calista,” the woman stutters, “what–what are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she asks while looking down at the woman. She sounds much more uncanny than I’ve ever heard her before. The woman opens her mouth, and Calista says, “Honest answers only.”

The woman only stutters.

Calista shakes her head, her voice taking on an almost seductive quality. “I’ll have to take your memories, but if you answer correctly, I won’t have to take your life.”

The words fall from her mouth in such a rush they’re hard to make out. “I was only sent to pick up a tome.”

“Hm,” Calista muses. “Which tome?”

The woman looks at me and shakes her head. It’s almost answer enough: something pertaining to Soma.

Calista puts her middle and pointer fingers on both of the girl’s temples. Her eyes wash over pale yellow while she stares blankly at Calista. Minutes later, with her eyes still on the woman, Calista says to me, “Pull back your shadows.”

I do, and a moment later she brings the woman to her feet and pushes her back in the direction she came.

The first thing I say is, “You kill your staff?”

“Gods no,” Calista says, disgusted. “I only learned how to get my way around here. She won’t remember anything other than she couldn’t find the tome.” She gives me a wide grin. “And I found something you won’t like.”

My voice is stiff. “What?”

“Come along.” She walks to the table in the middle of the room and leans over one of the chairs. “Does this look familiar to you?” Between her pointer finger and thumb, there is a moonstone earring, embedded in silver.

I hear a click when I clench my jaw and Calista laughs, then shoots me a mock frown. “Your perfect family isn’t so perfect after all.”

The earring reeks of Lusia’s energetic signature. Soma could know everything I’ve discovered and more. Do Lusia and Labyrinth know of the power supplies they have here? The extra mining and welding villages? The weapon?

Has every fight in the meetings been staged?

“You’ve always known we were never perfect.”

I reach for the earring, and she flicks her hand back. “Perhaps I want the worlds to know too.”

“You’d do that to Lilac?”

Calista answers in way of a frown.

My idea of stopping—ending—the Arcanes has gotten so muddled beneath the layers I keep pulling back. I always seem to end up feeling hopeless.

Lilac won’t wake up, Desdemona has something to do with it, I have a man in a dungeon who won’t talk, and like Azaire said, what I do to him will never leave me. There’s a weapon being made, and my desire to use it against the Arcanes doesn’t seem to be what Elysia’s two strongest worlds want.

I have a laundry list of questions that need answers, and I’ve only managed to obtain a headache.

I only wanted the power source.

I start taking book after book out from the shelves.

“Lucian,” Calista whispers. “We should get out before someone else comes.” She sounds stressed.

Her already pale complexion has blanched. Her eyes are bloodshot. Altering the woman’s memories has burnt her out.

“I can’t leave with nothing,” I say quickly, flipping through page after page.

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