Page 172 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

I shiver, something I’ve never felt around Desdemona. If anything, I’m hot in her presence. Yet this is more akin to Soma’s weather.

She pushes me down into the grass. My back is met by dirt and worms, maggots and skulls. Desdemona hoists herself on top of me, and I feel the phantom of her blade just over my chest.

“Wake up or die,” are the last words I hear her whisper before my eyes force their way open.

A fingernail attached to a hand that’s so brutally burnt I’m not even sure it’s human any longer runs down my chest, cutting into me shallowly all the way to my stomach. My back burns like I’m being held over an open fire, roasting alive.

“We want you, creator,” it whispers.

The pressure is gone, and I’m looking at the starry night sky. I jerk my body up but fall back over, coughing my guts out until I’m puking out foam. The venom is working its way through my body. The two kappa I killed are still on the ground, but there’s nothing else in my vicinity.

I stumble to the infirmary, through the still desolate halls, but there have been no more sightings within the academy walls. Despite every single one of our wards and barriers being broken down, nothing has come past the mastick since Azaire.

Elva looks at me and pulls her lips in the way she always used to when she was annoyed with me. “Room thirteen.” She points to an open door down the hall, and two Eunoia come to help me make my way there.

It takes both of them to pinch the skin around the bite mark that takes up most of my forearm. Blood rushes out, accompanied by more white foam.

“Desdemona?” I call when I see a girl with orange hair. She stops, and I know it’s her. I need to talk to her, find the truth once and for all.

What link does she have to the corenths?

Or perhaps I just need to talk to her.

There’s a bottle of vesi beneath her arm, and it’s as good an excuse as any. “Can I have some?”

She grabs the bottle in her hand, tugs the cap off, and takes a long, slow chug with her eyes on me. Then she flicks the cap at my face. “No.”

The quest for answers has taken me so deep into the unknown that I don’t even know front from back anymore.

“Please?” I call.

Desdemona steps back into view. She frowns at me and points the bottle toward my arm. “What happened to you?” she mutters, her face blank.

“Kappa bite.”

“They’re really making their rounds,” she sighs.

There’s a stretch of silence between us. Her looking at the bite on my arm and me looking at her. I frown as well. “What are you doing in the infirmary?”

“Kappa bite,” she answers.

“You look fine.” My eyes scan her body for a wound.

“Yeah.” She raises her eyebrows and looks down the hall in front of her. The blank slate of her eyes replaces itself with a multitude of emotions. “You too.”

Then she’s gone.

You know, the fatta said when I asked who controlled them.

Could it be Desdemona? I have a hard time imagining it, but I can’t discredit the theory.

Don’t give someone the benefit of the doubt and yourself the doubt.

I wait it out while they pull the venom from my blood. When I’m healed and taped up, I venture my way to Cynthia. The ghost of myself accompanies me when I sink into the davenport.

“My condolences.” She pours me a glass of vesi, and as she hands it to me says, “The prices we pay.”

“Is that what revenge becomes?” I question. “Death upon death?”

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