Page 180 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Because a prince can only be a prince, not a soldier. Entering battle is bad press—no one wants their king on the front lines, not unless they want their king dead. A king is a show of strength, and who is stronger than those who control an army? Certainly not someone who fights in an army. Not to the Lucents.

I scan further. The entire page is anti-Nepenthe rhetoric. For how is a creature so thirsty for blood any different than the corenths who attack for fun?

This is what I’m supposed to say. This is why I’m not to see Lilac until after I’ve completed their mission—to have something they can hold over my head.

“How much of this is public?” I ask.

“Everything,” Labyrinth says, clutching his staff. “The people only need to see their savior now.”

“The corenths attacks on the other worlds have ceased?”

“After you killed the fatta, they all seemed to retreat.” Labyrinth’s face is straight as can be. They don’t know that I spent my time in the mastick, still fighting off these creatures. They have most certainly not retreated. Though they wouldn’t kill me either.

“Fair to hear,” I say. “I’ll stay to the tunnels until we begin.” They both nod, and I walk to the tunnel south of the entrance.

I killed him and now am expected to slander his name. Yet, what choice do I have? What choice have I ever had?

I read through the scroll—the script—three times, memorizing every lie until they are easy on my tongue, all while hoping that it will twist. I have to do this for Lilac’s safety and no longer for Azaire’s. Because I killed him.

Sometimes my visions show me how someone will swing and I’ll miss the knife in my back. My own thoughts evaded me when I said let the consequences be damned. I never meant it—I didn’t think there would be consequences. I certainly would’ve never said it if I knew it was Azaire who would face them.

He should’ve been the one to live, not me.

One day I will show the worlds what he is. Yet here I am, about to not only go back on that promise, but to smash it to smithereens.

If choices create our fate, at what point does compliance define me?

The crowd shuffles in, and I watch them from the tunnel. The faint light of the reqreium tells me it’s on. It’s not only the hundred orphia in this room who are going to hear this, there are thousands across the worldly borders listening in.

Lusia and Labyrinth take the front of the room together, but I am lost on the audience. My heart is beating with the threat of coming out of my throat.

This is the moment that I lose all honor; every good piece of Azaire that I carry with me will be gone with his soul when I say what I have to.

I take their place, staring into the reqreium at the back of the room, past the orphia with their notebooks and recording devices. It’s propaganda, I’d know it even without our psychology class. I’m promoting the hostility against the Nepenthe—the exact mindset that’s been used as a weapon.

“As we all know, the corenths have risen again, attacking the orphia and destroying our homes,” I begin, as the words on the scroll instructed. “Some have made it so far as to break past the protective barrier of Visnatus, killing Azaire Wendigo.” There’s a subtle sigh among the crowd. Not one of despair. “Your queen and king wanted me to come forward and say a few words about the situation and my heroics. The moment that I knew there was no choice but to stop the fatta before it stopped me.” There’s much conviction in my voice that I do not feel an ounce of. “Azaire took the path I had hoped he wouldn’t. As we all do, I wanted him to rise above,” I stutter, speaking slowly, losing conviction, “his nature.”

I pause, take a deep breath, and feel my hammering, traitorous heart. I look into the audience instead of the faint light behind them.

Don’t let them take more of you than they already have.

“Azaire was not only the best Nepenthe I ever met, he was the best orphia. With a stronger moral compass, probably, than any individual in this room.” I make solid eye contact with many recoiling faces. “It was my idea to fight the fatta, my idea that got him killed, and in the end, do you want to know what he asked me to do?” A shiver runs through my spine. “He asked me to give him peace.

“A Nepenthe, a creature you’ve all deemed to be aggressive murderers who are not much better than the corenths, was dragged into battle by me, and was killed at my hands.” When I hear the scoffs and see the orphia standing up around me, I feel my eyes grow cold. I let the shadows rise in obvious threat, and I say, “For those of you thinking of leaving or disrupting this broadcast, you’re going to want to sit down. This next piece of information will be a story worth your life.” They all sit, and for once I value my name, my status. I’m doing something worthy with it. The words spill from me before someone can stop me. “The respective queens and kings of Lorucille and Soma have been working on a weapon to destroy the lesser planets for the last eighteen years. Boycott, take the kingdoms, their powers.” I try to find Lusia and Labyrinth in the crowd. “They were never going to do anything worthy with it.”

The entire room buzzes, but no one stands up to do a thing. I escape the courtyard through the tunnels before I can be stopped and race the halls, looking for Lilac. I have to get to her before they can do anything to us.

Room after room and floor after floor come up empty, until I find Margaret. “She’s underground, in the dungeons.”

“No,” is the only sound I can manage to make. Then I run down to the place where I was forced to spend much of my youth. Could they have done to her what they did to me? Forcing her to watch or feel the dead? Or are they making her bring about the death?

I find her in the back of the dungeon, sitting on the floor in shackles. When she looks up at me, her eyes are still glowing bright blue. Too bright—almost enough to fill the room with light.

They’ve pushed her too far.

“Lilac.” I run to her. I lodge shadows into the keyholes before they bust and I yank her free.

She hugs me tightly, shaking and saying, “I didn’t want to.”

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