Page 196 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

The thing comes right for me, its jaw unhinging, preparing to bite my head off. I close my eyes and prepare for the end.

In the darkness behind my eyelids, I see red. A moment later, when I don’t die, I open them.

The bottom half of a severed body floats by and down. The corenth swims away. Desdemona looks at me with wide eyes.

She saw it all.

It protected us.

Questions aside, I open our portal and we land in a snowy landscape, miles away from the kingdom. Desdemona shivers and I shuffle out of my all-too-thin dress coat. She eyes it like it’s a weapon and offers me the faintest of nods. I place it over her shoulders. The moment my hands are off her, she shrugs her arms into the coat—that hangs past her knees—and wraps them around herself in a hug.

The cold begins to bite through the thin fabric of my shirt, and Desdemona asks, “Do we have a plan?”

“Yes,” I answer. “We will be sleeping somewhere warm.”

“And after the night?”

“We will find food.” I don’t tell her that I have to go back to Visnatus for Lilac—not yet. It’s not safe for her to join me. Not that it is safe for me to go when I’m the power source of their weapon. I’m their key to destruction. That’s the reason they brought me to that room. Tried to shove that liquid down my throat. Why Labyrinth told me I was only a contingency. I’m sure of it.

Before I let that happen, I’ll make sure Desdemona is safe.

I believe I was right about her being involved with Elysia’s greatest evil. What I was wrong about was her awareness of it.

Her jaw clatters as she asks, “How exactly are we going to find somewhere warm when it’s snowing?”

“I know a place.”

Desdemona stops, so I do too—which we really shouldn’t do, considering anyone from the kingdom could be following us. “My eyes,” she whispers.

This is the first good look I’m getting of her. The real her, eyes and all. Is it depraved of me to think that she is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen? When she is so evidently the very creature that murdered my parents.

If that’s the case, there’s this incessant knocking in my head, repeating that while she came into my life as a puzzle, she’s now a piece of me. Because there are very few things that I can control—in fact, I can count them all on one hand.

My feelings for Desdemona Marquees are not one of those things.

Arcane or not. Evil or good. She could burn the universe down, burn me inside out, and I’m sure this feeling would not falter.

I want to sink to my knees before her and pray to her for her forgiveness. I want her to serve me my retribution.

I want her to look at me the way I’ve been trying not to look at her.

“It will be dark,” I say. Coward. “Keep your head down.” It will be dark enough. It has to be.

“Keep my head down?” she whispers in disbelief. “Wish I’d thought of that before.”

I scoff a laugh. “Yes, as do I. Would have saved me the trouble.”

For one second her face looks soft, unguarded. She pulls it together fast, which seems to be instinct because the daggers her eyes are shooting at me don’t seem to have her whole heart in them the way they usually do. Her mouth opens, then her eyes dart away from me and she sighs.

“Where are we?” Her hand rests on her chest vacantly.

“We’re in Soma’s septic.”

Desdemona’s face practically lights up. “Then why don’t we go to Lorucille?” She whispers, eyes wide and on me. Condensation from her breath fills the air.

“Let’s only worry about immediate needs for now. We can convene tomorrow?”

She kicks at the snow like it’s a rock. “We?” I can’t tell if the word is spoken in anticipation or animosity.

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