Page 38 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Azaire was barely three-quarters my size. He wrapped his arms around me like he was twice that. I opened my mouth to talk and he said, “You don’t have to say anything.”

It was foreign to me—the idea of not having to explain myself.

“I think,” I croaked. “I think she almost killed me this time.” The tears almost froze on my cheek.

“But she couldn’t. You’re too strong.” I think you’re the strong one. “She can’t have you, Luc. Maybe your power, but not your spirit.”

“I hate them.” I picked up a rock and threw it in the Great Sea. “I hate Labyrinth for not doing anything.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

“No,” he said. “I know what it feels like to hate.”

“Who do you hate?”

He mumbled something under his breath I couldn’t hear, and when he looked up again I knew not to pry.

But he surprised me by saying, “Under my beanie, I don’t have hair. I have snakes.” He tugged on his beanie. Back then it was forest green. “That’s why I hate. Because they kill.”

“That’s not your fault,” I told him.

“Neither is what Lusia does to you,” Azaire told me. “No surrender?” he squeaked. “You don’t give in to Lusia.”

“Then you can’t hate your snakes.”

“That’s different.” He broke our eye contact and shook his head.

“Why?”

“Because they have killed,” he said looking out over the water. “They took my life from me.”

I knew—know—what it meant to have your life taken from you. So I told him the whole truth, my entire life’s truth. I think it was the first time I’d ever been so honest. To this day, he’s the only one who knows.

And after my confession, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “It wasn’t a Folk that killed my parents, it was the snakes.”

I, eleven and tiny, looked at him and repeated his words. “No surrender then?”

“No surrender then.”

He went on hating his snakes and I went on believing that Lusia would be the death of me. It ebbed and flowed until I one day realized that Azaire might be right. Perhaps she would take my life and perhaps there was something else, something that mattered more, that she would never get.

We protect one another. He’s the voice of wisdom, I’m the show of strength. You need both to win the battle. And as Labyrinth says, the wit matters more.

No surrender has come to mean something grand to the two of us. It’s the promise of another day. It’s the hope of making it through the hardest of them. It’s the strength to fight on, even when we don’t see the reason.

No surrender is the reason.

Today, I look at Azaire and say, “No surrender.”

* * *

I wait outside Calista’s third-period class, feeling relatively recharged from Lusia’s antics. I am unsure of how many more times I will be able to survive her soul sucking. Though I can say that it’s been many years that I’ve been sure she would be the death of me.

Calista rolls her eyes when she sees me and flips the few strands of hair that aren’t tied into her braided hairdo.

“Waiting for me, are you?” She walks past me. As far as I am concerned, we have much in common—a stark lack of control of our own lives. Yet neither she nor Kai cares to see it.

---