Page 106 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Everything here feels like her. The very air sets fire to my skin, sparking every nerve and sending shivers down my arms and spine. As if rising the hairs on parts of my body I never knew existed. As if she’s coaxing the very power within me with her own.

I could never depict this essence that I’m finally able to define as her.

I sink to my knees in front of her. As if I’m worshiping a deity at their altar. “Desdemona?” I whisper like a prayer. She looks up at me, her chest rising up and down fast. Her hair certainly isn’t hair. It rises around her, wisping in every direction. Her eyes aren’t brown either as I’ve grown to know, they are the picture of flames.

“Can you see me?” I ask, all while I wonder which is worse—my lies or hers. Has she lied to me even with her eyes? Every time she looked at me and I knew she felt what I felt, was that merely a deception? Alas, she nods, and I say, “I can get you out of this, all you have to do is allow me.”

Desdemona shakes her head. “I don’t think I want to leave.”

“I see,” I say, sitting next to her.

She watches me sit, and I can’t take my eyes off of her. In a different way than usual. Her hair, her eyes, glow in this darkness while her face lifts into a humorless laugh. “Right,” she says mockingly.

“Why don’t you want to leave?” I ask in the silence.

“Well, I have nothing in here and nothing out there. Only one of those options sounds somewhat peaceful.”

“You have me,” I say, staring at her even while she won’t meet my eye.

“Do I?” she says to the darkness beyond her. I don’t answer. Her lips press together while she nods. “Didn’t think so.”

We’re both taken into the silence. I don’t know where her mind is, but mine is on her. What happens when Lusia tries, again, to get to her? When I discover how to use this weapon, originally made by her mother? Or when I know what she was doing with the moonaro? How she burned me internally? Why she’s able to semi-step into a projection of the void?

This would never work. A king-to-be and a girl from the septic. She burned me. She must have been lying about knowing the extent of her powers the entire time. Yet today, when she could’ve used them to fight me, she went for a knife and ran. When the Soman soldier was trying to take her, she stabbed him.

Then she cried in my arms, begging to be believed. Had horrifying dreams the entire night.

I don’t want to think about all the ways she might be good. I’d prefer to focus on her lies. Put her back in her original place as a means to an end. Yet her lies don’t seem all that tantalizing. I do. I betrayed her.

Revenge really is stronger than matters of the heart. Or perhaps it is a matter of the heart.

“Come back with me.” I reach my hand to hers. “Please?”

She rips hers away and finally looks at me. “So you’re pleading now?”

Yes, I am, and I am not ready to see the depths in which I will take said pleading for her.

Desdemona’s eyes are wide, on fire with what I can only read to be anger. “You’ve lied to me about my mom this whole time.” Her head shakes so subtly I almost wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t watching her so acutely. “Did you see her?” Desdemona’s voice cracks, and her burning eyes grow glassy. “They’re torturing her, and there’s no way for me to actually get there.”

She’s right, the signs of torture were clear. Why not just kill her? The Arcanes have never been known to play with their victims. They’re deliverers of death, nothing more.

“What if I could find a way to bring us there?”

Her eyes light up, metaphorically, since they couldn’t get any brighter. “To the void?” The corners of her lips rise ever so slightly.

This is what we will become to one another. Partners in crime, if she’ll still have me. Surely, she now has a reason to want her own vengeance.

A smile splays across my lips.

“Yes.”

I look at her. Or she looks at me. Her eyes are wide. Her eyes are fire. “You can get to the void?” she asks eagerly.

“Working on it,” I say with one nod of my head. “If you stay here, you’ll never get there.”

Her nose twitches at me, and she raises an eyebrow. “Dirty work, Prince.”

I smirk. “It’s what I’m best at.”

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