Page 107 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Desdemona scoffs. “Lucian?” she says, and despite her tone, despite everything, I decide I never want to hear her stop saying my name. Then she shakes her head. “Just get us out.”

The light of the sun is blinding when I pull Desdemona and myself through to the land of the living. I’m surprised when I look at her and see her open her eyes. I wasn’t so sure she’d come with me.

Tears are caught in her eyelashes and brushing over her flushed cheeks. In her subconscious she looked like a god, and here, she looks like Desdemona. The girl whose face I’ve committed to memory with no wonder of it lost.

She wipes her eyes before glancing at me, a frown overcasting her features. Then she gets up and walks away, saying nothing.

“Wait,” I find myself saying.

Desdemona whips back in my direction. “How could you not tell me?”

There is no use in lying now. “Because I needed to make sure you were powerful enough first.”

She steps closer, both her fists clenched tight. “And am I?” she seems to be trying to ask it tauntingly, but it comes across morose. “Am I powerful enough for you?”

“No,” I tell her, almost sadly. “No, I need you to be able to get through.”

“So do I, Prince,” she says, turning her back on me. “So do I.”

As I step, I notice that my ankle feels twisted, and when Desdemona is entirely out of view, I lift my shirt. Right at my side, just above my hip, is a long patch of swollen skin. Pink and blistering.

Chapter 22

Somebody Might Die, But Everybody Gets Hurt

LUCIAN

Corenths are creatures without a single soul—herds from tens to thousands share one. Every orphia apart from the Lucents were born from such a creature. Among the stories, there’s a similarity: the individual corenths no longer wanted to feel the pain of the collective, so they morphed themselves together to create one. Apart from the Armanthine. Each herd of dragons was forced into one body when they became too large of a threat to our universe. Zola was said to have done it as an act of mercy, but this historians personal idea is that she simply couldn’t perform an act of mass genocide against a breed of corenths because of her beloved balance.

— HISTORY AND CORENTHS BY JJ ARIST (UNPUBLISHED)

I did it and now the only question left is: Was it worth it? I’ve alienated her entirely.

Yet I know what the weapon can do. I’m a step closer to using it for myself. And, when it comes time to go to the void, I know with certainty that Desdemona will aid me, if for no other reason than her mother.

It was not the wrong thing to do, and a part of me cannot find a reason to think that it wasn’t the right thing.

Still, I try not to think of the disdain in Desdemona’s eyes. “It’s as we thought. Desdemona’s consciousness can make it through my projection, but not her body. Try to do it again before she knows what she’s doing, and she’d likely die.” As I finish, all I can think of is the disdain in Desdemona’s eyes.

I can’t get her out of my mind—and not for the right reasons. It’s not the questions that surround her that occupy me, it’s only her.

I spin the little silver wolf in my pocket. I have to let it go. The answers, the truth, the promise of revenge, it’s all I have. All I can ever have.

“Don’t look so sad,” Cynthia muses.

I sigh, change the subject. “They made the weapon to destroy the void. As to my understanding, they weren’t able to make it work.”

“Perhaps you should meet Freyr again,” Cynthia says with a small shrug.

“Azaire almost didn’t get out last time,” I remind her. “He set us up.”

“He set you up… yet you’ve found more than you’d initially hoped for.” Her head tips to the side while she offers me a lopsided little smile.

“You don’t think he was lying?”

“What good would it do him to protect the people who have imprisoned him in a facility?”

A vision begins to prick at the edges of my mind. A blurry mess of green, brown, and red. I stand up in an instant. This isn’t something small like the next move of an opponent. It’s the kind of vision that is the reason Lusia forced me to learn to paint as a child.

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