Page 143 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

I summon my shadows in case she tries to burn me inside out again. “What are you?” I ask, my groin still throbbing. My body still overheated.

The burning knife, the burning me, Cynthia not being able to put out her fire. “You’re not a Folk, are you?”

“What are you talking about?” she whispers.

I look at her neck, where I’d cut her in Combat Training. “Your wounds cauterize themselves, don’t they?”

Desdemona’s eyes stray from mine.

“What are you?”

She stands. “How about you tell me when you figure it out, seeing as you know so much.”

I stand too, and when she walks away, I grab her hand that was burnt when she killed the Soman soldier, but the skin looks perfect.

The glass jar in her drawer is a glamour.

What else is she hiding?

She jerks her hand back. “You said that when you unravel, you’ll be taking me with you, but what you didn’t think about, Prince, is that I’m going to be your undoing. So threaten me again,” she says slowly, the dagger she hadn’t held a moment ago gleaming in her hand. “And I will do so much worse than sink this blade into your chest.”

* * *

Freyr sits in the corner, mostly mended from whatever poor healer Cynthia sent.

I sit on the floor on the other side of the cage a few feet back so he can’t reach me through the bars.

“Have you tried to burn these yet?” I ask, tapping on the bars and knowing that would be the first thing he’d do. They were made from a special alloy with a melting temperature higher than the Flame.

Freyr only looks at me, and I can make out his eyes—even in this dank darkness—for the first time in two days. They’re not swelled shut anymore. “Isa Althenia had a child directly after the events that led her to fake her death,” I say, though I also know he knows this. “I need to know if you’re her father.”

Freyr’s head snaps up. “Desdemona?”

He even sits like her.

“Yes,” I say. He is the father, which means she is a Fire Folk.

“She’s here?” I hear a hint of panic in his voice.

“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “An answer for an answer.”

Freyr grunts. “Fine.”

“Are you Desdemona’s father?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Is she here?”

“Yes,” I answer.

The words tumble from his mouth in a panicked cohesion. “What happened to Isa?”

“It’s my turn,” I say, and Freyr clenches his healed jaw. “When did you start building the weapon for Lorucille?”

“Eighteen years ago,” he bites out. “What happened to Isa?”

“The Arcanes got her. She’s in the void.” His face falls and his shoulders are slack. I consider him for a moment. “Do you know what the power source is?”

“By the gods.” He barks out a laugh and runs his hand along his dirty, scruffy beard. “You think us Fire Folk would ever be granted that kind of clearance?”

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