Page 147 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

I decide to just replay what I already did yesterday—so I don’t have to risk letting her think I’ve lost my mind, which I think I may have.

But the matches.

“You wanted to see me?” I ask, sitting in the chair I was just sitting in when the fire raged through the room. The pile of books are gone, but there’s still one small black mark on the wall a few feet above my head. Like ash or burnt wallpaper.

She smiles at me, but it’s gone so fast I’m not sure it ever even happened. “You killed a boy on campus.” And burnt off another’s arms, right?

“Breck,” I say. She nods. “And Jermoine?”

“Jermoine lost both of his forearms, but he lives.”

“So what’s my punishment?”

“You don’t remember? Oh well. You’ll be sent back to the septic.” But my mom. “Or perhaps a test subject for the healers.” A test subject? Like they’re going to injure me and heal me, over and over? There’s no way I’d be able to hide my cauterizing wounds. “Unless,” she says, her fingers tapping the desk over and over in a steady rhythm that’s driving me mad, “you can tell me what happened.”

“You’re messing with my mind,” I say in realization and throw her matches on her desk as I stand up. “I’m not doing this again.”

“Keep them,” she says. I hover above my seat. “You’ll need practice.”

“Thanks, but I’m good.” I head for the door.

“I had to make sure you were strong enough,” she says, and I ignore her. My hand is inches from the doorknob. “You could be the most powerful of them all.” Her chair squeaks. “Imagine that: the girl from the septic outranking the elites.”

Power, more importantly, power that won’t kill me, sounds pretty damn good. Power is murder, power is power—I don’t know which I believe, but I know I want it.

I take a deep breath, and when I turn around she throws the matches at me. I catch them.

“And matches are gonna get me there?”

“No, dear.” The headmistress smiles. “I will.”

* * *

I go to the one person I have left to go to—Leiholan. What does that mean? The person I trust most in my life is a Nepenthe. The same eyes and powers as the keepers. The same nature? I don’t think they’d hug me while I’m crying and droozed over a murder I committed.

Four, not five. One person in Damien’s family is still alive, only without their arms.

A hand plants itself on my forearm, and I have the dagger at my thigh unsheathed and pointed at someone’s heart in a second. Lucian smirks at me, then puts both his hands on the hilt of the dagger—over mine. His touch feels different. The same hands with a different intention.

I force myself not to shutter when I think about lying on my bedroom floor, being choked to death by his shadows.

“What do you want?” I lower the blade to get my skin out of contact with his.

“I may have found your father,” he says with all the casualness as if he were telling me I dropped a pencil.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes.” I turn from him. To the worlds, my dad is Dalin Marquees, to me my dad is unknown, and to both of us, he’s dead.

“Freyr Alpine is in the basement waiting for you right now.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” I spit out without looking at him.

He spins me around so I’m facing him, and I consider punching him. With my knife. “He was engaged to your mother before she… you know.” He lazily drags a knife over his neck, a centimeter away from touching his skin.

My knife. I rip it from his hands.

“You really think I’m going to go to the basement with you?”

“I think you’ve always wanted to go to the basement with me.”

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