Page 158 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

Yet, her bottom lip still wobbles. “I have her power.” Her head shakes, and her eyes won’t meet mine. “I’m a soul sucker.”

“You won’t wield it like her.” Her glassy, red-rimmed eyes narrow on me. “What? Are you going to use it to slowly kill your son?” I say it happily, jokingly, hoping for a smile. Lilac only sobs more. I hold the top of her hand. “It saved your life this time. Perhaps it will do so again.”

“I knew what I was doing the second it happened.” Her head falls against the headboard with a thud. “My visions were already showing me what was inevitable… they were pulling me out there. When I grabbed the moonaro, all I wanted was more. It was disgusting, like sludge in my blood, but I craved its power. The second I felt strong enough to pull away, it attacked, and I don’t blame it.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hands. “I don’t even know that I can blame Mother.”

Can’t blame Mother? I shift in my seat. Can’t blame Mother for the years of torture she’s bestowed upon me?

“No, Lucy,” she reaches for the wrist of my retreating form, but her eyes don’t meet mine. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I’m glad you’re awake, Lilac.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says again, grabbing onto my hand and holding it tightly.

“It’s alright.” She nods, frowning. “Do you remember Desdemona?”

“The girl who brought you to my suite?”

“Is that all you remember about her?”

“She’s Calista’s roommate. Why?”

“Curiosity. Did anyone happen to mention why you awoke belatedly?”

Lilac finally meets my eyes as she scowls. “Yes,” she exhales, “Mother said something similar happened to her when she… they said I took too much power than what was sustainable for my body.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

Chapter 32

No Future, No Past

DESDEMONA

Every now and again comes a Eunoia whose bare touch can incapacitate a person. This is because they have no control over the emotions they deposit into another. Do not touch this creature under any cost.

– A GUIDE TO SURVIVING IN VIRIDIS

The one who leaves returns alone.

I’ve been trying to decipher the prophecy. I think it means my mom will come back with or without my intervention, but I don’t know. As for time shattering and the universe dividing, I’m entirely stumped.

There’s also love being my demise and all that. I guess that’s about my mom. My love for her will take me to dark ends to get her back. Right?

I knock on Wendy’s door, and when there’s no answer, Calista tells me to check Azaire’s room. While I wonder if this is another trap from Lucian, there’s just no sensical way that it even could be, so I go.

I knock on the door, and a few minutes later Wendy walks out and right past me with messy hair and the top button of her uniform pants undone.

“Follow me.” We walk in silence to a corner of the garden. The mastick starts just behind a tall fountain, meaning we’re within the barrier. I think the fountain is supposed to be Zola. It has a scale in one hand—the sun on one plate and a moon on the other—and the roots of a tree wrapped around the other arm. What more do I need to decipher the goddess of balance and nature?

Wendy unbuttons her gloves. “I felt something when I channeled it. I can share it with you.” Of course she understood. I mean, what else do we have to talk about?

I grab her extended hands immediately.

Then I have to let go. I have to let go, but I can’t. It’s like her hands are glue and I can’t rip mine away. I can feel my brain slowing, my hands going limp.

Then it’s splitting agony, like there’s a zipper down my body and someone’s undone it and is pulling me out. The next part is agonizing loneliness, worse than I feel now. It’s debilitating. It’s everyone I love and could have loved, dead. It’s sitting in a blank, empty room, and the only chair is their bodies stacked one on top of the other.

I pull my hands from hers the second I can. “What the fuck was that?”

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