Page 159 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“Your prophecy,” she answers. Her eyes drop from mine and to my chest. “What stone do you wear?”

What a time to be asking such a question. Keep it hidden. “It was my mom’s.”

“Why do you wear it under your shirt?”

And why does this feel like an interrogation?

“To keep it safe.” My hand goes instinctively to it. “It’s the last piece I have of her.”

“Is it the Memorium?”

What an absolutely ridiculous question. It couldn’t be. “You do know I’m from the septic, right?” I almost laugh.

“Answer the question.” Her eyes glow green, and she stares into mine.

Like I’m scared of such a docile creature. My power surges through me, heat flooding my bones. I laugh at the mere thought that she thinks she could best me and say, “It’s not the Memorium.” My tone goes so bitter I have to spit the words out, “We don’t get to keep the precious stones, we only mine them.”

“The Memorium is a Soul Stone,” she says like I’m dense.

“All the more reason I can’t get my grubby hands on it.” I can’t stop myself from sneering at her. “Thanks for showing me the rest of the prophecy.” I don’t feel very thankful as I walk away. It just felt like death.

I stop when I hear the whispering. My head whips in the direction of the mastick. Trees rustle, and the whispering wind in my head grows louder.

“Help us.”

“What is it?” Wendy asks.

“You should go,” I say.

“What’s out there?” she demands.

“Nothing.” Certainly something, because a dark-gray cloud of smoke with four arms hovers toward us.

“Help me.”

Is that the corenth? This whispering that has just now become coherent?

I didn’t know corenths had a me. A herd of them share a soul, they’re not individuals.

Its arms—more like tendrils with a dark smoke wisping around them—reach for me while the wind pleads. I reach for it too. I have to hear what it has to say to me. Has this whispering been the corenths this whole time?

I think of the moonaro and the way the whispering grew then too. Is this why Lucian thinks I’m involved?

Branches wrap around the semi-solid creature while roots sprout from the ground and around its hovering form. The creature writhes beneath the restraints of the tree.

Wendy just saw everything. She might have felt it too.

“Thanks,” I say, playing it cool, at the same time that she says, “We need an arphac blade.”

“Go to Leiholan,” I tell her. At least one of us knows what it is we’re fighting. The creature breaks free from the tree and hovers toward Wendy—not me. “Go!” I say again.

She looks at me like I have two heads, but in the end, she nods and runs for the school, and I grab hold of the creature that slithers—in the air—toward her. It’s… scaly. “Help you what?” I whisper, and the blank slate of a creature turns to me. It looks like it blinks, but I don’t see any eyes.

“Causer of our pain, you are,” it hisses in my mind. “Never could we act for us.” Its words are muffled by a wind that I haven’t been able to explain until now. A wind that was always loudest beyond the barrier…

“How did you pass the barrier?”

“No more.”

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