Page 174 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“That’s too vague?—”

“You didn’t feel it!” she shouts. Tears fill her eyes and muffle her words. “You haven’t been out here for three days thinking about what you could’ve done differently! Like if I’d just been able to kill her—maybe the corenths wouldn’t have attacked. The kappa came for her, I swear it, Lucian. I swear it.”

I have spent most of these three days thinking about what I could’ve done differently. Would’ve done differently.

Just because you have a vision doesn’t mean you have to act on it.

“This isn’t what Azaire would want,” I say, tears dangerously close to taking my voice. I choke the words out anyhow. “He wouldn’t want his death to lead to more death. Peace, Wendy. You know he always wanted peace.”

“I can’t do it,” she cries. “There is no peace without him. I feel everything! Always!” She croaks and turns to the tree. “But I can’t feel him. He’s not here, his soul is gone. He’s gone. And it’s like—it’s like I can’t even grieve when she’s still around.” Her eyes go cold in an instant. “I have to avenge him.”

It’s me, I should be saying. I am the one who has to die to avenge him. I am the one who forced Azaire to fight. I am the one who killed him.

“She’d take you in seconds,” I say. “You don’t know the extent of her power.” Something wraps around my arms, tight, and pulls me up, stretching me apart. Branches. “Wendy,” I say through gritted teeth.

But her eyes glow a brighter green than they had a second ago. And she looks at me, her rage barely restrained.

“Do you feel something for her?” she asks, her head twisting to the side and the branches pulling me further apart.

“I think she’s hiding something.”

“No,” Wendy breathes. “Beyond that. What do you feel for her?”

The truth spills out of me like a broken faucet with no chance of stopping the dribble. “I want her to be hiding something because I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve never been more attracted to a person in my life.”

I, myself, was not entirely sure what the truth was. I think I could’ve gone this lifetime without knowing that. I think that Wendy could have too, because her eyes bulge and a scoff escapes her closed mouth.

Damn Eunoia.

“I’ve lost everything!” she screams. “Twice!” The branches continue to pull away from each other, stretching me like I am made of rubber and not flesh and bone. “And you’re worried about your attraction to a killer!”

There are no shadows in the mastick for me to use right now.

“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask, but the words come out rough. I’m being stretched to death.

“Are you going to try to stop me?” she seethes.

“Yes,” I barely am able to say the word.

“I don’t know!” Wendy falls to her knees, clutching onto her stomach as if she could stop the sobs that begin to tear through her. Then her body begins to tremble, and the world does too.

Below me, the ground splits. It’s nothing but a pit of darkness, a crack in the world. I am being held by nothing more than the branches around my forearm.

The more I am pulled apart, the less I can see. My vision blurs, my throat screams, and then it stops.

I fall. My hand jerks up and I manage to catch myself on a branch before I am lost to the rift.

That’s when I see it. A moonaro. Wendy’s attention has been turned to it instead of the rift in the world. I climb up the tree, high enough so that when I jump, I land on the ground. I have no weapons, but soon I will have shadows. I can help Wendy hold it off long enough to survive.

Yet it looks at me the way it looked at Desdemona in my vision.

Then it runs from us both.

Her voice breaks, “You’re part of it?”

“Why?” I say breathlessly. “What did you feel?”

“It wanted to save you.”

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