Page 193 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“Oh, Sulva,” she mumbles. “She is gone. Dead. Do you understand?”

“No, she’s not. I saw her.” A sentimental idiot indeed.

“Hear me good and hear me once, child.” Her face is so close to mine. With one, short movement of my head maybe I could smash her skull in. “You never will again.”

I don’t care what Mom said. I don’t care about the way she looked at me. I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it. “Okay,” I say. If I can just get out of these shackles, I’ll get my power back and I can figure out what I’m going to do next.

I’ll go back home. I’ll go to Damien and Elliae. Yes. For the first time in these months, this hope feels good, possible. Maybe Mom is still out there somewhere, but would she even want me to find her?

“I’ll run, like you said.”

“This will hurt.” Queen Lusia stands in front of me. She raises her hands and shadows summon from every part of the room, swirling up her arms and then from her palms, right into me.

I gasp with the pain as they fill me, cover me. Every inch of my body, inside and out, is struck with the freezing cold and immobilizing nature of the Lucent’s power. I become so thoroughly frozen that the aching becomes dull. I’m not even sure my heart beats.

I don’t even think the blood moves in my veins.

With another forceful motion of her arms, the shadows suck back out of me, like they were never there at all. But I feel their ghosts. I fall over at once, coughing out nothing. Every breath I take and release is colder than ice.

“You’re not far from the exit. When you leave this room, turn left. You’ll find the portcullis in three hundred yards. It will be open. Cross the moat and run south of the Great Sea.” The key slides into my shackles, and with a gratifying click, my hands are released.

“Got it.” I nod, then I run, turning left like she said.

The halls are different from the ones before. There is no marble and glass, just dark stone. A fortress. I’m not running for very long before I can see the portcullis. I hear it open for me.

A group of at least seven guards make their way down the hall, walking in a square and coming right for me. I’m so close. I can’t make it without risking them seeing me. I slip against the wall, between two columns.

They come slow, in no obvious hurry, and I shrink against the wall, trying to catch my breath as quietly as possible. They come to pass, and I watch them from my dark corner, my eyes catching on Lucian.

He looks almost dead, his body barely breathing, but his eyes still meet mine. They glance at the opened portcullis only a few feet from me.

When his gaze comes back to me, he nods, and when I don’t move, he mouths a word I can’t make out.

This is it. The last time I’ll see him. I try to conjure the memory of him telling the students I’m from the septic as I turn away from him, behind the guards and for the open door.

The light momentarily blinds me when I step outside. There’s a thick layer of snow beneath my feet, coating the bridge and making it hard to walk across. But I manage. South of the Great Sea is the way I go.

I’ve made good distance between me and the kingdom when I hear the clicking noise that tells me the portcullis is closing.

I keep running south.

But the last message Lucian had tried to send to me was one word. I see it now, make sense of it now.

Go.

My body forces me to turn around. He told the school I was septic. He made me fear for my life more than once.

But even as he was being defeated, he told me to go. He saved my life in the ballroom. He saved me when I killed the Lucent.

He didn’t look at me like I was a monster.

The way my own mom did.

The portcullis closes slowly, but the distance between me and it has made it feel far too fast. I force my legs to move faster and every step keeps pushing me further into the snow.

I’m not going to make it.

He was right. His touch did make my breath catch and it still does, despite everything that’s grown between us. Run faster, I demand myself.

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