Page 208 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

I should’ve never brought him into that battle, vision or otherwise.

“Azaire died,” the sentence feels anything but real, “because I pulled him into a fight. I’m not ready to…”

“I am.” Her hand extends to her side, and a shadow pulls a sword to her. “I’m probably even stronger than you now. Consider my fighting a favor.”

When Lilac grins at me, I can only hope this won’t end the same as it had with Azaire.

“Where’d you get that snark from?”

“Years spent with you, brother. Calista too.”

I jump into Lilac’s bed. “Hey!” she shouts when I untuck her sheets.

It isn’t until I’m lying and ready for sleep that I notice what’s missing. “Where’s your violin?”

Lilac doesn’t answer.

“Li?”

“In the closet,” she says hastily.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I got tired of seeing it.”

I sit up. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Lilac doesn’t meet my eyes.

“I spent a lot of our childhood in that dungeon,” I tell her, I finally tell her. “I must’ve watched at least a hundred people die before Lusia finally did the same to me.” I don’t look away from her. I want her to feel welcome enough to look at me. “I don’t know what it was like for you, but I’ll try to understand.”

When Lilac does finally turn to me, her eyes glisten with tears. She opens her mouth. Only a sob escapes.

I hold out my arms. “Come here.”

She collapses on her bed, crying into my shoulder.

“It was awful, Lucy,” she says, her words breaking between sobs. “Person after person. I can still feel them. Like I got more than their life force, I took their souls too.”

“We’ll figure everything out,” I whisper.

“There’s no escaping,” she says. “I see that now.”

“No.” I pull her back and look into her eyes. “We’ll get out from under their thumbs.”

Her bottom lip quivers and she shakes her head no. “I’m gonna be just like her, Lucy, I see it already.”

“You will never be her.”

“I have her power. I get it. Because even with the disgust, there’s the longing for more.”

“You have her power with your heart. You have what she never did.” I smooth out the hair at the top of her head. “If I know one thing, Lilac, it’s that you are better than her in every way.”

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head.

“Whatever good is in Lusia lives in you. I promise you that.”

“Okay.” She nods. “Okay.” She wipes the tears from under her eyes and says, “You should get some sleep.”

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