Page 25 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

He swallows. “No.”

If I can, I will find you.

She’s not dead.

I look between the two of them, my heart shattering. I made it so close, I am home, but my mom isn’t. I have to go back to the dwelling, find something I can use to find her. Anything.

“I’ll be back,” I tell them both. “I promise I’ll be back.”

Damien pulls me into a hug when I try to run. “Don’t go, Red. Not again.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper into his chest and pull away. “I have to.” I think of the red-eyed Folk before I plant a kiss on his cheek and am out the door. I hope he doesn’t follow and I wish I got to say goodbye to Elliae, just in case I don’t make it back like I promised.

I cling to the wall in my dwelling to keep from falling to the floor, until the only option I have left is falling to the floor. I rub my temples and hold my spinning head in my hands. Focus, I tell myself, focus. The room is spinning, and between the running and the panic, I am more than out of breath.

What a joke this is, to make it home and have the most important piece of it gone. I can’t believe I tried to run away with Damien as if my mom isn’t half of my everything.

I wish everyone in the preppy, stupid school could experience this. The heartache of losing everything. Those poised and pampered assholes have had everything handed to them their entire lives; meanwhile, the rest of us have to cling to the scraps we get that are so easily taken away.

My nails claw into the clay walls, and I manage to stand. I stumble through the room, but what I’m looking for I don’t know. Blood, hair, something to give me a clue as to what has happened.

The cruelest, sickest joke of an idea flashes through my mind. I’m not entirely sure I will follow through with it until my hand is on the only mirror in our dwelling and I envision the mastick and the river I just left.

Nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. Even my worst idea is one I cannot follow through with.

My back crashes into the wall, and my hand grips the memor stone around my neck, breathing harsh and heavy to keep the tears down. I pull too hard on my mom’s necklace and the chain yanks off my neck. I throw the necklace to the ground and my head into my hands and my hands into my knees. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Then I am no longer in my dwelling.

I’m standing in the woods, high on a mountain where Mom and I lived when I was ten. I can tell by the puddles on the ground. It was the only place I’ve ever lived that had rain. Flames lick my knuckles, my fingers, and my mom is there. “Very good,” she tells me. But the flames don’t stay on my hands. I light everything around me on fire too. Even the wet trees.

And when I open my eyes, my dwelling is burning. The door opens and I tell Damien to run, but the Folk who walks in isn’t Damien. I recognize him, but I don’t remember his name, nor do I remember his red eyes.

“Get out!” I scream. “Get out, get out, get out!”

The man starts choking. He falls to the floor, and that’s when I see the most peculiar thing. The shadow of an orphia claws out from him, burnt to a crisp, covered in orange and pink boils, but it can’t make it out. It claws and claws, a few inches outside of the Folk’s body, before it starts to choke too, and eventually it falls to the ground with the Folk. Neither of them move.

I cannot swallow. I cannot move either, not until the flames lick my hair and I know there is no other choice but to try to run. Still, I can only crawl. I make it to the Folk and I pull his eyelids apart, just to be sure, and I see that his eyes are brown, not red. Then I put two fingers to his pulse.

There’s nothing.

Chapter 6

What I Pay For

LUCIAN

In 5AA, Soma opened an academy on the freeland of Tenesia to help bring glory back to the universe.

— CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FORMING OF VISNATUS BY REPRESENTATIVE LUTHENIA (REDACTED)

The heat of the fire burns my eyes as I pass the bottle back and forth between me and Yuki.

“I’m gonna take a walk,” Azaire says, standing up from the stump of his tree.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles. “I need some air.”

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