Page 77 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

My whole body is shaking with fury, with rage. My shadows wrap around my fingers, up my arm. I know I could never win, not against Lusia and the hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of orphia she’s killed and stolen the life force from.

I look to Labyrinth, a pleading look slipping into my eyes. Stop this madness. That’s your daughter.

All hope shatters as he looks away.

It hits me all at once. I’ll never be able to protect them all. Lilac, Azaire, and now Desdemona. Knowing me is a death sentence, or, at the very least, a sentence to torture.

“Let her go, please,” I say to Lusia. I say to her mother.

Then my arms are restricted, pinned to my sides. I look down to see shadows wrapping around my torso, and they aren’t my own.

This time it’s Labyrinth who speaks, his voice booming through the room with the crack of his staff pounding against the floor. “The girl, when did she arrive in Tenesia?”

I look at Lilac. She is frozen still, petrified. Then Lusia looks at her too. I know the look that washes over the top half of Lilac’s face all too well. Her power is being taken, her life force.

Lusia is killing her slowly, as she does me.

“Let her go and I’ll answer,” I dare say.

Five weeks. Desdemona has been here for five weeks. Is that incriminating? What could Lusia do with the information?

Certainly something if she wants it.

“That’s not how our game works,” Lusia drawls.

“Prove it to me,” I spit. “Kill your future queen!” I am treading thin ice. “Kill your daughter.”

I exhale when Lusia drops her shadows.

“Make sure Lilac stays conscious,” Lusia instructs Labyrinth and gets up from her throne. Then I am moving behind her, being carried by her shadows against my will. I’ve truly lost all autonomy over my body, and she’s breaking the very little I have left over my will.

She takes me to the dungeon, something she hasn’t done since I was a child, back when she would force me to watch her kill the prisoners when I didn’t follow instructions. It’s why I’m so compliant.

If this is the worst she can do for my lies, then I will be fine. I learned to put up a mental shield of steel years ago. I can handle this.

Lusia pulls me to the back of the dark dungeon. The deeper in we go, the more it reeks of iron and other bodily fluids.

It would be an understatement to say that I did not miss this wretched room.

Then Lusia sets her talons into my subconscious. It’s something I’ve experienced before, albeit not very much. When she starts to tug, it feels like someone is taking their claws to my brain, drawing blood, butchering my mind. I can’t help but pant, even though I long to scream.

“What’s her name?” Lusia demands.

“What are you going to do with it?” I struggle to get the words out.

“That’s none of your concern,” she sings to me. “Not unless you’ve grown an attachment.” I feel her moving through my mind like it’s a file cabinet. “She’s septic, Lucian. Whatever you feel is to be dropped, immediately.”

How would Lusia know this?

I assumed Desdemona was middle class, from a family who worked in livestock or some other medium-level job, though certainly not from Utul. It never crossed my mind that she could be septic.

I am taken over by people, places, and thoughts I’ve never seen before. I’m in my body, but I’m barely in my head. “What are you doing to me?” my voice is gravely, a weak mess.

“A new little trick,” she says like she wants a laugh to follow the words.

It feels as if my brain is being split down the middle, hacked at with a sword. I see Lusia taking the life force from a prisoner while I feel it. Then my eyes land on the man, falling to the floor, dying, and I fall to the floor like I’m dying. My entire body, my entire being is being torn to shreds, and yet I’m perfectly intact.

“Her name and this will be over.”

---