Page 54 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“Eleanora!” the girl with the white hair shouts, her voice tight, then her attention is back on us. “It’ll be a group effort.” She sits next to Lucian, pushing him closer to me. A girl with curly light brown hair that matches the color of her eyes sits on my other side.

“I’m Desdemona?—”

“Fleur,” she practically cuts me off, holding out her hand past Lucian and in front of me. Her grip is far from firm. Her skin far from calloused. I’ve never touched hands so soft before. Even Lucian’s were rough and ragged.

“Eleanora,” the girl behind me sings. I turn with a reluctant smile. “Fair to meet your acquaintance.”

“Yes,” I say, drawing out the word and turning back around. “Very fair.”

Lucian chuckles and the sound is almost comforting amidst this tension, but Fleur cuts it from my ears when she says, “So why is the prince so interested in you?”

“I don’t know,” I say flatly. “Maybe you could ask the prince.”

Lucian’s eyes meet mine, playfully, teasingly. “She and I have a common interest.” His gaze does not waver from mine, and in front of this audience, it almost has me shrinking back.

Fleur begins, “And what’s that?—”

“Fleur,” Eleanora huffs. “We have an assignment.”

“Right,” I mumble at the same time that Lucian smugly says, “We do.”

“Marquees,” he says. “Any ideas?”

Any ideas on how to make my friends, family, and people suffer more. That’s what Hogan’s asking of us, that’s what Lucian is asking of me.

That’s who he is.

A prince, who if he even does realize how wrong this is, clearly doesn’t care. He seems to see it as just another reason to poke at me, to have his fun, entirely oblivious to the lives he’s ruining.

The lives he’s taking.

And I thought there was blood on my hands.

I may have killed two. But Lucian’s killed thousands. Inadvertently or otherwise.

But I have a role to play. “Well, the textbook already spells out the basics we need to rely on. Lack of free time, exhaustion, hunger. Once you have that, you make pretty pictures and simple words.”

Your hard work makes the worlds go round.

My mind is bombarded by those pretty pictures and simple words, and it disgusts me that these people here think that we people there don’t see past it.

The things that actually keep us down are the lack of energy to fight and the physical repercussions if we try.

But no, to these three—to this whole school—we’re just dumb. Barely more than a corenth.

“Yeah,” Fleur laughs, “that sounded like a whole lot of nothing.” She looks from me to Lucian. “From the sample propaganda we saw, I think there’s a real lack of emotional ties. Maybe add children or something?”

“Oh!” Eleanora says, like she has some bright idea. “Like instead of only lashing the perpetrator, lash their children too.”

They already do that.

I think I’m going to be sick. All I see are the mangled bodies that Marice was rounded into. Mangled bodies I’ve seen many times.

I’ve been a child tied to those posts. And if anyone here knew that, they’d likely kill me. So I force myself not to puke at the thought of tying more children to those posts.

“And loved ones,” Fleur says, like she’s bored. “Punish the whole family, friends, beloveds.”

Punish the already starving people who are only trying to survive.

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