Page 79 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“Will you come with me?” I ask Desdemona meekly.

Her gaze finally meets mine. It’s farther from me than I’ve grown used to. “Yeah,” she whispers.

“Let’s go,” Calista says, already on her feet, and Desdemona wraps my arm around her shoulders and her arm around my waist. I stand with her. We walk past three suites, and Calista knocks on Lilac’s.

Fleur opens the door, and I instantly hear Lilac’s violin. “Oh, Zola,” she says while looking over me. But her eyes slide to Desdemona and stop for a moment. Then she calls, “Lilac?”

Li exits her room and looks at Calista.

“Lucian needed you,” Calista whispers.

Then Lilac finally looks at me. “Oh, Sulva.” She’s rushing to me and taking me from Desdemona’s arms. It isn’t until we’re in her room and I’m lying on her bed that Lilac asks, “What did she do?” while sitting at the edge.

I mumble, my voice sounding far from what I am used to, “She killed me.” The shock of it all vibrates through me. The back of Lilac’s hand is pressed to my forehead, then she’s pulling the blanket over me.

“She killed me,” I say again. I felt it all, as if some sort of flip switched in my brain and I was outside of my body. Only I wasn’t looking down at myself, I was looking down at him. The prisoner she really killed.

I saw it all, his childhood in the septic of Soma and all of the things that happened that led him to choose to steal from his station. He did it for his wife, his daughter, for the hope of a better life. I felt his love, his desperation, then I felt his death.

“I’m tired, Li,” I whisper. I can’t stop the tears from filling my eyes.

“Sleep,” she says softly, brushing my hair out of my face and back behind the pillow.

“I can’t,” I say.

It’s the last thing I remember saying.

* * *

I wake up in a cold sweat from a dream of the dead prisoner desperately trying to sell his last furs to feed his family. I crash over myself and attempt to breathe, telling myself it was only a dream.

It was not simply a dream. It was his life. I feel that I will forever be inexorably tied to this man. As though his DNA is now written in my soul.

“Shit, Lucian,” Azaire whispers from the other side of the room.

I’m in Lilac’s room. I am not in Soma’s septic.

I groan, running a weak hand over my cold and damp face.

“Where’s Li?”

“Getting dinner,” he says softly.

I lay back down and mumble something that, even though I want it to sound like okay, sounds nothing of the sort. I stare at the ceiling, and it quickly morphs into the image of the man’s life.

Everlasting torture.

Tears fall from the corner of my eyes, onto the pillow, as my chest becomes restricted. As if I am dying all over again.

Azaire says, “What is it?” and I think he is walking to me.

“I died,” I choke out. “She put my subconscious inside a prisoner, and then she killed him.” I catch my breath. “I can’t—I can’t continue living this way.” I am frozen to this bed, unable to move, just as I am unable to cut these strings that tie me to them.

“You won’t have to,” Azaire says. “Soon you’ll be king, and they will have no say.”

The weak laugh that comes from me sounds foreign. “I appreciate your perspective.”

“I’ll believe it enough for us both. No surrender?” he sounds unsure, but he grabs my hand.

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