The string around her finger glowed like metal in a forge, then snapped and sizzled away to nothing. Lydia herself began to glow, as if stars melted into her veins, and rose up from her blankets, rose further still, until she floated above him, her hair high and wild as the lightning, and the air around her crackled with power. “Liar,” she hissed, and the word burned bright as her hair. “Liar! You’ve tried to cut me and bind me like wheat all this time!” And she spoke back at him every truth she’d untwisted from his words, every piece of her he’d taken while seeming to give her gifts, every
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