The Honest Lie

Cael has learned to hear the hollow beneath a lie. At Greyhold, and in the reckoning-halls beyond it, he learns something far more dangerous — that the truth itself can be made into a weapon.

A fact placed first. A fact withheld until too late. A true account arranged, sentence by sentence, into something false. This is the art of the honest lie, and Cael is becoming its most gifted student — and its most haunted.

The more clearly he hears, the more he is forced to judge. And judgment, once made, cannot be unmade. To hear enough is to become answerable for it.

The Honest Lie is the second book of The Long Listening — a morally searching literary fantasy about testimony, conscience, and the violence hidden inside the truth.