“Decide who you are,” I say to her. “That’s what it means now.”
“Who are you?” she asks in a soft voice.
“I’m still deciding,” I admit. My eyes search my sister’s face and I’m amazed—despite the lost time, all I see is young Amie, as though she’s always been this age to me. “Who are you?”
“I want to be a Spinster,” she admits. Her eyes flash briefly at me but then she looks away.
Her confession is bitter as I swallow it, but I’ll never win her back by belittling her dreams. “And why can’t you be?”
“Cormac has let me try to use the looms already,” Amie admits, making my chest constrict. She shouldn’t be on the looms yet. She isn’t even sixteen years old.
“And?” I ask.
“I keep trying to see it,” she says in a sad voice, “but I can’t. And he’s so disappointed. He’s had me examined by doctors and everything.”
I know Cormac has had Amie’s memory altered, but this sends a chill shivering down my neck. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to alter her to have my skills. It’s a terrifying possibility given how much control he already exerts over her. Perhaps this is why he hasn’t pushed for me to be altered yet. He already has a test subject.
“I’ve been going down to a private studio,” she continues. “Cormac gave me permission, but I had to promise I would inform him if I saw anything.”
“Let me help you,” I suggest. “Cormac can’t see the weave himself, so he isn’t a good person to advise you.” I hate using her like this, but I need to get on a loom. I’m curious about what Cormac has shown her of the looms.
“Would you?” For a moment, Amie is the adoring sister looking up to me for wisdom, and I almost break.
Instead I push back against my guilt and tack a smile onto my lips. “Of course.”
ELEVEN
“HERE IT IS.” AMIE RUNS HER HAND over one of the new security panels and the door creaks open. She pushes her way into the stone room as the lights automatically turn on, flooding the small studio. There’s an empty loom directly in front of us, but I force myself not to run toward it. Amie enters her access code and the loom whirs to life. I could see so much with the loom, not to mention change those things, but I have to tread carefully with my sister.
I look at Amie, whose eyes bore into the empty work space on the loom.
“There’s nothing on it,” I tell her in a soft voice.
“Oh!” She’s embarrassed but she manages a giggle.
I reach over and set the loom to pull up her most recent coordinates. Unfortunately, the last place she looked was an ordinary metro in the Western Sector. I can make out the entire metro—neighborhoods, the metro center, parks, academies. Try as I might I can’t get it to pull anything else up, except for security warnings. I shouldn’t be surprised that the looms are so carefully controlled and monitored now. I’d hoped to find a hole in Cormac’s tight-knit security system, thinking he might have a blind spot when it comes to Amie. I revert to the original coordinates and sit back so Amie can look at the loom.
“Do you see anything?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. I zoom in to take a closer look at the outlying neighborhoods and ask again.
This time her lip trembles as she says no.
“It’s okay if you can’t do this,” I say, putting a hand over hers. It’s more than okay, I add silently.
“It is not! What use will I be to anyone?” she says.
“I thought you wanted to design dresses.”
“I do! But Cormac will be disappointed in me. He has faith in me and I’m going to prove him wrong.” Amie wipes at the tears dribbling down her cheek and turns wide, tearstained eyes on me, looking for comfort.
“I will take care of Cormac,” I say. “Let’s try one more time.”
I zoom in as close as I can to the weave, allowing the machine to default to a surveillance feed. We are looking at someone’s living room. Amie sucks in a breath and I’m certain she can see this, but when I turn there are tears glistening in her eyes.
“Nothing,” she whispers.
I drop my arm over her shoulder and hug her close to me, shushing her as she sobs against my shoulder. How can I ever tell her this is something she doesn’t want? Especially when it’s the last bit of the old Amie left after Cormac’s alterations?
So I let her cry and no part of me rejoices that she can’t see the weave or work the looms. I always thought it would be a relief to know my sister couldn’t be a Spinster, but my fears have only been replaced by her pain.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s sneak into the kitchen and find some chocolate.”
Her eyes meet mine and a smile creeps over my sister’s face as she nods. I pull her gently to her feet and we walk arm in arm down the hall. As we pass the studios, I notice what I missed before: heavy bolts and security panels—even on the rationing and weather studios.
I’m not the only one under tight control.
No wonder they’re whispering that Cormac’s mad, that the Whorl is coming. A month of this would make anyone dream of change. No one stops us as we duck into the kitchen. A few maids bustle past and a young girl stops to point us in the direction of the sweets.
“Mom would never let us have chocolate this late at night,” I whisper to Amie conspiratorially. She giggles and I join her, choosing to ignore the dull ache in my chest at the thought of our mother.
I open the cupboard to discover a stack of chocolate bars, bonbons, and truffles. More chocolate than the entire sugar ration allotted in our childhood. I whip around to show off my discovery but Amie’s back is turned.
“Ta-da!” I call out. But she doesn’t turn toward me. Taking a step closer to her, I place a hand on her shoulder, urging her to look at me. Instead she steps to the side, revealing a large white cake with lacy lines of frosting that dip and weave delicately across its surface.
I can almost feel the too-sweet sting of the icing in the back of my throat.
“Why does this cake make my heart feel like it’s going to explode?” Amie asks in a small voice.
I can barely tear my eyes from it to look at her, but when I do the pain is written across her face. They’ve taken the memory but not the pain.
“There was a cake the night I was retrieved,” I remind her.
“I can’t remember,” she says. “Why can’t I remember?”
“What?”
“Mom. Dad. They’re here.” She taps her forehead. “But they’re not.”
I have a choice. I can tell her the truth about Cormac and alteration. I can tell her he has stripped her of most of her childhood and adjusted her life to leave out the horrific events of that night. Or I can continue to lie to her.
“Because you miss them,” I tell her, and in a way it’s the truth.
“What happened to them?” This time her question is demanding. I know Cormac fed her a story about them. Given that she’s been altered on more than one occasion, he’s probably told her several stories about her life. But I don’t know what she remembers or how she remembers it. I can’t anticipate how she’ll react to the information she desperately wants.
Telling Amie the truth serves no purpose. It might turn her against Cormac, but in the end, if I can’t find a way to save Mom, then she’ll also have to live with the knowledge of what’s been done to our mother. Amie’s innocence has already been twisted enough by Cormac. I must carry the burden alone. “They’re dead. They died when I tried to escape from the retrieval squad.”
Amie takes a step back as though I’ve hit her. “They died because you ran?”
In many ways this is what happened, but the guilt pressing on my chest tells me that even I can’t blame myself entirely. Amie remembers little about our parents, even less than I knew that night. But I can’t bring myself to tell her they had connections to the Agenda any more than I can tell her about Dante or that our mother is still alive. There’s so much more to the story that it wouldn’t h
elp if she could remember it. It doesn’t matter, though, because Amie believes the little I’ve told her. And she hates me for it. I can see it in her green eyes, the cool, hard emerald—she looks exactly like our mother when she’s angry.
“How could you?” she asks.
“I didn’t want this life.” Even though I’m willing to protect her from the story of what happened to our parents, I’m not willing to pretend a Spinster is more than a false ideal. She needs to know there is a world so much larger than this.
“What’s wrong with this life?” a soft voice asks behind us. Startled, Amie and I turn to find Pryana watching us.
“It’s a lie,” I tell her.
Pryana already knows this. She’s smart enough to have always known.
Before Pryana can speak again, Amie chokes back a sob and rushes toward the door. I begin to stop her, but the weight of the truth holds me back. It’s better this way.
“Every life is a lie we tell ourselves to help us sleep,” Pryana says with a mirthless laugh.
“I never chose this lie.”
Pryana takes a step closer to me and I can smell coconut on her skin. “I have news for you, Adelice. Every life is a choice. We don’t get to pretend like we’re forced into this world, this job, anymore. You chose to come back. I chose to play along.”
“You’re right,” I say, meeting her steady gaze. “We have choices—you and I and Cormac. But there’s a good part of the population who are powerless to stand up to the Guild, and they don’t have a choice. You know that.”
“Of course I do. I think of nothing else,” Pryana says.
My breath catches in my throat not because she’s agreeing with me, but because of the implication of her words.
“I see you’ve been sneaking cake,” Pryana says, changing the subject.
“I was trying to cheer Amie up.”
“Why was she upset?” Pryana’s voice pitches up an octave.
“She can’t see the weave on the loom. I thought I’d help her, but I couldn’t.”
“It’s tricky,” Pryana says, her eyes glued on mine. “Alteration does funny things to abilities. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell her the truth about your retrieval.”
“Why would I tell her the truth?” I reply as I pace the small space in front of the icebox.
“Because you hate Cormac,” Pryana says. “He’s the only one who gains anything by your keeping it from her.”
So Pryana does know what Cormac did to my sister. “Amie gains something.”
“And what’s that?” Pryana asks.
“Innocence.”
“Her innocence was robbed from her long ago,” Pryana says, and her tone reminds me that Cormac and the Guild have robbed it from us all.
“She doesn’t know that, though,” I say in a quiet voice. “I can’t quite explain it. If I tell her why she can’t remember and about what happened to our parents, she has to live with that.”
“We all have to live with that,” Pryana reminds me.
“Yeah, we do, but she’s my kid sister. Someday she’ll know. I won’t be able to keep it from her forever. But right now she feels safe. She doesn’t have nightmares. She doesn’t blame herself.”
“And you would rather she blame you?”
I take a deep breath, willing myself to broach a sensitive subject. “Wouldn’t you do that for your sister?”
“I don’t know,” Pryana admits. Her voice shakes. “The Guild took her from me before I had the chance.”
“You could have told Amie the truth. Why didn’t you?”
Pryana hesitates as she twists her fingers together. “I’m not sure. It’s not my place.”
“Why are you being kind to Amie?”
“I don’t have a sister to be nice to anymore,” she says, opening the old wound we share. I’d lost my innocence about the nature of our world long before the day Maela ripped Pryana’s sister and her classmates from their Cypress academy.
“Blame Maela,” I say.
“I do blame Maela,” she says, practically spitting the words at me. “Did it seem like we were best friends back there?”
I give her a grudging no. It sounds like whatever passed between them in my absence was as bad as what I’d endured under Maela. It also feels like Pryana still resents me.
“It’s Cormac,” Pryana says at last. “Maela hates anyone who catches Cormac’s attention.”
“And you were engaged to him,” I say.
“Briefly.” She shrugs. “I’m not exactly sorry to be rid of him. It was only a way out of here.”
“You didn’t want to be Creweler?” I ask, not hiding my surprise.
“I thought I did, but…” Pryana trails off. Her dark eyes meet mine. She doesn’t need to finish the thought. We both know the burdens of being Creweler.
“All of this over a scumbag like Cormac Patton,” I say.
“I was surprised you didn’t know.”
“I hadn’t seen Maela for a long time. I thought she was mad about Erik.”
“Don’t get me wrong. She still hates you more than me, and Erik has a lot to do with that,” Pryana says.
“How would she know about what happened between Erik and me?”
“She saw you kissing him in the garden,” Pryana reminds me.
“I didn’t mean that. Lots has happened since that night…” My thoughts trail away to memories of dancing in a moonlit courtyard and stolen kisses on the rocky shores of Alcatraz. I’m lost thinking of him, and I don’t realize I’ve said too much.
Pryana takes a step back and studies me, then laughs. “You’re in love with him.”
“I…” But I don’t know what to say, because if I lie, she’ll know. I try to fight off the blush stealing over my face.
“The rumor was that you ran away for Jost.” Pryana looks impressed.
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is when you’re in illicit relationships,” Pryana says, but she’s smiling all the way up to her eyes. “You do have good taste. His hair—he hasn’t cut it?”
I allow myself a small grin and shake my head. Even though the thought of them both, Erik and Jost, of not knowing what’s happening to them, whether they’re safe—it’s almost too much to bear.
“I’m not being nice to Amie for revenge,” Pryana says, circling back to the question that sparked the conversation. “I like Amie. She reminds me of my sister.”
“Pryana.” I pause, unsure how to say this now. It’s much too late for an apology. “I’ve made a lot of excuses for what happened that day, but I’m genuinely sorry about your sister.”
“Me too, and … it’s not your fault.”
This morning I would never have thought she’d admit this to me.
“There are things that no one in Arras knows about,” I say, feeling compelled to share something with her now. “Horrible things. If Amie knew—”
“Knew what?” Pryana presses me.
“Our mother isn’t dead,” I tell her. It’s a relief to confess this to someone. No one on Earth really understood how difficult it was to find out what my mother had become. Even Dante forced himself to believe my mother was worth saving when he let her go, believing that a part of her was still in there. I wasn’t so sure. “She’s a—”
“Remnant?” Pryana guesses, and my mouth falls open. “I told you things have changed around here.”
“You’ve always had the good gossip, but how in Arras do you know about Remnants?”
Pryana raises an eyebrow and then gestures that we should leave. As she turns to go, she flips her silky curls over her left shoulder to reveal the nape of her neck and the faint hourglass mark printed there. “Does this answer your question?”
I lunge for her, grabbing hold of her arm and whispering furiously, “You’re Agenda?”
Pryana’s pace remains steady and controlled, not wavering in the slightest at my accusation. “Shhh! Things have changed.”
We continue toward the tower an
d as the shock wears off, a smile sweeps over my face. “I have questions for you,” I tell her. “There’s a lot I need to know.”
“Not right now,” she says, parting ways with me at the elevator.
“When?” I clutch her arm, but the elevator doors begin to slide shut and I jump away as she mouths one word.
Soon.
TWELVE
WHEN PRYANA APPEARS IN MY DOORWAY THE following day, I remember what Albert told me—that people would follow me as the Whorl. This is my chance to see if that’s true.
Pryana slides a thin bracelet over my wrist and yanks me into the hallway. “It’s a mask,” she explains. “It disrupts surveillance. Temporarily.”
“For how long?” I ask.
“Thirty minutes. Where do you want to go?”
“The clinics,” I say without hesitation. “And Cormac’s suite.”
“I can’t guarantee we’ll have time for both.”
“The clinics then.” I hate having to choose, but getting information on previous alterations, especially on what’s been done with my mother’s soul, has to come first. If things go wrong with Cormac, I might not get another chance to find it.
We move through the main tower and into the rest of the compound, passing the locked studios I saw last night. No one walks the halls. The Spinsters are on the looms. “They’ve fitted these walls with an artificial program.”
“I know,” I say. “There are no windows here at all.”
“Not just that,” Pryana says a trifle wistfully. “It’s one big camera now. Rule number one about life at the Coventry: watch your step. Because they certainly are.”
My eyes flick to the walls, half expecting to see eyes peeking through the plaster at me.
“But they can’t see us because of this?” I ask her, holding up my bracelet.
“Nope. Present from the Agenda,” she says, flashing me a grin.
“How did you get them?” I try to keep suspicion from seeping into my tone.
“Rule number two: the Agenda is everywhere.”