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“I hated you,” Valery says to me. Her words implore me to understand, and part of me does. The part of me that blames myself for Enora’s death. “That hate became stronger until it was the only feeling I was sure was true. It consumed me. When I saw you that day in the grey market, I wanted to lure you into an alley and do what the Guild wouldn’t do.”
Icicles crawl down my spine, branching out in chills through my body. So I hadn’t imagined seeing Valery that day, but I didn’t know she had seen me, too.
“But you didn’t,” I say. “You didn’t do that, Valery. You’re better than they would let you be.”
“No, I followed orders. I led you to the shop, so that you would find the truth. Seek Kincaid and walk into their arms. They knew you would come here eventually, but only after you led Kincaid to the same place.”
Every moment has been engineered since we got here, carefully executed to ensure we would be standing here right now. Have all our decisions been so carefully directed by Valery? I co
nsider how she warmed to us at the estate after being cold and unfriendly and then shifted back to coldness. Her connection with Deniel, the Tailor who attacked me. The rest is murky.
“You sent Deniel,” I accuse her, “so I would distrust Kincaid.”
“Cormac’s idea,” Valery admits. “He knew you would turn against him after you went snooping. We only had to get you to snoop.”
“Bit of a gamble,” Erik says.
“That’s the thing. The reason I’ve hated Adelice the most. She tries to do what’s right even at the cost of alliances and power.”
“And you hate me for that?”
“I hated you because it’s not that simple,” she cries. “Don’t you see what you’re sacrificing? Who you’re sacrificing?”
This time I advance on her, my fists balled, my body shaking. “I never wanted this. I’ve done the best I can. Do you want me to become another Creweler locked in a room doing the best I can? Or worse—Cormac?”
“I’m starting to understand.” Valery holds her hands out, stopping my advance and my words. “I tried to keep hating you, but I can’t anymore.”
“How is that even possible?” Jost asks, and it’s clear he doesn’t believe her.
“Emotional and psychological alteration is tricky,” Dante says, and I turn to see he’s been here listening to her confession. “It takes the most talented of Tailors. Don’t do it properly and it never fully takes, but alter too much and you wind up with a void, someone who seems half human, half there. Altering a person’s psychology can have drastic effects, turning a person into a blank slate.”
Beth, the girl next door when I was a child, a variant in her own little world. The citizens of Cypress watching with apathy as I cut the ribbon on their new school. Enora blankly reciting the Guild’s plan to map me. I’ve seen it myself throughout my life in Arras, never knowing how deep the Guild’s fingers were in the minds of those around me.
“But Enora was like Valery,” I say, pointing to her. “Except more…”
“Cunning?” he asks. “It should have been a warning sign, but it’s easy enough to overlook on Earth. They couldn’t remove her memories of you entirely, not if they wanted her to find you. But if she was your friend’s lover, they removed that. Spliced what they considered to be normal feelings into her.”
“I wanted her back,” Valery says, a break in her voice. “I remember that. Enough to do anything they asked.”
“They couldn’t give her back to you. Enora slipped past their fingers,” I tell her.
“I know. I knew, but it didn’t matter.”
Grief is a funny thing, I think. It can make you see things that aren’t there and ignore what’s in front of your face. Bitterness channels itself into anger and stupid backtalk and a million other destructive impulses. I knew that better than anyone.
“But why now?” Jost asks.
“Because it’s too late,” Erik says.
“No, it isn’t,” Valery says. “We can leave off the far side of the island.”
“That won’t buy us enough time,” Dante says to her. “You told us now because the alteration didn’t take. You may have hated Adelice, but emotional altering doesn’t work if a person changes her mind. Am I right in guessing you no longer harbor a grudge against her?”
“I tried. I wanted to keep hating her, because then it was easier,” she says.
Albert lifts his head and in a faint voice addresses us. “Nothing can remove free will. Our self-determination is bound to our very souls. It is the thing that defines our humanity.”
“You really want us to get away?” I ask in a low voice that only Valery can hear.
