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“It doesn’t matter.” Cormac turns away and speaks quietly to Hannox, who nods gravely at commands I can’t hear.
While Cormac talks to him, I wander over to the bars. Most of the girls look away from me, but Hanna faces me without blinking.
“Come to stare at us so that you can feel superior?” she asks.
I run my fingers over the cool steel between us. “I’ve spent time imprisoned by Cormac.”
“And now you’re by his side. Clearly, you’re back in his good graces. Who did you betray for that privilege?” Hanna is clearly unimpressed with me.
“I understand being angry. I’m angry, too,” I whisper to her.
“Oh, please,” she says with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “What could you possibly have endured?”
“Death, destruction, the loss of the people I love most,” I say, and I refuse to blink. Hanna thinks she has me pegged, but she has no idea how I wound up here.
Or how far I’m willing to go.
“So you gave in to save a boy,” she says in a mocking voice.
I don’t tell her about my sister or the mother they’ve turned into a monster or the friend who escaped only by losing her own blood in a bathtub. Hanna needs to be angry. It fuels her so that she won’t feel the fear in her belly. I know that fear. It never goes away. You can only ignore it or hide it under the fury.
But I have different reasons to play along right now. Ones she can’t understand. Hanna only sees me on the other side of the bars and that makes me her enemy.
Still, a girl might go crazy locked away in a tower day after day. Hanna and her conspirators’ perception of Arras has warped. It’s easy to believe you understand the function of your world when it’s at your fingertips every morning, afternoon, and evening. When the loom presents a piece of your world, it’s easy to believe you see the whole picture. I held thunder in my palms and wove rivers into being. But I didn’t understand what I was facing until I stood under the Interface and contemplated the reality of both worlds. Then I saw Arras for what it was: a parasite sucking away at the Earth.
“There’s more at stake here than you or me,” I say to her quietly. “It’s the awful truth. You think you can run from it, but there’s nowhere to go.”
“I don’t want to run from it,” Hanna says, her eyes fierce. “I want to change it.”
“You can’t do that from a prison cell,” I remind her.
“Adelice wised up,” Cormac says, and I realize he’s been privy to our entire conversation. “She and I are working to make life in Arras stable again.”
“I can’t wait to see how you’re going to do that,” Hanna says.
“It’s too bad you won’t be around to witness it,” Cormac replies.
“What does that mean?” I demand, stepping in. I don’t care what any of them think of me anymore. Not when things are spiraling out of control.
“You know how I treat traitors, Adelice. You’ve seen it yourself.”
“But she hasn’t experienced it herself,” Hanna points out. “You’ve spared her. If we were all young and pretty, maybe you’d make an exception for us as well.”
“You are young and pretty, Hanna, but I can’t forgive everyone,” he says. “Adelice will help me to heal the wounds your generation has inflicted on Arras by becoming my wife. That was the price she was willing to pay for peace.”
“Better her than me,” Hanna says, and then she unceremoniously spits at him. It lands at his feet.
Cormac takes a step back and regards the floor with disinterest. “If you want to know why I chose her despite her clear lack of respect for Guild authority, then I’ll tell you. Adelice uses her intelligence to fight, which proves to me she is capable of reason. I’m less and less sure that’s something most of you are capable of.”
“When you say most of us, you mean women, right?” I say.
“Don’t bother, hon,” Hanna says. “You stopped being one of us when you partnered with him.”
Her accusation doesn’t sting like it once might have. Hanna has chosen her path and I’ve chosen mine. I have the benefit of experiences that she doesn’t. Hanna is young and angry, but there’s desperation in her actions and her words. It colors her ability to think rationally. The only way I can salvage this situation is to take the opposite approach. Reacting got me nowhere when it came to saving the man in the street. I can’t focus on a strategy now. I have to anticipate Cormac’s next move. It’s clear Cormac plans to execute the Spinsters. But I’m not certain what that will do to the Eastern Sector. The blackout will continue. Food supplies will cease to arrive. How long before the people cross the borders? What will happen to them then? I have to convince Cormac to keep girls on the looms.
So even as Hanna tosses her accusations at me, they bounce off, unable to penetrate the thick skin I’ve constructed. I need to think so that I can plan. I need to bite my tongue. I need to play dumb until I know the correct words to change Cormac’s mind.
Because I know they exist.
