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The other girls are watching our interaction with increasing dread. One has started to cry. Hanna is the ringleader. Several back away from her. I watch as they abandon Hanna, leaving her at the center of the rebellion.
“I will go back to the looms,” the crying girl shouts.
Cormac smiles at her, but then he wags a finger. “It’s too late for that. This whole sector has been tainted by disloyalty.”
“B-b-but … but…” The girl stammers against the sobs heaving through her.
“Cormac,” I say, taking his arm gently. “You’ve made your point.”
“No, I h
aven’t,” he snaps at me, wrenching free.
I swallow hard and say the one thing that’s always haunted me, that I’ve never brought up with him. “I know you are capable of mercy. You showed it to me once.”
“I needed you, Adelice. I always knew you would be a Creweler,” Cormac admits. “If you’d been any other Spinster, you would have shared their fate.”
“What fate is that?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer me. What will he do to them?
Instead he turns to the group of officers and officials surrounding him. “Protocol Two has been activated. Those with border privileges should evacuate now.”
“You can’t do that.” Grady’s face is ashen.
“I already did. The Guild can’t continue to pretend this issue will be resolved. You’ve had two years to deal with this, Grady.”
“There are innocent Spinsters here,” Grady says. “Most remained in the towers. You can’t punish them for the others’ actions.”
“I’m not,” Cormac says. “I’m punishing them for their own inaction. Five girls didn’t black out the sky. Five girls didn’t cripple a sector. Inaction breeds rebellion. And the Guild has been inactive for too long regarding this matter. I take responsibility for that. It ends today.”
“So that’s it,” Grady says, no longer trying to appeal to him. The fight has gone out of his eyes.
“Evacuate now, Grady, and try again if you can bear to show your face at the Ministry.”
“How will you show yours?” he asks Cormac.
“Proudly. Because I’ve done something important here.”
“Who has clearance to leave?” Grady asks.
“Those with border privileges. No one else.”
“But my family!” Grady protests.
“You can have another.”
“I don’t want another.”
“How sentimental of you.” Cormac laughs at his colleague, dropping his voice to whisper, “Would you have said that about your last family or the one before?”
But judging from their confused faces, Hanna and the other girls hear the question, too. I shake my head at them, a message that this is not going to end in their favor. The Spinsters thought they were making a stand. They suffered under the delusion of their own power. It’s a trap laid early in the Coventry. Make a girl feel pretty and important and she’ll start to believe it. Distract her while you lead her into a tower and strip away her rights. And never show her what you’ve hidden.
The Guild miscalculated in thinking this would be enough to keep the female population happy, though. They hadn’t conceived of our evolution. But despite their mistakes, they’d kept their most important truths secret.
While I was on Earth I discovered how far they had gone to protect their power. I’m the only Spinster who knows the true depth of their power—and their history.
“You have no idea who you are dealing with,” I say to Hanna sadly, “or what he’s capable of.”
Cormac flashes us a wicked smile. “They’ll know soon enough.”
