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“Is my present edible?” I ask. Chocolate might be worth getting excited over.
“Generally it’s considered poor taste to eat one’s presents.”
“Unless it’s chocolate.”
“It’s not chocolate.”
“Damn.”
When they arrive with the final course, my dessert is placed in front of me. I can’t stop staring.
But my present won’t meet my eyes.
“Amie will be residing at the Western Coventry for the foreseeable future,” he says. I look to Amie for a sign that she’s happy about this, but she’s watching her plate.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“You said it wasn’t chocolate. There is clearly chocolate on this plate,” I say, smiling.
“The dessert is chocolate,” he says.
“Amie loves chocolate.” It’s the only thing I can think to say in this moment. Her eyes flicker up to me and she gives me a tentative smile as though a real one would be too costly. She can’t be here. Amie is a means of distraction.
“I see you have that in common,” Cormac says. He gestures to the desserts in front of us—torta di cioccolato. The same as at my first meal at the Coventry. Now I’m eating it with my sister. The sister who was never supposed to wind up here.
“It’s delicious,” Amie says in a polite, if small, voice.
“There’s more. Don’t be shy about it,” he says. “My girls are too skinny.”
My stomach sinks at the way he casually throws out my girls. Neither of us belongs to him, yet we’re both in his possession.
“What else do you like to eat?” I ask Amie, at a loss for what normal conversation would consist of between us. We can’t talk about the last two years of her life, and I have no clue what lies Cormac has fed her about me. But I do know the surest way to lose my sister is to try to find out. The last time I saw her, she called me a freak. I’m not sure if time or alteration has softened her toward me, but I can’t risk my second chance with her now.
“Curry,” she says, her lips turning up at the edge again.
“Me too.”
“And I like the onion soup.”
Cormac smirks at this revelation. I don’t tell her what I think of it. We manage a few more minutes of awkward conversation, but it only serves to remind me of the rift Cormac has created between us.
Once she had been my sister. Then she was Riya, a little girl rewoven into another family, and now she is here—Amie again. But not my Amie. She would never be my Amie after what they had done to her. She was too quiet, her bubbliness replaced by a timid subservience. If my parents hadn’t trained me to resist the Guild, is this how I would have wound up: an obedient girl locked away in a tower?
When the plates are cleared, the two of them stand to leave my quarters and for a moment I want to ask Amie to stay. There’s more than enough room and more can always be made. But I know Cormac will never allow it. He’ll oversee our interactions, listen to our conversations, and chaperone our time together. He can’t trust me not to undo all the work he’s put into Amie.
“Will I get to see Pryana soon?” Amie asks Cormac.
“Of course. She was asking about you,” he tells her. Amie bounces a little, clapping her hands, and I’m taken aback. Maybe the Amie I remembered wasn’t gone. Behind her Cormac smiles at me, revealing rows of perfect teeth.
I can’t bring myself to ask her about Pryana, the one person in the Coventry who has a real reason to hate me. I’d been responsible for her sister’s death, at least in Pryana’s mind. She couldn’t see the lesson Maela wanted to teach us when she ripped most of an academy from Cypress: no one is safe from the Guild, and those at the loom least of all. Pryana had never forgiven me for my inaction. In truth, I’ve never forgiven myself, either.
Amie is led away from my apartment, to her own quarters, and I watch her go, wishing I could think of something better to ask her than what foods she likes now. But the questions I have for her can never be asked in front of Cormac.
Cormac pauses at my door, sliding his bow tie off his collar. For one horrible mo
ment I think he’s going to kiss me as he leans in, but instead he whispers, “Consider my present a reminder of what you have to lose.”
I let him leave without bothering to point out that I’ve already lost her, but when the door closes behind him I rush to the bathroom. It’s still the only place they don’t watch me. I reach under the sink and feel around the pipes until my fingers close over the blade. I hid it in my sleeve at my first dinner when I returned to the Coventry, scared and uncertain of what to expect. But now I’m not thinking about defending myself, I’m considering how and when to strike.
