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I can’t unwind Cormac, especially now that Amie is finally close. Attacking him like that would only undermine Arras’s situation, and I don’t have everything I need yet. I have to wait for the right opportunity—keep playing along until I can access the alteration information I need to fix my mother and recover the soul strand I hope is kept somewhere in the Coventry’s repository. Once I do that, I’ll need to incapacitate him to put my final plan into place. Arras needs a rebirth and it must begin with Cormac. He must change. If he refuses, I can change his mind for him. I settle onto the floor, the knife cradled carefully in my hand. It reflects the image of my engagement ring, and I choke back a scream.
With Amie here I’ll have another source of information. She will hear things spill from his lips, and if I can earn her trust I will learn those secrets from her. But to do that I must trust her as well. Cormac may have twisted her to his purposes, but the old Amie is in there and I know how she works. I know her heart as well as my own. Cormac thinks he has the upper hand, but two can play this evil game.
Albert’s words echo in my memory:
Destroy the looms. If you choose this path, others will follow you as Whorl. Embrace and trust them, but know their hearts. As you must know your own.
EIGHT
I’M UNCERTAIN WHEN I’LL HEAR FROM MY sister. I’m sure she’s still scared of me after the night on Alcatraz when I unwound Kincaid, but the very next morning a note arrives. She’s arranged for us to have a fitting for new gowns the next day, something I’m not looking forward to. But it’s the first time I’ll be alone with her since my retrieval, so I go with the flow and agree to host it in my overlarge quarters.
As soon as she arrives with Pryana at her side, I know this is a mistake. Pryana’s eyes travel along the walls of my living room, taking in the upholstered sofas and carved tables, all the essence of elegance and wealth.
“Aren’t you moving up in the world.” Pryana isn’t asking me a question. It’s merely an observation—one that reeks of annoyance. This should have been her life.
“It’s not really my taste,” I say, leading them through the apartment to the bedroom. My closet is preconfigured for fittings, with mirror-lined platforms and ample space to work.
Amie dashes in and starts plucking gowns from the racks, holding them up to her slender figure as she eyes herself in the full-length mirror.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to have taste as Cormac’s wife.” Pryana speaks in a quiet voice that only I can hear.
“I’m not terribly interested in mirroring my … fiancé’s tastes,” I say.
“How modern of you,” Pryana says. She wanders through my closet, picking up heels from the shoe racks and examining them. “And stupid.”
I snatch the shoes back from her. “I’m known for my abstinence.”
Before the nastiness can escalate between us, Amie coughs politely. I don’t want her caught in the middle of our feud, especially since I can’t trust Pryana’s motivations for getting close to her. But Amie might as well know how Pryana and I feel about each other.
The seamstresses arrive and maids take our dresses, hanging them to wait while we’re measured and sized. Standing with my sister and my old enemy in nothing more than a wispy slip, I feel surprisingly vulnerable. I thought I would outgrow feeling awkward around Pryana, but she’s still as poised as ever. One thing I’m definitely not.
“I love the lace on your hem,” Amie says, darting over to study it. “I think it must be Chantilly.”
It’s such a silly thing to notice, and yet some of the tension in the room evaporates.
“Amie knows everything about textiles,” Pryana explains to me after I give my sister a curious look.
“If I don’t get chosen as a Spinster,” Amie whispers to me, “I want to be assigned to make the dresses.”
I smile at her. For a second, she’s five years old and we’re back in our living room in Romen, splayed out on the floor, watching Spinsters stroll the purple carpet at the State of the Guild address.
We were innocent then, seeing only the beautiful surface of Arras’s elite class. Knowing Amie still studies dresses makes me feel as though a balloon filled with happiness is inflating inside my chest. Somehow, even with everything she’s been through, this hasn’t changed. It brings me hope.
“You would make beautiful dresses,” I tell her. And you’ll be safe doing it, I add silently. No one would spare a second thought for a seamstress.
“Perhaps she’d make a better Spinster,” Pryana suggests.
“Oh, I still want to be a Spinster,” Amie says, grabbing my hands. “Don’t worry, Adelice. I’ll make you proud.”
Behind her Pryana raises an eyebrow.
That’s about the last thing that would make me proud, but I don’t say this in front of the group. To my surprise, the same concern seems to be reflected in Pryana’s eyes.
They could only spare two seamstresses for our fitting and Amie insists on watching Pryana and me go first.
“This is my favorite part. I like to learn how they do it and it’s hard while you’re the one being fitted,” she explains. Pryana and I glance at each other but we don’t argue with her. I climb onto the platform and a girl begins measuring my arms. Pryana stands directly across from me and it’s like looking in a warped mirror as the seamstresses stretch the tapes across our limbs. Over our busts. Around our waists. Pryana not only seems older to me now, if only slightly, but I realize, as we stand parallel to each other, that she looks older as well.
Pryana isn’t the girl she was when I met her during orientation. Not anymore. That first day Pryana was wild, asking questions without pause and fluttering her eyelashes at the valets and officials. She was everything a Spinster could be. She believed in her role here, and her right to hold it. Now she’s composed and polished. But underneath the veneer of self-assurance something is broken. I know how this happened, of course. I know she was set to be my replacement both as Creweler and as Cormac’s wife. For a girl with as much ambition as Pryana once displayed, rejection must have destroyed something vital in her.
