Unraveled (11 page)

I don’t listen to Cormac’s answer because I know it’s lies. He’s feeding the progressive
dissenters what they want to hear:
Look, I’ll give a woman some power on the Stream. We’re moving forward, so stop worrying
your pretty heads about the fate of the future generations.

But anyone with half a brain would notice I’m not allowed to speak. They would see
my pristine costume, specifically chosen to look demure and womanly on the camera,
and know I have no more power than they do. Cormac’s plan is to show them that even
a woman of great power is willing to lay it aside and become a wife. But I can hardly
expect them to know that when even Cormac doesn’t take my power seriously.

And yet, he placed me on this loom tonight. If I were a true rebel, I would never
have done what he asked. I would have wreaked havoc over the entire Southern Sector,
throwing it into an uprising. But even as I think this I spot the techprint on my
wrist.

That’s not who I am. Unlike Cormac, I have no desire to abuse my skills to hurt the
innocent. He knew that when he placed me here tonight. He’s calling my bluff, but
he doesn’t know the cards I’ve hidden up my sleeve, especially not the access card
I swiped from one of the guards. Cormac knows I’m a Tailor, though I don’t think he’s
considered exactly how I could use that to my advantage.

But I have.

TEN

T
HE DREAM IS THE SAME.
I am in a white room. When I look closely I see them. Frozen. Trapped. The faces
of those I have loved and lost. My father. Enora. Loricel. They stare at me with dead
eyes from translucent faces. Their mouths are twisted open, but struck dumb.

And still I go to each of them and ask them how to help. Nothing changes, so I return
to the loom. On it are strands, but they are bloody. A bow is tied across the polished
top of the loom, a single card dangling from it, reading:
Choose
.

The threads are dying, oozing away on the cold steel, but when I reach out to fix
them the bands of the loom slice open my hands and fingers.

To save them I must bleed.

I reach forward and catch the sticky strands between my thumb and index finger and
I see them.

Jost and Amie and Dante. They’re dying.

Erik. His beautiful face contorts into a mask of anguish, and I begin to work without
hesitation. Spurred by the ache in my chest that pulses with each cut of my fingers
as I try to help him.

I twist and I tangle and I try to stop the blood ebbing from the strands, but as I
do, I bleed more and more and more. A puddle forms at my feet and I know there’s no
way to save them all.

I begin to shake but then I hear a voice. “Adelice, wake up!”

The world blurs into focus and I open my eyes to find my sister standing over me with
a frown on her face. I must have fallen asleep in a chair.

“You were dreaming,” she says. “It sounded like a nightmare.”

It was, but I don’t tell her that. Instead I reach out and hug her close to me. For
a second it’s awkward, but she settles into my embrace. Her soft blond hair tickles
my skin. We are right again.

“Are you okay?” She pulls away and looks at me with concern.

“I’m fine. I don’t even remember the dream,” I lie.

“I came to tell you that you were amazing on the Stream. I wish I could’ve been there,
but Cormac forbade me.”

I frown at this. Since when does Cormac care what Amie does? He’s given her the run
of the place since she arrived.

“I can leave if you’re tired,” she says, misinterpreting my frown. I shake my head.
The dream sticks to me like the blood on the loom. I want Amie to stay because I need
her. She strokes my hand, reminding me of our mother.

“What’s this?” Amie reaches out and runs a soft finger over my techprint.

“Credentials,” I say without thinking. I immediately wish I could take it back.

“From when you were with the revolutionaries?”

“Yes,” I say hesitantly. Amie wasn’t there to see Benn—the man we both knew as our
father—print me on the night of my retrieval. She doesn’t remember that our parents
were the ones who pushed us into those tunnels.

“Adelice, you’re lying to me,” she says in a low voice. “I know it. You keep lying
to me. It’s like you forget that I’m your sister sometimes. I know you well enough
to know when you’re telling me the truth.”

I sigh. This Amie isn’t the one I whispered to at night or opened Winter Solstice
presents with. She’s different now. Hesitant where she was once vivacious. She doesn’t
run to me like she did when we were girls at academy. We don’t share the same memories
or experiences. Even though I want to trust her, I can’t keep the Guild from using
her against me.

“Amie, they monitor everything we say to each other,” I tell her, choosing a logical
reason to keep things from her.

“They’re listening to us?” she asks. She’s still very girlish sometimes in her trust
of the Guild, so she doesn’t see the twisted mechanisms at work here.

“Yes. And I don’t think Cormac wants me to talk about my time on Earth,” I say, knowing
I don’t want to tell her, either. “It’s not safe for you to know, and I don’t want
to relive it.”

“Was it terrible?” she asks.

It’s a testament to how dependent she is that she doesn’t see I’m unhappy here.

“No it wasn’t, but it’s in the past.”

“And that’s it? I was out of your life for years, and you won’t share what happened
to you? Or why you don’t look any older than you did the night they came for you?”
Her lower lip trembles like when she was a girl and our mom told her no.

“I can’t,” I say. Her face sinks and she stands to leave. “I can’t tell you about
all
of it.”

Amie sits back down and waits with an eager expression.

“This isn’t a secret,” I say. “At least, not one that Cormac cares about.”

“Is it good?” She used to ask me that question at night when we swapped stories as
girls.

“There’s a boy,” I say.

“Not Cormac?”

“No.” I laugh at her question, but she leans forward and grabs my hands.

“Tell me!” she demands.

“His name is Erik.”

Amie releases my hand and bites her lip in excitement. “I like that name.”

It’s exactly how I imagined it would be once I started courtship appointments. If
I hadn’t come to the Coventry, Amie and I would have giggled over boys late into the
night. Now this is as close as I’ll ever get.

“He has long blond hair. It’s a little bit wavy. And bright blue eyes the color of
the Endless Sea.”

“He sounds cute,” she says, squeezing my hand.

“He is,” I say. “You saw him on the island.”

The words escape my mouth before I think them through. I shouldn’t bring up that night.
Not now while our relationship is as fragile as glass.

“I don’t remember much about that night.” She’s lying and I know it, because despite
all that’s changed about Amie, I recognize how she tugs at the one strand perpetually
loose from her pinned-up hair. The same strand that wiggled free of her pigtails and
ponytails and braids in our childhood. She would curl it around her delicate fingers,
twisting at it, when she got nervous.

“Do you love him?” she asks me.

“I do.” The words sit like a lump in my throat. “It doesn’t matter, though.”

The excitement fades from Amie’s face. “What about Cormac? Do you love him?”

There are things I’m willing to lie to Amie about, but this isn’t one of them. “I
don’t. But my arrangement with Cormac was never about love, Ames. It’s about what’s
best for Arras.”

“Even if you aren’t happy?” Her eyes are wide and earnest as she asks.

I wish it were that simple. I wish I could tell Amie that love and happiness win in
the end, but that would only be another lie. “Arras is more important.”

“And that scar on your wrist? What does it mean?” she asks one more time.

I recall the words my father said to me the night I was taken:
Remember who you are.
I try to remember who I am, but I’ve discovered too many things about myself since
that night. I’m not even sure I’m the same person anymore. I’ve evolved in many ways
from who I was in that cellar.

“Decide who you are,” I say to her. “That’s what it means now.”

“Who are you?” she asks in a soft voice.

“I’m still deciding,” I admit. My eyes search my sister’s face and I’m amazed—despite
the lost time, all I see is young Amie, as though she’s always been this age to me.
“Who are you?”

“I want to be a Spinster,” she admits. Her eyes flash briefly at me but then she looks
away.

Her confession is bitter as I swallow it, but I’ll never win her back by belittling
her dreams. “And why can’t you be?”

“Cormac has let me try to use the looms already,” Amie admits, making my chest constrict.
She shouldn’t be on the looms yet. She isn’t even sixteen years old.

“And?” I ask.

“I keep trying to see it,” she says in a sad voice, “but I can’t. And he’s so disappointed.
He’s had me examined by doctors and everything.”

I know Cormac has had Amie’s memory altered, but this sends a chill shivering down
my neck. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to alter her to have my skills. It’s a
terrifying possibility given how much control he already exerts over her. Perhaps
this is why he hasn’t pushed for me to be altered yet. He already has a test subject.

“I’ve been going down to a private studio,” she continues. “Cormac gave me permission,
but I had to promise I would inform him if I saw anything.”

“Let me help you,” I suggest. “Cormac can’t see the weave himself, so he isn’t a good
person to advise you.” I hate using her like this, but I need to get on a loom. I’m
curious about what Cormac has shown her of the looms.

“Would you?” For a moment, Amie is the adoring sister looking up to me for wisdom,
and I almost break.

Instead I push back against my guilt and tack a smile onto my lips. “Of course.”

ELEVEN

“
H
ERE IT IS.”
A
MIE RUNS HER HAND
over one of the new security panels and the door creaks open. She pushes her way
into the stone room as the lights automatically turn on, flooding the small studio.
There’s an empty loom directly in front of us, but I force myself not to run toward
it. Amie enters her access code and the loom whirs to life. I could see so much with
the loom, not to mention change those things, but I have to tread carefully with my
sister.

I look at Amie, whose eyes bore into the empty work space on the loom.

“There’s nothing on it,” I tell her in a soft voice.

“Oh!” She’s embarrassed but she manages a giggle.

I reach over and set the loom to pull up her most recent coordinates. Unfortunately,
the last place she looked was an ordinary metro in the Western Sector. I can make
out the entire metro—neighborhoods, the metro center, parks, academies. Try as I might
I can’t get it to pull anything else up, except for security warnings. I shouldn’t
be surprised that the looms are so carefully controlled and monitored now. I’d hoped
to find a hole in Cormac’s tight-knit security system, thinking he might have a blind
spot when it comes to Amie. I revert to the original coordinates and sit back so Amie
can look at the loom.

“Do you see anything?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. I zoom in to take a closer look at the outlying neighborhoods
and ask again.

This time her lip trembles as she says no.

“It’s okay if you can’t do this,” I say, putting a hand over hers.
It’s more than okay,
I add silently.

“It is not! What use will I be to anyone?” she says.

“I thought you wanted to design dresses.”

“I do! But Cormac will be disappointed in me. He has faith in me and I’m going to
prove him wrong.” Amie wipes at the tears dribbling down her cheek and turns wide,
tearstained eyes on me, looking for comfort.

“I will take care of Cormac,” I say. “Let’s try one more time.”

I zoom in as close as I can to the weave, allowing the machine to default to a surveillance
feed. We are looking at someone’s living room. Amie sucks in a breath and I’m certain
she can see this, but when I turn there are tears glistening in her eyes.

“Nothing,” she whispers.

I drop my arm over her shoulder and hug her close to me, shushing her as she sobs
against my shoulder. How can I ever tell her this is something she doesn’t want? Especially
when it’s the last bit of the old Amie left after Cormac’s alterations?

So I let her cry and no part of me rejoices that she can’t see the weave or work the
looms. I always thought it would be a relief to know my sister couldn’t be a Spinster,
but my fears have only been replaced by her pain.

“I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s sneak into the kitchen and find some chocolate.”

Her eyes meet mine and a smile creeps over my sister’s face as she nods. I pull her
gently to her feet and we walk arm in arm down the hall. As we pass the studios, I
notice what I missed before: heavy bolts and security panels—even on the rationing
and weather studios.

I’m not the only one under tight control.

No wonder they’re whispering that Cormac’s mad, that the Whorl is coming. A month
of this would make anyone dream of change. No one stops us as we duck into the kitchen.
A few maids bustle past and a young girl stops to point us in the direction of the
sweets.

“Mom would never let us have chocolate this late at night,” I whisper to Amie conspiratorially.
She giggles and I join her, choosing to ignore the dull ache in my chest at the thought
of our mother.

I open the cupboard to discover a stack of chocolate bars, bonbons, and truffles.
More chocolate than the entire sugar ration allotted in our childhood. I whip around
to show off my discovery but Amie’s back is turned.

“Ta-da!” I call out. But she doesn’t turn toward me. Taking a step closer to her,
I place a hand on her shoulder, urging her to look at me. Instead she steps to the
side, revealing a large white cake with lacy lines of frosting that dip and weave
delicately across its surface.