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.

But she isn’t trying to kill me. At least I don’t think she is. It’s a start.

“You’ve lost weight,” the seamstress says to me, checking her chart. “It’s been too long since your last fitting.”

The measurements on file are not that old. I stood on a platform like this less than four months ago by my time, preparing to escort Cormac to the State of the Guild, but to the seamstress those measurements are two years old. A lot of time has passed in Arras since I escaped to Earth. But for me, I’d only been gone for a few months. I couldn’t exactly explain that to the seamstress.

“She must not be eating enough,” Pryana says, and for one second there is a flash of the old Pryana, the one who could be equal parts clever and cruel. A sudden thought sends a chill up my spine: Why hasn’t Cormac altered her memory or wiped it completely?

The seamstress is encouraged by Pryana’s participation and continues: “I can’t understand why they would let you go this long between fittings, especially with the amount of traveling you’ll be doing soon.”

“Traveling?” I ask.

Amie looks up from the chart she’s swiped from the seamstress and laughs. “Didn’t Cormac tell you? This was his idea. He said you would need appropriate clothing for your trips.”

They all wait for my reaction but I shrug. “He’s not the most talkative.”

“Not lately,” the seamstress says, popping a pin from between her gritted teeth and fastening a swath of fabric around my waist.

“Maybe Adelice and Cormac are too busy to talk,” Pryana suggests. Amie looks horrified but the seamstresses giggle.

“Don’t,” Amie warns. “You’ll make me sick.”

“You aren’t excited about the wedding?” Pryana’s seamstress asks Amie.

Amie looks torn between shaking her head and nodding. “I’m happy for them, but Ad is my sister and Cormac is like my father.”

A wave of revulsion tumbles through my stomach. Like my father. Cormac is the reason she has no father. He took that away from her and now he dares to assume the role. I know better. Amie is a pawn—as expendable as anyone else in this twisted game. If he ceases to need her, she’ll be tossed down to Earth or left to waste away in a coventry without a second thought. I can’t imagine him expending enough energy to love a child.

“That does make things … complicated,” the seamstress says. I wonder if my relationship to Amie is common knowledge or not.

“But your bridesmaid’s dress will be beautiful,” Pryana says, directing Amie’s attention away from the painful topic. “And I imagine you’ll probably wear it on the purple carpet.”

“Do you think so?” Amie practically squeals the question.

“I’m sure the wedding will be a gala event.”

“What if I’m not invited?”

No part of me is looking forward to my nuptials with Cormac. But despite that, there is a little part of me that can see Amie fussing with my train and holding my bouquet.

“You’re invited,” I say. If I actually go through with the wedding, I dare Cormac to tell me my sister can’t come.