This is why I’m kept alone, because I’m always screwing things up for innocent people like Jost and Enora. The maid enters the room and gawks for a split second at the wall, but she replaces her surprise with practiced indifference and goes about cleaning up the soup.

“It slipped,” I call to her. “I’m terribly clumsy.” I keep my eyes on Cormac as I speak and he nods once like an approving master. I am but his humble servant once more, like everyone else in Arras.

Once the maid leaves I wait for him to make the call to have her altered or removed, but he doesn’t place it. I’ve performed to his satisfaction.

The main course is a selection of vegetables—carrots, potatoes, a squash of some sort—in a heavy tomato sauce. The first bite reveals complex tones of red wine and I savor it, before pointing out the obvious.

“There’s no meat.”

“I’m trying to eat less of it. Doctor’s orders,” he explains.

“You’re immortal.”

“I am not immortal.”

“You’ve used other people’s time threads to stay alive for hundreds of years,” I argue.

“That’s not immortality.”

“What is it then?” I ask.

“That’s privilege.”

It must be nice to be a man.

“And privilege allows me to choose such spirited company,” he continues.

I smile at him. “I can throw this plate against the wall if you like.”

“There’s been enough collateral damage for one evening, I think.”

I shrug and pretend to pick up the plate but he doesn’t crack a smile of his own. The Cormac who could appreciate my spirited company seems to be fading with each dramatic new development in Arras. At least the old Cormac was fun to fight with. Now his behavior is unpredictable.

“Despite your behavior this evening, I have a present for you.”

“It’s not my birthday,” I tell him. Still no smile.

“You missed two while you were away,” he reminds me. “I’m catching up.” Now he is smiling, acting sweet, his attitude totally reversing in seconds. I can’t wrap my head around it.

“Does that count?”

“I’m having it brought with the dessert course,” he says.

“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.