Page 61 of Crewel (Crewel World 1)

‘She’s scared of you,’ he says.

‘Why? I’m not her problem any more.’

‘I don’t know.’ Erik sighs. Clearly he’d hoped I’d open up more. ‘It has to be something that happened at your testing. She’s been different ever since you arrived.’

‘Oh, she wasn’t a psycho before?’

Erik shakes his head and the moonlight bounces off his golden hair. ‘No, that’s nothing new. I thought I’d have to kill you when you first got here.’

I groan. This is so unfair. ‘She really hates me.’

‘No,’ he says, ‘the Guild executes any girl who runs. Standard no-tolerance policy. When she had me sedate you, I assumed—’

‘And you would have done it,’ I accuse him.

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘I wasn’t really running,’ I admit. ‘My parents were trying to hide me.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Erik says, unshaken by the confession. ‘They would kill you and your family then.’

‘Why?’ The word forms on my lips but no sound comes out.

‘A girl who tries to escape or run with her family after testing can never be loyal enough to trust. Runners rarely ever make it to the Coventry after they’re caught, but Maela lives for gossip, so I hear about it when one does. It seems to happen frequently in the Western Sector. People whose parents hide them – whose parents try to cheat the testing process – have poisoned minds.’

‘And the girls who come willingly are loyal?’ I demand.

‘Of course. The Guild controls their families, Adelice,’ he says. ‘Not many question it, and those who do—’

‘What happens to them?’

Erik shakes his head.

‘Is that why they watch us? Me?’ I ask flatly. ‘Because my parents are dead and my kid sister wouldn’t recognise me? Because they have nothing to hold over me?’

‘Maybe,’ Erik admits, and I hit him hard in the chest. I hate him for telling me the truth. I hit him again and again, and he lets me. Finally my hands hurt from hitting the mass of his solid chest, and I crumble against him. For a long time we say nothing and I pace my breathing to his; our chests rise and fall rhythmically, a promise of normality.

‘Adelice,’ he whispers, still holding me perfectly still. ‘I wouldn’t count on them both being dead.’

My breath catches and blocks all my thoughts from tumbling out.

‘The Guild is too smart to kill off a Spinster’s family and expect her to be of service to them, but they’ll make sure that you have almost nothing left,’ he warns me, speaking so quietly against my hair I barely hear him.

‘They have my sister, Amie.’ I force myself to face facts. ‘They remapped her though.’

‘Younger than you?’

‘Twelve.’

He furrows his brow. ‘And your parents – did you see them die?’

The body bag in the dining room flickers into my mind.

‘My dad. I know he’s dead,’ I say in a hollow voice.

‘But they only told you they killed your mother?’

A thousand tiny pieces of shattered hope tug together in my chest.