What did the Guild do to her? Can I undo it?

She stares at me without speaking and I see the wheels turning in her head. She’s going to play with me, but I won’t let her.

“Meria,” I say. I can’t bring myself to call her Mom after our last meeting.

“Adelice,” she murmurs. “Come to check in on your prisoner?”

“You aren’t my prisoner,” I remind her.

“Sure, your whining didn’t land me in here.” She sits up. She’s thinner than the last time I saw her. Under her threadbare shirt I can see the jut of bones, and how her clothes hang on her. She’s all points and angles.

“Are they feeding you?” I ask.

Her lips squash a smirk. “Yes, scraps.”

Scraps like she is an animal. No wonder she’s so thin.

“I’ll make sure you get real meals,” I promise her.

“That’s so sweet of you.” Her voice is flat, as colorless as the walls around us.

“I have some questions for you.”

“And I have all the time in the world to answer them.” She blinks slowly.

“Can you swim?” It seems silly and frivolous to ask a starving woman this.

“Are you planning to drown me?”

I plant my hands on my hips and stare down at her. “Do you see any water in here?”

“No, I can’t.” She speaks each word with halting, dramatic emphasis.

“Never mind,” I say. “This was a stupid idea.”

“Your question was stupid.”

“Fine.” My fists ball up as they did when I was a sullen child. If she wants a real question, I have those, too. “How did you get to Earth?”

“Planning to return home?”

“Do you remember?” I ask, bypassing her question.

“Of course I do,” she says. “We took a loophole.”

“Were you running to a loophole on the night I was retrieved?” I ask, abandoning any hope of a casual conversation.

“Your parents really failed you that night,” she says, not answering my question.

“Do you remember?” I ask, unsure I want the answer.

“I know what happened,” she snaps. “The retrieval squad came and you were too stupid to warn your parents. They tried to run. There was a slub in Romen. You would have been safe there, but you didn’t warn them, so they couldn’t escape. You killed your parents.”

Her words sting.

“My parents aren’t dead,” I say. “Benn is. But you’re alive, and so is my biological father.”

“So Dante told you?” she asks. “I wondered if he would. I didn’t think he had the courage.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I tell you?”

It’s frustrating to sit here and talk with a woman who shares my history and holds the secrets to the past I can’t remember, but who doesn’t see herself as part of it. She looks at her memories from the outside.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be calling him Daddy anytime soon,” I say.

“That child couldn’t be a father,” she says. “He can’t see past himself. He didn’t even realize she was pregnant.”

“You were pregnant?” I prompt.

“Meria was pregnant.” The words are oozed venom on her tongue.

“You are Meria.”

“I am no one,” she says.

And I see the truth of it in the flat deadness of her eyes. I hear the resignation seeping through her voice. I feel it as the words hang between us. It’s true because she believes it.

“Where can I find a loophole?” I can’t keep talking circles around this subject. I can’t listen to my mother denounce me, my family, herself.

“Around,” she says with a shrug.

“That’s so helpful.”

“Don’t you think someone as powerful as your host would know the answer to that question?”

“My host is gone at the moment,” I say. Then it occurs to me that I might be giving her too much information in telling her that Kincaid is away. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s so securely kept.

“And he left you behind?” The question digs at me.

“I’m tired of your games,” I tell her. “I just … just wanted to see you.”

“In the future,” she begins, and my breath hitches, caught on the unexpected hope rising in my chest, “don’t bother.”

It stings, even though I know this is a game. I turn without a goodbye and leave her there. On my way out, I decide:

I’m never going back to her.

* * *

Erik is at dinner, alone. I’m not hungry, but I knew he would be in the dining room. When Kincaid left to find the Whorl, I expected meals to become less formal. But even though Valery doesn’t join us and Dante rarely does, the kitchen still serves a full five-course meal.

“Do you know anything about loopholes?” I ask Erik, sipping the last of the coffee that was brought with the dessert tray.

“Like bunny ears for tying your shoes?” he asks.

“Yes, of course that’s what I mean,” I say in a flat tone.

“I guess I don’t know then,” Erik says. He hasn’t touched his coffee, so I steal it.

“I can’t believe you drink that stuff,” he says.

“I can’t believe you don’t.” I slurp a long draft of it for emphasis.