I turn and hit his shoulder. “He will never be my father.”

“I know that,” Dante says, closing the door behind him. “I’m not trying to boss you around. I wanted to protect you from this.”

“You had no right to keep this from me,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Dante says. “I kept it from you at first because it was protocol. I wasn’t about to drop this into your lap, but somewhere along the line, I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Because you don’t trust me,” I accuse.

“No, it’s more than that. I may not have been there when you were born. Arras, I might have a hard time wrapping my head around this—you aren’t the only one struggling with what this means,” Dante says. “And despite all of it—despite the fact that I knew you deserved to know—I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I demand over my swollen throat. Erik wraps an arm around my shoulder and steadies me, which makes it harder to hold my tears hostage.

“Because—like it or not—you’re my daughter, Adelice.” Dante pauses and dares to bring his eyes up to meet mine. “And I love you.”

He doesn’t offer me any more placation; he quietly exits back to where we left Falon. Erik pulls me into his shoulder and I free my tears, sobbing.

“I don’t know who to trust,” I whisper.

“Me,” he says, rubbing my arm. “And Jost. No matter what, you will always have us.”

I know that, but even as I cry in his arms, the distance between us feels like too much to overcome. It’s a distance we’ve created out of necessity, and if we breach it, I can’t guarantee I won’t lose Erik, but I know one thing.

I will lose Jost.

“Erik, I can’t lose you,” I say. “I can’t lose either of you.”

His arms tighten around me, and for one second I want him to storm the wall we’ve built between us. I want him to help me forget this. But instead he only whispers, “You won’t. I won’t let that happen. I promise I’ll never let you go.”

And even now, wrapped in an embrace, we’re a million miles from each other.

* * *

We stay on the observation deck, watching the aeroship pass along the Interface. A series of hooks and pulleys built along the ship’s external skeleton grip and gather the strands of the Interface. We’re not flying, we’re crawling across the web of strands. Dante approaches us as the skeleton’s gears and hooks latch and lock, tethering us to the Interface semi-permanently.

“This is a loophole,” Dante says.

As he speaks, strands of the Interface rotate violently, curling in on one another in rapid and graceful precision until a long funnel of chaotically woven strands extends in a gentle diagonal toward the ship, opening a few feet from the deck. I take the risk and look up into the mouth of the loophole. It’s hollow as I expected, a perfectly round shaft of strands that stretch and swim in a kaleidoscope of color. My eyes squeeze shut and I listen for the music of the strands. It comes in a surge of violins, the notes sharp and lingering. This is all I need. I could climb through there and go back. But back to what?

“How did you do this?” I ask.

“Arras doesn’t control every talented person,” Dante says with a shrug.

That’s the understatement of the century.

“You have people on the inside,” I surmise.

“Of course,” Dante says, “a resistance wouldn’t be much good without spies.”

“What do your spies say about me?” I ask, recalling that Falon recognized my name immediately from her intel.

Falon appears at my side. “It’s my job to keep tabs on what’s going on up there. And girl, you’re all over my stream.”

“They put me on the Stream?” The color drains from my face. There’s no way I’ll ever make it back into Arras safely if everyone there is looking for me.

“A stream of information,” Falon assures me. “I have a web of spies, people who pass info to me from inside the coventries and ministry offices.”

“The same people that pass Kincaid info?” I guess. “You sell it to him.”

“Information is good business,” she says. “I can control what Kincaid hears and use the money he pays me to buy some people off him.”

“Buy people?”

“Refugees don’t come here for free. If they don’t have the credits, they owe their sponsor,” Falon says. I detect a note of disgust in her voice.

“That’s how Valery wound up at the estate,” Dante says.

“Speaking of, how is Deniel?” Falon asks him.

At the mention of his name my stomach constricts as though a wire is coiling tight around it.

Dante hesitates and shakes his head. “Gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“Not where,” Dante says. “He was unwound.”

“What?” Falon asks, unmistakable anger in her voice.

“He attacked Adelice, tried to alter her. He was a spy,” Dante says.

“A spy?” Falon echoes. “Who authorized his credentials in Arras?”

“I’m not sure,” Dante says.

“Too bad,” Falon says, sighing. “He was talented. I should have known when he asked to go to Kincaid. We could have used a Tailor like him.”

“A crooked Tailor does bad work,” Erik reminds her.