“It’s not so bad,” Dot said.

“But… can I try an analogy?” I asked. I could do this if I could treat it like picking apart a puzzle. Treat it like I was figuring Ashley out and finding a common ground, with her natural imperiousness and skewed perspective. Treat it like I was trying to figure Kenzie out, before I’d figured out the smile or the family situation. “Hunter was my charge, someone I helped, and Amy took her and broke her. What if I took you and broke you? How would Amy feel?”

“Broke me how? Made me interesting?” Dot was very still.

“I’m not going to hurt you. But in this story we’re telling… how would she feel if I killed you?”

“Pissed,” Amy answered for Dot. “Not many people have my back or keep me company. I’d mourn her. Seriously, do not hurt her.”

“How would she feel, Dot, if I fucking told you I knew the Red Queen and you could trust me, and then I killed you? Or I… broke you in other ways, made you uninteresting?”

“Took my colors?”

“Took your colors, took your…”

I didn’t want to budge from where I was, but I lifted a foot. My boot had been removed and I just had the athletic sock on. I extended my leg across the bed and tapped Dot in the chest.

“My heart,” Dot said.

“Your you.”

Dot’s ears weren’t as high as they had been at the start of the exchange, and stuck out to the sides more than they stuck up, now. A clawed hand gripped my big toe.

“I’ll fix her,” Amy said.

“I trust her,” Dot spoke up. “She’ll protect me from anything like that. She’ll fix what’s broken.”

“You trust her but nobody else does, and if nobody else does, she can’t help your… family, was it?”

“Family, yes.”

“Most importantly, Dot,” I said, withdrawing the foot I’d extended Dot’s way, hugging my legs tighter. “She can’t do what she does if she doesn’t trust herself. That’s when she makes mistakes, she loses trust in herself, and she makes more mistakes, and so on. It’s what happened when she broke me. When she doesn’t trust herself she stops fixing things and starts breaking things more.”

“Vicky,” Amy said.

“Do you deny it?” Again, in the quiet room, I sounded angrier than I’d intended.

It made me afraid to move, because my movements might be the same. I could see myself using my power without wanting to, and I considered my control over my power to be one of the few things I was confident in.

“It’s things other than trust or trust in myself,” Amy said. “Pushing in, twisting things around.”