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“Have you even thought what you’re going to do with the little brat?”
“What do you mean, what I’m going to do with her?”
“You don’t actually intend to … raise her, I hope.”
Dragging her gaze away from the wall, Levana peered down her nose toward her sister. “She will be raised as royalty. As we were.”
“With na
“With everything she could possibly want. Every luxury, every toy. Besides.” She lifted her hands to the side as the seamstress reached the seam beneath her underarm. “Evret loves her very much, as do I.”
It was a lie, and she knew it was a lie. But she also felt that someday it could be true. The girl was her daughter now, after all, and she was a part of Evret, so how could Levana not love her?
Mostly, though, she said it just to watch the a
The seamstress finished the seam and Levana lowered her hands again, letting her fingers trail over the fine embroidery of the bodice. She felt peculiarly happy today, after spending her second night in a row curled against Evret’s body. She was a wife, now. Though her dress did not bare half as much skin as her sister’s, she felt much more the woman. She had what her sister did not have. A family. Someone to love her.
“I hope,” Levana continued, more to herself now, “that little Princess Winter will soon have a brother or sister too.”
Cha
“Not yet, no. But I don’t see why it would take long.”
She had been thinking about it a great deal, actually, often returning to the glamour of Solstice’s pregnant belly when she was alone, ru
Frowning, Cha
“How I do look forward to those conversations, sister.”
“In the meantime,” said Cha
“What does that mean?”
Cha
Levana’s jaw fell. Shoving the seamstress away, she gathered up her full skirt and stepped down from the pedestal. “You?” She glanced at Cha
“I’m not sure. I’ll be seeing Dr. Eliot this afternoon.” Glaring, she turned and headed back for the dressing room’s doorway. “I hope it’s a boy. I am so sick of stupid princesses.”
“Wait—Cha
Cha
“Constable Dubrovsky. Is he the father?”
Cha
* * *
She did not become pregnant, though she went to Evret’s bedchambers nearly every night. He and Winter had been moved into the royal family’s private wing of the palace, but only a week went by before Levana decided it would be safer to retire to her own room after her visits to him. She was afraid of what might happen if he awoke before her one morning and saw her without her glamour, and she was tired of using her gift to drag him into a deep unconsciousness every night.
It was not quite the marriage she’d dreamed of, but she told herself it would get better. It would take time.
She did not come to love Princess Winter, who cried every time Levana held her.
Evret refused to let anyone call him a prince, and even vowed to keep his job as a palace guard, though Levana told him over and over that it wasn’t necessary. He was royalty now; he never had to work again. This only seemed to irritate him, though, so eventually Levana stopped pressing the issue. Let him play guns and soldiers if it made him happy.
Cha
As the months passed, Levana came to feel like there must be some conspiracy against her. Rumors were spreading about any number of women in the court who were having babies. The whole city seemed suddenly full of their crying and howling. When Levana went to see Dr. Eliot for a private appointment to ask if there was something else she could be doing, she even learned that a pair of wedded royal scientists were pregnant—Dr. Darnel and his wife, both specialists on the genetic engineering team. The woman was more than three times Levana’s age.
Dr. Eliot was largely unhelpful. She went on and on about how it could take time, and they would look into further treatment when Levana got a bit older, if they still had not had any success. The woman even had the nerve to tell Levana to relax, to not worry about it so much. It would happen when it was meant to happen.
Levana was tempted to make the infuriating woman jab a scalpel into her own eye.
Her sister. The old doctor. Solstice.
There could be nothing wrong with Evret.
So what was wrong with her?
Her only consolation was that, as a result of Cha
Then, on the twenty-first day of December in the 109th year of the third era, Queen Cha
The royal bloodline would continue.
The Lunar throne had an heir.
* * *
“I like the silver foliage. Don’t you agree, little sister?”
Levana tore her gaze away from the baby, who was laid out on an embroidered quilt in the center of the room as if this were a common day care and not a royal meeting to discuss the country’s upcoming a