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Levana’s shoulders knotted. A warning in her head told her to get up and walk away, to go tell someone that Cha
But she didn’t. Cha
She stayed rooted to the carpet, watching the flames grow and grow.
Once they were almost as big as the holograph, Cha
This time they turned blue, crackled and sparked and faded away.
Levana gasped.
Cha
“Do you want to try?”
Levana nodded. Pinched the tiny crystals and tossed them into the flames. She laughed as the blue sparklers billowed up toward the top of the enclosure and crashed into the stone wall where there should have been a chimney.
Rising to her feet, Cha
But while Levana was entranced by the flames—so very real, with their smell of ashes and the almost painful heat blasting against her face and the smoke that was darkening the wallpaper overhead—she could tell that Cha
Snip.
Jerking away, Levana turned just in time to see Cha
Levana reached for the back of her head, found the chunk that Cha
She made to scramble to her feet, but Cha
Even as Levana tried to roll away, Cha
“Stop it!” she screamed. When Cha
A large shred of material was torn away and Cha
Levana gaped at her sister, horrified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Are you all right?”
It was clear that Cha
“I’m sorry,” she stammered again.
Ignoring her, Cha
“I’ll call for the doctor,” said Levana, climbing to her feet. “You should get water … or ice, or…”
“I was trying to save you.”
Levana paused. Tears of pain were glistening in her sister’s eyes, but they were overshadowed by the crazed look, glowing with fury. “What?”
“Remember, baby sister? Remember how I came in here and found you playing with a real fire in the fireplace? Remember how you fell in, thinking it wouldn’t hurt you, just like the holograph? Remember how I got burned while trying to rescue you?”
Blinking, Levana tried to take a step back, but her feet were rooted to the carpet. Not from fear or uncertainty—Cha
Horror crept down her spine, covering her skin in gooseflesh.
“S-sister,” she stammered. “We should put ice on your burns. Before … before they get any worse.”
But Cha
“Come here, baby sister,” she whispered, and despite the terror twisting inside Levana’s stomach, her feet obeyed. “I want to show you something.”
* * *
Levana couldn’t stop crying, no matter how hard she tried. The sobs were merciless and painful, coming so fast she felt faint from an inability to breathe as her lungs convulsed. She crumpled over her knees, rocking and trembling. She wanted to stop crying. So badly she wanted to stop crying, in no small part because she knew that Evret, in his own private chambers down the hall, could probably hear her. And at first she’d dreamed that he would take pity on her, that the sound of her tears would soften his heart and bring him to her side. That he would comfort her and hold her and finally, finally realize that he’d loved her all along.
But she’d been crying long enough now, with no sign of her husband, to know that it wasn’t going to happen. Just one more fantasy that wouldn’t come true. Just one more lie she’d constructed for herself to escape into, never realizing she was welding the bars of her own cage.
Finally, the tears began to slow, the pain began to dull.
When she could breathe again, and thought she could stand without collapsing, she took hold of a bedpost and hauled herself to her feet. Her legs were weak, but they held. Without the strength to reinstate her glamour, she tore off one of the sheer drapes that hung from the bed’s canopy and draped it over her head. She would look like a ghost wandering the palace halls, but that was fine. She felt like a ghost. No more than a figment of a girl.
Hugging the makeshift veil around her body, she stumbled out of her bedroom. Two guards were posted outside the royal chambers, at silent attention as she emerged. If they were surprised at the fabric draped over her head, their expressions gave nothing away, and they fell into a march at a respectful distance behind her.
Despite the care she took to conceal herself, she passed no one else as she wandered through the palace. Even the servants were asleep this late at night.
She didn’t know where she was going until, minutes later, she found herself standing outside her sister’s bedroom, or what had been her sister’s bedroom during her short reign as queen, nearly eight years ago. Levana could have taken these chambers as her own—larger and more lavish than the room she was currently in—but at the time she’d enjoyed the quaintness of her rooms shared with Evret and Winter. She’d liked the idea that she was a queen who did not need riches and luxuries, only the love of her family to surround her.
She wondered if the people of the court had been laughing behind her back all this time. Was she the only one who had never recognized just how false her marriage, her family, really was?
Leaving the guards in the hall, she opened her sister’s door. It wasn’t locked, and at first Levana expected to find it emptied of anything of value. Surely the servants knew that she never came here, that they could have their pick of all the fine treasures inside.
But as Levana stepped into the room and the lights flickered on, casting the room in a serene glow, it was exactly as she remembered it, even the very faint scent of her sister’s perfume. It was like walking into a museum, every piece encapsulated in time. Her sister’s hairbrush on the vanity, though the tines had been carefully picked clean. The unruffled bedcovers. There was even the little basinet with its cream-colored velvets and filigree of a tiny coronet on top, where baby Selene had slept, unbeknownst even to Levana. She’d assumed that the child stayed with a wet nurse or na