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It occurred to her, staring at that tiny, beautiful little bed, sweet and i
But there was nothing. She felt nothing but the breaking of her own heart inside her chest.
Tearing her gaze away, she spotted what she’d come for. Her sister’s mirror.
It stood in the far corner, its glass cast in shadows. It was taller than Levana, framed in silver that was tarnished with age. The metal had been crafted into elaborate scrolls with a prominent crown centered at the top. On the sides, silver flowers and thorny branches entwined around the frame, looking as though they were growing out from behind the mirror, like they would someday engulf it entirely.
Levana had stood before a mirror only once since she was six years old. Since Cha
Only when her screaming had brought a couple of servants ru
Her ugly, deformed, scarred baby sister.
The mirror had belonged to their mother, and Levana had only faint memories of watching Queen Ja
Levana could recall being very, very young and having nightmares about her mother and the court and how everyone around her had two faces.
Cha
Now Levana braced herself and strolled toward the standing monstrosity. Her reflection came into view, draped with the sheer white cloth, and she was surprised to find that she didn’t look so much like a ghost. Rather, she looked like a second-era bride. Endless happiness could be concealed beneath this veil. Boundless joy. So many dreams fulfilled.
Gripping the edges of the drape, she lifted it over her head.
She grimaced, flinching away from her reflection. It took her a moment to gather her courage again before she could face it, and even then she kept her face partly turned away, so that she could quickly turn back if the sight became too painful.
It was worse than she’d remembered, but then, she’d spent many, many years refusing to remember.
Her left eye was permanently sealed shut, and the scarred tissue on that side of her face was formed of ridges and grooves. Half of her face was paralyzed from the incident, and great chunks of hair would never grow back. The scars continued down her neck and shoulder, half of her chest and upper ribs, all the way down to her hand.
The doctors had done what they could at the time. They saved her life, at least. They told her that, when she was older, she would have options. A series of skin-grafting surgeries could gradually replace the ruined flesh. Hair transplants. Modified bone structure. They had even said that they could find a new, working eye for her. Finding a perfect match would be difficult but they would scour the entire country for a suitable donor, and surely, no one would dare refuse a request from their princess should she ask. Even their own eye.
But there would always be scars, no matter how faint, and at the time, the idea of accepting such transplants had disgusted her. Someone else’s eye. Someone else’s hair. Skin transplanted from the back of her thigh onto her own face. At the time, it had seemed easier to develop her glamour and pretend that nothing was wrong underneath it at all.
By now, so many had forgotten what she truly looked like she wouldn’t even consider having the surgeries. She couldn’t stand to think of those surgeons hovering over her unconscious, grotesque body, analyzing the best way to disguise her hideousness.
No. Her glamour worked. Her glamour was the reality now, no matter what Evret thought. No matter what anyone thought.
She was the fairest queen Luna had ever known.
Grabbing for the sheer drape, she pulled the veil back over her head, encapsulating herself. Her heart was stampeding now, her pulse drumming against her ears.
With an enraged scream, she reached for the silver hairbrush on the vanity and hurled it as hard as she could at the mirror.
A spiderweb of cracks burst across the glass, spindling toward the silver frame. A hundred veiled strangers looked back at her. She screamed again and grabbed for anything in reach—a vase, a perfume bottle, a jewelry box—throwing them all at the mirror, watching as pieces of glass splintered and shattered, broken slivers crashing to the floor. Finally she picked up the small chair beside the vanity, cushioned in white velvet.
With that final crash, the mirror was destroyed, shards of glass scattering halfway across the bedroom.
The guards burst through the door. “Your Majesty! Is everything all right?”
Panting, Levana threw the chair aside and crumpled to her knees, ignoring the piece of glass that cut into her shin. Trembling, she adjusted the veil over her head, making sure she was fully hidden.
“Your Majesty?”
“Don’t come any closer!” she yelled, holding out her hand.
The guards paused.
“I want—” Nearly choking on the words, she scrubbed the tears from her face. It was a struggle to compose herself, but her voice was firm when she spoke again. “I want all the mirrors in the palace destroyed. Every one of them. Check the servants’ quarters, the washrooms, everywhere. Check the entire city! Destroy them and throw their shattered pieces into the lake where I will never have to look at them again!”
After a long silence, one of the guards murmured, “My Queen.”
She could not tell if his words were to say that it would be done, or that she was talking like a madwoman.
She didn’t care.
“Once all of the mirrors are destroyed, I want to commission special glass for the palace, to replace all of the windows, and every glass surface. Glass that holds no reflection. None at all.”
“Is that possible, My Queen?”
Exhaling slowly, Levana grabbed for the edge of the vanity and pulled herself to her feet as gracefully as she could. She adjusted the veil again before turning to face the guards. “If it is not, then we will all live in a palace without any glass at all.”
* * *
“Yes. Yes. This will work. I’m pleased.”
The technician bowed, his face contorted with obvious relief, but Levana was already ignoring him, her attention captured by the special screen she’d commissioned to be installed into the silver frame of her sister’s mirror. The destroyed glass had been thrown into the lake with all the rest of it.
She drew a finger across the screen, testing its functionality. Most of the entertainment on Luna was broadcast through the holograph nodes or on the enormous screens set into the walls of the domes themselves. But comms and video feeds from Earth didn’t always translate to the holographs, so her newly commissioned netscreen was more akin to Earthen technology. It was as useful as it was beautiful. She would need it for the surveillance she hoped to conduct on the people of the outer sectors. For her discussions with the Commonwealth emperor. For the newsfeeds she would be monitoring, closely, once her army was unleashed.