*
Levana attended the coronation ceremony in head-to-toe white, under the guise of a waxen-haired princess with skin so pale as to be almost invisible, her faded glamour hiding the tracks of her tears.
She sat in the front row and praised her sister when the rest of the gathered Lunars praised her, and knelt when the rest of Luna knelt, and bowed her head with all the others. She refused to look at Channary, not even when the crown was placed on her head or when she took the scepter in her hand or the great white cloak was draped over her shoulders. Not when she drank the blood of her people from a golden chalice or when she cut open her fingertip and let her own blood splatter into an ornate marble bowl or when she spoke the vows that Levana knew Channary would never take to heart.
She also did not look at Evret, though he was on duty and stood directly within her line of sight throughout the proceedings.
Levana was a statue. A girl carved of regolith and dust.
She hated her sister, now her queen. Her sister did not deserve the throne. She would squander every opportunity she had to make a great ruler. To increase the economic potential of Luna. To continue the research and technological advancements that their ancestors had begun. To make Artemisia the most beautiful and enviable city in the galaxy.
Her sister did not deserve that scepter. That cloak. That crown.
She deserved nothing.
But she would have it all. She and Solstice Hayle and all the families of the court would have everything they ever wanted.
Only Levana—too young and ugly to matter—would go on living in her sister’s shadow until she faded away and everyone forgot that she’d ever been there to begin with.
*
She turned sixteen two weeks later. The country celebrated, but on the heels of the week-long party that had come from the coronation, the birthday seemed to dissolve into just one more day of royal shenanigans. An illusionist was hired to perform at the feast, and he awed the court’s families with feats of magic and wonderment, and the partygoers were more than willing to be taken with his pretend fancies.
Levana attended her own birthday celebration as the pale, invisible girl. She sat at the head table beside her beautiful sister and pretended not to notice how the illusionist turned a tablecloth into a lion and a lady’s handkerchief into a rabbit, and the crowd oohed and aahed and placed jovial bets as the lion chased the rabbit under tables and around their ankles. Then the pretend rabbit hopped up into the queen’s lap, who giggled and went to stroke the long floppy ears, and the creature vanished. The napkin, still held in the illusionist’s hand, was nothing but a napkin.
The lion bowed to the queen, before he, too, disappeared. A tablecloth untouched.
The crowd was in fits, applauding and laughing.
No one seemed to care that every illusion had been centered before the queen, not the birthday girl.
After a series of flourishing bows, the illusionist took a tapered candle from one of the tables and blew it out. The crowd fell silent. Levana sensed that she was the only person who didn’t lean forward in curiosity.
He let the black smoke curl naturally for a moment, before arranging it into a pair of entangled lovers. Two naked bodies, writhing against each other.
The show of debauchery received boisterous laughter from the families, and flirtatious smiles from the queen.
It was easy to tell who would be warming her sister’s bed that night.
For her part, Levana could feel the heat burning in her cheeks, though she hid her mortification behind the pale-faced glamour. Not that such entertainment was anything shocking, but while the illusion persisted, she could feel Evret’s presence in the room like a gravitational pull. The knowledge that he was seeing the same suggestive show, listening to the same bawdy laughter, possibly thinking of his own relations with his wife, made Levana feel as pathetic and insignificant as a crumb off her own cake.
She had not spoken to Evret since he witnessed her impersonating Solstice, which was not altogether unusual—they had shared more words at the funeral than in the entire time she’d known him. But she couldn’t shake away the suspicion that he was avoiding her, perhaps as much as she was avoiding him.
Levana assumed he must still be mortified, both at her glamour and at Channary’s accusations. But she couldn’t avoid a fantasy that maybe he was also flattered. Maybe he had begun to notice how his heart fluttered extra fast when he saw her. Maybe he was regretting marriage, or realizing that marriage was as silly a convention as many of the court families believed it to be, and that he loved her … he had always loved her, but now he didn’t know what to do with those emotions.
It was a very complex fantasy, which frequently left her even more depressed than she’d been before.
The smoke charade faded away to loud cheers, and the illusionist had not finished his bow before every candle flame on the head table exploded.
Levana screamed, tipping backward so fast that her chair crashed to the floor, bringing her with it. Though the flames continued to roar above her, bright and flickering, she realized after a terrified moment that there was no heat coming from them. Neither the threatening pulse of fire nor the smell of charred flesh followed.
No one else had screamed.
No one else had tried to get away.
Now, everyone was laughing.
Trembling, Levana accepted the hand of one of the royal guards—they alone were not showing their amusement. Her chair was righted, and she settled self-consciously back onto it.
The flames continued to burn, every one of them now as tall as a person, and with her terror waning, Levana was able to discern that this was just another illusion. Hovering over the table of wine goblets and half-finished plates was a line of fiery dancers, twirling and leaping from candlestick to candlestick.
Channary was laughing harder than all the others. “Whatever is the matter, baby sister?” Come here, baby sister. “You can’t possibly be afraid of a silly little trick.” I want to show you something.
Levana found that she couldn’t respond. Her heart was still thumping wildly, and her distrustful gaze was still fixed on the flame-dancers. Their existence, even if only a mental trick created by manipulating her own bioelectricity, made it impossible for her to relax. She could not tear her attention from them. Which was fine. She didn’t wish to see the mocking expressions around her. Hearing the laughter was bad enough.
She was only grateful that she’d had enough practice with the glamour of the invisible girl that she hadn’t lost her control.
“Is the princess afraid of fire?” asked the illusionist. Though he didn’t stop the illusion, the dancers did stop jumping, instead content to twirl slowly upon each candlewick. “I apologize, Your Highness. I did not know.”
“Don’t worry about her,” said Channary, holding a hand toward one of the dancers. “We cannot let her childish fears ruin our fun.”
“Ah—do be careful, Your Majesty. The fire underneath is still very real.” To prove his point, the illusionist sent the nearest dancer stepping down off her candle and into Channary’s palm, leaving the very real flame still flickering behind. Again, the crowd oohed its pleasure, and again Levana was forgotten.
Don’t worry about her.
It was only her birthday, after all. This was only her party.
The performance ended with all of the dancers turning into old-fashioned rocket ships that blasted upward and exploded into fireworks.
Once the delighted crowd had finished applauding, the dessert course was served. Levana stared down at the chocolate torte with the sugar sculpture that rose up nearly an arm’s length above her plate, a delicate series of curls and filigree. It looked as though it would shatter with a single touch.
Levana did not pick up her fork.