“Come away,” Evret said, behind her again.
Shivering, Levana stepped back, and dared to turn to face him. She didn’t have to fake the shock. The sight of it was a thousand times more terrifying than her imagination had given her. A thousand times more real.
She had done this.
Those bodies were her fault.
Selene was dead.
Though Evret was still holding Winter against his hip, and trying to block her view with his hands, Levana could see the girl craning her head to see the commotion and the chaos, the burned remains of her playhouse and her only cousin.
“Come away,” Evret said again. He took Levana’s hand, and she allowed him to guide her. Her thoughts were a daze as they made their way back through the corridors. Her stomach was writhing with a hundred emotions she couldn’t have named. Winter’s questions started coming in force. What happened, Papa? Where is Selene? What’s going on? Why does it smell like that?
She went largely ignored, answered only by kisses pressed against her thick curls.
“She is dead,” Levana murmured.
“It’s horrible,” said Evret. “A horrible, horrible accident.”
“Yes. A horrible accident.” Levana’s grip tightened around his hand. “And now … you understand? This means I will be the queen.”
Evret glanced at her, his face full of sorrow as he scooped his free arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him. He pressed a kiss against the top of her head then too.
“You don’t need to think about that now, sweetheart.”
But he was wrong.
As the knots in her stomach slowly began to loosen, it was all she could think of.
She was the queen.
The guilt and the horror and the memory of that awful smell might stay with her forever, but she was the queen.
*
Princess Selene was pronounced dead that evening. Levana made the announcement to the people from the palace’s broadcast center. The video showed pictures of the young princess while Levana struggled to keep her voice somber, even while her nerves tingled from success. It was not happiness—she was very sad to know that victory had required such an appalling act. But success was success, victory was victory. She had done it and now, as the country mourned, she would be the one to lift them out of this tragedy.
Little Selene, barely three years old, would hardly even make a blip in their history. The memory of their little princess would be entirely eclipsed with the reign of Queen Levana.
The fairest queen that Luna had ever known.
For once, she was satisfied. She had Evret. She had her crown.
She did not yet have an heir, but now that she was the last of the royal bloodline, surely fate would smile on even this request. She was all that was left. Not having a child of her own was not an option. After all, Winter couldn’t grow up to be queen. No. Levana would have a child.
With Selene gone, these were the new thoughts that engulfed her. How she would be a great ruler and how the people would love her with all their hearts. And how, when Levana finally gave Evret a child of their own, he too would love her, finally, even more than his darling Solstice.
She was making the life she’d always wanted for herself, and she was close to it now. So very, very close.
But only a week had gone by when Levana began to notice the change.
The way people dropped their eyes when she walked past, not with normal respect, but something akin to fear. Perhaps—was she imagining it? Perhaps even disgust.
The way there was a new coldness from the palace servants. How they all seemed to be biting their tongues, wanting to say something to her and daring not to.
The way that Evret asked her one night why she had gone to get Winter that day. Why she had brought it on herself to take Winter to the doctor’s appointment when clearly it was something the nanny was capable of.
“What do you mean?” Levana asked, her heart in her throat. “She’s my daughter, and I hardly get to spend time with her these days. Why shouldn’t I take her to her appointments?”
“It’s just…”
She tensed. “It’s just what?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He kissed her, and that was the last that was said of it.
But all this she could have ignored. Let them think she was guilty. Let them accuse her behind closed doors. As the queen of Luna and the only royal descendant of the Blackburn bloodline, no one would dare accuse her to her face.
No—it was another rumor that chilled Levana to her core.
They were saying that Selene had survived.
It was not possible.
It could not be possible.
She had seen the body, smelled the charred flesh, witnessed the aftermath of the fire. A tiny toddler could not have lived through that.
She was dead. She was gone.
It was over.
So why did she go on haunting Levana this way?
*