Evret was in the middle of pulling his shirt over his head. He tossed it on the bed and looked up.
Gasping, he stumbled back a step, nearly knocking a glowing sconce off the wall.
Levana shrank away, wrapping her arms around her waist. She ducked her head, so that her hair fell over half her face, hiding what it could. But she resisted the urge to cover her scars with her hands. She refused to pull up the glamour again.
The glamour he had always loved.
The glamour he had always hated.
At first, it seemed that he wasn’t even breathing. He just stared at her, speechless and horrified. Finally, he closed his mouth and placed a shaking hand on the bedpost to steady himself. Forced down a gulp.
“This is it,” she said, as new tears started to leak from her good eye. “The truth that I didn’t want you to see. Are you happy now?”
His blinks were intense, and she could imagine how difficult it was for him to hold her gaze. To not look away, when he so clearly wanted to.
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Not happy.”
“And if you had known this from the beginning, could you ever have loved me?”
His mouth worked for a long time, before he responded, “I don’t know. I…” He shut his eyes, collecting himself, before meeting her full on. This time, he didn’t flinch. “It’s not the way you look, or don’t look, Levana. It’s that you have controlled and manipulated me for ten years.” His expression twisted. “I wish you would have shown me a long time ago. Maybe things would have been different. I don’t know. But now we’ll never find out.”
He turned away. Levana stared at his back, feeling not like a queen at all. She was a stupid child, a pathetic girl, a fragile, destroyed thing.
“I love you,” she whispered. “That much has always been real.”
He tensed, but if he had any response, she left before she could hear it.
*
“Come here, baby sister. I want to show you something.” Channary smiled her warmest smile, waving Levana over excitedly.
Instincts told her to be cautious, as Channary’s enthusiasm had turned into cruelty before. But she was hard to resist, and even as Levana’s instincts were telling her to back away, her legs carried her forward.
Channary knew better than to use her gift on soft-minded children, especially her young sister. She’d been scolded by their nannies a hundred times.
In response, she’d only gotten more secretive about it.
Channary was kneeling before the holographic fireplace of their shared nursery, the gentle warmth in contrast to the roaring flames and crackling logs in the illusion. With the exception of celebratory candles, fire was strictly forbidden on Luna. The smoke would too quickly fill up the domes, poisoning their precious air supply. But holographic fireplaces had been popular for some time now, and Levana always liked to watch how the flames danced and defied predictability, how the wooden logs smoldered and crumbled and sparked. She would watch them for hours, amazed at how the fire seemed to always be burning low, eating into the logs, and yet never went out altogether.
“Watch,” said Channary, once Levana settled beside her. She had set a small bowl of glittering white sand on the carpet, and now she took a pinch of the sand and flicked it at the holographic flames.
Nothing happened.
Gut tightening with apprehension, Levana looked at her sister. Channary’s dark eyes were dancing with the firelight.
“They’re not real, right?” Leaning over, Channary passed her hand through the flames. Her fingers came away unblemished. “Just an illusion. Just like a glamour.”
Levana was still too young to have much control over her own glamour, but she did have a sense that it wasn’t exactly the same thing as this holographic fireplace.
“Go ahead,” said Channary. “Touch it.”
“I don’t want to.”
Channary glared at her. “Don’t be a baby. It isn’t real, Levana.”
“I know, but … I don’t want to.” Some instinct made Levana curl her hands in her lap. She knew it wasn’t real. She knew the holograph wouldn’t hurt. But she also knew that fire was dangerous, and illusions were dangerous, and being tricked into believing things that weren’t real was often the most dangerous thing of all.
Snarling, Channary grabbed Levana’s arm and tugged her forward, nearly pulling Levana’s entire torso into the flames. Levana shrieked and struggled to pull back, but Channary held firm, holding her small hand into the glowing flames of the holograph.
She felt nothing, of course. Just that same subtle warmth that the fire always released, to make it seem more authentic.
After a moment, Levana’s heartbeat started to temper itself.
“See?” said Channary, though Levana wasn’t sure what point she’d just made. She still didn’t want to touch the holograph, and as soon as her sister released her, she pulled her hand back and inched away on the carpet.