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 Channary had forced her into that fireplace—first her hand, then her arm, then the entire left side of her face. Offering no mercy. Channary didn’t even have to touch her. Under the grip of Channary’s mind control, Levana had been powerless to fight back, to run away, to pull herself from the flames.
Only when her screaming had brought a couple of servants running into the nursery did Channary let her go and told them all that she’d been trying to help her sister. Her stupid, curious baby sister.
Her ugly, deformed, scarred baby sister.
The mirror had belonged to their mother, and Levana had only faint memories of watching Queen Jannali primp in front of it before some gala or another, on those rare occasions when she wasn’t annoyed with the presence of her own offspring. For the most part Levana remembered her mother as her glamour had been. Pale as a corpse with platinum hair and those severe violet eyes that seemed to make the rest of her fade away. But when she sat in front of this mirror, Jannali had been as she was underneath. As she was really. And she looked a lot like Channary, with naturally tanned skin and shiny brown hair. She’d been pretty. Perhaps even prettier than she was with the glamour—though not as striking. Not as regal.
Levana could recall being very, very young and having nightmares about her mother and the court and how everyone around her had two faces.
Channary claimed the mirror almost immediately following the assassinations, and Levana hadn’t seen it since. Which was fine with her. She hated mirrors. Hated their reflections, their truths. Hated how she seemed to be the only one who hated them as much as she did, even when everyone in the entire court walked around with glamours every bit as fake as her own.
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.