Her lip started to tremble, and her father’s face softened. He pulled her back against him again and kissed the top of her head.
“You’re not in trouble,” he said. “I hope that girl will get the help she needs now, and that she’ll thank you someday. I just need you to know … there are people in this palace, and on all of Luna, who see manipulation as the quickest way to solve every problem. While it might be useful at times, it’s rarely the only way, or the best way. And the person you would manipulate … they do deserve to have a choice. Do you understand?”
She nodded, but she was pretty sure that he didn’t understand.
She loved her father with all her heart, but he would never know what it was like to help someone with a mere thought. To give them happiness or to change how they saw the world.
She was going to use her gift to help people. To make Artemisia better.
Saving that servant had been only the beginning.
*
For the months that followed, Winter focused more on her studies than ever before. Her glamour became stronger. Her thoughts became sharper. She practiced on Jacin when she could, though after that first talk with her father, she made sure to always ask his permission.
She kept her eye out for the servant who was still alive because of her. Winter always reserved a special smile for her, and every time their paths crossed in the palace, she made sure to give her an extra boost of pleasant emotions.
She made sure the woman was proud of the great work she did here in the palace.
She fed her contentment from living in such a beautiful city.
She coaxed her into feeling loved and appreciated, safe and calm—a steady drip of every good emotion Winter could think to give her, so she might never feel tempted to end her life again.
A year passed, then two, then three—but Winter started to notice a change in what she had begun to think of as a quiet companionship between her and the servant. She noticed that when the woman saw Winter coming, she would often change directions before Winter could get close enough to alter her thoughts. She was avoiding her.
Winter couldn’t understand why.
Then one afternoon, during her weekly session with Master Gertman, he told Winter that she had become so strong in her gift and so far exceeded his expectations that she might be talented enough to someday become a thaumaturge. It was a great honor. A role reserved for only the most talented Lunars in their entire kingdom.
Winter preened like a peacock all afternoon. She bragged about it to Jacin, and was annoyed when he didn’t look nearly as impressed as she thought he ought to.
She went to bed that night with a pleased grin on her lips.
Hours later, she was awoken by the deafening sound of a gunshot coming from her father’s room.
She would have nightmares for years to come. Her father’s blood. The thaumaturge who had shot him, now lying dead, too, in the room’s corner. Winter still standing in her nightgown and the feel of disbelieving tears on her cheeks and how she was unable to move, like her toes had been stitched to the carpet.
It was Selene all over again. One moment the person she loved most in the whole world was there, and then they were gone. Selene, taken by fire and smoke. Her father, by a thaumaturge and a gun.
In the years to come, it would not be the blood or her father’s dead eyes or the guards rushing past her that Winter would most remember.
It was her stepmother. The queen. Wracked by such heartbroken sobs that Winter thought they might never stop echoing in her head. Those wails would haunt her nightmares all her life.
At nine years old, Winter had begun to realize that it wasn’t normal for a queen to be married to a guard. She had begun to understand that there was something strange about such a match, even embarrassing.
But hearing her stepmother’s cries that night, she had understood why Levana had chosen her father. She loved him. In spite of the rumors and the glares and the disapproving frowns, she had loved him.
From that night, Winter had started to fear the thaumaturges. They were not honorable members of the court. They were not her friends or her allies.
She would never be one of them, no matter how much praise her gift brought her.
*
Winter gasped awake, her stepmother’s sobs still echoing in her head, leftover remnants from the nightmare. She was drenched in cold sweat.
It had been years since her father’s murder, and months since she’d dreamed of it, but the shock and horror felt the same every time.