Fairest

Finally, she took to wandering the hallways, pressing herself to the sides when people marched past, focused and determined. She found the infant viewing room easy enough and slipped inside to stare at the new arrivals through a pane of glass. A nurse was on the other side, administering drugs and checking vital signs.

She found Evret’s child. A label was now printed on the side of the tank.

Hayle

3 January 109 T.E., 12:27 U.T.C.

Gender: F

Weight: 3.1 kg

Length: 48.7 cm

So he had a little girl. Her skin was dark like her father’s, her cheeks as round and touchable as a cherub, and tufts of hair were just long enough to frizz out like a halo around her head, especially now that she had been cleaned. She was no longer fussing, just lay there in perfect peace, her little chest rising with each breath. She was impossibly small. Frighteningly delicate.

Levana had not seen many babies, but she could imagine that this was the most perfect child that had ever been born.

The little girl was the only one in the infant viewing room with a blanket wrapped around her that wasn’t in plain hospital blue. Instead, the soft cotton material had been hand embroidered—a dozen different shades of white and gold creating a shimmering landscape around the child’s tiny form. At first Levana thought it was meant to be the wild, desolate surface of Luna outside of the biodomes, but then she noticed the black trunks of leafless trees and, somewhere near the baby’s ankles, stark red mittens lying abandoned in the snow, the likes of which Levana had only seen in children’s stories. This was a scene from Earth, from a dark and cold season that Luna never experienced. She wondered what had even made Solstice think of it.

For this was so clearly the work of Solstice Hayle.

Listing her head, Levana let herself imagine that this baby was hers. That she had been the one to spend countless loving hours creating that illusion on the fabric. She wondered what it would be like to be a proud and exhausted mother, loving and adoring, looking down on the healthy little girl she’d given birth to.

Her glamour changed almost without her realizing it. Solstice Hayle. Beloved wife. Delighted mother. This time Levana kept her stomach flat and her figure lithe. She pressed a finger against the glass, tracing the outline of the child’s face on the other side.

Then she spotted a shadow. Her own shadow on the glass. Her own reflection.

Levana flinched and the glamour disintegrated. She spun away, covering her face with both hands.

It took her a long while to shove the image from her thoughts. To call up the glamour of pale skin, waxen hair, frosty blue eyes.

“You can view her from here,” said a voice from the hallway.

Levana’s head snapped up as Evret was led into the viewing room. He looked as though he had just woken from a haunting dream. His eyes were rimmed in red when they fell on her and he spent a moment blinking. As if he couldn’t see her, or couldn’t place where he knew her from.

Levana gulped.

Recognition crept into his eyes and he bowed his head. “Your Highness. I didn’t realize you would still be here…” His jaw worked for a moment. “But of course, you must require an escort. I am … I am so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Not at all,” she said. “I could have called for…”

But he was not looking at her anymore. His attention had drifted to the window and latched on to his baby girl. Fathomless emotion misted over his gaze as he placed his fingers against the sill.

Then, between the heartbreak and the loneliness, there was love. So open and intense it stole Levana’s breath away.

What she wouldn’t give to be looked at like that.

“They tell me she’s going to be all right,” he said.

Levana kept her back against the window, afraid to catch her reflection and lose control of her glamour again. Afraid that if Evret saw her as she truly was, he wouldn’t want her anymore.

“She’s beautiful,” she said.

“She’s perfect,” he murmured.

Levana dared to fixate on his profile. The fullness of his lips, the slope of his brow. “She looks like you.”

He didn’t respond for a long time. Just stared at his little girl while Levana stared at him. Finally, he said, “I think she’ll have her mother in her, when she gets older.” He paused, and Levana saw the strain of his Adam’s apple in his throat. “Her mother—” He couldn’t finish. He brought his hands up to his mouth, fingers laced together. “I would give anything…” He pressed his forehead against the glass. “She’ll grow up without a mother. It isn’t right.”

Levana felt her heart stretching, like it was reaching out for him, trying desperately to connect. “Don’t say that,” she whispered, placing a hesitant hand on Evret’s arm, and glad when he didn’t pull away. “These things happen for a reason, don’t they? Look at the child she gave you. She served her purpose.”

Levana recognized the callousness of the statement at the same moment Evret jerked away from her. He turned to face her, shocked, and instant shame crawled down Levana’s skin.

“That isn’t … I didn’t mean it like that. Only that … that you and this child still have your whole lives ahead of you. I know you must be hurting now, but don’t give up hope on future happiness, and all the good things that are still to come for you.”

He scrunched up his face, as if in physical pain, and it occurred to Levana that she was probably saying all the wrong things. She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t imagine being devastated at the loss of someone. She had never felt that before.