Fairest

No one pointed out that she had not told them this before. But of course, they should have known before coming to this meeting. Naturally.

Levana shook her head behind her sister’s back.

The baby started crying.

Wheeling around, Channary tossed her arm toward Levana. “Take the child.”

Levana blinked. “Me? Why me? Where’s her nanny?”

“Oh, for star’s sake, she only wants to be held.” Channary started to cough. She turned hastily away, coughing into her elbow, as ladylike as she could. It seemed to Levana that she’d been coughing a lot lately—for weeks, if not months—and though Channary insisted it was only a temporary virus, it seemed to go on and on.

A servant rushed forward with a glass of water, but Channary grabbed it and threw it at the wall, too. Glass shattered across the stone as Channary stomped out of the room, still coughing.

The baby’s screams grew more fervent. Levana approached her, hesitant.

Someone clapped. “Let’s adjourn for today,” said one of the event planners, ushering away the artisans. “Come back tomorrow with … your improved work.”

Levana stood over the child for one dread-filled moment, watching at how her face reddened and pinched, at how her chubby arms writhed against the blanket. Her tufts of dark brown hair wisped in every direction.

Though the child was seven months old and hinting every day that she was about to start crawling, Levana could still count the times she’d held her niece on one hand. There was always someone else there to take the baby, and just like with Winter, this child did not seem to be warming up to her at all.

Huffing, she squared her shoulders and crouched down, scooping up the baby as gently as she could. Standing, she nestled the child in the crook of her arm and did her best to coo comforting words at her, but the crying went on and on, little fists thumping the air, beating against Levana’s chest.

With an annoyed sigh, Levana paced back and forth through the room, before stepping out onto the balcony that overlooked Artemisia Lake. She could see members of the court milling about the lush palace gardens, a few of the aristocrats out in boats upon the lake’s surface. In the sky, the Earth was nearly full. Huge and blue and white and stunning amid the starscape.

Once, she had persuaded Evret to go out on a boat with her, but he’d spent the whole time wishing he was back home with Winter, going on and on about how quickly she was growing, and speculating on what her first word might be.

That seemed like a long time ago.

In fact, it had been a long time since they’d done much of anything together.

Bouncing little Selene as gently as she could, Levana examined the face of her future queen. She wondered if this child would grow up to be as spoiled and ignorant as her mother, who cared more about the flower arrangements than political policy.

“I would be a better queen than your mother,” she whispered. “I would be a better queen than you.”

The baby continued to wail, spoiled and stupid.

There was no point thinking it, anyway. Channary was queen. Selene was the heir. Levana was just the princess, with a guard for a husband and a daughter without royal blood.

“I could drop you over this balcony, you know,” she said, cooing the words softly. “You couldn’t do anything about it.”

The baby did not respond to the threat.

“I could force you to stop crying. Would you like that?”

It was a tempting thought, one that Levana barely managed to withstand. They were not supposed to manipulate young children, as studies suggested that too much tampering when they were so tiny and impressionable could disrupt the way their brains formed.

Levana was beginning to wonder how much damage just one little moment of silence could do … when she heard her sister’s heels clapping across the meeting room’s floor.

Turning, she saw that Channary was attempting to hide just how horrible a coughing attack it had been, storming back with a stick-straight spine and blazing eyes, her brown hair swinging against her shoulders. But her face was blotchy and a thin layer of sweat still clung to her upper lip.

She took the baby out of Levana’s arms without preempt, without even a thank-you.

“Are you all right?” asked Levana. “You’re not dying, are you?”

Shooting a glare at her, Channary turned away without taking even a moment to admire the view. As she paced back into the room, the child’s crying began to subside, her pudgy fingers pawing at her mother’s face.

It occurred to Levana that maybe babies weren’t affected by glamours, and they all hated her because they could see what she was underneath.

“You’ve had that cough for a long time. Maybe you should see Dr. Eliot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the queen,” Channary said, as if this alone would protect her from illness. “Though, speaking of doctors, have you heard about that couple in bioengineering?” She grabbed a bottle from a satchel and fit it into the child’s mouth. Levana was amazed every time she witnessed this motherly affection from her sister—a girl she had only ever known as cruel and selfish. Surely their mother never fed them. She wondered what possessed Channary to do it, when they had so many servants on hand.

“What doctors?”

“The ones that had the baby. Darnel, I think … the man is … heavens. Ancient. Sixty, maybe?”

Levana clenched her teeth. “I had heard they were expecting, yes.”