Fairest

A servant appeared, face red and panting for breath.

“Doctor! Come quick!”

“I beg your pardon, but I am with Her Highness and—”

“No—it’s the nursery! Princess Selene!” The servant’s voice pitched so high it cracked.

A chill rolled across Levana’s skin, but she managed to maintain her baffled expression.

“Whatever could be—”

“There was a fire. Please, you have to come. There’s no time to lose!”

Dr. Eliot hesitated, glancing at Levana, then back at Winter.

Gulping, Levana took a step forward. “Well, of course, you must go. If our future queen is in danger, you must see to her at once.”

It was all the prompting the doctor needed. As she scooped up a medical bag, Levana turned to the servant. “What’s happened? What about a fire?”

“We’re not sure, Your Highness. They were in the playhouse and it caught fire … we think they must have been sleeping…”

“They?”

“The princess and her nanny.” Gaze alighting on Winter, the servant suddenly started to sob. “Thank the stars Princess Winter wasn’t there too. It’s awful. Awful!”

It took only a few seconds for Levana to become annoyed with the servant’s wails.

Winter hopped down from the table and went to put on her shoes, but Levana grabbed her wrist and dragged her after the doctor. “Not now, Winter. We’ll come back for them.”

The doctor ran. Levana wanted to. Her curiosity was agony, all her fantasies accumulating in that breathless moment. But she didn’t want to carry Winter, and princesses did not run.

Future queens did not run.

She was still gripping Winter’s hand when she smelled the smoke. Heard the screams. Felt the pounding of footsteps reverberating through the floors.

A crowd had gathered by the time they arrived. Servants and guards and thaumaturges filling up the corridor.

“WINTER!” It was Evret, his face made of relief when he spotted his child. Shoving his way through the crowd, he stooped to lift Winter into his arms, squeezing her against him. “I didn’t know where you were … I didn’t know…”

“What’s happened?” said Levana, trying to push her way into the nursery.

“No, don’t look. Don’t go in there. It’s horrible.”

“I want to see, Papa.”

“No, you don’t, darling. No, you don’t. Sweetheart—”

Levana bristled. Never did he call her that when they were in public, always hiding their relationship behind closed doors for fear of impropriety. He must have been truly shaken. He tried to grab her wrist, but she ripped her hand away. She had to see. She had to know.

“Move aside! She is my niece. Let me see her!”

The people listened. How could they not? Their faces drawn in horror, cloths pressed over their mouths to stifle the stench of smoke and coals and … she thought, certainly that wasn’t the smell of burning flesh? But it did have a familiar meatiness that turned her stomach.

When finally she reached the front of the crowd, she paused, taking in the sight through a veil of smoke. Dr. Eliot was there, along with countless guards, some still holding empty buckets that must have been used to put out the flames, others stamping out the remaining embers. The blanket was entirely gone, the playhouse reduced to a teetering wood structure, all blackened timbers and ashes. Scorch marks were left on the wallpaper and elaborate crown moldings.

Through the clustered guards, Levana could make out two bodies on the playhouse’s upper level. Obviously bodies, though from this distance they looked like little more than charred remains.

“Step back! Step away!” Dr. Eliot screamed. “Give me room to look at her. Give me space. You’re not helping!”

“Come away,” Evret said, behind her again.

Shivering, Levana stepped back, and dared to turn to face him. She didn’t have to fake the shock. The sight of it was a thousand times more terrifying than her imagination had given her. A thousand times more real.

She had done this.

Those bodies were her fault.

Selene was dead.

Though Evret was still holding Winter against his hip, and trying to block her view with his hands, Levana could see the girl craning her head to see the commotion and the chaos, the burned remains of her playhouse and her only cousin.

“Come away,” Evret said again. He took Levana’s hand, and she allowed him to guide her. Her thoughts were a daze as they made their way back through the corridors. Her stomach was writhing with a hundred emotions she couldn’t have named. Winter’s questions started coming in force. What happened, Papa? Where is Selene? What’s going on? Why does it smell like that?

She went largely ignored, answered only by kisses pressed against her thick curls.

“She is dead,” Levana murmured.

“It’s horrible,” said Evret. “A horrible, horrible accident.”

“Yes. A horrible accident.” Levana’s grip tightened around his hand. “And now … you understand? This means I will be the queen.”

Evret glanced at her, his face full of sorrow as he scooped his free arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him. He pressed a kiss against the top of her head then too.

“You don’t need to think about that now, sweetheart.”

But he was wrong.

As the knots in her stomach slowly began to loosen, it was all she could think of.