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.
A spiderweb of cracks burst across the glass, spindling toward the silver frame. A hundred veiled strangers looked back at her. She screamed again and grabbed for anything in reach—a vase, a perfume bottle, a jewelry box—throwing them all at the mirror, watching as pieces of glass splintered and shattered, broken slivers crashing to the floor. Finally she picked up the small chair beside the vanity, cushioned in white velvet.
With that final crash, the mirror was destroyed, shards of glass scattering halfway across the bedroom.
The guards burst through the door. “Your Majesty! Is everything all right?”
Panting, Levana threw the chair aside and crumpled to her knees, ignoring the piece of glass that cut into her shin. Trembling, she adjusted the veil over her head, making sure she was fully hidden.
“Your Majesty?”
“Don’t come any closer!” she yelled, holding out her hand.
The guards paused.
“I want—” Nearly choking on the words, she scrubbed the tears from her face. It was a struggle to compose herself, but her voice was firm when she spoke again. “I want all the mirrors in the palace destroyed. Every one of them. Check the servants’ quarters, the washrooms, everywhere. Check the entire city! Destroy them and throw their shattered pieces into the lake where I will never have to look at them again!”
After a long silence, one of the guards murmured, “My Queen.”
She could not tell if his words were to say that it would be done, or that she was talking like a madwoman.
She didn’t care.
“Once all of the mirrors are destroyed, I want to commission special glass for the palace, to replace all of the windows, and every glass surface. Glass that holds no reflection. None at all.”
“Is that possible, My Queen?”
Exhaling slowly, Levana grabbed for the edge of the vanity and pulled herself to her feet as gracefully as she could. She adjusted the veil again before turning to face the guards. “If it is not, then we will all live in a palace without any glass at all.”
* * *
“Yes. Yes. This will work. I’m pleased.”
The technician bowed, his face contorted with obvious relief, but Levana was already ignoring him, her attention captured by the special screen she’d commissioned to be installed into the silver frame of her sister’s mirror. The destroyed glass had been thrown into the lake with all the rest of it.
She drew a finger across the screen, testing its functionality. Most of the entertainment on Luna was broadcast through the holograph nodes or on the enormous screens set into the walls of the domes themselves. But comms and video feeds from Earth didn’t always translate to the holographs, so her newly commissioned netscreen was more akin to Earthen technology. It was as useful as it was beautiful. She would need it for the surveillance she hoped to conduct on the people of the outer sectors. For her discussions with the Commonwealth emperor. For the newsfeeds she would be monitoring, closely, once her army was unleashed.
A good queen was a well-informed queen.
She paused when one of the Earthen newsfeeds showed the royal family of the Eastern Commonwealth. Emperor Rikan standing alone at the podium with his country’s flag like a sunrise behind him. The young prince stood beside a sour-faced political adviser, his eyes downcast. He was a string bean of a child, not much older than Winter. But it was his father, expression equally miserable, that held Levana’s attention.
The press conference was to discuss their recent tragedy.
The beloved empress was dead, having contracted none other than Levana’s disease during a philanthropic trip to a plague-ridden town at the western edge of the Commonwealth.
Dead of letumosis.
Levana laughed—she couldn’t help herself—remembering Channary’s dreamy, offhanded comment that the empress might someday find herself assassinated.
This was not an assassination. This was not murder.
This was fate.
Simple, exquisite, blindingly obvious fate.
No longer could Earth flaunt its perfect royal family, in their perfect little palace, on their perfect little planet. No longer could they claim the happiness that had eluded Levana for so long.
“My Queen?”
She turned back to the technician. He was clutching a pair of gloves in his hands, and he looked terrified.
“Yes?”
“I only wanted to mention that … you are aware, I hope, that your—that glamours do not translate through netscreens? Should you wish to send any video comms, or conduct any broadcasts, that is.”
A smile stretched across Levana’s lips. “Do not worry. I have already commissioned something special from my dressmaker for just such an occasion.” She glanced at the sheer lacy veil that had been delivered a few days before, much more sophisticated than the canopy curtains, yet with all the same mystery and security they’d afforded her.
Dismissing the technician, Levana turned back to watch the muted feed of the Commonwealth’s royal family. Since her fight with Evret over a month before and her assault on the palace’s mirrors, she’d delved into her role as queen more than she’d ever done before. She hardly slept. She hardly ate. She and Sybil Mira and the rest of the court spent long hours discussing trade and manufacturing agreements between the outer sectors, and new methods to increase productivity. More guards were needed to patrol the outer sectors—so more guards were drafted and began their training. Some of the young men they’d tried to draft didn’t want to be guards at all, especially those who had family in the same sectors they would be monitoring. Levana solved the problem by threatening the livelihoods of those very families they were so concerned about, and watched how quickly the young men changed their minds. The curfew, instated for the necessary rest and protection of the workers, had not been popular to begin with, but after Levana had suggested they make public examples of those civilians who refused to obey the new laws, the people began to see the reasonableness of such strict expectations.