Fairest: The Lunar Chronicles: Levana's Story (6 page)

“I am not in need of a new gown, thank you, My Queen.”

“Fine, don’t try anything on, then. You will make an excellent hat stand while I’m being fitted. Come along.”

She smothered a groan, the thought of denying her sister already exhausting her.

Channary swooped ahead, and the thaumaturges and aristocrats all bowed. Walking in her sister’s wake, Levana imagined that she was the one they were really bowing to.

As she followed her sister into the palace corridor, she spotted Evret coming toward them. Her heart pattered, but Evret didn’t even look at her, merely stopped and saluted the queen as she passed, one fist clapped over his chest. Levana tried to catch his eye, but he stared at the wall over her head, expressionless as a statue.

Only when she glanced back a few steps later did she realize he had come to change shifts with one of the other guards. The changing of the guard was fast and smooth, like a well-oiled clock. Gulping, Levana faced forward again, lest she walk into a wall. This could be her chance to thank him for the pendant that was, even then, hanging around her neck, tucked beneath the collar of her dress.

She could hear Evret’s boots clacking behind her. Feel his presence tugging her toward him. The back of her neck tingled, and she imagined him looking at her. Admiring the curvature of her neck. His gaze dropping intimately down her back.

Her emotions were in tatters by the time they had reached the main corridor of the palace and turned to begin the climb toward Her Majesty’s quarters on the top floor. Channary did not like to take the elevators. She had once told Levana that she felt queenly having to lift her skirts as she went up and down the stairs.

It had taken all of Levana’s efforts not to ask if that was the same reason she lifted her skirts all those other times too.

“Your Majesty?”

Channary paused, and Levana came to a stumbling halt behind her. Turning, she saw a girl not much older than she was, dressed in plain utilitarian clothes. She was breathless and flushed, her hair falling out of a loose bun in messy chunks.

“I do apologize for my forwardness, My Queen,” said the girl, panting. She fell to one knee.

Channary sneered, disgusted. “How dare you approach me in such an informal manner? I will have you flogged for your disrespect.”

The girl shuddered. “I-I do apologize,” she stammered, as if she hadn’t been heard the first time. “I was sent by Dr. O’Connor from the AR-C med-center with an urgent message for—”

“Did I ask who sent you?” said Channary. “Did I suggest in any way that I cared where you were sent from or whether you had a message or who that message might be for? No, because I do not have the time to listen to every person who would seek an audience with me. There is a method to having your voice heard. Guards, escort this woman away.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “But—”

“Oh, stars above, I’ll handle her request,” said Levana. “Go to your fitting, as it is clearly more important than listening to a message from a girl who has run herself ragged trying to get here.”

Channary snarled. “You will not speak disrespectfully to me in front of one of my subjects.”

Levana flattened her hands against her skirt, to keep them from becoming fists. “I meant no disrespect, My Queen. Only that you seem to have a lot on your schedule today, so please, allow me to assist you with your royal duties.” She nodded at the girl, who still remained on one knee. “What is your message?”

The girl gulped. “It is for a royal guard, Your Highness. Sir Evret Hayle. His wife has gone into labor. They fear … the doctor … they have requested that he come see her right away.”

Levana felt a clamp tighten around her rib cage, forcing all the air from her lungs. She glanced back in time to catch the dawning horror on Evret’s face.

But then Channary started to laugh. “What a shame. Sir Hayle has only just begun his shift. His wife will have to wait until he is relieved. Come along, Levana.” Gathering her skirt, she began marching up the steps.

Evret looked from the girl—a nurse, perhaps, or an assistant—to the queen’s retreating back. He seemed cemented to the spot in the middle of the corridor. To leave would be to disobey a direct order from his sovereign. Such an act would mark him as a traitor, and result in what punishment Levana could only guess.

But his indecision did not wane. How desperate he must be to defy the queen.

On top of that, Levana’s own curiosity was piqued. Babies were born all the time and complications were so rare, and yet, Solstice had seemed so weak …

Levana stepped forward. “Sister?”

Channary paused, nearly to the top of the stairs.

“I am going into town, and require an escort. I am taking Sir Hayle with me.”

Her sister’s face was murderous when she turned, but Levana lifted her head and fixed her own glare upon her. She would suffer the consequences later, and she knew very well there would be consequences. But she doubted that Channary would risk being defied in public a second time, and this way she alone would take the blame. Evret would only be following orders.
Her
orders.

The electrified moment stretched on for ages. Levana waited, and imagined that she could feel Evret’s terrified heartbeat pounding into her, even from six paces away.

“Fine,” Channary finally conceded, her voice nonchalant, and all the tension seemed to melt away from them. It was a false release, Levana knew. “If you happen to pass down Lake Boulevard, do bring me back some sour apple petites, won’t you?”

With a flip of her hair, the queen turned away and continued up the stairs.

Peculiarly dizzy, Levana realized that she’d been holding her breath.

Only when Channary was no longer visible did Evret break from his watchful position. “My wife?” he said, emotion filling up his voice, his shoulders, his eyes. He walked right past Levana and grasped the nurse’s elbows, lifting her to her feet. He seemed wary and anxious, almost as if he’d been expecting this. “Is she…?”

Still pale from her encounter with the queen, the nurse took a moment to comprehend his question, before sympathy creased her brows. “We should hurry.”

*   *   *

Levana was left in a waiting room while the nurse escorted Evret down the sterile white hall of the med-center. She saw them pause at a doorway, and Evret’s face was so contorted with worry that Levana wished she could wrap her arms around him and let all of his concerns soak into her. The nurse opened the door and even from this distance Levana caught a shrill scream before Evret disappeared inside and the door shut behind him.

His wife was dying.

The nurse hadn’t said as much, but Levana knew it was true. It was clear that Evret had been hurried here because it would be his only chance to say good-bye, just as it was clear that it wasn’t a complete surprise to him. Perhaps she’d been ill. Perhaps the pregnancy had already suffered complications.

Levana remembered seeing Solstice at the funeral. How she’d looked as breakable as a porcelain vase. The concern on Evret’s face as they’d moved through the receiving line.

Levana took to pacing back and forth. A holograph node attached to the wall was broadcasting a silent drama in which all of the actors wore elaborate masks and costumes and twirled together in a graceful dance, oblivious to the empty chairs of the waiting room.

She did not leave the palace often, but now she found it refreshing to be where no one would recognize the glamour she’d been wearing since the coronation. The invisible girl, the unknown princess. She could have been anyone, for all the doctors and nurses knew. The medical center wasn’t very big—sickness was rare in Artemisia, so mostly the clinic served for setting broken bones or easing some elderly patient into death or, of course, childbirth.

Despite being small, the clinic was busy, the staff constantly darting through the halls, emerging from and disappearing into countless doorways. But Levana could think only of Evret and what was happening behind that closed door.

His wife was dying.

He would be alone.

Levana knew it was so very wrong to think, but she couldn’t fully deny the spark that flared behind her sternum.

This was fate.

This was meant to be.

His kind words at the funeral. His bashful glance during her birthday celebration. The little Earth charm.
Your friend, and most loyal servant.

Was there meaning behind the words, something he couldn’t say before now? Could he possibly want her as much as she wanted him?

Evret seemed like the type that would never disregard his vows of matrimony, no matter how much he yearned for another. And now he wouldn’t have to. He could be hers.

Thinking of it made her whole body shiver with anticipation.

How long would he wait to make his intentions known? How long would he mourn the loss of his wife before he gave himself permission to declare himself to Levana, his princess?

Waiting would be agony. She would have to let him know that it was all right for him to mourn and love at the same time. She would not judge him, not when they were so clearly destined for each other.

Fate was taking his wife away. It was as if the stars themselves were blessing their union.

The door opened down the hallway.

Without waiting for an invitation, Levana hurried forward, concern and curiosity pulsing through her veins. Just before she came to stand in the doorway, a cart was wheeled through it and she jumped back to keep the corner from jabbing her in the stomach.

Plastering her back to the wall, Levana saw that it was not just any medical cart, but one that held a tiny suspended-animation tank. The baby lying on the blue, squishy surface was screeching and fussing, small hands and wrinkled fingers flailing beside its head. Its eyes were not yet open.

Levana had the sudden, encompassing instinct to touch the child. To run her finger along those tiny knuckles. To stroke the short tufts of black hair sprouting from that tender scalp.

But then it was gone, wheeled fervently down the corridor.

Levana turned back toward the doorway. As the door slipped shut, she saw Evret in his guard uniform, hunched over his wife. A white blanket. Blood on the sheets. A sob.

The door closed.

The sound of Evret’s sob continued on in Levana’s ears, bouncing around inside her skull. Again and again and again.

*   *   *

An hour passed. She spent more time in the waiting room. Grew bored. Passed by the closed door separating her from Evret a dozen times, but he never emerged. She began to grow hungry, and realized that all she would have to do is tell one person her identity and demand they bring her something to eat, and any person in this building would fall over themselves to fulfill her wishes. The knowing of it made her want it less, and she forced herself to ignore the gnawing at her stomach.

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.”