Cinder frowned, wondering why Levana could control her in the courtyard, but failed now. Was it because her own mental strength had been too fragile then, while trying to maintain control of so many people, or was the queen growing weak? Perhaps the video showing her true face had fragmented her abilities.
It did not seem to be affecting her ability to manipulate Thorne, but, to be fair, Cinder was pretty sure a Lunar toddler could have manipulated Thorne.
Levana sighed. “Why, Selene? Why do you want to take everything from me?”
Cinder narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who tried to kill me, remember? You’re the one sitting on my throne. You’re the one who married my boyfriend!” The word was out before she’d contemplated it, and Cinder thought it was the first time she’d ever said it aloud. She wasn’t even sure if it was true. But it felt sort of right, except for the whole being-married-to-her-aunt thing.
But Levana didn’t seem to be listening.
“You don’t understand how hard I worked for all this. How many years of planning, of laying the foundation. The disease, the shells, the antidote, the soldiers, the operatives, the carefully orchestrated attacks.” She pressed a pale hand against her temple. She looked miserable. “It was done. It was perfect. He would have announced our engagement at the ball, but, no—you had to be there. Back from the dead to haunt me. And you come here, and you ask my people to hate me, and you show that … that horrid video, and fill their head with your lies.”
“My lies! You’re the one who brainwashes them. I just showed them the truth.”
Levana flinched, turning her head even farther away like she couldn’t stand to be reminded of what she was hiding underneath the illusion of beauty.
Exhaling sharply, Cinder stepped forward.
Thorne stepped back.
She grimaced. So much for hoping Levana was caught up enough in her own delusions to stop paying attention.
“What I can’t understand,” Cinder said, easing her tone, “is how you could have done that to me. I was just a kid, and you…” Her heart twisted. “I know those are burn scars you have. I have the same scar tissue where I lost my leg. Knowing what it’s like, living with that—how could you do it to someone else?”
“You weren’t supposed to survive,” Levana snapped, as if that made it better. “At least I would have had the mercy to kill you, to be done with it.”
“But I didn’t die.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed. It is not my fault someone thought you might be worth saving. It is not my fault they turned you into … into that.” She cast a halfhearted gesture toward Cinder.
Cinder clenched her teeth, wanting to argue the point, but she bit her tongue. Levana had been living with her excuses for a long time.
She stole a glance at Thorne. He was sucking on his teeth and staring up at the ceiling. He looked bored.
Cinder tried taking a step backward, like a show of peace, but Thorne stayed where he was.
“Who did it to you, anyway?” she asked, aiming for gentle. “Who hurt you like that?”
Levana sniffed and, finally, dared to look at Cinder. There was all the beauty glistening on the surface, but now that Cinder had seen beneath it, she couldn’t unsee the truth. Whether it was her cyborg programming or Levana’s own weakness, she could see her as she was now. Scarred and deformed.
There was a twinge of sympathy in her stomach, but only a twinge.
“You don’t know?” Levana asked.
“Why should I?”
“You stupid child.” A lock of hair fell over Levana’s face. “Because it was your mother.”
Eighty-Nine
The word mother was foreign to Cinder’s ear. Mother. A woman who had given birth to her, but that was all. She had no memories of her, only rumors—horrifying tales that said Queen Channary was more cruel even than Levana, though her reign had been much shorter.
“My own sweet sister,” Levana purred. “Would you like to hear how it happened?”
No.
But Cinder couldn’t form the word.
“She was thirteen and I was six. She was learning how to use her gift, taking great amounts of pleasure in manipulating those around her—though I was always her favorite target. She was very good. As I am. As you are. It is in our blood.”
Cinder shivered. It is in our blood. She hated to think that she shared blood with anyone in this family.
“At that age, it was her favorite trick to convince me that she loved me dearly. Having never felt love from our parents, it was not a hard thing to get me to believe. And then, when she was sure I would do anything for her, she would torture me. On this particular day, she told me to put my hand into a fireplace. When I refused, she made me do it anyway.” Levana smiled as she told the story, a deranged look. “As you’ve seen, by the time she let me go, it was not only my hand that suffered.”
Bile was filling Cinder’s mouth. A child so young, so impressionable.
It would have been so easy.
Yet a cruelty too impossible to fathom.
Her mother?
“After that, they started to call me the ugly princess of Artemisia, the sad little deformed creature. While Channary was the beautiful one. Always the beautiful one. But I practiced my glamour, and I told myself that someday they would forget about the fire and the scars. Someday I would be queen and I would make sure the people loved me. I would be the most beautiful queen Luna had ever known.”
Cinder tightened her grip on her weapons. “Is that why you killed her? So you could be queen? Or was it because she … did that. To you.”
One of Levana’s perfect eyebrows lifted. “Who says that I killed her?”
“Everyone says it. Even down on Earth we’ve heard the rumors. That you killed your sister, and your own husband, and me, all for your own ambitions.”
A coolness passed over Levana’s face and she leaned slowly back against her throne. “What I have done, I have done for Luna. My struggles, my sacrifices. Everything has been for Luna. All my life I’ve been the only one who cared, the only one who could see the potential of our people. We are destined for something so much greater than this rock, but all Channary cared about were her dresses and her conquests. She was a horrible queen. She was a monster.” She paused, nostrils flaring. “But no. I did not kill her, though I’ve wished a thousand times that I had. I should have killed her before she ruined everything. Before she had you, a healthy baby girl who would grow up to be just like her!”
Cinder snarled. “I don’t know who I would have become if I’d grown up here,” she said, “but I am not like her.”
“Oh, yes,” Levana mused, skipping from word to word like a stream over rocks. “On that note, I believe you are correct. When I first saw your glamour at the Commonwealth ball, I was surprised at how much you resembled her, once the dirt and grime and awful metal extremities were removed. But that seems to be where the similarities end.” Her lips stretched, bloodred, curving around perfect pearl teeth. “No, little niece. You are much more like me. Willing to do anything to be admired. To be wanted. To be queen.”
Cinder’s body went rigid. “I’m not like you, either. I’m doing this because you’ve given me no choice. You had your chance. You couldn’t have just been fair. Been a good ruler who treats her people with respect. And Earth! You wanted an alliance, Earth wanted peace … why couldn’t you just … agree to it? Why the disease? Why the attacks? Did you honestly believe that was the way to get them to love you?”