Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection

“Help me, Sir Clay! Save me!” Winter cowered behind the fort of pillows. Though their fortress was strong, she knew it would not keep out the villains forever.

Luckily, at the most opportune of moments, Sir Jacin Clay leaped to her defense, brandishing the legendary Earthlight Saber—in reality, a wooden training sword he’d gotten from his father for his seventh birthday.

“You’ll never have the princess!” Jacin yelled. “I’ll protect her with my life, you Earthen fiend!” He swung and jabbed at the air, while Winter abandoned the wall of pillows and scurried beneath the bed.

“Sir Clay! Behind you!”

Jacin pivoted to face her at the same time that Winter sprang upward.

“Princess?” he asked, his eyes twitching with uncertainty.

Winter grinned a wicked grin and tackled him around the middle, sending them both crashing onto the mattress. “A-ha!” she bellowed. “I have lured you into my trap! You believed I was your beloved princess, but it was only my glamour tricking you. I am none other than Vile Velamina, the infamous space pirate!”

“Not Vile Velamina,” said Jacin, with a feigned gasp of horror. “What have you done with my princess?”

“She is being held prisoner aboard my spaceship. You will never see her again. Bwa-ha-ha!”

“No! I will rescue her!”

Jacin—who was starting to leave Winter behind in the height department—tossed her easily off the bed. She screeched and landed on the floor with a thump. It wasn’t a hard throw, but her knee burned where it hit the rug.

Jacin climbed to his feet, steadying himself on the plush mattress, and thrust the point of the sword at her. “Actually, it is I who have lured you into a trap, you stinking pirate. You are now precisely where I want you.” Reaching up, he grabbed onto one of the tassels that hung from the canopy on Winter’s bed. “With a yank on this rope, a trapdoor will open beneath you, and you will plummet straight into…” He hesitated.

“Oh—the menagerie!” Winter suggested, eyes brightening. “Ryu’s cage. And the wolf is very, very hungry and will no doubt gobble the pirate up!”

Jacin scowled at her. “Are you plotting your own demise?”

“That was the princess speaking. I was implanting the thought directly into your brain. Velamina has me tied up, but not unconscious.”

Jacin started to laugh. “What she said, then.” He made a great show of pulling on the tassel. The curtains didn’t budge, but Winter played along, screaming in anguish and rolling around on the carpet as if she’d just been thrown into a den with the most dangerous feral wolf of all time.

Jacin held the sword toward the ceiling. “Now I must find my princess and return her safely to the palace, where I will be rewarded with great honor.”

“Honor?” Winter sneered. “Aren’t you going to ask for riches, or something? Like a mansion in AR-4?”

Shaking his head, Jacin stared dreamily toward outer space. “Seeing my princess’s smile when she is returned safely home is all the reward that I need.”

“Ew, gross.” Winter threw a pillow at his head, but Jacin dodged it and hopped down from the bed.

“Now then—with the pirate vanquished I have only to find her spaceship.”

Winter pointed at the glass doors that opened out onto her balcony. “It’s out there.”

Chest puffed like a proud hero, Jacin strutted to the doors.

“Hold on!” Winter jumped to her feet and grabbed a belt from her wardrobe. She fluffed her thick curls around her face, trying to leave Vile Velamina behind and return to her sweet, demure princess role instead.

On the balcony, she made a great show of tying herself to the rail.

“You do realize,” Jacin said, watching apprehensively, “that if anyone looked up here right now, they’d think you really were in trouble.”

“Pffft. No one would believe that you could manipulate me so easily.”

His jaw twitched, just a little, and Winter felt a sting of guilt. Though he pretended otherwise, she knew Jacin was sensitive about how poorly his Lunar gift was developing. At almost eight years old he should have been starting glamour practice and emotional manipulation, but it was becoming apparent that Jacin had inherited his father’s lack of skill. He was almost as ungifted as a shell.

Winter knew it was bad—shameful, even—to have so little talent, especially here in the capital city of Artemisia.

On the other hand, her gift had started developing when she was only four, and was becoming stronger every day. She was already meeting once a week with a tutor, Master Gertman, who said she was growing up to be one of the most talented pupils he’d ever had.

“All right, I’m ready,” she said, cinching the belt around her wrists.

Jacin shook his head. “You’re crazy, is what you are.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then tossed her hair off one shoulder and screwed up her face in distress. “Won’t some strong, brave hero come save me from these awful pirates? Help! Help!”

But Jacin’s frown remained, his attention caught on something over her shoulder. “Who’s that, in the throne room?”

Winter glanced back. Her chambers were in the private wing of Artemisia Palace, where the royal family slept, just down the hall from her father and stepmother’s rooms. They were on the third floor, with a marvelous view of Lake Artemisia below, and she could see most of the opposite wing of the palace, which wrapped around the lake’s far side.

At the very center of the palace was the throne room. It was the only room that had a balcony jutting far out over the lake’s waters—with no rail or barrier to provide protection if anyone stepped too close to the edge.

And there was a woman standing there, peering into the waters below.

Winter didn’t recognize her, but the uniform of a palace servant was clear even from far away.

“What’s she doing?” she asked.

She had barely finished speaking before Jacin turned and started to run.

Heart thumping, Winter scrambled to undo the belt around her wrists. “Wait—Jacin! Wait for me!”

He did not wait, and it didn’t occur to Winter to use her gift to force him to wait until he was already out her bedroom door. Finally she managed to get the belt undone. With one hurried look back toward the throne room, relieved to see that the woman hadn’t moved, she bolted after Jacin.

Her guard—her real guard—startled when she burst out into the corridor and followed at a fast clip as she flew down the hallway, around the familiar white-stone curves of the palace. No one tried to stop her, though guards and nobility and thaumaturges alike stepped out of her way as she barreled past.

From a distance she watched Jacin’s white-blond hair disappear through the enormous black doors of the throne room. The doors had almost shut again when she wedged her arm between them and shoved her way inside.

Jacin stood only a few steps into the room and Winter nearly crashed into him, catching herself on his outstretched arm instead.

“No!” the woman gasped. “Take her out of here. Her Highness needn’t see this.” Her voice was wobbly and cracked, her eyes bloodshot. She was young, maybe in her early twenties, and she was pretty in a natural way. No glamour was creating her rosy skin or thick brown hair, but neither was a glamour hiding the hollowness of her cheeks or the wild panic in her eyes. Everything in her expression suggested a brokenness, a desperation, and a heartbreak later Winter understood.

The woman stood barely half a step from the balcony’s edge. She intended to jump.

Of her own will.

Winter’s jaw hung open. How could anyone wish that for oneself?

“Please,” Winter said, taking a hesitant step forward. “Step back now. It’ll be all right.”

Jacin planted a hand on Winter’s shoulder, as if he meant to hold her back, but with a twitch of her thoughts Winter sent his hand right back to his side. She heard his unhappy intake of breath but ignored it as she stepped beyond his reach.

Behind her, she heard the clomp of her guards’ footsteps as they caught up, the bang of the doors admitting them.

But they were only guards. They had as much talent as Jacin or Winter’s father—which is to say, almost none at all. They could not help this poor woman.

She could, though. She could save her.

Gulping, Winter took another step.

The woman had started to cry. “Please,” she pleaded. “Please go away, Your Highness. Please let me do this.” She hid her face behind her hands and Winter noticed a purple-yellow bruise on her arm.

“It will be all right now. You can trust me.”

Just come back.

The woman recoiled, and her expression began to change. No longer frightened, but rather dark and determined. She clenched her jaw and looked down at the lapping waves. The lake was unfathomably deep and spread all the way to the horizon, as far as one could see.

Her toe crept back, teetering toward the edge.

Horror expanded in Winter’s chest. The woman needed help, needed her help …

She squeezed her fists and, with her mind, reached for that toe. She was aware of the danger—if she accidentally knocked the woman off-balance, then she might send her off the balcony even while she was trying to save her.

But it was instinctual, as it had been from her first lessons with Master Gertman.

She was careful. She was slow and gentle. She eased her will into the woman’s toe and the sole of her foot and her ankle and up to her knee and her thigh.

She brought the woman’s foot steadily down.

The woman whimpered. “No. Please. Please.”

“It’s all right,” Winter cooed, urging forward the other leg now. One step.

A second step.

The woman retreated, ever so slowly, from the balcony’s edge.

After the third step, she sagged, the strength draining from her, and Winter allowed her to collapse onto the glass floor.

Relief rushed through her and she went to the woman, kneeling beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder. The woman’s sobs came harder.

“You’re all right now,” said Winter. “You’re safe.”

When the woman only cried harder, Winter did her best to comfort her. She persuaded the woman that it was true, that she was safe and everything would be all right. She imprinted pleasant emotions on the surface of her mind. It was the most difficult of the manipulations that Lunars were capable of—to change not only people’s vision or to bend their bodies to one’s will, but to change the very depth of their own feelings.

But Winter believed she could do it. She had to do it. This was what she’d been practicing for.

She chose happiness. A soft blanket of joy settling over the woman’s thoughts. She didn’t stop until a grateful smile stretched over the woman’s mouth, warming Winter to the core.

“Th-thank you, Princess,” the woman said, her voice listless and trembling.

Winter beamed back. “You’re welcome.”

She had nearly forgotten Jacin and her guards watching them until more footsteps crashed into the room.

“What is the meaning of this?”

She froze, all sense of comfort vanishing at her fingertips. As if a string had been cut, the servant moaned and crumpled onto her side.

Swallowing hard, Winter glanced back. Her stepmother, Queen Levana, along with a handful of guards and her two highest-ranking thaumaturges—Sybil Mira and Aimery Park—all stood scowling at the display. Winter and Jacin and the woman whose smile had already collapsed into an empty look.

Winter’s personal guard stammered what explanation he could, and Winter looked away, unable to bear her stepmother’s disapproving frown.

“It seems the girl is in need of assistance.” This was Thaumaturge Park, his voice like a gentle stream over smooth rocks. He had the loveliest voice of any person in the court, and yet hearing it always sent chills down Winter’s spine.

“She needs to be put back to work,” said Queen Levana. “I will not abide idleness in my palace. If she creates such a disturbance again, she will be dealt with in court. Now—I want everyone out of my throne room this instant.”

The servant curled in on herself, limp as a helpless doll.

Winter tried to give the servant a gift of tranquility as the guards dragged her away, but the woman’s expression was so desolate that she had no way of knowing if she’d succeeded.

* * *

“What happened in the throne room today, Winter?”

Her heart jumped and she craned her head back to look at her father as he set aside the holographic storybook he’d just finished reading. Winter’s emotions had been jumbled all afternoon—torn between pride that she had rescued that poor woman and distress that she had needed rescuing in the first place.

Here in the palace, they were always surrounded by a wealth of art and splendor, food and entertainment. Workers, even regular servants, were said to be treated more fairly in Artemisia than any other place on Luna. So what could be so bad that she would consider taking her own life?

“There was a servant who was … she was going to jump from the throne room, into the lake,” said Winter. “I think … I think she wanted to hurt herself. So I stopped her.”

Her father nodded, and she could tell he’d already heard the story, probably from the guards who had been on duty at the time. Everyone liked her dad. Despite being married to the queen, the other guards still treated him like a friend, and more than once Winter and Jacin had gotten in trouble when her personal guards had told him of their mischief.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I don’t understand why she wanted to do it, though.”

Her father was silent for a long time before he tightened his arm around Winter’s shoulders, drawing her against his chest. His heartbeat was comforting and steady.

“I’m proud of you for trying to do the right thing,” he finally said, though the way he said it made Winter frown. Trying? “But I need you to understand that there are often other ways to help someone than by manipulating them with your gift. It’s usually best to talk to them first and then figure out how best to help them.” He hesitated before adding, “When you use your gift on someone without their permission, you’re taking choice and free will away from them, and that isn’t fair.”

Winter pulled away, no longer comforted by his heartbeat. She turned to stare at him. “She was going to jump. She would have died.”

“I understand, Winter. I’m not saying you did anything wrong, and I know you were doing what you felt was the right thing to do. And maybe it was. But … it’s becoming clear that you’re going to be talented, much more talented than I ever was. And while I’m proud of you, I also know that being strong with our gift can sometimes lead to us making poor decisions. Decisions that can hurt the people around us if we aren’t careful.”

Winter’s jaw tightened, and she was surprised at the hurt and anger that began to churn in her stomach. Her father didn’t understand. He couldn’t possibly understand—after all, he couldn’t have helped that woman today. Not like she had.

Winter had saved the woman’s life. She was a hero.

Her lip started to tremble, and her father’s face softened. He pulled her back against him again and kissed the top of her head.

“You’re not in trouble,” he said. “I hope that girl will get the help she needs now, and that she’ll thank you someday. I just need you to know … there are people in this palace, and on all of Luna, who see manipulation as the quickest way to solve every problem. While it might be useful at times, it’s rarely the only way, or the best way. And the person you would manipulate … they do deserve to have a choice. Do you understand?”

She nodded, but she was pretty sure that he didn’t understand.

She loved her father with all her heart, but he would never know what it was like to help someone with a mere thought. To give them happiness or to change how they saw the world.

She was going to use her gift to help people. To make Artemisia better.

Saving that servant had been only the beginning.

* * *

For the months that followed, Winter focused more on her studies than ever before. Her glamour became stronger. Her thoughts became sharper. She practiced on Jacin when she could, though after that first talk with her father, she made sure to always ask his permission.

She kept her eye out for the servant who was still alive because of her. Winter always reserved a special smile for her, and every time their paths crossed in the palace, she made sure to give her an extra boost of pleasant emotions.

She made sure the woman was proud of the great work she did here in the palace.

She fed her contentment from living in such a beautiful city.

She coaxed her into feeling loved and appreciated, safe and calm—a steady drip of every good emotion Winter could think to give her, so she might never feel tempted to end her life again.

A year passed, then two, then three—but Winter started to notice a change in what she had begun to think of as a quiet companionship between her and the servant. She noticed that when the woman saw Winter coming, she would often change directions before Winter could get close enough to alter her thoughts. She was avoiding her.

Winter couldn’t understand why.

Then one afternoon, during her weekly session with Master Gertman, he told Winter that she had become so strong in her gift and so far exceeded his expectations that she might be talented enough to someday become a thaumaturge. It was a great honor. A role reserved for only the most talented Lunars in their entire kingdom.

Winter preened like a peacock all afternoon. She bragged about it to Jacin, and was annoyed when he didn’t look nearly as impressed as she thought he ought to.

She went to bed that night with a pleased grin on her lips.

Hours later, she was awoken by the deafening sound of a gunshot coming from her father’s room.

She would have nightmares for years to come. Her father’s blood. The thaumaturge who had shot him, now lying dead, too, in the room’s corner. Winter still standing in her nightgown and the feel of disbelieving tears on her cheeks and how she was unable to move, like her toes had been stitched to the carpet.

It was Selene all over again. One moment the person she loved most in the whole world was there, and then they were gone. Selene, taken by fire and smoke. Her father, by a thaumaturge and a gun.

In the years to come, it would not be the blood or her father’s dead eyes or the guards rushing past her that Winter would most remember.

It was her stepmother. The queen. Wracked by such heartbroken sobs that Winter thought they might never stop echoing in her head. Those wails would haunt her nightmares all her life.

At nine years old, Winter had begun to realize that it wasn’t normal for a queen to be married to a guard. She had begun to understand that there was something strange about such a match, even embarrassing.

But hearing her stepmother’s cries that night, she had understood why Levana had chosen her father. She loved him. In spite of the rumors and the glares and the disapproving frowns, she had loved him.

From that night, Winter had started to fear the thaumaturges. They were not honorable members of the court. They were not her friends or her allies.

She would never be one of them, no matter how much praise her gift brought her.

* * *

Winter gasped awake, her stepmother’s sobs still echoing in her head, leftover remnants from the nightmare. She was drenched in cold sweat.

It had been years since her father’s murder, and months since she’d dreamed of it, but the shock and horror felt the same every time.

Not bothering to wait for her pulse to slow, Winter pushed herself from the bed. She fumbled around in her wardrobe for a pair of soft-soled slippers and pinned back her wild curls before slipping into the corridor.

If the guard who stood watch at her door was surprised to see her up in the middle of the night, he didn’t show it. It was not a rare occurrence. There had been a time when she sneaked down nearly every night to the palace wing where the guards and their families lived, back when the nightmare had plagued her in earnest. Those nights when she and Jacin would fix themselves mugs of melted cream-and-chocolate and watch stupid dramas on the holograph nodes. When he would pretend that he didn’t notice her crying as she pressed her face against his shoulder.

This night, though, she did not make it all the way to the guards’ private wing.

Rather, as she approached the main thoroughfare of the palace, she heard chatter bouncing off the windows. The clomp of booted feet. A pair of maids whispered sadly in an alcove, startling and curtsying when they noticed Winter in their midst.

She followed the commotion and found it centered in one of the libraries.

Thaumaturge Aimery Park stood near a window. He was wearing his crimson coat, even though it was the middle of the night. “Your Highness, what are you doing awake?”

Winter did not like Thaumaturge Park, though she was smart enough not to let it show. She couldn’t even pinpoint what it was about him that set her nerves to vibrating when he was nearby.

He always smiled when he saw her, but it was the smile of a vulture.

Not wanting to mention the nightmare, Winter answered him, “I thought I heard something.”

He nodded. “Something tragic has occurred, young princess. You do not need to see.”

He looked back out the window, and despite his warning, he didn’t stop Winter as she made her way to another window, where two guards were looking down toward the gardens.

Winter gasped.

A body was sprawled out in the fountain beneath the window. Blood filling the basin. Limbs turned at odd angles.

She knew, though it was too far to see for sure, that it was the servant woman. The one she’d saved years ago, when she was only a child. The one who Winter had been feeding happiness to for more than half her young life. At least, she thought she had.

Winter stumbled back.

“She was ill, Princess,” said Aimery. “It is terrible, but these things do happen.”

Unable to speak around the emotion clogging her throat, Winter turned and rushed from the room. Walking at first, then faster, faster. Behind her, she heard the familiar clomp of boots as her guard chased after her. Let him run. Let him chase.

She ran as fast as she could, arms pumping, feet barely touching the cool floor.

When she reached the wing where the guards lived, she passed Jacin’s father, Sir Garrison Clay, on his way to start his next shift. He was a palace guard, like Winter’s father had been. They had been in training together years before and had been friends from the start—which is how she’d known Jacin all her life too.

“Highness,” said Garrison, eyes widening when he saw her and took in what must have been a look of shock. “What’s wrong?”

“Is Jacin awake?”

“I don’t think so. Are you all right?”

She nodded and whispered, “Just another nightmare.”

His expression was understanding as he turned and headed back to the apartment he shared with Jacin and his wife, along with two other guards and their families, all in about the same amount of space as Winter’s private chambers. He let her inside with a fatherly squeeze of her shoulder before leaving—it was not acceptable for a guard to be late for duty, even if it was the princess herself who came knocking on his door.

Jacin was still asleep, but he was a light sleeper, and his eyes snapped open the moment Winter creaked open the door. His mother’s heavy breathing could be heard from the cot on the other side of the room. “What is it?” he whispered, pushing himself upward.

Winter took a step forward, but hesitated. For years, it would have felt like the most natural thing in the world for her to crawl into bed beside him. After all, he had comforted her more times than she could count after her father died.

But lately she could sense something changing. Jacin was fourteen now, and no longer the slightly gangly boy she’d grown up with. It seemed like he was taller and stronger every day.

There had been recent changes in herself, too, though she wasn’t sure if he’d noticed.

Suddenly, having never before cared about all the court whispers of “propriety” and “decorum,” Winter found herself questioning the meaning of her oldest, dearest friendship.

“Winter?”

“She’s dead,” she stammered. “The servant. She … jumped out a window, into the gardens. She—”

She started to cry.

Jacin’s face twisted and he held his arms toward her.

All her concerns vanished as she scrambled onto the bed and buried her face in his chest. She was an idiot to think that getting older changed anything. This was, and would always be, the only place she belonged.

* * *

“Good afternoon, Sir Owen,” Winter said as she stepped out of her quarters the next morning. She gave a curtsy to her guard, guilty for having made him chase her halfway through the palace the night before, but he neither looked at her nor acknowledged her greeting. Which was the way of the guards. They were there to serve and to protect, and to act as a target and a shield for any intruder that might want to harm the royal family. They were not friends. They were not confidants.

But Winter couldn’t always bring herself to ignore them as they ignored her.

She glided down the hall on her way to her tutoring session and spotted Jacin waiting for her as soon as she turned the corner into an elevator bank. She smiled—an instinctive reaction—though it fell once she took in his expression. A frown creased Jacin’s brow.

He glanced once at her guard, who had followed a respectful distance in her wake, before dipping his head toward her. “They found a note.”

“A note?”

“From the servant. The one that…” He didn’t have to finish. “My dad is on the team conducting the investigation. It was found in the servant’s quarters. Probably won’t be made public, but he read it before it was taken away.”

“And it was a … suicide note?” she asked, her heart pattering. The words chilled her. Suicide was always met with suspicion in their society. Everyone knew, even twelve-year-old princesses, that an apparent suicide could just as easily have been a murder caused through manipulation. That was how almost all of the queen’s formal executions were carried out, after all. Hand the convicted perpetrators a sharp blade and let them drain out their own lives.

But the crown did not have a monopoly on the Lunar gift, much as the queen may have wished it so. No death could ever be proven a true suicide, and few murders were ever solved.

“What did it say?” Winter asked.

“It wasn’t murder. She definitely meant to do it.” Jacin’s voice stayed low as they stepped into the elevator, along with her stoic guard, and he said nothing else until they’d stepped out again and left the guard to follow a few paces behind.

Winter frowned. Much as she’d hoped that it was a misunderstanding, she wasn’t surprised. No one had been manipulating the woman in the throne room before Winter rescued her. Or thought that she’d rescued her. She couldn’t help wondering how many attempts the woman had made to take her life before she finally succeeded.

“But why?”

Jacin’s gaze darted around the hallway. A few young aristocrats wandered by, probably having just finished with their own tutoring sessions, and when they noticed the princess they stopped to gawk at her. Winter ignored them. She was used to gawking.

Jacin scowled every time and seemed relieved when they passed.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

She wasn’t sure at all, but she nodded anyway. What could drive a person to such a decision? What could make them think there were no other options? Especially when there were doctors and specialists who could ensure you never felt sad or lonely or frightened again.

Jacin swallowed hard. “She was pregnant.”

Her feet stalled. Jacin paused with her, his brow drawn tight.

“Pregnant?”

It clarified nothing. She’d only ever known women to be happy upon discovering a pregnancy.

Jacin’s jaw tightened. He had gone from looking sorry to angry in half a heartbeat. His blue eyes, normally so bright, were now shadowed with a fury Winter rarely saw. “The note said that Thaumaturge Park is—was the father.”

She stared.

“Evidently, he’s been manipulating her for a long time.” Jacin looked away, seething. “No one knows exactly how long it’s been going on. Or … what methods exactly he’d been using to…” His face was reddening, his breath erratic and his knuckles white.

What methods.

This was a horror that Winter knew of, yet so few spoke of it. Manipulation of the strong against the weak. You could make a person do anything, and though there were laws against it, with the powerful among the elite and the enforcers, who was to stop them?

She recalled the desperation in the woman’s eyes, the desperation that had gotten stronger over the years.

Winter pressed a hand against her stomach. Her mouth was suddenly stinging and sour and she couldn’t swallow fast enough. She would be sick.

“I’m sorry.” Jacin held her elbow. “I didn’t know if I should tell you or not. I know … I know you have to see him…”

Only in the court. She would only have to see him among the court.

It would still be far too much. “Will they do anything to him?” she asked.

But Jacin didn’t have to answer.

Aimery was a great favorite of the queen. No repercussions would come to him for this crime.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Winter accepted a brief embrace from Jacin before pulling away. He stayed with her for the rest of the walk to her session, but she hardly noticed his presence as her mind sorted through this terrible information.

The woman’s desperation.

The bruises that she sometimes noticed on her arms, only half covered by the sleeves of her uniform.

And Aimery looking down at her from the library. “These things do happen…”

She stopped suddenly beside a potted plant and bent over, heaving into the soil. Jacin and the guard both dropped to her side. Jacin’s sure hand on her back, comforting. The guard asking if he should call for a medic.

She shook her head. “Something I ate,” she said, spitting as daintily as she could. “But … perhaps, if a servant could clean up…”

“I’ll alert someone straightaway.”

Nothing else was said of it, but Winter felt no better. Her stomach was still churning.

She had rescued the woman. She believed she had saved her.

When really she had handed her right back into the grip of her tormenter. She had allowed him to keep abusing her for years, and the woman couldn’t even have fought against it—not when Winter was forcing her to be happy, to be content, to just keep accepting it.

Winter had not saved her at all.

* * *

“You are distracted today, Your Highness.”

Winter pulled her gaze away from the servant girl who was a constant fixture in her tutoring sessions. The one who kept her eyes lowered and her hands clasped in her lap. Who said nothing. Who was but a tool for Winter’s education. Over the past year, Winter had made the girl laugh and swoon, dance and touch her nose, fall into a deep sleep. She still did not know the girl’s name.

“Your Highness?” said Master Gertman. “Did you hear me?”

Winter smiled at her instructor. “I apologize. I’m still … a little upset, I think, about the servant. The other day.”

“Ah, yes. I heard it was the same girl you kept from jumping from the throne room when you were young.” Master Gertman laced his fingers together. “It is not for you to worry about, Princess. Tragic things happen sometimes, even here in Artemisia.”

Tragic. Tragic. Everyone said it as though the word had meaning.

But was the woman’s death the tragedy, or her life?

She looked again at the servant girl, waiting to be manipulated. She had a good life here in the palace, didn’t she? Winter never did anything awful to her during her trainings, never hurt her or forced her to hurt herself. She gave her pretty illusions to see. She fed only happy emotions into her brain.

For her service, the girl and her family were richly rewarded. It was better than anyone in the outer sectors could hope for.

Wasn’t it?

But looking at her now, Winter noticed, for the first time, a strained whiteness around the girl’s knuckles.

She was tense. Maybe even frightened. Of Winter? Of the tutor? Of one of the other pupils who trained here throughout the day?

Winter’s entire world was spinning and it occurred to her with sudden clarity that this was wrong. Her training sessions. The thaumaturges. The entire Lunar gift. The power that the strong, like she and the queen and Aimery, held over the weak. Like this servant girl. Like Jacin.

Like Winter’s father.

It was exactly what he had tried to tell her all those years ago.

“Try again, Princess,” prompted the tutor. “You did so well last week.”

She looked at Master Gertman again. “I’m sorry. I’m a little faint. I haven’t been feeling well, and … Could you repeat your instructions, please?”

“Just a basic glamour, Your Highness. Perhaps you could try changing the color of your hair?”

Winter reached up and grabbed a handful of her thick black curls. She could do that. She’d done it plenty of times before.

The servant girl inhaled a bracing breath.

Winter released her hair and ran her fingers over it instead. Beauty was usually the goal of simple glamour, and usually she would call up the glamour of the most beautiful woman she knew, the most beautiful woman anyone knew. Her stepmother, Queen Levana. The most beautiful woman on Luna.

The difficult part was making herself seem older. In order for a glamour to be effective, you had to believe that you looked as you wanted others to see you. And while Winter found it easy to change her tight curly hair or the hue of her brown skin or to make herself taller or shorter or thinner or curvier—making herself mature, with all the grace and experience of her stepmother, required a mental focus she was still developing.

She was getting better, though. Master Gertman praised her often.

Someday, she would be powerful.

Someday, she could be as strong as a thaumaturge.

She stared at the top of the servant’s head.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

The tutor frowned.

Rubbing the back of her neck as if she were embarrassed, Winter gave him a faint smile. “I’m just so tired. And distracted. Perhaps we should try again another day. If that’s all right, Master Gertman?”

His frown did not disperse. The servant made no movement, nothing to suggest she had even heard Winter or cared the slightest that the princess would not be manipulating her today. It was as though she weren’t there at all.

Finally, Master Gertman leaned back and nodded. “Of course, Your Highness. You should go rest. We’ll try again next week.”

She stood and smiled as prettily as she could. The tutor looked briefly flustered. “Thank you, Master.” She curtsied before leaving his office.

Jacin was still waiting in the hallway, just where she’d left him. He scrambled to his feet in surprise. “Done already?”

Winter shut the tutor’s door behind her and held Jacin’s gaze. His eyes caught the light of the enormous windows that lined the corridor wall. Her friend was becoming handsome indeed, and he would never need a glamour to improve upon that.

Her palms were suddenly warm and growing damp.

Her unexpected resolve frightened her, but she knew she wouldn’t change her mind.

“I’ve come to a decision, Jacin.”

He cocked his head at her.

All the best people—Jacin and her father and Sir Garrison Clay and the servants who smiled kindly in the hallways and did not seem at all bothered that they did not have perfect unblemished skin or dark, thick eyelashes—they did not use glamours. They did not manipulate the people around them.

Winter didn’t want to be like her stepmother or the thaumaturges.

She wanted to be like the people she loved.

She stepped close to Jacin, because no one else could hear her now. Because her decision would go against everything their society stood for, everything they valued.

“I will never use my gift,” she whispered. “Not ever again.”

* * *

It was easier than she expected it to be, once the decision was made. It required some changes of habits, no doubt. If she wanted a servant to bring something, she had to ask, rather than simply impose the request into their mind. If she wanted to look extra pretty for a party, she would call up a stylist to tint her cheeks and glitter her eyelids, rather than create the illusion in her mind’s eye first.

She never once forgot her vow, though. She stayed true to her word.

Master Gertman was confused as all the progress they’d made in the past years dissolved over the course of a single week. Winter was persistent with her excuses. She pretended to try. She was very convincing. But after every fake attempt, the servant would crease her brow and shake her head, as confused as the tutor.

A month after Winter had sworn off her gift, she passed that servant girl in between sessions and, for the first time, the girl smiled at her in a way that suggested a shared secret.

She wondered if the girl knew that Winter was only pretending. She wondered if the girl was grateful for her weekly respites from whatever manipulations were done to her by the rest of the tutor’s pupils.

“It’s called Lunar sickness,” said Jacin as they whiled away an afternoon in Winter’s chambers. Though rumors had begun circulating about the two of them and how they spent more time alone with each other than was proper, Winter and Jacin refused to be cowed by the passing scowls and snide remarks from the court. Besides, she knew her guards would never say anything. They respected Jacin’s family too much to add fuel to such shameful gossip.

Jacin slid his hand through the medical-studies holograph that shimmered in the center of the room. There had been a time when they would call up adventure stories and virtual reality games using the holograph node, but now more often than not Jacin wanted to study anatomy books and psychology texts instead. In a year he would be applying for an occupation, and his heart had been set on a doctor’s internship ever since Winter could remember.

Seeing how excited he got when he talked about it made her heart warm, but she also dreaded to think of the years he would spend away from her. He could be stationed at any med-clinic on all of Luna. There was a slim chance he could end up in Artemisia, at their med-clinic or in one of their laboratories, but it was more likely he’d end up in the less desirable outer sectors, at least for the first few years of his training.

Winter hated the thought of him leaving, even temporarily, but she would never tell him so for fear he would give up his dream in order to stay with her. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if he did that. “Lunar sickness?” She cupped her cheek in one hand, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and staring up at the holograph. It showed a very dull brain diagram.

“That’s the common term. The official name is Bioelectric Suppression Psychosis.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s very rare. It happens whenever a gifted Lunar chooses not to use their gift for an extended period of time. The only cure they know of is … well, to start using the gift again.” Jacin’s jaw was tight as he swiveled the holograph one way and then the other. “It doesn’t come up very often, though, because why would a gifted Lunar forgo using their gift?” He glanced at her, and he seemed concerned, but not judgmental. He had never once, since Winter had told him of her conviction, tried to persuade her to change her mind.

“And what will it do?” she said, leaning back against the sofa. “This Lunar sickness?”

His shoulders drooped. “It will make you go crazy.”

She tilted her head to one side and refrained from laughing, but only barely. “Well, I’m already crazy, so that doesn’t sound so bad at all.”

His lip twitched, but the smile was halfhearted at best. “I’m serious, Winter. People who suffer from it have frequent hallucinations. Sometimes bad ones. Being chased or attacked. Seeing … monsters.”

Her playfulness drooped and she inspected the brain diagram, but it was just a brain. How frightening could that be?

“I already have nightmares and I survive them just fine,” she said. “I’ll survive this too.”

Jacin hesitated. “I just want you to be ready. And…” He fixed his eyes on her. “If ever you change your mind, I’ll understand. Everyone would understand. You don’t have to do this, Winter. You can manipulate people without being cruel, you know.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t think I was being cruel when I pulled that woman back from the ledge.”

Jacin lowered his eyes.

“It has to be this way,” said Winter. “I will accept this side effect. I will accept any amount of monsters my mind wants to give me, but I will not become a monster myself.”

* * *

She was beginning to think that Jacin had only been trying to frighten her with all that sickness and psychosis talk. Five months had passed and she felt more grounded than ever—more in control of her decisions and willpower than she’d felt her whole life. Her thirteenth birthday was on the horizon, and her choice to live only by the skills that did not require manipulation had made her more aware of what those skills were.

Politeness, it turned out, was almost as effective when you wanted someone to do something for you. And kindness went further toward lasting admiration than any amount of mind control.

Word was spreading, too, about her lack of a gift. Though no one could call her a shell, it was becoming apparent that her Lunar abilities were inferior to the other sons and daughters of Artemisia’s families. Some thought it a shame that their beloved princess was turning out to be so weak-minded, but others, she sensed, weren’t so easily fooled by Winter’s failings. The servants had started to give her appreciative smiles whenever she passed them. The looks of fear that she noticed in her stepmother’s presence ceased to exist around Winter, and this alone made her happier—and stronger—than any amount of tutoring had ever done.

There were changes, too, in how members of Artemisia’s aristocracy acted around her, though Winter sensed it had less to do with her gift and more to do with the growth spurt that had finally arrived, forcing the seamstresses to work overtime to keep her in hemlines that reached the floor and sleeves that didn’t ride up her forearms.

“Her Highness is growing into a fine lady indeed,” she had heard one of the thaumaturges say in court, and though the queen had snorted her disagreement, Winter had seen multiple conferring nods before she bashfully lowered her head. “Of course, no beauty could ever compete with yours, My Queen,” the thaumaturge had continued, “but we will all be proud to have such a beautiful princess in our midst. She does our court proud, I think.”

“She will do our court, and this family, proud,” Levana had said derisively, “when she learns to control her glamour like a proper member of the gentry. Until then, she is nothing but a disappointment.” She’d cut a glower at Winter. “To me, and no doubt to her father.”

Winter had squirmed in her seat, embarrassed.

But it had not changed her decision.

Besides, Winter’s instincts told her Levana was wrong. Her father would have been proud.

As for Levana herself, Winter couldn’t help but wonder if it was jealousy that had prompted her to lash out. Except, jealousy of what? That someone had called her beautiful, when everyone knew that Queen Levana was the most beautiful of all?

Absurd.

* * *

The queen—who had never acted warmly toward Winter, even when she’d been a child—grew even colder in the weeks that followed. Always watching Winter with wary eyes, her red lips twisted in annoyance. Winter couldn’t guess why Levana was inspecting her. She had very little concept of what she looked like, other than what Jacin told her and the compliments others paid. Mirrors had been banned in Artemisia since before her father’s death.

“You are looking lovely as ever, Your Highness,” said Provost Dunlin, brushing a kiss against Winter’s hand. She pulled herself from her thoughts and forced herself not to recoil. Though the gala being held in the great hall was crowded and loud with music and laughter, she knew her stepmother was always near and always watching. She would not be pleased to see Winter spurning the court’s respect. No matter how gross and slimy some of them made her feel.

“You are gracious as ever, Provost Dunlin,” she said, and though she smiled, it was a reserved one.

“My son has been paying you many compliments since we saw you at your birthday celebration,” he said, waving his son over. Alasdair was a little older than Jacin, but shorter and significantly rounder, and he could claim about as much charm as his father.

He grinned at Winter, though, as if he were entirely unaware of this fact, and kissed her hand as well.

“A pleasure to see you again, Alasdair,” said Winter.

“The pleasure is all mine.” Alasdair’s gaze slipped down to Winter’s chest, and her gut tightened.

She ripped her hand out of his grip—but her disgust was momentary. Another second and she was flushed with satisfaction at the compliment, pleased with the flattery. She was maturing, and it was nice to know that the handsome, eligible men of the court were taking notice …

Winter had to excuse herself to keep from turning into a stammering fool. She glanced up at her stepmother, who was watching her curiously, even as Head Thaumaturge Sybil Mira prattled on about something or other.

Queen Levana raised her eyebrow, and Winter hastened a curtsy in her direction before slipping out of the hall.

The feelings of flattery fell off her shoulders, slowly at first, then faster and faster until all that was left was a twist of loathing.

That filthy scum had been manipulating her. Her. Though she expected glamours from the court, only the queen and her thaumaturges ever dared to influence Winter’s emotions. Alasdair hadn’t even been particularly subtle about it, which repulsed Winter more, knowing how easily he’d caught her unprepared. She shuddered, feeling more violated than she would have imagined a basic mind trick could make her feel. She knew that some Lunars were able to put up barriers around their minds, but it took practice and a skill that she didn’t possess. She hated this court. She hated the lies and the fraud of it all.

“Winter?”

She halted.

The corridor was quiet here, though not completely deserted as women came and went from the washroom. Palace guards stood statue-like along the walls. She let her gaze travel over the lines of their faces, thinking maybe Jacin’s father, Garrison Clay, was among them—but no. She did not know any of these men.

Winter …

She shivered. Her breaths turned to tatters.

“Your Highness, are you all right?” asked one of the servants who stood nearby.

Ignoring her, Winter took off running in the direction of the voice.

It was him. It was him.

She skidded around a corner, away from the private wing of the royal family, where she’d last seen him alive, and toward the guard quarters. The place where her father had lived before Winter was born. Before Levana had claimed Evret Hayle as her husband and tied their fates together forever.

Winter …

His voice rumbling and warm, just how she remembered.

Winter …

She saw his open smile. Remembered how tall he was, how strong. How he could throw her into the air and catch her every time.

Winter … Winter …

“Winter!”

She gasped and spun around just as Jacin grabbed her elbow. She blinked the daze away. Looked back down the corridor, past the guard quarters, toward the servant halls.

Empty.

“What are you doing here?”

She met Jacin’s eyes again. He was looking at her gown, frowning. “Why aren’t you at the gala?”

“I heard him,” she said, taking Jacin’s hand into both of hers. Gripping so hard that part of her feared she would crush his fingers, but he didn’t even flinch.

“Who?”

“My father.” Her voice splintered. “He was here. He was calling to me and I … I followed him and … and…”

Her heart rate began to slow. Realization crept through the bewilderment at the same moment that Jacin’s confusion turned to concern.

Releasing him, she pressed a palm to her own forehead. No fever. She wasn’t ill.

Before she had time to be frightened of what it meant, he was holding her, telling her that it would be all right. He was there. He would always be there.

That was the first of the hallucinations.

They kept coming.

They got worse.

Hungry beasts crawled out of the shadows in the night, scratching at the floor beneath her bed.

Bodies hung from the chandeliers over the tables in the dining hall.

A necklace of jewels would tighten around her neck, strangling her.

Usually Jacin was there, as he’d been all her life. He would make light of it and force her to laugh about the absurdity of whatever trick her mind was playing. He would talk her through each episode with his steady rationality, leaving no room for her to doubt his words. He would hold her and let her cry, and it was during one of these embraces when Winter realized with all the force and clarity of a solar flare—

She was in love with him. She had always, always been in love with him.

* * *

“I brought you something,” said Jacin, smiling impishly when he spotted her. He was sprawled out on a bench in the gardens, his legs stretched out before him. It seemed he would never stop growing, even though his legs and arms no longer fit his body.

He was holding a white box that was emblazoned with the seal of Winter’s favorite candy maker.

Her eyes widened. “Petites?”

“Mom took me for new boots this morning and I made her stop for some.”

Winter hopped up onto the bench, sitting on its back so that her feet were tucked under Jacin’s knee. Though the biodomes of Luna were temperature- and climate-controlled, there was always an extra chill beside the lake, warranting the closeness. She did not hesitate, as soon as the box was open, to pop one of her favorite candies into her mouth. The sweet-sour burst of apples melted across her tongue.

“S’pose you wan’ one?” she said through her full mouth, pretending resentment as she held the box out for Jacin.

He smirked. “So generous, Your Highness.”

She wrinkled her nose at him and took another bite.

There had been a time—right after she’d realized how hopelessly in love with her best friend she was—when she had become awkward and reserved. When she had thought that she must become a lady when she was near him, as she was expected to be in the presence of any suitor … should she ever have a suitor. She smiled demurely when he made a joke and she touched him only timidly and she sat like a proper princess when they were together.

That time had lasted for about three hours, until Jacin had given her a strange look and asked what was wrong with her.

There was no point in pretending to be someone else now. Jacin knew every one of her secrets, every habit and every flaw. There would be no hiding them, and besides, those three hours had served only to make him uncomfortable, not enamored.

A cold voice cut through their candy devouring, shooting a tinge of anxiety along Winter’s spine.

“Winter.”

A single word, her own name, that brought more dread with it than a thousand threats.

Jacin jumped to his feet, swiping any candy bits off his mouth as he bowed to the queen.

Winter was slower to follow, but she, too, lowered into a curtsy as her tongue dug out bits of candy from between her teeth.

“Hello, Stepmother,” she said.

The queen’s glare was focused on Jacin. “You are dismissed, Jacin. Go find some way to be useful.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, still in his bow, and a second later he was marching away from them, back toward the palace. The stiffness to his stride made Winter curious if he was mirroring the strut of the guards or if Levana was controlling his limbs.

“Did you need something, Stepmother?”

Levana stared at her for a long time.

A very long time.

Winter could read nothing behind her glamour, her placid expression, her breathtaking beauty. She had heard some rumors lately that she, Winter, the gangly princess with the unruly hair, might someday surpass the queen’s beauty. She laughed every time she heard such nonsense, knowing that it could be only empty flattery.

Finally, one side of Levana’s lips curved upward. Maybe it was meant to be comforting, but it failed.

“Come with me, Winter.”

She turned and headed back toward the palace without waiting to see if Winter would follow, because of course she would.

“You are spending too much time with that boy,” Levana said as they stepped beneath the portico overhang and back into the bright-lit corridors of the palace. “You are getting older. You are no longer a child, and soon you will have suitors and perhaps even requests for marriage. You must be aware of propriety and expectations. That is your role in this family. That is the part you will play on behalf of the crown.”

Winter kept her eyes focused on the floor. Nothing the queen was saying was news to her, but she had never broached the subject so openly. She did know what was expected of her, and marrying the son of a palace guard wasn’t it. She ignored the fact that Levana herself had married a man from the working class when she’d been just a princess. Winter’s father. A lowly palace guard himself.

The sneers and derision from the court continued even to this day, thirteen years after their marriage and four years after her father’s death. It was a mistake that Winter would not be allowed to make for herself.

She would marry for political gain.

Jacin would go off and become a doctor and she might never see him again.

“Of course, Stepmother,” she said. “Jacin is only a friend.”

It was the truth. He was a friend, albeit one she would cut out her heart for.

Levana took her to the elevator and they rode it to the top floor, to the queen’s solar. A private place that Winter had rarely entered.

The room was beautiful—the highest place in all of Artemisia. The walls were made of glass and she could see the entire city, all the way to the walls of the dome and beyond into the desolate landscape of Luna. Far off on the horizon, she spotted the glow of the other nearby sectors.

It occurred to Winter for the first time how odd it was that her stepmother was alone. No thaumaturge loitering at her elbow. No simpering member of the court trying to earn her favor. Only a single guard was posted at the solar’s door, and Levana sent him away.

Winter’s stomach began to churn.

“Master Gertman tells me that you have not been improving in your lessons,” said Levana, floating around a desk. “In fact, he says that you have not shown any sign of the Lunar gift in nearly a year.”

Winter felt a sting of betrayal, though she knew it wasn’t fair. The tutor was doing his job, and keeping the queen apprised of Winter’s progress was a part of it.

Her tutor could not be blamed for Winter’s choices.

Lowering her gaze, Winter did her best to look embarrassed. “It’s true. I don’t know what happened. I thought things were going well, but then … well, there was that suicide. You remember? The servant who threw herself into the fountain?”

“What of it?”

Winter shrugged sadly. “I tried to stop her once before. I used my gift to bring her away from the throne room ledge and it worked. I thought I’d done so well. But then … after she died, it was as though my gift began to weaken.” She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I try. I try so hard. But it’s like … it’s like my gift is broken.”

To her surprise, tears were starting behind her lashes.

Quite the actress she was becoming.

Levana sneered. She did not look even remotely sympathetic. “I had hoped you would progress well and become a useful member of this court, but it seems that you might take after your father after all.” She paused. “You are aware that he was not adept at his gift, either.”

Winter nodded. “Guards never are.”

She had no idea if her mother—her biological mother—had been skilled with her gift. No one ever spoke of her, and she knew better than to ask.

“But we do know, don’t we, that you are not as talentless as your father, because Master Gertman tells me that at one point you showed marvelous promise. In fact, he feels that you were once one of his most outstanding students, and he is as baffled as anyone over your current lack of ability. I wonder if this isn’t all due to some … psychological trauma. Perhaps pertaining to that suicide?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe I need to see a doctor rather than a tutor.” Winter barely smothered her own smirk. A doctor. What might they prescribe for the girl who was going crazy, who heard monsters clawing at her door nearly every night?

But she would not mention that. She knew what was wrong with her. She knew how to make the visions stop. But she wouldn’t give in to them. She was stronger than the monsters.

“No,” said Levana. “I have another idea, Princess. A bit of added motivation, to assist with your studies.”

She opened a drawer, smiling serenely. Every movement was graceful and precise. The queen moved like a dancer, always. So controlled. So lovely to watch, even now, despite the cruelty that Winter knew lay beneath her beauty.

She waited, expecting a lesson plan or some trivial instructions for practicing her gift.

Instead, the queen produced a knife.

The handle was carved from milky crystal and the blade was obsidian black. Like her stepmother, it was both threatening and exquisite. Winter’s stomach dropped. Her head spun with alarm, but her feet were cemented to the carpet. “Stepmother?”

“You will learn to use your gift, Winter. You will not embarrass me and this crown any more than you already have.” Pacing toward her, Levana held out the knife, handle first.

It took a while, but finally Winter forced herself to take it. Her hand was shaking, but she knew that she took the knife of her own will. She was not being coerced.

Not yet.

She had seen this scene play out dozens of times in the throne room. Criminals being sentenced to self-inflicted death.

“I don’t understand.”

“You are a very pretty child.” Levana’s expression remained poised. Winter’s arm still trembled. “We would not want to ruin that prettiness, now would we?”

Winter swallowed.

“Manipulate me, Winter. Go ahead.”

“What?” she squeaked, certain she’d heard wrong. She’d only practiced on malleable servants in the past. She wasn’t sure she could manipulate her stepmother even if she tried—and she wasn’t going to try. She couldn’t, not after working so hard to free herself of her Lunar instincts.

But what was the queen planning?

Images of her own throat being slit flashed through Winter’s thoughts.

Her heart pounded.

“Prove that you are capable of a simple little manipulation,” said Levana. “That you aren’t a waste of my time and my protection. That you aren’t the mockery of a princess the people of Artemisia believe you are. Just one little tiny manipulation, and … I will let you go.”

Winter looked down at the knife in her hand.

“Or,” Levana continued, her tone sharpening, “if you fail, I will give you a new reason to practice your glamour. I will give you something to hide. Believe me, I know how strong that motivation can be. Do you understand?”

Winter did not understand.

She nodded anyway.

Her fingers tightened around the cool handle.

“Go on, then. I will even let you choose what manipulation you will perform. A glamour. An emotion. Make me take that knife back from you if you can. I won’t fight you.” Levana’s smile was patient, almost maternal, if Winter had known what a maternal smile looked like.

It took a long, long time for the smile to fade.

A long, long time for Winter to consider her choice.

Her decision.

Her vow.

I will never use my gift. Not ever again.

“I’m sorry,” Winter whispered around her dry throat. “I cannot.”

The queen held her gaze. Passive at first, before Winter saw fury spark in her eyes, an anger that burned hot with loathing. But it soon faded, smothered with mere disappointment.

“So be it.”

Winter flinched as her hand began to move of its own accord. She slammed her eyes shut against Levana’s detached expression and saw the vision again. A deep cut in her throat. Blood spilling across the floor.

Her breath caught as the tip of the blade grazed her neck. Her body went rigid.

But the knife didn’t cut her throat. It continued up, up, until the sharp point settled against the corner of her right eye.

Her gut twisted. Her pulse thundered.

She gasped as the blade cut into the soft flesh beneath her eye and was dragged slowly down her cheek. She could feel tears welling behind her eyelids from the stinging-hot pain, but she kept her eyes shut and refused to let them fall.

The blade stopped at her jaw and her hand lowered, taking the knife with it.

Winter gulped down a shuddering breath, dizzy with horror, and opened her eyes.

She was not dead. She had not lost an eye. She could feel blood dripping down her cheek and throat and catching on the collar of her dress, but it was only a single cut. It was only blood.

She blinked rapidly, dispelling any tears before they could betray her, and met her stepmother’s hardened glare.

“Well?” Levana said through her teeth. “Would you like to try again before your beauty is marred further?”

Beauty, thought Winter. Of course. It meant so much to the queen, and so very little to her. The pain she could tolerate. The scar she could accept.

A new resolve straightened her spine. She would not allow the queen to win this battle. She refused to lose herself to the queen’s mind games.

“I cannot,” she said again.

The knife came to her face again, drawing another parallel line beside the first. This time, she kept her eyes open. She was no longer afraid of crying, though the blood felt like warm, thick tears on her cheek.

“And now?” Levana said. “Go on, Winter. A simple manipulation. Prove your worth to this court.”

Winter held her gaze. Her stepmother’s face had lost its calm facade. She was openly livid. Even her shoulders were trembling with restrained rage.

They both knew this was no longer about a princess making a mockery of the royal family. Levana must have sensed the quiet defiance brewing inside her.

The queen could make anyone do anything. She had only to think it, and her will was done.

But not this. She could not force Winter to do this.

It was a struggle for Winter to keep a proud smile from her face as she said firmly, “I will not.”

Levana snarled and the knife rose again.

* * *

When the queen released her, Winter refused to run back to her chambers. She walked like royalty, head high and feet clipping steadily on the marble. She didn’t even consider using her glamour to hide the three gashes and the blood that dripped down her neck, staining her dress. She was proud. Her wound was proof that she had been to battle and survived.

People stopped to stare, but no one asked about the three cuts in her flesh. No one stopped her. Her guards, sworn to defend their princess at all costs, said nothing.

The queen would be proven wrong. Winter’s skin would be permanently marred, but she would not let the scars bully her into submission. The wounds would become her armor, and a constant reminder of her victory.

She might be broken. She might be crazy. But she would not be defeated.

When she reached the wing to her private quarters, she drew up short.

Jacin was waiting for her outside her chamber doors. Beside him stood Head Thaumaturge Sybil Mira in her pristine white coat.

Jacin was staring at the ground, his face tense.

Sybil was smiling, a hand on Jacin’s shoulder. And when they both looked at Winter—

Jacin appeared shocked, first, though it fast turned to horror, while Sybil …

Winter shuddered.

Sybil Mira looked not surprised at all, and not the tiniest bit sympathetic. Levana must have told her what she was planning. Maybe it had even been Sybil’s idea—Winter knew that the head thaumaturge had a great amount of influence over the queen.

“What happened?” Jacin said, shrugging off Sybil’s hand and rushing toward her. He went to place his palm over her bloodied cheek but hesitated. He covered his hand with his sleeve first before pressing the material against her.

“Shall I call for a medic, Your Highness?” said Sybil, folding her hands into her own sleeves.

“I’m fine, thank you. You can step aside so that I might retire to my quarters.”

“If you are sure I cannot be of service.” Sybil did step aside, even bowed her head, but an amused smile lingered on her lips as Winter brushed past her. Jacin stayed with her, step for step, applying pressure to the cheek that she had not dared touch. It hadn’t stopped stinging, and the pain was a persistent reminder of what she had endured and the choices she had made. She would never regret those choices, scars or no.

“Who did this?” Jacin demanded as Winter shoved through her bedroom door, leaving her personal guard outside.

“I did, of course,” she said, to which he stared, aghast. She snorted bitterly. “My hand did.”

His eyes blazed, full of murder. “The queen?”

She had only to stay silent to confirm it.

Rage cascaded over his face, but he turned away too fast for Winter to appreciate the depth of it. He pulled her into the powder room and set her on the edge of the tub. Within minutes, he had cleaned the wounds and applied a generous amount of healing salve.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he muttered through gnashed teeth as he applied a makeshift bandage of cotton strips. Winter was impressed that he was able to keep his hands so calm, while his expression was so furious.

He would make a great doctor.

“You had no choice,” she said. “Neither of us did.”

“Why would she do this to you? Is she jealous?”

She met his flashing gaze. “Why would the queen be jealous of me?”

His anger sizzled. “How does this benefit her?”

“She said that she wanted me to learn to use my gift, so that I would stop making a mockery of the crown. She thought that if I … she thought this would motivate me to learn to use my glamour.”

Understanding dawned on his face. “To hide the scars.”

She nodded. “I also think she wanted to remind me that I’m … that I belong to her. That I’m nothing but a pawn in her game, to be used as she sees fit.” She slumped, letting go of the composure she’d fought so hard for. “But I am not her pawn. I refuse to be.”

Jacin stood with his hands strangling a towel for a long moment, looking like he wanted to keep working, keep cleaning, keep bandaging, but he’d already done all he could. Finally, with a huff, he sat beside her on the tub’s edge. His anger was fading, replaced with guilt. “If she thinks you’re intentionally not using your gift, she might see it as rebellious.” His tone was subdued now, though his fingers showed no mercy to the towel. “I think she is jealous. Because people like you. They respect you. And you don’t have to manipulate them for it.”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” said Winter. “I just … I just don’t want to be like her. Like them!”

Jacin smiled, but it was tired. “Exactly. What could be more threatening than that?”

She sagged further, settling her face into her hands, careful not to press against her stinging cheek. Then she frowned and peered up at Jacin from the corner of her eye. “What did Thaumaturge Mira want?”

He inhaled sharply. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t say anything, but finally he spoke. “She came to tell me that I would need to find new housing accommodations if my plan is to stay in Artemisia until my internship begins next year.”

Her brow creased. “New housing? Why wouldn’t you stay here in the palace?”

“Because my parents are leaving.”

She straightened.

“My father’s been transferred to one of the outer sectors, as a security guard.”

Her heart thumped. “A demotion? But … why?”

Jacin started to shake his head, but then stopped and met her gaze, and instantly Winter knew why.

She was spending too much time with this boy.

She was in love with this boy.

And that would not fit into Levana’s perfectly constructed plans for her. That could cause problems for the queen and whatever alliance she planned to cement using Winter’s hand as the purchase price.

Send his family away, and the boy would leave too.

She pressed a hand over her mouth.

“My parents don’t seem to mind,” said Jacin. “I think they’re both relieved to be getting out of Artemisia. All the politics.” And the manipulations, he didn’t say, but didn’t have to.

“You’re leaving me,” she breathed.

Jacin pursed his lips. He looked terrified as he snaked his hand beneath her arm, entwining their fingers together. Their hands fit like a lock and key. It had been years since they had simply held hands, and she wished they had never stopped.

“No,” he said. “I’m not leaving you.”

She raised her eyes. There was a determined set to his jaw that surprised her. “But where will you go, if you can’t stay here?” she asked. “And besides, when your internship starts you’ll have to leave anyway, and then…”

“Thaumaturge Mira gave me another option. Or…” He gulped. “The queen gave me another option. They’ve invited me to join the palace guard. I could begin training as early as next week.”

Her eyes widened and she yanked her hand away. “No. No. Jacin, you can’t. What about being a doctor? What about—”

“I could stay with you, Winter. I could stay here in the palace.”

“Until they send you off to one of the outer sectors, you mean.”

“They won’t do that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I’ll be the most loyal guard Her Majesty has ever known.”

His expression was withdrawn. Haunted.

Winter’s hand went slack in his grip.

Levana would threaten her, maybe even threaten her life.

Maybe she already had, which was how they’d gotten Jacin to consider it in the first place.

He would do anything they asked if he thought he was protecting her.

“You know how we all take aptitude tests in year fourteen?” Jacin said, unable to look at her. “I tested high for a potential pilot role. Thaumaturge Mira said she could use me as her personal guard and transporter.”

“No, Jacin. You can’t. If you do this, you’ll never be able to get out.”

Releasing her hand, he stood up and began pacing the powder room floor. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t leave you here, especially now, after this.” He waved a hand toward her cheek and Winter placed her palm over the washcloth. The blood hadn’t yet soaked through.

“I don’t want you to be a guard, Jacin. Not after … what happened to my father…” Her voice cracked.

Killed by a thaumaturge, with no hope at all of defending himself. Because he was weak. Jacin was weak. She was weak.

Against the queen and her court, they had no hope at all.

Pawns. Just pawns.

“I think you should go,” she said.

He stared at her, hurt.

“With your parents, I mean. I think you should go with them. In a year, apply for your medical internship and be the doctor you’ve always wanted to be. This is what you want, Jacin. To help people. To save people.”

“Winter, I…”

She gasped, her gaze catching on the wall over Jacin’s shoulder. A frosted-glass window was there, letting in enough daylight to make the entire room glow rosy and gold.

But the light was being blotted out.

By blood.

Crimson, thick, sticky blood, oozing from the mortar that held in the glass windowpane, dripping thickly down the sides and pooling on the sill.

She started to tremble. Jacin spun around, following the look. He was silent a long moment before saying, “What? What’s wrong?” He looked back at her.

Something splattered on Winter’s forearm.

She tilted her head back.

The ceiling.

Covered in it.

Red, everywhere. The tang of iron on her tongue. Her mouth was thick with it.

Her chest convulsed with panic and nausea. She shoved herself to her feet and spun in a full circle, watching as the blood came down from the ceiling, soaking into the gilt wallpaper and wood moldings, puddling on the tile floor.

“Winter. What is it? What are you seeing?”

The blood reached her toes.

She turned and shoved past him, scrambling out of the powder room.

“Winter!”

Her bedroom was no better. She froze in the middle of it. Blood had made a waterfall over her bed, staining the linens in crimson, squishing in the carpet beneath her feet. The door into the corridor had a bloodied curtain dripping from the jamb.

No getting through.

No getting away.

She stumbled and teetered on her weak legs, then tripped toward the only escape—the doors that led to the balcony. She heard Jacin screaming behind her, and she hoped he would follow, hoped he would not get stuck here in the suffocating stench, the incessant dripping—

She threw open the doors.

Her stomach hit the protective barrier. Her hands latched on to the rail. The blood kept coming. Pouring out of the bedroom, spilling over the balcony, dribbling down to the garden.

It was the palace. The whole palace was bleeding.

It would fill up the entire lake.

Gasping for air, she hauled one leg up and threw herself over the rail.

Arms locked around her just as her center of balance tilted forward. Her stomach swooped, but Jacin was hauling her back into the room. She shrieked and clawed, demanding that he let her go. If he didn’t, she would drown. They would both be swallowed alive—

He wrestled her to the warm, sticky carpet and pinned her wrists to either side of her head.

“Winter, stop!” he cried, leaning down and pressing his cheek against hers in an attempt to soothe her. “It’s all right, Winter. You’re all right.”

She turned her head and snapped her teeth at him. He pulled back far enough that she barely missed his ear. She screamed in frustration, writhing and kicking, but Jacin refused to yield. “You’re all right,” he whispered, again and again. “I’m here.”

Winter had no idea how long the hallucination lasted. How long she struggled, trying to get away from the blood that cascaded over every surface of the room. A room that had once seemed a sanctuary.

Sanctuary.

There was no safe place. Not in Artemisia. Not on all of Luna.

Except—Jacin.

When her screams succumbed to hysterical sobbing, Jacin finally allowed his hold to turn from the grip of a jailer to the embrace of her best friend.

“This is why,” he whispered, and it occurred to Winter that, at some point, he’d started crying too. “This is why I can’t leave you, Winter. This is why I’ll never leave.”

* * *

The nightmare came again. And again. Weeks of it, incessant.

Gunshots.

Dead eyes.

Blood sprayed on the bedroom walls.

Only, this time, the queen did not simply curl herself against her dead husband and cry and cry and cry.

This time, she took the knife that she had used to stab the thaumaturge and she carved three straight lines into the cheek of Winter’s father.

Winter tried so hard to stay strong, knowing that every time she sought out Jacin’s security, it would further cement his decision to stay. So she rocked herself in her bed and tried to whisper comfort into her own blankets.

Until the night she could stand it no longer.

He was the only place that was safe.

Her nightclothes still damp from the terrors, she rushed out of her quarters, pretending not to notice the night guard who followed in her wake.

Jacin would hold her. Jacin would comfort her. Jacin would keep the nightmares at bay.

Except—Jacin was gone.

That’s what they told her when she arrived, pounding on the apartment door that the Clays had shared with two other families.

He and his family had been transferred the day before and she hadn’t even known, he hadn’t even told her, he hadn’t said good-bye.

Demoted. Transferred. Gone.

Shocked and heartbroken, Winter retreated. She wandered blindly back toward the main corridor of the palace.

Gone.

She’d told him to go. She’d believed it would be for the best. It was the only way for him to have a chance at happiness. He had to get away from Artemisia. Away from the queen. Away from her.

And yet, she had not believed he would really go.

Jacin.

Her dearest friend.

Her only friend.

Just like Selene. Just like her father.

They all left.

“Win—Princess?”

She froze.

Slowly turned.

It was him, but not him.

A hallucination.

Because this could not be her Jacin wearing the pressed uniform of a guard-in-training, his blond hair tucked behind his ears, not quite long enough to be tied back. He stood with his arms stiff at his sides, like he was waiting to carry out orders.

Not a smile.

Not a teasing glint in his eye.

Barely even recognition.

“Jacin,” she whispered to the phantom that looked like her best friend.

His Adam’s apple bobbed with what looked to be a painful gulp. Then his jaw set and he clicked his heels together awkwardly. His gaze lifted away from her eyes, staring at the wall in the distance with the same vacant expression that all the guards had. The same emptiness.

“Shall I escort you to your quarters … Princess?”

Every bit the guard.

Winter, by habit, found herself drawing her shoulders back. A defense. She would hide behind politeness and grace.

Every bit the princess.

It was strange, how quickly it started to feel normal.

They had played this game before, she realized. A hundred times they had played it.

He, the loyal guard. She, the princess he must protect.

“Yes,” she said, as loudly as her voice would allow. “Thank you … Sir … Clay.”

A slight shake of his head. “Squire Clay, Your Highness. Guard-in-training.”

“Squire Clay.” She gulped and slowly turned her back on him, walking dazedly back through the halls.

He followed behind her. Respectful and distant.

Over her shoulder, she dared a nervous smile. “If you aren’t too busy with your training later, Squire Clay, I fear I might need rescuing from a pirate.”

His eyelid twitched. He did not look at her and he didn’t smile—but she caught it, just for a moment. The light entering his eyes.

“It would be my honor, Princess.”