Fairest: The Lunar Chronicles: Levana's Story (10 page)

Which she knew was wise of him. He’d been right before. If her sister wanted to accuse him of taking advantage of the princess, it would be in her right to do so. Levana wasn’t worried about it, though. Channary had her own romantic conquests to worry about and, besides, she had been making eyes at older men since she was even younger than Levana was now.

No, she was not worried.

Especially in those moments when they were finally alone. Those borrowed spaces of time when he was hers, entirely hers. She began to loosen her mental grip of him, little by little, and to her relief and her joy, his response to her only became braver. His hands more possessive. His caresses more daring.

The first night they spent together, he whispered a single word into her hair.

“
Sol…”

Simultaneously filled with pain and pleasure, joy and rage, Levana had grit her teeth and held him closer.

When the dome brightened over the white city the following morning, Levana let him sleep until the servant entered to bring her breakfast. Mortified and distraught, Evret lay in bed, frozen, while Levana ordered the servant to cut and butter her rolls. Slice her fruit. Prepare the tea that she had no intention of drinking.

When the servant had gone, Evret scrambled from the sheets. She saw the moment when he took in the spots of blood on the white cotton. How quickly he turned away. How hastily he pulled on his clothes, muttering curses beneath his breath.

Sitting up against her feathered pillows, the tray settled across her lap, Levana dropped a berry onto her tongue. It was sour. Channary would have called for the servant to take it back, and the thought crossed her mind, but she buried it. She was not her sister.

“Not this,” Evret said, without facing her. “I didn’t think you would push it this far. I didn’t think—” He fisted a hand into his hair, cursing again. “I’m so sorry, Princess.”

She bristled, annoyed, but tried to play it off as a joke. “For leaving before breakfast?” Levana cooed. “I will have another tray sent for, if you’re hungry.”

“No. My daughter … she’ll have been with the nanny all night. I hadn’t planned on…”

Levana glared at his muscled back as he pulled his shirt over his head.

“I will pay for the nanny’s additional time. Stay, Evret.” She smoothed the blankets beside her.

He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his shoes, shaking his head. Then, hesitating, he dropped the first shoe back to the floor. His shoulders slumped in defeat. Levana grinned as she sucked the berry juice left on her finger, and was preparing to scoot over, to make room for him against the headboard, when he started to speak, his voice thick with misery.

“I tried to leave. A week ago.”

Levana hesitated, pulling her finger out of her mouth. “Leave?”

“We were packed and everything. I was going to take Winter to one of the lumber sectors, learn a new trade.”

She squinted at the back of his head. “A new trade doing what? Toppling trees?”

“Maybe. Or at a lumber mill, or even making wood moldings, I don’t know. I just wanted to be anywhere but here.”

Aghast, she set the tray aside. “Then why didn’t you? If you’re so
desperate
to get away—”

“Her Majesty wouldn’t allow it.”

She froze.

“I gave her my resignation, and she laughed. She said she was having far too much fun watching you make a fool of yourself to let me go now. She even threatened to send guards after me and Winter if I dared to leave without her consent.”

Levana shivered. “I don’t care what she thinks.”

“I do. She’s my queen. She controls me as much as you do.”

“I don’t
control
you.”

He looked at her, finally, but his expression was bewildered. “What do you think this is?”

“I’m—! I barely—!” She dug her nails into her palms. “You want me as much as I want you. I see it in your eyes every time you touch me.”

He laughed, a cruel sound, so different from the warm, kind laughter she remembered. Gesturing at her face, he yelled, “You’re wearing my wife’s face! She was gone for two weeks and I was miserable and then she was back and I … but she’s not back. It’s you. It’s just
you,
and you don’t think that’s manipulative?”

Shoving the blankets aside, Levana scrambled into the robe left on her vanity chair. “It’s
my
face now. This is who
I
am, and you can’t tell me that what happened last night was a mistake. That you didn’t want it.”

“I
never
wanted this.” He massaged his brow. “The court is talking, and the other guards. The rumors about us—”

“What does that matter?” She choked down a calming breath. “I love you, Evret.”

“You don’t even know what that word means. I wish I could make you understand that.” He gestured to the empty space between them. “Whatever this fantasy is that you’ve built in your head. None of it is real. You are not my wife and I … I need to go be with my daughter. The only part of her I have left.”

Levana cinched the belt tight, then stood there, shaking with anger, as she watched him pull on his boots.

“You will marry me.”

He paused briefly, before snapping the last buckle at the top of his boots. “Princess. Please. Not again.”

“Tonight.”

He stared at the floor for a long time. A painfully long time.

She didn’t know what she expected to see when he finally lifted his head, but the nothingness surprised her.

They stared at each other for a painful, hollow moment, until it occurred to Levana that he had not said no.

She gulped, pressing forward. “I will find an officiant and we will meet in the sun chapel at nightfall.”

His gaze again fell to the floor.

“Bring your daughter if you’d like. She should be there, I think. And the nanny to watch her.” She pulled her hair over one shoulder, feeling better about their argument already. How many of his annoying points this would solve.

She would be his wife—he could no longer say that she wasn’t.

She would be the mother to his child.

And the rumors would stop, for no one would dare speak ill of the princess’s husband, the queen’s brother-in-law.

“Well?” she said, daring him to say no. Already she was feeling for the energy that surrounded him, ready to bend him to her will if he denied her. This was for his own good. This was the only way to solidify their family. Their happiness.

Releasing the top of his boot, Evret slowly stood. His absent expression had turned sad.

Sad?

No, sympathetic. He felt sorry for her.

She frowned, casting a wall around her heart.

“You have a chance to find love, Princess. Real love. Don’t throw that away on me. I beg you.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I have already found love. I have shared my bed with him, and tonight, he will be my husband.” She attempted a smile, but her confidence was waning. He had bruised it so many times, and she didn’t want to face rejection now. She didn’t want to force him into this.

But even as she thought it, she knew that she would, if that was the only way.

Evret pulled his weapon holster over his head, his knife hanging on one hip, his gun on the other. A guard. Her guard.

“Well?” Levana demanded.

“Do I have a choice?”

She sneered. “Of course you have a choice. It is yes or no.” Levana ignored the twist in her stomach that told her she was lying. He would not say no, and it wouldn’t matter.

But still, she was surprised at how vulnerable she felt as the seconds ticked past. He wouldn’t say no. Would he? She held her breath and sent—just a subtle tenderness into his thoughts. Just a warm reminder that they were meant to be together, forever.

He shuddered, and she wondered if he knew she was doing it. She stopped, and watched his shoulders relax.

“Evret?” She hated the whine in her voice. “Marry me, Evret.”

He did not meet her eyes again as he crossed to her bedroom door. “As it pleases you, Your Highness.”

*   *   *

The officiant wrapped the gold ribbon around Levana’s wrist, explaining the significance of their union, the magnitude of the occasion as he tied a knot. He then moved to Evret, taking a second ribbon from the dish on the altar and knotting it around Evret’s wrist. Levana watched closely as the shimmering ribbon settled against his dark skin. His arm was so much broader than hers, making her bones seem bird-like in comparison.

“Knotting the two ribbons together,” said the officiant, taking them into his fingers and tying them once, then twice, “symbolizes the unity of bride and groom into one being and one soul, on this, the twenty-seventh day of April in the 109th year of the third era.”

Releasing the ribbons, he let the knot dangle between their arms.

Levana stared at the knot and tried to feel connected. Unified. Like her soul had just merged with Evret’s.

But she felt only a yawning distance between them. A black hole of silence. He had barely spoken since arriving at the chapel.

In the second pew, the baby began to mewl. Evret turned and, annoyed at the distraction, Levana followed the look. The nanny was shushing the child, bouncing the girl gently in her lap, and Levana recognized the embroidered blanket that the child had been swaddled in, the pale snowscape, the red mittens. Sol’s handiwork. Her teeth ground against each other.

“You will be exchanging rings?” asked the officiant.

Levana turned back and realized that neither Evret nor the officiant were still paying the fussy child any attention.

Evret nodded, though the action was curt. Levana glanced at him from the corner of her eye, surprised. She had not brought a ring.

Turning, Evret held his palm out toward the only guests other than the nanny and little Winter. That guard friend of his, Garrison Clay, who was there with his wife—a plain girl with strawberry-blonde hair—and their own child. A towheaded toddler boy who had spent the ceremony bobbling down the aisle while his mother hissed for him to come back, gave up, chased after him.

Although their presence seemed to indicate that Evret was taking this ceremony with some levity, Levana couldn’t help but be annoyed at everything about this family.

When they had first arrived, Garrison had pulled Evret aside. They’d seemed to be arguing about something, and she was certain he’d been trying to persuade Evret not to go through with it.

The intrusion had not endeared the guard to Levana.

But now, he stepped forward without hesitation and pulled a hand from his pocket. In his palm rested two wedding bands, each carved of black regolith polished to a fine gleam. They were as simple as Levana had ever seen, and had never dreamed she would wear. A wedding band made for a guard’s wife, not royalty.

Her heart snagged, her eyes misting.

It was perfect.

Garrison did not look at her as he put the rings into Evret’s hand and returned to the pew beside his family.

“Please take hands and face each other for the exchange.”

They turned, almost robotically. Levana inspected Evret’s face, and his handsomeness warmed some of the chill from her bones. She tried to express, silently, how much she loved her ring. That it was everything she wanted. That
he
was everything she wanted.

His dark gaze settled on her.

She smiled, a little shy.

His inhale was sharp and he opened his mouth to speak. Hesitated. Shut it again.

Then he slid the ring onto her finger and repeated after the officiant. “With this ring, I take you, Princess Levana Blackburn of Luna, to be my wife. From this day forward, you will be my sun at dawn and my stars at night, and I vow to love and cherish you for all our days.”

Her insides trembled, giddiness burbling through her. The smile came easier now as she stared down at the band on her finger and the slip of gold ribbon binding them together.

It had not seemed real that morning, that whole day, waiting to see if he would even come. And now it was happening. This was her wedding day. She was marrying Evret Hayle.

She didn’t know if her body could contain the joy throbbing inside it as she took the second wedding band from Evret and went to slide it onto his finger.

She paused.

Another band was already there, nearly identical, and so dark it almost vanished into his skin.

She looked up. Evret’s jaw was set.

“I will not take it off,” he whispered, before she could gather her thoughts, “but I will wear both.”

She looked at the ring again. Considered, for half a moment, forcing him to take off his old wedding band anyway. But no—this was what he wanted. She would not take it from him.

“Of course,” she whispered back, pushing the band onto his finger until she heard the quiet click of the two pieces of carved rock colliding.

“With this ring, I take you, Sir Evret Hayle of Luna, to be my husband. From this day forward, you will be my sun at dawn and my stars at night, and I vow to love and cherish you for all our days.”

As the officiant confirmed the ceremony, baby Winter began to cry in earnest. Looking back, Levana saw that the toddler boy was hanging off the nanny’s arms, trying to peer into the baby’s swaddle.

Evret wrapped his hands around Levana’s, regaining her attention. The kiss was a surprise. She hadn’t heard the officiant order it. But it was a gentle kiss, perhaps the most gentle he’d ever given her, and it warmed her to her toes.

With that, the officiant untied the knotted ribbons, and Evret was hers.

*   *   *

“Tell me it isn’t true!” Channary yelled, stomping into Levana’s dressing quarters the next day. Wearing little more than shredded ribbons that barely covered what a woman should have covered, Channary looked like an effervescent spirit beneath the glow of the chandeliers. A risqu
é
effervescent spirit.

Levana dared not move as her seamstress whipped her needle and thread over the seam at Levana’s waist, taking it in. She had made a comment about how Levana must not be eating well, how she needed to plump up a little to keep a good figure, like her older sister, and Levana forced her to hold her tongue after that. The seamstress flushed with embarrassment and returned silently to her work. It had since been a very long two hours.