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Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Who is the Fairest of the pyre, hot coals beneath her back White sparks floated in her vision but the mercy of unconsciousness wouldn’t co The s flesh invaded her nostrils S her eyes Blisters burbled across her skin, and entire swaths of flesh peeled away, revealing raw tissue underneath

The pain was relentless, the agony never ending She pleaded for death, but it never ca her body from the fire, but the bed of coals crushed and collapsed under her weight, burying her, dragging her deeper into the elier curled toward her Coasped and jolted upward, liled in heavy blankets Her sheets were da hot froled to s, but her saliva tasted like sht shuddering, trying to will away the nightued her for too many years, that she could never seem to escape

She rubbed her hands repeatedly over her arms and sides until she was certain the fire wasn’t real She was not burning alive She was safe and alone in her cha breath, she scooted to the other side of the mattress, away from the sweat-stained sheets, and lay back down Afraid to close her eyes, she stared up at the canopy and practiced her slow breathing until her heartbeat steadied

She tried to distract herself by planning who she would be that day

A thousand possibilities floated before her She would be beautiful, but there were many types of beauty Skin tone, hair texture, the shape of one’s eyes, the length of a neck, a well-placed freckle, a certain grace in the way one walked

Levana knew a great deal about beauty, just as she knew a great deal about ugliness

Then she reroaned at the thought How exhausting it would be to hold a glao, but she would have no choice

It was an inconvenient day for her focus to be shaken by night familiar

As the dream receded into her subconscious, Levana toyed with the idea of being her mother that day Not as Queen Jannali had been when she died, but perhaps as a fifteen-year-old version of her It would be a sort of ho her mother’s cheekbones and the vivid violet eyes that everyone kneere glah no one would have dared say so aloud

She spent a few ht have looked like at her age, and she let the glamour settle over her Moon-blonde hair sleekly pulled into a low knot Skin as pale as a sheet of ice A little shorter than she would becorown Pale pink lips, so as not to detract fro into the glamour But no sooner had she tested the look than she felt the wrongness of it

She did not want to go to her parents’ funeral in the garb of a girl-now-dead

A tap fluttered at the door, interrupting her thoughts

Levana sighed, and quickly fell into another costuraceful slope to her nose, and raven-black hair cut adorably short She shifted through a few eye colors before landing on a striking gray-blue, topped off with suess herself, she eht eye

A teardrop To prove that she was inher eyes

A servant entered carrying a breakfast tray The girl curtsied in the doorway, not lifting her gaze frola, Your Highness"

Sitting up, Levana allowed the servant to set the tray across her lap and tuck a cloth napkin around her The servant poured jasmine tea into a hand-painted porcelain cup that had been iarnished it with two s as the servant uncovered a tray of tiny cream-filled pastries, so that Levana could see what they looked like whole, before using a silver knife to saw them into even tinier bite-size pieces While the servant worked, Levana eyed the dish of bright-colored fruits: a soft-fuzzed peach set into a halo of black and red berries, all dusted with powdered sugar

"Is there anything else I can bring for you, Your Highness?"

"No, that will be all But send the other one up in twenty hness," she answered, although they both knew there was no other one Every servant in the palace was the other one It didn’tas whoever it was could properly stitch her into the sleek gray gown the seamstress had delivered the day before Levana didn’t want to bother with gla her dress today in addition to her face, not with so hts in her head

With another curtsy, the servant ducked out of the roo Levana to stare down at her breakfast tray Only now did she realize how very un-hungry she was There was an ache in her stomach, perhaps left over from the horrible dream Or she supposed it could have been sadness, but that was doubtful