Selene chucked her pillow across her room.

"Of course we're friends, Kai!" Selene mocked herself, cocking her head to each side. She yanked her slippers off and slammed them to the ground. "Are you okay, Kai?" She sneered. What the hell was she doing? With a frustrated groan, Selene fell face first onto her bed, screaming into the comforter.

This was hopeless. She was hopeless. Every time she decided to maintain a professional distance from Kai and be productive in their diplomatic relations, her fat mouth had to go and run itself off a cliff. And what was worse was that she was sure she was leading him along. She saw the way he looked at her. She saw the way his cheeks were dusted with a perpetual blush every time they were together. She saw it all, and she did nothing. She didn't shut these naive feelings of his down at the roots, and she didn't know why.

She didn't know how she could even get this close to him when guilt filled the hollows of her very bones. He would hate her, knowing the things she'd done in the past. It sickened her. She physically sickened herself, and she had no idea how to let go of it. Everywhere she looked, there was letumosis. She saw it in the pain in Kai's eyes. She saw it in the bruises covering his father. And she saw it every day, on every netscreen, on the streets of New Beijing. She couldn't escape it. It was always there, taunting her.

Selene sighed into her blankets. And then there was Luna. Sweet, frivolous Luna. Stupid and conniving. Her home and her prison. When had Luna become such a far-away land? When had it stopped being her haven? She thought back to her court, the silly costume parties they'd throw. She could remember the sights and smells of every single one of them, loud and boisterous and completely fake, every single bit of them. Everywhere she looked, glamours. Everywhere she went, some more political affairs. More secret plots in the shadows of her very own palace.

Artemisia smelled of perfume and gunpowder. The entire goddamn city. It smelled like burned fireworks. Luna always smelled as though it was on fire.

Fire? Selene hated it. She despised fire. But she was fire. She was the worst wildfire Luna had ever seen- worse than her mother, worse than her grandmother. She couldn't blame Luna. It was the fault of her ancestors that it was this way, hateful and frivolous. But it was her fault that Luna was becoming evil.

Selene grasped at her glamour for a moment, rolling onto her back. Would she have been sick right now, had her scientists not created a cure for lunar sickness under her orders? She raised her hands above her head, toward the dark ceiling, and wondered what it would be like to be made of metal. Unimpenetrable. Unbreakable. She slipped her will into her own mind, and soon steel started to grow from the tips of her flesh fingers, the wrist of her metal hand. It spread, crackling and hissing, and engulfed her arms. She flexed her fingers and they shone in the moonlight filtering through the window.

And then she blinked, and the glamour was gone.

Even this power of theirs. She'd never thought of it on Luna; she'd twisted her lips at the extravagant hair and otherworldly makeup her court would don, but she'd thought nothing of it. Stupid and frivolous like the rest of Luna. But it was also fake. Every single bit of it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Luna was built on deception and manipulation, and it certainly didn't take a birthright to make Selene believe any of it.

Selene tucked her hands into her armpits, gazing up at the lush canopy above her bed. Earth was different. Earth had been built on hard work- every drop of sweat and blood every year of Earth's history had produced was still visible in every building, every human being here.

Lunar called themselves human. But were they? Were they even human anymore?

Selene didn't know. She didn't want to think about it. Curling up into a fetal position, Selene savoured the cool feel of her metal hand on the bare skin of her arm. She hadn't bothered to put on a nightgown; she lay in only her slip, curled up on a single ray of moonlight. Kai's face lingered behind her eyelids again, along with the flash of panic that always came with it. And then Selene was asleep, her toes growing cold.

•

Selene was in Luna. She was in the palace. Exotic scents filled the air, thick in Selene's nostrils, and she realised she was in her quarters. At home.

Night hung behind her massive windows, Earth nowhere to be seen along the horizon. The carpet-like red curtains had been drawn back. Her quarters seemed massive with all the windows exposed. Artemisia spread down below the palace, sprawling and white and beautiful. Selene walked to the the window, touching it with the tips of her fingers. Both of her hands were flesh again. Closing her eyes, Selene exhaled slowly. This is where she belonged. This was where she was queen. Right?

"How's your reign, darling?"

Selene spun around, her hand still plastered against the window. Her eyes widened. "Mother?"

Channary smiled demurely and walked over to the window beside Selene, each step clipped and graceful. She surveyed Artemisia serenely, her milky eyes soft and comfortable. Her fingers laced themselves together in front of her velvet gown, golden and shimmering.

"Hello, darling," Channary spoke, her lips full and red. The corner quirked up in a smile. "How are you faring as queen? I hope it's not too much for those little shoulders of yours."

Selene gaped at her mother, taking a step back. "I- I'm fine. Mother, what are you doing here? You're-"

"Dead?" Channary turned to Selene. "Yes, I know. How many times did poor Vera stab me? Ten, twenty? Dear me, I've lost count."

Selene couldn't stop gaping. She shook her head slowly. She took another step back. "This is a dream. This is a nightmare. This is-"

"I assure you, darling, I'm very real." In just a few of those sweeping, graceful steps, Channary stood before Selene, tall and regal. She cupped Selene's bared shoulder in one hand and met her daughter's eyes, a smile playing at the corners of her own. "What's that saying, again? Oh, I know. I'll always-" Channary tapped Selene's chest with one perfectly manicured finger, "-be right in here."

Selene shriveled away from her mother's touch. "No. You're not here. You're gone." Even as Selene said it, her lip trembled. Her mother's face. Perfect and so much like her own it made her heart ache. She hated her mother. She hated her.

"You know, Vera's family got executed for this. For my death, I mean. My murder." The word cut into Selene's chest like a knife. Murder. Channary turned back to the window and fingered the edge of the curtain. "I'm sure you remember. I remember. You were crying. I saw all those tears, and all I could think about was my poor baby. Motherless." Channary glanced back at Selene. "Even at that age, you were so very strong with your gift. Stronger than me, maybe. Definitely stronger than Levana."

Selene backed up into the wall, shaking her head repeatedly, though her eyes were glued to her mother's regal form. "Stop. Stop. Stop, I don't- I don't want to-"

"Remember? Remember the way her son cried like a baby when he was executed? The way he blubbered and cried? Do you remember, Selene?" Channary's eyes burned into Selene's skull. Selene plastered her hands to her ears and shook her head, whimpering and shutting her eyes.

"No. I don't- I don't-"

"You do remember. You remember it every day. You remember me every day."

"I did what I had to do!" screamed Selene, digging her fingernails into her scalp and doubling over. Stars burned behind her eyelids. "You were a tyrant! A monster!"

"No," said Channary, "you're the monster."

Selene screamed to drown out her mother, though she said nothing else. She screamed to drown out the voices in her head, repeating her mother's words over and over and over.

Murder. Execution. Remember. Tyrant.

Monster.

"You were a child, Selene," her mother said pitifully, and then the world dissolved into chaos. Screams echoed around Selene's chambers. Screams of I didn't do it, spare me, please spiraled into Selene. She crumpled to the ground, whimpering into her hands.

Fake. Phony. Lies. Monster.

"I was a child," whispered Selene, her head a frenzy and her voice hoarse from screaming.

And then she awoke, a sweaty, twitching mess on her massive bed. The netscreen on the wall chimed, although it had been asleep before.

"Attention all citizens of the Eastern Commonwealth. As of the time of 2:13, August 17th, the 126th year of the Third Era, Emperor Rikan of the Eastern Commonwealth has been pronounced dead by the doctors of the royal palace. Cause of death determined most definitely as letumosis." The words scrolled across the screen in the dark, a robotic voice chanting them out. When the message finished, the screen blackened once again and Selene was alone in her vast quarters.

She curled up and started to cry.