Chapter Text
v.
“The floor is lava!”
The prince and princess of the Eastern Commonwealth were running around the New Beijing Palace garden, feet sloshing through the dewy grass. It was hard to tell that the children were royalty when they were running around and playing as they were now. They just looked like normal kids.
Four-year-old Peony had laid out picnic blankets and was jumping from one to another to evade the pretend lava. She teetered on a particularly long jump.
“No!” she cried as her toes kissed the grass. She dug her heels to plan her next jump and glanced over her shoulder.
Rikan stood at a distance. She yelled after him. “Come on, Ri! Come play!”
Rikan looked around, squinting at the grass. He’d played the game countless times before, but with just a thought, he could imagine a way to make it more fun. More realistic.
Concentrating, he pictured the grassy floor as oozing lava. The blankets and leaves as rocky stepping stones. And where else would lava be found, but under the Earth’s crust? Or perhaps, in a volcano. Either way, the air would be musty and hot, and the sky red and dark under the cavern of a volcano’s walls.
With the entire scene imagined, Rikan sought out Peony’s bioelectricity and slotted the vision into her mind.
Her shriek was ear-splitting.
It was a mild autumn afternoon, and Cinder forwent the stuffy indoors for the gardens. Her youngest daughter was fast asleep, and Cinder cradled her while responding to comms on her retina.
She was sad Kai couldn’t join them—being tied up in a meeting—but she was glad anyway that the children could have some time to play outside. Rikan and Peony were running around and from the sounds of laughter, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The joy fled when a scream spiked the air.
Cinder jumped to her feet but didn’t need to rush over—within a second, Peony was crashing into her legs with wild sobbing. Cinder set her other daughter on the bench and brought Peony into her arms, not knowing whether her soothing voice would be heard over the frantic cries.
After a moment of trying to calm her to no avail, Cinder glanced up at Rikan. She beckoned him over.
“What happened?”
Rikan sheepishly refused to meet her gaze. “Nothing.”
Cinder didn’t need her lie detector to know he was lying. “ Rikan, ” she warned.
He finally looked at her and broke into panicked defence. “I didn’t mean to scare her, I swear! I just wanted to make it more fun and Peony said the floor was lava. I thought she’d like it!”
Cinder stroked Peony’s hair as she processed his words. “What exactly did you do, Rikan?”
He stayed quiet, telling her all she needed to know.
“Rikan,” she began, stern but not harsh. “Did you use your glamour to make Peony see actual lava?”
He stilled, and eventually, slowly, nodded.
She sighed. Peony was still hiccuping and snivelling and her youngest was now waking up and Cinder couldn’t deal with all of this at once. “Rikan, go get your bags and toys.”
He left obediently, and when he returned, Cinder instructed him to take his other sister’s hand.
They walked back to the palace, Peony still desperately holding onto Cinder in fear that anywhere else but her mother’s arms would be fire and magma and terror.
“What happened?” Kai whispered.
Cinder rummaged through the linen closet as Kai leant against the wall. Peony was now asleep in his arms, with her head tucked under his chin.
She had been inconsolable the whole evening, too young to understand that what she had seen was a glamour and not reality. Rikan had hung his head all evening and lazily picked at his food at dinner. Now he was in the living room as instructed, waiting for Cinder to return.
“They were playing, and Ri glamoured her into seeing lava.” She handed Kai a blanket to tuck around the child.
He groaned. “We’ve talked to him about this.”
“I know,” she said, exasperated. “But I honestly don’t think he realised he was doing anything wrong.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No, I’ll do it.” She reached up and brushed a kiss to his mouth. “You get Peony ready for bed. She won’t sleep tonight unless it’s with us.”
He nodded and left as Cinder stalled by the doorway. With a deep breath to compose herself, she entered the living room. Rikan sat on the couch, worrying at his lip.
“Hi, bǎo bao,” she called. He pressed his knees together as she sat next to him.
“Hi Mama,” he murmured.
“Now, do you know what you did wrong today?”
He launched into his excuse. “I only wanted to make it more fun for Peony!”
“I know that,” she said calmly. “I know you didn’t mean any harm. But that doesn’t make it right. What did you do wrong?”
Rikan fidgeted, gripping the fabric of his pants. “I…manipulated Peony. I scared her.”
“Mhm. Ri, how old are you?”
“Eight.”
“And Peony is four. Imagine if I had manipulated you into seeing scary things like lava when you were four. How would you have felt?”
Rikan’s eye twitched in a way that indicated he was thinking deeply. “I would have been terrified,” he confessed.
Cinder tilted his chin up towards her. “Because you are older, you know more than your sisters. You knew that it was just a glamour, but they won’t. And because you know, you have a responsibility to do the right thing.”
She lifted the short on her left leg, exposing the part of her thigh where burnt tissue met metal. “You remember how I became a cyborg, Rikan?”
He traced the swivelling lines on the scarred flesh. “Levana burnt you in a fire.”
“But do you remember why she did it?”
“Because she hated you?” he guessed.
Cinder shook her head. “Because Levana’s sister burnt Levana in a fire. And because my mother had done that, Levana did the same to me. Do you see, darling? Our glamours are very powerful, and if we misuse them, we can hurt people. So can you promise me that you’ll be careful with how you use your glamour, particularly on those who are younger than you?”
Rikan nodded. “I promise. I’m sorry, Mama.”
Cinder smiled and squeezed his hand. “I know. Dad and I are going to decide what your punishment will be, and I expect you to apologise to Peony, okay?”
He nodded again fervently, with eyes pleading sincere apology. “Of course. I’m sorry, I really am.”
She kissed his forehead and stood. “You can do that tomorrow. Now it’s bedtime. You’re a good boy and a good brother, but you have to be careful. I do too, and so will your sisters when they’re older.”
Rikan buried his head in her hip, and Cinder empathised with his guilt. It was how she’d felt when she’d started using her glamour on people, too.
Cinder heard hushed humming as she walked through her bedroom door. Inside, Kai was singing to a sleeping Peony, who lay sandwiched in between them when Cinder slipped under the covers.
Kai shuffled the blankets around for her. “How did he take it?”
“Pretty well. He’s going to apologise to her tomorrow, and I’m going to be more militant with teaching them responsibility.”
Kai smirked. “Rikan will listen, but I don’t think a two and four-year-old will quite comprehend the moral dilemma behind their abilities.”
“I disagree,” she whispered to keep Peony from waking. “We should start them young. Say, ‘if Daddy had a cookie and you wanted it, is it okay to use your glamour to take it from him?’”
Kai frowned. “They couldn’t control me if they tried, not with my bio-lock.”
She rolled her eyes. “The point is to teach them in terms they will understand.”
Kai dropped the banterous tone. “I agree with you, love. I can’t teach them how to use their glamour, but we can both teach them discipline in using it.”
She looked down at their daughter. It was awful, knowing that such a sweet child had the capability to terrorise hundreds without breaking a sweat. And although their children were kind and gentle, they truly didn’t understand that their glamours were a danger. Even as toddlers they would try to manipulate her into moving her hand or picking them up. Not out of malice, but simply because they could.
Cinder fell back against the headboard with a whimper. Kai pushed hair off her brow.
“I’m worried.” She dragged a palm down her face. “I honestly thought all the Blackburn stuff was behind me. But what happened today reminded me of my mother. She used her power over Levana, who—evil as she ended up—was then just a defenceless child. I don’t want that repeating with our kids.”
Kai stroked her cheek. “That’s why we’ll teach them.”
They couldn’t embrace with Peony in the way, but as they settled into their pillows his presence nestled close to hers.
Just when Cinder thought Kai was asleep, his husky voice cut through her thoughts. “They’re our kids, not Levana’s or Channary’s, and we’re going to do all we can. It will be enough.”
Cinder ruminated on his piece for a moment, then leaned over to kiss him goodnight.
Cinder had spent The Lunar Revolution afraid that she would turn into Levana. Kai had quelled that fear, and she had overcome it, certain that she wasn’t like her aunt, or her mother, or anyone from that wretched bloodline.
That fear returned in blaring colours once her children got older. Glamour, manipulation. It was a problem all Lunar parents faced, but Cinder regarded it as more than just a childish phase.
It sounded like the beginning of past Blackburn atrocities.
From that point onwards, Cinder and Kai meticulously taught their children to use their gift fairly. They reminded them that when they were adults, they could make the decision to dampen it with a bioelectrical lock, if they so wished.
They tried their best, but Cinder still feared that it wasn’t enough, or that she hadn’t taught them what they really needed.
Mechanics had blueprints. Empresses had protocol. In comparison, motherhood felt like a chasm of options and uncertainty.
She wouldn’t know the fruition of her efforts until there was nothing else she could do.