UNWANTED

CHAPTER 17 - L12.2 - LIZAVETA

I caught my breath.

Uncle Hassan was looking himself over in my mirror, admiring his work. As usual he looked like a masterpiece. He was in a perfectly tailored mulberry suit, hand-painted and inlaid with gold leaf, with a golden ear-cuff in the shape of a geometric sun around his left ear. For someone who abdicated so long ago, he wore purple better than me.

Jonah sat on the sofa, rolling his eyes at him. He was dressed more modestly, of course, with a silver-embroidered cobalt suit over a turtleneck. Uncle Hassan had always been the peacock of the family and tonight for the ball he threw for me, he did not disappoint.

I had a feeling come over me then; I wondered how long the gilded life would last.

I was an imposter wearing a lost royal family's tiara, pretending to be queen. Unmarried women weren't even supposed to wear tiaras... I didn't get it.

"This is good." I heard a voice say. Ilyaas was still changing behind a small divider, a whole team of stylists brought by my uncle also working on him. If he approved, that probably meant he was perfect. It was a shock how a man who grew in a palace and a boy who grew up in a patch of ruins in a desert could both end up with the same style, but it was a fact.

As of the moment, I was standing in front of a lit mirror as they applied powder to my eyelids. "Why do I need this, Uncle? I have the mask anyway." It was tradition, he said, the masquerade.

Honestly it was tacky, but I let him have his fun. I didn't know how much of my burden he carried. I knew he was shielding me from much of everything I needed to worry about. A few days ago, I might have reprimanded him for it, but today, I understood.

The crown rests on shoulders that rest on shoulders, that rest on shoulders.

"No one's gonna see my eyes." I whispered.

"Just because you're not seen doesn't mean you should be any less stunning." He replied, walking towards me, picking up the skin-tight mesh boots he intended for me to wear. They were hand-picked by him, saying that they were much more comfortable than all the thousand shoes delivered to my suite that night. They were not. "What matters is knowing you're beautiful, even when no one else knows."

I looked over myself. Everyone knows. That's what everyone always told me about myself. Before I could speak a word, I would get complimented by the generations of handpicked genes I inherited as if it was an achievement.

I knew I was beautiful, but I never saw value in it apart from its use in war: it's much easier to die for someone who looked like heaven. Hell is much more bearable that way.

"Ilyaas, are you done?"

"Hmmph" I heard him.

The blue and red dress was full in the back but hovered a foot and a half off the ground at the front so the boots could be seen. It was scandalous by royal standards since it showed my shoulders and wasn't purple, but I was the empress now and apparently everything goes if I say so... if my uncle says so.

It was one of a kind. I hadn't seen anything like it before. It felt like thick hanfu fabric with yue embroidery on it, but it was also... lighter and there were these tiny silicone circles sticking to my skin and connecting to the threads. When my uncle was asked about it, he just smiled. I didn't remember them being there the last time I did a fitting. They also replaced the sleek gold belt with a much more intricate one resembling the diamond-encrusted grain on the tiara.

I felt like a sparkling lamp. And I was distracting myself from the reality that starting past midnight, the shield they built around me would fall down and I would have to face the reality of being the empress.