Luna stared at him silently. He still didn't understand.
"Your name is not that pathetic jumble of syllables," she repeated patiently. Well, yes, it was faked patience, but it was good enough.
"You think you know my name?" he challenged. Luna tilted her head slowly to the side, ignoring the whispers of the men behind her. It was a sort of conscious tick. She did it when she was too mad to be made to repeat things without dealing out punishments, so any one of her slaves that wasn't new would know that they better shut the fuck up and start listening when they saw it.
Unfortunately for him, this man was new.
"What is it then?" he asked with a scoff. He still didn't understand.
"You have no name," Luna said in a low, condescending whisper, as though speaking to a child.
"My family-" he began to protest, but Luna cut him off.
"You have no family either," she snapped. It was rare for her to be so bent out of shape. Attractive people pissed her off, badly. They had the nice life that she never could have, after her accident when she had been a young girl. She still had to wear a half mask to cover the right side of her face. Despite her nearly perfect features, everyone either knew or suspected that a monster hid beneath the mask, so if they saw her they would only make a sign to ward witches, touch a piece of amethyst jewelry, or just avert their eyes and either continue on their way or stop immediately.
Luna was bitter. But so what? She had every right to be. Next in line to the throne, and the most powerful sorcerer in generations, and she had been thrown away just because of a stupid disfigurement? If she was the queen, no one would even dare to make up rumors. They would assume she was just hiding it because her visage was so divine that anyone who saw the whole thing would be incinerated or some shit like that.
Although maybe a large reason that they unconsciously rejected her appearance was the fact that there wasn't a hole for her to see out of. Her right physical eye didn't work anymore, so what was the point in adding one? That would just make forging the damn thing more difficult. Unfortunately, she hadn't thought until after getting her latest one that only having one eye would make her seem either disfigured or divine, because although she was obviously missing an eye, she walked and moved as well as any other, and her appearance was just as ethereal, especially with the mask being silver and having a golden inlay.
Now, obviously, she wouldn't get out of it easily and be worshiped because of it. As she had been rejected from the throne, everyone assumed something had gone wrong. Hence, the terrible reputation.
To be fair, maybe she did deserve some of it. After all, she was a known virgin. Being the Queen's daughter, she had a Holy Stone, which would change from its pure white to a vibrant color the second she lost her virginity. Hers was the only one still white. The color predicted the lifestyle that the linked person would live, but they didn't know exactly how to interpret them, because there was such nuance to color.
Unfortunate that they hadn't kept her as the heiress. She could have told them.
Instead, she just kept her research silent, and methodically predicted her siblings' futures. When they needed advice, they would come to her, offering hefty sums. Sometimes she would help them, if she felt like it. If she didn't, she would refuse them. It didn't matter, because she demanded the pay up front anyway. Soon after that started, they had each begun to be a lot more kind to her. Now everyone but the queen bowed to her, and she even had friends among the nobles. Their children were much harder, because they didn't have Holy Stones, only Souls Stones, the colors of which were much less precise, and almost always completely solid. Holy Stones had some patches, which appeared to shift but really stayed in the same place in the pattern. The reason that the Holy Stones' lighting wasn't constant was because the pattern that told every single part of the bound person's life moved around and through it.
Luna watched as two thin iron bars were pressed into his skin. They were glowing red-hot, an easy result of her alchemy, and they burned his flesh, leaving behind red welts and some black marks along the edges.
She smirked. But he didn't cry out.