13 DAYS. 12 HOURS. 37 MINUTES.
“Meena, there’s something I need to do before we leave the city.”
She looked at me with raised eyebrows.
I slipped the envelope Lapis had handed me out of my cloak pocket and handed it to her. “Do you know where I can find this address?”
She looked it over and frowned. “Sorry, no, but hold on a moment.” She turned to beckon one of the guards still trailing behind us and handed him the letter. “Could you please escort us to this address?”
He stared at the writing for a moment and paused in thought. “Please, follow me.”
We followed the guard down a few levels, twisting and turning in the elevator tubes, until he found the green- and blue-stained street that matched the address. “It’s the property with the green door over there.” He pointed to a door in a dark shade of green that seemed to shine under the sunlight. Purple flowers hung from small baskets pinned to the wall on either side of the door.
Standing outside of it, I took a deep breath and used the heavy knocker in front of me.
A familiar man with a short beard and a dark red top hat greeted me with wide eyes. Faryl. “Cinderella! How lovely to see you. I was not aware you were traveling to Prago City.”
“Yes, it was a last-minute arrangement. May we please come in?”
Faryl looked at the princess and dipped his head. “Lovely to meet you. I’m Faryl.” He lifted his top hat in greeting and sat us down in a lounge with lots of heavy drapes and a large fireplace I didn’t understand how he used in a city this warm. “As lovely as it is to see you again, I have to inquire as to your intentions.”
I pulled the envelope out of my pocket with a frown, unsure if I really wanted to be in the middle of whatever was going on with my stepsister and this man. “She begged me to stop by and deliver this myself, to make sure you received it.” Not entirely true, but he seemed to buy it.
He wiped a stressed hand down his beard and took the letter from my hand. “I have tried explaining myself, but she doesn’t seem to understand the need for me to provide her with a good life.”
“I’m not an expert at love, nor do I know the ins and outs of your relationship with Lapis, but sometimes love grows fonder when you face the hard times together, rather than pushing her away and trying to do everything on your own.”
We sat in plush armchairs adorned with more cushions than were reasonable and sipped toffee and tea while I played love guru for my stepsister—a role I was ill-equipped and under-experienced for.
“She deserves the world, Cinderella,” Faryl said with a certain wistful tone I had come to associate with Meena and her garden. “I can’t give it to her just yet, but I will. I’ll give her everything she deserves.”
The honesty momentarily took my breath away. I didn’t know what anyone would see in Lapis, but clearly he saw her as a diamond. “Did you know she designs dresses?” His eyebrows rose. “She’s been shoving the pages down the side of her bed for as long as I can remember. She likes to draw ones with high necklines and short sleeves that match the individual she draws them on. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and hear her scratching away.”
His arm rested atop the armchair as he crossed an ankle over his knee. “She always talks about the dresses in the shop windows and gives me an analysis of every dress of every ball we attend and tells me which one won her favor that night.”
“I think, if given the chance, she would make a great designer.” I smiled at him, trying to infuse confidence. “But I don’t think she can do that from back home. But look at this.” I gestured to the room around me in wonder. “You live here, working on your own apprenticeship, in a location in Prago City she might have a shot at living her dreams in.”
“Maybe,” Meena added, “instead of pushing her away, you could bring her with you and work on your dreams together.”
After tea and chatting about what he had been up to since moving here, we left, and Meena insisted she had to pick the shopkeeper up herself before heading back to the dirigible, so I found myself once again on the ground level of Prago City browsing items in a store I’d walked into just for Lazuli, looking for her stupid hair dye. The lady helped me choose a color or two, and Meena paid, of course. The colors in question were lavender-violet and an ocean teal I thought would look nice with Lapis’s favorite cloak, since I couldn’t find a red that would work with her already dyed hair.
Seren, what was happening to me? I was thinking nicely of my stepsister.
She might have been an annoying pain in my butt once upon a time, but nowadays she’d grown out of the hate. She’d kept a number of my secrets over the past two years, even if those were just so she could use the garage as a rendezvous for her and her lover. Maybe they would get married. Maybe they would move here to Prago City, where he lived.
That’d be nice. She’d like that.
Phyllis would not.
And I did not plan to be home during that conversation.
We left with the hair dye and a new golden comb that had a butterfly on the handle I particularly liked, so Meena had purchased it for me.
“That was far too much to spend on a comb,” I complained as we strolled around the fountain and found a shaft of sunlight to sit in.
“But you like it, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but?—”
“Then quit complaining.” She took my hand in hers and met my gaze. “I’d buy you a house and a life if I thought for a second that you’d let me. At least let me buy you a comb.” She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “This way, if you find yourself in a spot of financial bother in the future, you have something to sell that might help.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I could be freezing on the streets, starving to death, and I would still never sell that comb. Instead, I placed a gentle kiss on her lips and leaned my forehead against hers. “Thank you.”
We fetched our black-haired metal worker a few minutes later, and we separated in a hurry—well, I separated in a hurry, Meena seemed not to care.
“I hate to be a bother,” the shopkeeper said, “but if we could move quickly, that would be great.”
I started pushing Meena’s wheelchair toward the nearest lift tube, and we took a few lefts, a couple of rights, nearly got lost down an alley I didn’t like the look of, until our new passenger, Billary, got fed up of following us around and took charge, quickly leading us to a set of lift tubes that could take a wheelchair.
Meena and I took the wider one we’d fit into while the others took the individual ones next to us, and eventually we shot up the pipes and landed on level twelve, not too far from the royal embassy. Thankfully.
As we stepped out of the tube, however, red hair flashed and a sharp grunt echoed from beside me. Billary’s panicked eyes darted around, trying to figure a way out. But he was stuck behind Red’s knife.
She smirked and pressed the knife to his neck tighter, drawing a little blood.
Billary whimpered.
“Well, well, well,” she cooed. “Look who ratted me out to the princess of the realm. Billary, dear, you know the rules.”
“No, please,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. Th-they offered me a new life. A fresh st-start. I...couldn’t say no.”
“Hmm,” she considered. “Not a bad deal. Shame what they’re looking for is something I’ve been searching for my whole life.” She stomped on his foot, and he howled in pain.
“Let him go!” Meena shouted, panic lacing her face. “Let him go, and you can come with us.” She looked taken aback by her own suggestion, but it was out in the open now.
Red’s eyes lit up, and she lowered her knife with a maniacal grin. “That, Princess Jemeena, sounds like a deal.” She sheathed the knife and stood behind us, gesturing ahead. “After you.”
With Red an ever-threatening presence by our side, Billary a nervous wreck anywhere near her, a tired and mentally exhausted princess, I was anything but cheerful when we did finally make it back onto the dirigible.
Red and Billary were placed on the other side of the ship, in similar rooms to ours, so when we finally settled in and had a minute to ourselves, I exhaled loudly and slouched into an armchair in Meena’s room.
“I don’t trust her,” I said.
Meena, lying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling, flitted her eyes my way and then back to their post. “Me either, but we do not have a choice. Hopefully, she will just...return here after we visit the temple, and we can all go our separate ways.”