CINDER31LA

7 DAYS. 10 HOURS. 15 MINUTES.

Six days later, and Meena was quiet. Even sitting in the steamer with a scarf around her face, where she could breathe okay and avoid the sand, she was almost silent. She only answered questions with short sentences, not engaging in full conversation.

“Have you ever been to the Temple of Seren before?” I asked, once again trying to snap her out of her thoughts.

“Once or twice when I was young.”

“What’s it like?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t remember much, just lots of stone walls and women in white.”

Red butted in, answering my question instead. “The women in white are the priestesses of Seren, and the temple is the only place they reside. The cities are where they send the priests. The priestesses educate young acolytes, maintain the temple, which is the oldest structure on the island, I believe, and apparently have a secret anti-aging plant they’ve been denying me and my ancestors for hundreds of years.” The last part was said through gritted teeth, but she kept up the pretense nonetheless.

Maybe we should keep her away from the priestesses, or at least make sure she wasn’t alone with them.

The guards from our trip to Red’s lair sat beside her, but others trailed behind and in front of us in two-person steamers. More guards than I was used to Meena using. We left Billary on the ship. There was no need for him to be in the way here. IoN sat in Meena’s lap, like he often did.

The distance was nothing but sand for the better part of an hour, and I found myself wondering why we landed so far away, but I didn’t bother to ask Meena, because the moment I looked at her, I found her staring into the distance with deep thoughts in her eyes and her hands running familiar circles on IoN’s head.

After a while, when I was wondering if we would even get there before nightfall, something angular peeked over the horizon in the distance. The point grew in size the closer we got.

“Is that it?” I asked, leaning as close as I could get to the front of the steamer.

“Yup.” Red fiddled with one of the belt loops in her pants and followed our gazes. “The Temple of Seren.” She seemed less than pleased, and I couldn’t figure out if it was a good thing she was nervous because it meant she was worried about whatever scheme was brewing inside that crazy head of hers or if I should be worried by whatever had gotten the confident maniac on edge.

Either way, though, I was apprehensive, and I got the feeling it was going around. Meena seemed to fiddle with the rings on her fingers faster the closer we got, and even the guards kept looking from left to right with increasing frequency.

The building loomed larger in the distance until I could make out a gate barring entrance to many buildings that were all connected to the massive temple in the center, which stood proudly, seeming to grow toward the sky. I had to look up to even see the roof.

“It’s huge,” I whispered, the atmosphere tense.

“It’s the largest temple in the world.” Meena stood as we came to a stop. “And it’s where the inhabitants all stay until they complete their education, unless they are women, in which case they stay there a lifetime.”

“You’re allowed to leave if you want to leave the holy service,” Red said blankly.

We stared at her, but she had her back to us, having already stood to follow the princess’s movements.

The gate was a rusted set of metal spikes that dug into the ground and stood twice my height, but someone was on the other side in moments, waiting for one of us to exit the steamer.

Meena went for the steps, opening the door, but I got there first and helped her down. I tucked her arm around mine, ready to be leaned on if needed, and guided us toward the person dressed in white from head to toe.

“Princess Jemeena,” she exclaimed upon seeing us close up. “What an honor. Had I known you were coming, I would have arranged rooms and a feast.”

“That will not be necessary,” Meena said, straightening her back. “All we require is your time.”

The lady bowed her head and unlocked the gates, signaling the young guards, who were probably acolytes, to open them. “Welcome,” she said after we stepped inside, “to the Temple of Seren.”

With the princess in a wheelchair she clearly hated but wearing a strong and purposefully neutral look on her face, we all stepped onto the temple’s grounds and were taken on a tour through the front gardens, which became more of an oasis the farther in you went, as though the sand itself was repelled by the might of Seren. It started with small shrubs with barely any leaves growing randomly out of the ground and ended with luscious palm trees and bright pink flowers with spikes on their long stems.

The doors to the main temple were the largest I’d ever seen, with ornate carvings of old on the front depicting what our guide said were the origins of the women in white. “The early texts say that three women found themselves in the desert, starving, near death, and they happened upon three white dresses and headscarves in a pool of water. After donning the material and drinking their fill, the ground split apart, and out of the desert’s core rose the Temple of Seren, the first of three to rise over the course of their lifetimes.”

“Are the original three temples still here?” My fingers played with the hem of my collar, my mind racing.

The woman grinned as she looked at me, her gentle face at ease in the heat. “Yes, but we don’t use them often nowadays for fear of the old structure falling apart.” She looked at Red for the first time, their eyes meeting in an exchange of knowledge, as though they shared a secret. “But they’re still used for certain rituals.”

Red’s face fell to the floor, a fury of crimson crossing her cheeks as her fist clenched and unclenched at her side.

“Would you like me to make up a room for you and your companions, Princess?” she asked, looking down at Meena.

Meena considered the question for a moment but shook her head. “I would like to speak to Lady Lorelai first, Serena, then I’ll know how long we might be here.”

Serena bowed, a puzzled look crossing her brow for a mere moment, then she gently rapped at the doors. “It takes a moment to open these doors, I’m afraid. The mechanism is old and must be worked by hand.”

Meena waved her concern off, acting the perfect royal guest, but I could see the frustration bubbling beneath the surface. She wanted to speak to this Lady Lorelai as quickly as possible, and I didn’t blame her.

Red, however, seemed to feel the opposite. She continuously turned her gaze back to the front gates as often as possible, standing as far away from Serena as polite society would allow. She was a mystery, this woman, and there was a part of my brain that wanted to unravel it and gaze at the depths of what made this woman the murderous criminal she had become. But I restrained myself. However dismayed I might have been to be associating with someone like her, she was not a puzzle for me to solve, she was a person.

The doors slid open on massive bronze runners embedded in the dark stone floor, the sound rumbling like thunder. If I thought the doors were beautiful, it was nothing compared to the opulence inside the cavernous space. Columns the size of small houses stood in rows of twelve and soared into the ceiling that was so high, I couldn’t make out the details etched into the stone. The floor, made of the same stone as outside, had patterns of the same flower etched onto its surface over and over again for as far as the eye could see. I grabbed the pieces of paper from my pocket and shuffled through them until I found the one with the plant drawing and held it to the floor tiles.

They matched.

That was the plant we were looking for.

Fires lit the edges of the circular space one by one in large alcoves until the dais at the back center lit up in orange flickers.

“This is the main temple used today,” Serena said, waving a hand over the space in indication. “It is where we hold daily sermons and teachings, and it’s the first space the acolytes are permitted to use without instruction.”

“Forgive me, Serena,” Meena said, “but I would love to see Lady Lorelai first and take the tour after. It’s of the utmost importance.”

Serena’s gaze flickered to Meena’s wrist and the edges of the golden cloth cover, her eyes squinting with suspicion. “Of course.” She bowed her head and rushed off, gesturing for us to follow.

Red was suspiciously silent throughout the journey down a series of alleyways and hallways until we reached a narrow staircase the wheelchair wouldn’t fit through even if we could carry it. “Looks like you’ll have to be carried up, Princess.”

Serena looked at her with sympathy. “Can I call for some acolytes to help?”

Meena shook her head and stood, determination etched on her face like the drawings in the temple’s stone floor. “I can make it.” She had a look I knew all too well.

She might need help, but she didn’t want it from them.

I wrapped my arm firmly around her waist, prepared to help lift some of her weight, and we crawled up the stairs, taking a break every four or five to let her catch her breath.

“I am sorry for your health, Princess,” Serena said. “Is there something that can be done?”

Meena shook her head once she reached the top. “They do not even know the disease, let alone how to cure it.”

“I am sorry.”

Even Red looked at the floor, a sympathetic expression crossing her eyes. “I, too, am sorry.” I frowned at her, but she interrupted whatever thoughts crossed my mind. “What? I can’t be sorry a kind princess is sick?”

IoN made a small sound from beside my head. No one noticed, but Meena and I both looked at each other.

Serena knocked on the door, and another woman in white answered, looking at all of us with a confused scowl on her face. “Why would you disturb Lady Lorelai at such a holy hour?” she asked our guide.

“The princess requires her advice.”

Meena bowed her head and muttered, “Serena, I am grateful for your service and thankful for your duties. If it’s not too much trouble, I would like a private word with Lady Lorelai.”

Were they both called Serena? Seemed unlikely.

Red answered my unspoken question in a whisper. “It’s a title, not a name.”

Oh, right.

I should have paid more attention during holy lessons, but instead I spent the time hiding small textbooks on steam engineering inside the larger holy textbooks. If I had known I would need the knowledge to save the princess’s life one day, I might have taken heed.

Both Serenas bowed and stood away from the door, gesturing us inside. The room was small—more of a cupboard with shelves on every available space, displaying more books and trinkets than I’d seen in my lifetime. There was a couch at one end beneath a small corner window that overlooked the beautiful desert, and a desk and chair were in the corner by the door. On that couch, bare feet resting on the small table in front, book in hand, sat a lady with hair that trailed in ringlets past her shoulders and chest.

“Lady Lorelai.” Meena bowed low, the lowest I’d seen her bow to anyone. “It is an honor to meet with you.”

Both Red and I followed suit, bowing low and greeting her with honorifics.

She looked up from her book and raised a single pierced eyebrow. “Princess Jemeena, please have a seat.” She gestured to the space next to her on the sofa. “I was just giving a private lesson, but I have time for you.”

“Thank you.” She walked a few paces to the couch and breathed heavily, mildly out of breath from the task. “I am grateful you could move things around for me.”

“Of course.” She placed the book written in a language I couldn’t decipher on the table and looked at me with a strange flitter of recognition and then at Red, a scowl deepening on her face. “You can wait outside, Redower.” She gave the girl no further thought and looked straight back at Meena.

“Actually, Lady Lorelai, I am accompanying the princess today and must stay.” She bowed her head slightly and smirked beneath the social mask.

Lady Lorelai huffed but said nothing, instead placing all her attention on Meena, who looked between the two as vexed as I felt. “What is it I can do for you today, Your Highness?”

For the first time since I’d met her, Meena looked as though she didn’t know what to say. I presumed there were no social lessons or graces that could be applied that would weaken the outcome anyway. It seemed she came to the same conclusion. She merely edged her sleeve up and untied the golden cloth. “I am dying.”

Lady Lorelai took her wrist in hand and inspected her lifeclock. “Lifeclocks have been known to change when a cure to an illness is found. They are not entirely set in stone. There is still hope.”

Meena shook her head. “Not mine. I have been destined to die on the day of my twenty-first birthday since the day I was born. Mother says I was born cursed, and Father likes to pretend as though it’s not a problem. They employed the best healers across the island, even sending envoys and letters to other countries to see if anyone could help. But no one knows what is wrong with my lungs.”

“And it hasn’t moved a single second since the day you were born?”

She shook her head, eyes casting to her lap, then to me. “The papers, El?”

“Oh, right, of course.” I fumbled them out of my pocket and handed them over.

Meena placed them on the table one by one, creating a collage of findings from the record room at the exportation office, Red’s notes from her and her ancestors, my father’s notes, and then mine. “We are searching for something...something that might cure me.”

“And how do you think I can help with this search?” She hadn’t taken her eyes from the drawing of the plant. “This cure you are searching for, it’s for your lungs?”

Meena looked at me, then back to Lady Lorelai, and shook her head. “I have spent a lifetime searching for that cure and gotten nowhere. No, I’m looking for a cure to time.”

Lady Lorelai shook her head and looked away from the papers. “No, I can’t help you?—”

“My father came to you once,” I said, “years ago, asking for help. I know he didn’t find answers, but what he did find has been erased from his notes entirely. Please, what did you tell him?”

Her brown eyes pierced me with such intensity, I had to hold onto the table to stop myself from toppling over. “Many have come looking for answers, but few find the one they are looking for.”

“What did Preston find when he came looking for answers?” Meena asked.

“That the answer was not what he was expecting, and I’m afraid the information may have done more harm than good.”

“How?” I crouched beside Meena, my hand on her lap.

“IoN,” Lady Lorelai whispered, “you have much to share with your friends.” She looked at him hovering in the air. “You need not hide your true nature from me, for I helped create you.”

Lady Lorelai stood on her bare feet and exited the room. We followed down the stairs we had come up—quite the task for Meena, as she was still recovering from coming up them—and round so many twists and turns I wouldn’t be able to lead us back out again if needed. But eventually, she rounded a corner that led to a grand door similar to the one we had entered earlier.

“Lady Lorelai?” Red asked. “Is that . . . ?”

“The original temple, yes. It was where IoN was created, and it’s where the princess will find answers.”

Red looked taken aback, as though she was surprised this place even existed, much less that we were about to set foot in it.

“Lady Lorelai,” Meena said, only slightly out of breath after resting in the wheelchair, “would you prefer I leave the chair out here?”

“That’s quite all right, Your Highness. I wouldn’t want you needing medical attention this far into the temple. It would take us a while to get a doctor to you.” She didn’t look at her as she said it, but sympathy laced her tone. She took a moment to collect herself before opening the doors into a place older than civilization itself.

Records didn’t even go back this far—a thousand years before steam power was invented, and barely anyone knew what life was like when people roamed this temple. It was like stepping into the past. I could feel the importance reverberate within me, through me, as though I were simply a part of a system greater than a single person.

Surely there were people who were more important, like Meena, who could change people’s lives forever, shape nations, and lead the next generation into the future. Surely, she was important.

Lady Lorelai glided along the floor, and we followed, Meena’s chair doing its best to catch on every piece of rubble along the way and us trying not to damage anything older than our city.

Red, however, was dazed as she looked around in awe and inspiration. “Is this really where Lady Galatria founded the ladies in white?”

Lady Lorelai turned around. “It’s where Seren saved her and her sisters, and together they forged a whole new world, yes.”

“It’s amazing.” She looked at Lorelai as though she was once a friend. “Why does no one come here anymore?”

Lady Lorelai didn’t answer. Instead, she held up a finger and guided us to the center, where a statue of a flower dropping water onto a field of houses stood. “Because it holds knowledge we, as a society tasked with safeguarding Seren and all we know about Him, decided we don’t want the general populace to know.”

“When you say ‘we?’” Red asked.

“I mean my ancestors, yes, but I agree with them.” She knelt at the foot of the flower. “It’s for the best.”

IoN hovered above her head and asked, “How did you create me? I cannot seem to recall that information.”

“No, you won’t be able to. We made sure to erase it from you before allowing you to wake.” She finished whatever prayer she recited inside her head and turned to face him. “IoN, you are a unique specimen that I have always questioned whether I should have helped create. I’ve wrestled with the idea of it being the wrong choice for many years, but now I see that it was Seren’s plan all along.” She looked at the princess. “Without you, she wouldn’t have made it here.”

IoN turned to the princess and his mouth lit up green. Then he turned to me and said, “Anything to make El happy.”

A single tear slid down Lady Lorelai’s cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. “Cinderella, when your father came to visit me, he was looking for a cure, as you know, after having tried many times to transfer time from himself to your mother, but to no avail. It didn’t work because he didn’t have all the information about our lifeclocks. When his time was coming to an end, he came to see me, seeking answers so he could live long enough to give his daughter a chance at a better life.

“Red, your ancestors couldn’t find the answer because you were also missing information. Information I was careful not to reveal to you while you were here with us as a child.”

Red’s gaze fell to the floor, her cheeks as bright as her hair. “So, it didn’t matter. Everything they’ve done, everything they’ve sacrificed was meaningless?”

“People are not meant to cheat death, Redower.”

“Why tell us now,” Meena asked. “If this is such a secret, why tell anyone?”

Lady Lorelai smiled gently at the princess. “Because some people are worthy of the knowledge.” She looked up at me. “Just like your father.”

I squinted at the statue, and the recognition flashed through my mind like lightning. “It’s the herbilore plant!” I pointed to the statue and then looked at Meena. “It’s the plant Red buys from the temple.”

Lady Lorelai scowled, then looked furiously at Red. “You are a menace to this world.”

Red flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I try.”

“But yes,” Lady Lorelai said, “it’s a plant we call herbilore today, but in the old tongue it was called gracious. It was used during the grace ritual to keep the sisters healthy. They performed it every morning, and the texts say they lived hundreds of years and only passed upon their choosing.”

“Is it true?” Meena asked. “Can it really extend life?”

“Not quite, no.” She looked at me with sadness in her eyes. “It can transfer life from one being to another.”

“Just like Dad was trying to do.”

Red furrowed her brow. “But how were the sisters able to live long lives if they had to trade years between themselves?”

Meena’s eyes pinged open and she gasped. “They didn’t transfer years between each other. They took them from their followers.”

“It’s an old way of life we don’t subscribe to anymore, but yes, I’m sorry to say the sisters took the lives of their followers—often willingly given, but sometimes not. They did great things for this world, but they were troubled, and the older they got, the more troubled they became.”

Meena frowned up at me. “El, I can’t do this. This isn’t the answer we’ve been seeking.”

I frowned, not understanding. “You’re one of the most amazing and important people in the country.”

“I can’t steal someone else’s life just so I can sit on a throne for the rest of mine.” She looked at Lady Lorelai and apologized. “Take me home, please.”

I turned the wheelchair around, but IoN flew in front of us. “El, you have been wanting to understand your father’s steps for years. You have this opportunity right in front of you, and you won’t even consider asking questions?”

“I apologize, El. Of course you should stay and get the answers you seek. I’ll wait for you.” She looked at the lady in white, who stared at her in shock. “Is there anyone who can wheel me to a room I might reside in while I wait?”

Shaking her curls, Lady Lorelai replied, “Of course, Your Highness. I’ll summon someone now.”

Red shook her head. “I’ll pull the cord. You stay.” Red disappeared outside for a while, and in the meantime, we both turned back to the plant statue with solemn expressions.

“I am sorry,” I whispered.

Meena rested her hand atop mine on the wheelchair’s handle. “It’s quite all right, El. It was always meant to be this way.”

“But it feels so wrong.”

“Death isn’t supposed to feel right.”

Yeah, but this feels like something that could be prevented. Something with an answer on a silver tray in front of us, but we’re too afraid to take it.

Red returned several minutes later, a little out of breath after exclaiming there weren’t servant cords anywhere near here—whatever that meant—but I ignored her. Instead, I traveled around the room, looking at the statue and how the steady flow of water dripped into a pool in the center of the houses, which then flowed around a river through those houses, watering everyone.

It was intricate and beautiful, but nowhere I recognized.

“Some of our best scholars think this is supposed to represent the village that once stood here. There are still remnants of it behind the temple, where the Serena and acolyte quarters reside.”

“You do not agree?” Meena asked, curious.

“It’s my job to pass down knowledge to those I see fit to hold it, to oversee the teachings of the ladies in white, and to ensure our line is never broken, but it’s an awfully dull job, to tell you the truth. I spend a lot of time poring over texts and diary entries and anything written down by long-forgotten ancestors who also resided here. And what I have found, among lots of other important thoughts and theories, is that the people who lived here four or five hundred years ago thought this temple held the power to create towns and entire cities. That that was where Palatina and Prago City came from. That the statue represents what could be, not what has already passed.”

“Could it not just be metaphoric?” I asked. “That the sisters truly believed they were feeding their people life, that the herbilore plant kept themselves and therefore everyone else alive?”

“Possibly,” Lady Lorelai said. “Others have suggested as much. There are as many theories about this one statue as there are carvings on every temple’s walls, and all of them could be the answer. So to answer your question, Princess, I am unsure what its original intent was.”

“How does it work?” I asked tentatively, worried I wasn’t really allowed to ask. “How does one transfer time?”

“It’s really not that complicated, but if you try doing it without the plant, it doesn’t work. We are unsure why. We ladies in white believe, of course, it’s because Seren doesn’t allow it. Herbilore is His plant, His gift to us. Without it, we are cheating His will.”

“But others believe other things?” I asked, curious.

“Some scholars think the plant might act as a buffering agent, like a stabilizing mechanism that enables the transfer of time. That without it, the lifeclocks might destabilize and start to erode, therefore eroding a person’s time with it.”

Meena gazed at me knowingly.

It sounded exactly like what Dad had described: Mom’s years disintegrating before his eyes.

IoN asked, “Why did he make me?”

Lady Lorelai turned to him and said, “To provide El with a friend, so that she might always have love, even after he’d passed.”

IoN settled in my arms and wrapped his around my wrists. “So El is my purpose?”

“She always has been, and I think you already knew that.”

Another lady in white bustled through the door moments later, and she bowed at both the princess and Lady Lorelai, then wheeled the princess away, asking her what kind of food she preferred and whether she wanted anyone to gather her things from the dirigible.

“Do you have any other questions, Cinderella?”

“I feel like I have more questions than words in the dictionary, Lady Lorelai, but for now, I think I’d prefer to just absorb.”

“I do.” Red stood next to me, fists clenched. “I have many questions.”

I should have left—it was rude to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation—but curiosity got the better of me, as it often did, so I shrank into the shadows.

“I know you do, Redower.” Lady Lorelai ran a frustrated hand across her forehead. “When your parents abandoned you on our doorstep, I didn’t know what to do with you.”

“So you knew?” She knelt in front of the statue and clasped her hands, folding her fingers together.

“That you were here to provide information to your parents as to the properties of the herbilore plant? Of course I did. Both of our ancestors have accounts of each other. Why else would you have been here?”

“To learn, to be guided?” Red didn’t open her eyes or look at Lady Lorelai, but the hint of amusement in her voice was evident. “Maybe my parents thought I needed Seren’s guidance.”

Lady Lorelai let out an undignified snort that sounded erroneous coming from her, then knelt next to Red and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Red, I am sorry for how things turned out. It is, in part, my fault for how you were shunned out of the temple.”

A single tear slipped down Red’s face. She opened her eyes and met Lady Lorelai’s gaze. “It was supposed to just be a mission, to find out your secrets and then leave, but the temple was my home. Something I didn’t know I needed, and you threw me out of it for something I couldn’t control.”

“It is still forbidden to fornicate with a lady in white, to taint Seren’s purity. It is instant banishment.”

Red’s head fell onto her shoulder as hiccuped sobs echoed across the chamber. “I . . . needed . . . you.”

Lady Lorelai wrapped her arms tight around her, and a few tears slid down her face before she hid them in Red’s hair. She mumbled something I couldn’t hear, but then she pulled herself back and raised Red’s chin to meet her face. “For what it is worth, I forgave you a long time ago, and I eventually came to realize that you didn’t need my forgiveness at all. That everything you did was consensual.”