7 DAYS. 8 HOURS. 33 MINUTES.
I slipped out after that, feeling guilty for intruding on such a moment. When I eventually found a lady in white to guide me to the prepared rooms, or at least point me in the right direction out of this maze, I found my way to a small corridor of chambers.
“The princess said that you have a room next to hers, if you wish to use it.” She gave me a small curtsy and hurried off.
Did Meena really think that low of me, that I would stop cherishing her the moment we couldn’t find an answer? “Pfft.” I made my way to the widest door, assuming she would be in there, and turned the knob to the sound of sobs and the sight of her tangled in sheets with makeup trickling down her face.
I rushed to the bed, kicking my shoes off on the way, and yanked her into my arms. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say, nothing that would detract from the fact that she was going to die in a matter of days.
“It’s not fair,” she mumbled into my shoulder.
“I know it’s not.”
She spilled a lifetime’s worth of tears onto my shoulder, and when she calmed down, she stayed there. “I’m scared.”
I didn’t know what to say. Words seemed little comfort in light of such a time. “Is there anywhere you’d like to go? Anything you’d like to do?”
Meena looked up at me and smirked. “Well, I can certainly think of something I’d like to do right now.”
“In the Temple of Seren? Really?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have much time left, so I’d like to spend it doing things I love.” She stared into my soul, her eyes still glassy from the now dried tears, and leaned into me. The kiss was tender, soft, but with an undercurrent of desperation that swept me away on a boat of soft skin and a breeze of gentle moans.
We took our time removing each other’s clothes layer by layer, and I made sure to touch every inch of her skin as I peeled her open like a rich sunrise, paying particular attention to her neck, the space between her shoulder blades that made her breath hitch, the soft skin of her breasts, and the ticklish underside of her feet that I rubbed into relaxation. She lay sprawled out on the bed beneath the waning candlelight, the moon shining through the window on a cloudless desert night, and she gazed down at me as I peppered kisses across her inner thighs, slowly rising higher and higher.
Her head fell back on the bed in a moan as I wrung pleasure from her. I explored every depth, used every idea I had ever dreamed of, tried to mimic what she had done to me, and did my best to make one of her last nights a pleasurable one.
We had to stop multiple times for her to get her breath back, so I tried to keep her as relaxed as possible, eventually lowering her into a steamy bathtub filled with all kinds of salts and scents—most of which I had never seen before—and continuing to run my hands over her soapy skin.
“I want to pleasure you too.” She stopped my hand from delving below the water and kissed me, driving her tongue past my lips and tangling it with mine. “I want to watch you fall apart.”
After pulling me into the tub alongside her, she took her time bringing me to release as often as possible, and after my skin had pruned and my eyes couldn’t stay open a moment longer, she guided us back to bed, where she lay in my arms and made herself breathless kissing me.
6 DAYS. 19 HOURS. 42 MINUTES.
Meena didn’t look her usual self in the morning, already sitting up in bed reading an ancient tome by candlelight when I opened my eyes. “How long have you been up?”
“A while.” She didn’t look up from the book, poring over every line. “Did you sleep well?”
“Better than I have in ages, actually.” I smirked, and a small chuckle slipped across her lips in response. “Is there anywhere you wanted to go today or something you wanted to do?”
Meena pulled out a slip of paper from her nightstand and handed it to me. “It’s my list.”
“Your list?” I asked, but upon opening it, I needn’t have asked because the answer stared me in the face. It was her list of everything she wanted to accomplish before she died.
Some of the things she had already crossed off, especially the ones at the top of the list in untidy handwriting, obviously having been written when she was just a child. But there were a few left at the bottom:
43 . Stay in bed all day and eat nothing but dessert
44. Run naked in the sunlight
45. Apologize to Hera
46. Fall in love
“Well,” I started, “I’m up for staying in bed all day, unless you’d rather go home first.”
Meena shook her head, closing her book and looking down at me. “The crossing from here to Palatina will take a week.” She unwrapped the cloth on her wrist. “I only have six days.”
I looked at her lifeclock and felt the ticking deep in my bones, echoing so loudly it was as though the last few days of her life screamed at me. “I promised you wouldn’t be alone at the end, and I have no intention of letting that promise be false.”
Her smile lit up the world, the candlelight bouncing off her beauty like the sun, her kissed skin a marvel I wanted to run my hands over, even now, when she was paler than ever.
“Reckon they’ll make us dessert for the whole day?”
“If I ask, they probably will,” she replied as she bent her head and kissed my forehead. “There’s a servant cord at the end of the corridor.”
The end of the corridor led to some stairs we had come up earlier, and dangling from a golden panel in the ceiling was a red rope, which I tugged.
Less than a minute passed before a lady in white hurried up the steps and bowed at me—which was still an odd experience. “Is there something I can do for yourself and the princess?”
“Yes. Could you bring us lots of dessert?” She looked confused for a moment before blanking her face and nodding. “And make sure there are some apple tarts in there. They’re the princess’s favorite.”
She bowed and got halfway down the stairs before I thought of something. “Actually, there’s also something else.”
She hurried back up, and guilt grasped me for a moment after seeing her mildly out of breath. “Yes, my lady?”
Lady? Shaking the question from my head, I said, “Could you send IoN out to our dirigible for Hera. The princess would like to see her friend this evening.”
“Shall I bring her to her room, or would she prefer to meet her somewhere more formal?”
“Er... Her room will be fine.” That way she could truly stay in bed all day.
Meena was resting when I returned, having finally fallen back to sleep. I sat at the desk situated in the corner, hoping the extra candlelight wouldn’t wake her. It turned out Lady Lorelai had delivered some old texts while I was sleeping this morning, and that was what Meena had been reading.
I sifted through them, hoping for something I could use as a distraction. I came across a diary entry from an ancestor of Lady Lorelai’s only a hundred years ago. This was around the time we were inventing steambotic technology and the great Averice Sellion made the first of what we would go on to call a steambot. It seemed this lady thought that one day we might be able to place life into steambots using the same practices the three sisters used, but even I scoffed at that thought.
It was impossible.
No one could put life into a steambot—they were all instructions and cogwork, not people.
Just before I could think further on the subject, a knock sounded at the door and Lady Lorelai entered with a wheeled tray. Pain in her eyes, she looked at the sleeping princess, who turned over in bed in a disgruntled version of sleep. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help yesterday,” she whispered. She left the desserts by the bed and sat on a chair next to me, her hand resting gently on my knee. “I am sorry for your pain, Cinderella. Truly.”
“I promised her I would try.” Tears slid down my face. “That I would try to find a cure, but I failed. The only cure I found can’t be ethically used.” I looked at her sleeping face, peaceful and in another world. “She’s going to die in six, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You can give her the best last days you can. You can make someone, who has known their entire life that they wouldn’t get long to enjoy being an adult, happy enough in their last moments that they forget entirely about their fate.”
I grabbed the list from the nightstand and handed it to her. “She made it when she was young and has been adding to it ever since.”
Lady Lorelai stared at the paper with some level of astonishment and internal struggle. “I wish I could help. I wish the help I could give was a viable option.” She looked at the paper with tear-stained eyes and said, “You can use the grounds of the temple for whatever you wish while here. I recommend using the gardens in the back if you want to be naked in the sun.” She got up and left, her hands shaking.
I was left in a dark room watching the princess slowly die while she got a few hours of being alive without worry in her dreams.