5 DAYS. 17 HOURS. 03 MINUTES.
Meena didn’t wake up the next day. She was still breathing, but her brow had broken out in a cold sweat and I couldn’t wake her. “Meena!”
IoN whizzed into the room, shoving his metal frame into the door to open it. “El?”
“I can’t get her to wake.”
IoN left the room for a moment, pulled the servant rope, and rushed back. “It’s okay, El.”
“This isn’t okay, IoN. It wasn’t meant to be this way. She still has five days left.” Tears streamed down my face as my hands shook, but I managed to tuck her hair behind her ears and button her shift to retain her modesty. “I was meant to save her.”
Ladies in white rushed into the room and threw the blanket off the princess. They rolled her onto a stretcher they had brought with them, clearly expecting the call, and rushed her out of the room and down the stairs as quickly as they could.
I didn’t know what they were going to do, but in that moment I didn’t care. I simply followed, my brain on autopilot. I wore nothing but a robe that came with the room, and slippers, and the only sound other than hurried feet and Meena’s wheezing breaths were the slap of those slippers on stone matching my heartbeat.
They took her to the same temple we were in the other day and laid the stretcher at the feet of the statue in the center, where Lady Lorelai rested on her knees, one hand on her heart and then the other on her stomach. She was praying.
“Is...is there anything we can do?” I whispered, knowing the answer and yet still being afraid of it.
After muttering something under her breath, she turned to me and shook her head. “No. I can make her passing more comfortable, let her pass in the hall of the sisters, but I cannot save her. I am sorry.” She turned back to the statue and rubbed water over Meena’s forehead, whispering more words in a language I only recognized as the one Minister Farro sometimes used in church.
Like this, unable to wake and her every breath labored, her illness was all I could see. I couldn’t separate her from it.
“She’s going to die?”
Lady Lorelai shed tears as she said, “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“But . . . we came all the way here.”
“You did your best, El,” IoN said, “but sometimes you cannot win. Some things are too powerful to fight against.”
“No...” Meena’s hand was limp in mine; she hadn’t even the strength to hold my hand. “No, I have to do something.”
“You cannot.” IoN sat beside me, also touching Meena. “And that is okay.”
“Nothing about this is okay!” I snapped.
Silent sorrow. Grief so thick I couldn’t breathe, choking on its edges with every inhale I forced into my lungs, shoveling air into my body by force, against its instinct to cease living.
I had no idea how much time had passed, nor could I recall a single thought from the hours I spent crying beside her dying body, until I could finally utter a sentence. “She’s such a beautiful person.” It was barely a breath, the words a whisper, but it was all I had.
“That she is,” Lady Lorelai said. “She is magnanimous in every way.” Her white dress was slightly less white today, as though she hadn’t changed it since yesterday. She kneeled at Meena’s feet, washing them and preparing her for her next journey. Her next adventure.
IoN had moved into my lap at some point, silent, but his presence was like a weight keeping me from floating off into the empty space of grief.
Tears fell freely from Lady Lorelai’s eyes, and she looked at me with such sadness I didn’t know how to respond. “Are you going to remain here until she passes?”
“Yes.” Turning to face Meena, I whispered, “I’m sorry I failed you.” I didn’t take my eyes off her body the entire time, waiting with bated breath for the moment she stopped breathing. “I promised she wouldn’t spend her final days alone. I promised she wouldn’t die alone and afraid.”
Lady Lorelai unwrapped the princess’s lifeclock and checked her time. “You have another few days left, Cinderella. You should go and rest. It’s been a long day.”
The day had passed, and I hadn’t noticed. Tiredness was taking the edges of my vision.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
I looked at Meena, then at IoN on my lap, and nodded reluctantly. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
4 DAYS. 14 HOURS. 23 MINUTES.
I woke a day later to the sound of crinkled paper beneath the pillow my head rested upon. No matter which way I tossed and turned, I couldn’t get rid of the offending sound. Finally, stressed and tired, I threw the pillow off the bed and yanked the piece of scrap paper from underneath. Only, I recognized this piece of paper, and it wasn’t scrap. At least, it wasn’t to Meena. It was her bucket list. I unfolded it and laid it flat in my hands, seeing the last two items she hadn’t gotten around to completing, but something wasn’t right. She had crossed off Apologize to Hera , as expected, but she had also crossed off Fall in love .
“She loves me?”
“Of course she does,” IoN said. “Just as you love her.”
She loved me. Somehow those words sunk deeper than I had expected them to. Finding love wasn’t on my bucket list, but somehow I’d found it anyway, and I wasn’t going to let it go. I crumpled the paper in my hand and shoved it on the nightstand, storming to my feet. “Then I can’t let her die.”
Moments later, or maybe minutes—my time seemed frozen as hers ebbed into death—I stormed back into the chamber, toolbelt in hand. Ignoring the scowl from Lady Lorelai, I cradled Meena’s lifeclock in my lap. “Lady Lorelai, the herbilore plant serum, if you please?”
“Cinderella, I can’t let you do this.”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission; I just didn’t want to fight with the Lady of Seren. Now, the herbilore plant?”
“The no wasn’t a suggestion for you to ignore, engineer. It was an order.” Lady Lorelai hovered over me with a bitter stare, her hands clenched to her sides. “I want to save her too, but this isn’t the way.”
“This is the only way. Don’t you see that? Do you not understand what is happening here?” I gestured to Meena lying at my feet. Her breathing stuttered, and we all snapped our heads to watch her regain her unsteady rhythm. “If she dies, the lower levels of Palatina will die with her.” I turned to Lady Lorelai, aware I was speaking treason. “I apologize for my words, but I must speak them, regardless of the consequences.” Hands clenched into fists, tears streaming down my face, I said, “She has such vision for us. To make the levels equal, to reinstate trade to level zero, to provide us an education and fair rations, to give us the opportunity to be great again. If she dies, that’ll die with her.” Under my breath, I added, “I’ll die with her.”
IoN spun in a circle behind me, grabbing my attention.
“What?”
“El, I don’t think this is a good idea. I love how happy she makes you, but sacrificing your life, even for a princess, even for someone as lovely as Meena, is not the right choice to make.”
Ignoring him, I wiped the tears from my face and unscrewed all the bolts and tiny filaments that sealed the top of Meena’s lifeclock. I unwound the coil and pulled it out. Just as I went to grab the screwdriver to undo my own, IoN yanked it out of my grip and chucked it a few feet away.
“What are you doing?”
“Ensuring you don’t die for a love you’ve only had for a month.” He threw the screwdriver across the room and wound Meena’s coil back into her lifeclock. “I know you don’t want to lose her after losing your mother and father and feeling as though you have no one, but this isn’t the way.”
I went to grab something else from my toolbelt, but it wasn’t there. “Where’s my toolbelt?” I spun around, scanning the dim space, and noticed it dangling from Lady Lorelai’s fingers. Her gaze could cut glass even with the tears leaking from harsh pity falling in small rivers down her face. The scream that left my throat didn’t sound like me when I caught its echo, but it continued to rip from my throat nonetheless. “What are you both doing? Why would you...?” My knees gave way, and they slammed into the stone below me as I fell to the floor.
Something sharp pinched my arm, but I barely felt it, and the tears blurred the world around me until I saw nothing.