7 DAYS. 8 HOURS. 56 MINUTES.
Back inside, Meena led me over to a group of people I didn’t recognize except for one. His image was usually on a poster above my bed, but today it moved and smiled and charmed. Zimeon himself stood in front of me, and I didn’t know what to say.
Meena, who was looking positively delighted by my social predicament, introduced me. “Zimeon, I would like you to meet Cinderella. She prefers El.”
“Anything other than Cinderella, really.”
He took my offered hand, raised it to his lips, kissed it, and then dropped it. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I have heard all about your adventures with my sister.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t worry. Whatever the two of you are hiding, she wouldn’t share it.” Leaning back, he looked at me with flushed cheeks. “And I would like to apologize on behalf of Zime Industries for trying to purchase your steambot without your permission.”
I was trying to process what was happening, but too much information had entered my brain and I was struggling to process. Zimeon kissed my hand. Zimeon apologized for his company’s behavior. Zimeon was Meena’s brother.
“And I am sorry for the loss of your father. I met him once when I was younger. He was a brilliant man.”
“Thank you,” was all I managed to utter.
Once Meena had whisked me once more to the dance floor, she laughed out loud.
“Why didn’t you tell me he’s your brother?”
She shrugged. “Mostly because he doesn’t like it, but I will admit, your face was priceless.”
We danced, we laughed, I introduced her to Lapis and Lazuli, who helped me keep Phyllis away, and Hera spun the princess around the dance floor once or twice as friends. It was lovely, but it was coming to an end. The candles were nearly stubs, the servants had tried in vain to hide a yawn or two, and the last punch bowl had emptied hours ago.
“It’s time,” Meena said. “I’ve put it off all night, but it’s time I introduced you to Mother and Father.”
My eyes went wide and my heart stuttered to a standstill, forgetting how its job worked. This was important. If I wanted to remain a part of her world, I needed a final piece of her sphere to spin around us. I needed her parents’ approval.
“Consider yourself lucky that you don’t need to do this,” I said out of the corner of my mouth just as we arrived before the older couple who had been dancing all night. “Your Majesties.” I curtsied and kept my gaze low, mirroring others from the evening.
“Ah, Cinderella,” the king said, disdain evident in his voice. “I understand I have you to thank for my daughter’s current...well-being.”
“Well, I did what I could, but she saved herself really.”
Meena laughed but hid it behind her gloved hand. “There’s no need for that. They know everything you’ve done.”
“Oh, I see.” I met their gazes briefly, their stern eyes burning my retinas. “Then I apologize.”
“There’s no need, dear.” The queen grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “We understand how these things work. Adventures and seeing the world and falling in love. It was inevitable.”
“Yes, well,” the king said, “Jemeena is back now and in line for the throne, given her time, so she’ll need to pick a more suitable partner.” He forced me to meet his steely gaze. Somehow, despite having the same color of eyes as Meena, his were harsh and bitter where hers were deep and gentle. “You understand, don’t you?”
Meena looked at him with warding eyes, her brow furrowed low. “Father, now is not the time. I can have whomever I want in my life. I can rule a kingdom without a man by my side, thank you very much.”
“Now, Meena, we’ve talked about this. You need?—”
“You need to fulfill your promise and learn how to keep your word.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed, not letting go. “You promised a civil night, an introduction, and a thank you for saving my life.”
Her mother turned a strong look at her husband, who conceded in less than a heartbeat.
“Oh, very well.” He faced me once more with a softer expression and grabbed my hand. “May we dance?”
I nodded, entirely too terrified to use my words or, for that matter, to do anything else. He led us to the dance floor, where a fast-paced number struck up with quick violin strokes and steps I couldn’t follow particularly well. “You see, my dear, while I have nothing against you personally, my daughter needs a leader by her side. Someone she can trust to help her make decisions that will be hard for someone with a soul as gentle as hers.”
We spun and I nearly lost my footing entirely, but he helped keep me on track. If I were in a different scenario, one where I wasn’t being told how terrible a choice I was for my girlfriend, I would comment on his excellent dancing skills. But I wouldn’t, because he simply didn’t deserve it.
Meena was gossiping with her mother, excitement in her eyes as she watched us dance around the ballroom.
“Keep smiling, dear. We wouldn’t want to upset someone we both care about.”
“I don’t want to break her heart at all if I can help it.”
He swung me low, and my hair pins came loose, my hair scattered around my shoulders, and he pulled me in close, slowing us down. “I don’t think that is an option. I know you care for her, and I know you want what is best for her, but what is best for her now that she must take her place in the royal succession is someone of a more practiced status.”
Practiced status? What kind of dictionary did they feed kids up here? But he was right. I couldn’t rule beside her. I couldn’t even keep my own garage up and running, and that was when I had IoN to help. What kind of ruler would I be?
But she could run the world if I let her.
“I do care for her. I love her, and I’d love to live in a world where I could be by her side forever, but I don’t think I can.”
“I’m glad at least one of you sees reason.” He met my gaze with questioning pride. “You have everything you need to begin school and keep yourself and your family afloat in the meantime?”
I nodded.
“Then after tonight you will never come back here. You will leave during the nearest social opening, and you will let her live the life she deserves. Are we agreed?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Good.” He pulled himself from my arms as the song ended, and he bowed his head at me as I curtsied at him. “I wish you a nice life and my deepest gratitude, Cinderella.”
“And yourself, Your Majesty.”
Meena spun into my arms the moment he left, and I couldn’t contain the wonder at her beauty or the amazement at her soul. “You looked beautiful while dancing with Father. Was he pleasant? Because I swear, I will kick him out of my palace the moment it is mine if he acts otherwise.”
I chuckled, her passion seeping into her features for a moment while she forgot where she was. “He was the perfect gentleman. And a wonderful dancer.”
“Yes, I know. He taught me himself.” We wandered around the edges of the dance floor, eating the last of the canapés and trying our best not to wince at our heels. “We used to dance around every available space when I was young, when I was still able to breathe at least semi-normally. I used to wait for him outside of meetings, and he’d dance as politicians and trade masters left, all of them rolling their eyes at us. But he never cared.”
“He loves you very much.”
“I know, but sometimes his love can be suffocating.”
I couldn’t relate. “Dad always gave me as much freedom as he could. He never took me to balls or social functions. He never made me wear dresses or socialize with the other kids if I didn’t want to. He let me simply exist. In some ways, I’m grateful, but in others I feel as though his idea of freedom has left me on the outside. I’m not free to enter the regular world now.”
“It sounds like he loved you a lot too.”
There were fewer people in the ballroom now, some having already left for the night, but Phyllis was still flirting with some older man in a blue tailcoat who looked bored by whatever topic of conversation she had chosen. Lapis and Lazuli were dancing together, I suspect to fend off any potential suitors Phyllis had designated Lazuli to dance the night with.
“Would you like to see my personal garden?” Meena asked. “You’re here, and it would be a shame to not share it with you.”
“How personal?” I asked, her gloved finger tracing circles on my wrist.
“Lock and key.” She snickered as we took a walk around the public gardens and exited through a servant door no one was even looking at.
“We have a few flights of stairs to go up, but I think we should be there soon.”
The palace was a maze of corridors and grand foyers and comfy seating areas that looked barely used, all ornately opulent in various golds and whites and blues. Everything looked polished to perfection, and I found myself wondering how much the palace spent simply keeping the dust off everything. Not to mention the hours spent sweeping the floors.
“My rooms are through the doors over there.” She gestured to the other side of a grand staircase. “My brothers’ rooms are both through the other door, which divide off into separate sections. One each.” She opened the doors and gestured me inside. She threw her gloves off and laid them on a side table in the corridor lined with paintings of people, some of whom I recognized and some of whom were strangers to me. I loved the one of her and her father dancing in the midday sun in one of the palace’s gardens, her mother looking on from the stone bench under a tree. Meena looked no older than five in the painting.
It wasn’t until she led me through her bedroom and past the drapes covering the doors that led to her private balcony that I understood how important nature was to Meena. The entire floor was covered with moss and clover and something purple she said was called creeping thyme, so I removed my shoes, and when I stepped my bare feet on the patches carefully left to provide footing, my entire heart sang.
I was here, in her space. Not just the place she lived and spent her time, but the space she’d carved out as a living incarnation of her soul. I breathed it in and mapped it out with my eyes, never wanting to forget a single inch. From the willow tree in the corner that sat above the pond to the sunflowers growing along the eastern wall.
I would remember it all.
And I would remember how she looked as she stared out at the moon from the edge of the balcony, her fingers running familiar patterns in the wall of plants beside her. She looked like a goddess fit to be queen.
My hand rested heavily on her shoulder, her skin kissing mine, and I began unlacing her dress and removing the many layers that kept her cinched in, suddenly thankful for the fewer layers of her previous outfits, and she did the same to me. We undressed each other in silence, kissed in silence, and ran out hands over each other in silence. We didn’t need to speak words for the moment to mean something. It already meant the world to me, and by the looks of pleasure in her eyes whenever I touched her just right, it meant something to her too.
She kept our eyes locked all night, making me look at her whenever she brought me to release and staring down at me whenever I was in my favorite place between her legs tasting her. Without the illness holding her back, she used me in any and every way she wanted: riding my thigh, using my fingers and tongue, even instructing me on how to use some of the things in her bedside drawer.
Eventually we were both too tired to continue, so we simply lay in the moss and clovers covering the floor and looked at each other. I mapped the way her eyes curved into her nose, the way her smile stretched from cheek to cheek, the way her chin dimpled whenever she laughed, and the way her brow furrowed whenever she was deep in thought.
I never wanted to forget a single moment of her existence.
The words haunted my breath, getting stuck in a way I couldn’t force out. I didn’t want to leave. But I had to. She needed me to, even if she didn’t recognize it yet.
“Meena, I’m leaving.”
“Oh...Okay. Well, I can walk you to the elevator building if you’d like, and then tomorrow I can show you more of the palace and...”
I turned to meet her soft green eyes, tears threatening to fill the void of mine, and I shook my head.
“You’re leaving me.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t be in this world with you. You deserve someone who can be the left to your right, and I am not her.”
“But I...I thought...” She sat up and wiped tears from her eyes. “I thought we could figure it out. That we could fight through it together.”
“I’m sorry.” I slipped on my shoes, grabbed the sleeves of the cloak she had given me, and ran. I didn’t know why I couldn’t face her—maybe I was a coward—but I needed to get away from this world. This floor. And go back to my normal life.
“El, wait!” Meena raced after me, but she was slow after spending twenty years in ill health. “Wait, please!” Her voice broke as she begged me to stay, to talk through everything. To stay with her. But I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t give in. The king was right: She needed someone better suited than me.
I descended out of the castle, but I lost my footing and a shoe came loose. I spun around to pick it up, but Meena shot me a hurt look, tears running down her face, so I decided to leave it. Turning back would make me stay. Turning back would force me into her arms, and if I stayed there for even a second, I didn’t think I would ever leave again.
Eventually, as I ran farther down the stairs and followed the floating candles back to the elevator building, Meena’s cries got quieter and quieter. She stopped running after me.
Instead, she sat on the stairs holding my shoe and weeping, which I shouldn’t have known, but I did the unthinkable and looked back at the last possible second. Apparently I needed to torture myself for the rest of my time.
The ride back to floor zero was torturously slow. The time it took to return back to my regular life was simplified into a two-minute descent, but it might as well have been two years for all the distance it put between myself and the princess.