22. Casimine
Casimine
Casimine frowned down at the parchment before him.
Seira’s notes weren’t difficult to read.
In fact, she had better penmanship than Amer.
Maybe even Casimine himself, but that wasn’t the issue.
Casimine had read the same messy story Seira had recorded at least five times now.
There was a halfling, a wild desert landscape, and something called a sand slither—which Casimine guessed was some kind of monster, though he wasn’t familiar with it in the slightest.
The story wasn’t bad. Seira knew their process by now and could pull all the best details for Cashmere Fantasy to craft a song with.
The problem was that it was past dinner and Tala hadn’t come back yet.
It had been hours since she had left and based on what Seira told them, she should have been back by now.
Casimine had always been prone to worrying.
It came from his life prior to college. Of living day by day, hoping that one day he would have enough gold and merit to apply for the entrance exam.
Then, that worry had transformed from where his food was coming from to whether or not he had practiced lyrics enough to convey the emotions of a song.
Whether he would gain the approval of the faculty, of his fans, and most importantly of all, Amer.
Maybe it was their physical encounter. Casimine had affection for a lot of the people he had shared a bed with over the years.
It only made sense as he couldn’t imagine sleeping with someone he didn’t like—that was more Amer’s expertise.
Affection meant the potential for other emotions like concern—
Here I am trying to rationalize my worry when I already know the answer, Casimine thought.
What happened between the three of them was so much more than just sex.
Beyond exceeding any expectation of pleasure, Casimine had felt something fundamentally shift in that moment.
This wasn’t just a tryst that would endure while Tala was assigned to them as a bodyguard.
What lay before Casimine was possibility solidifying into some kind of new reality.
It wasn’t about the potential of falling in love, but the real, undeniable existence of love.
While not the same as the love he held for Amer, Casimine could see the path that would take him there with Tala.
And that frightened him almost as much as when he first realized he loved Ameriden that way.
Casimine sighed.
“You okay, Casi?”
Sitting across the table, with a lute in his arms and a barely disguised look of concern across his face, was Ameriden.
He had been lazily strumming, chasing the wave that would eventually become the melody of a song.
It was normal for their process. Ameriden would find a beat and Casimine would string the words together until they were so in sync, they couldn’t remember how they completed a song.
“I’m—” Casimine cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”
Ameriden stared, though not unkindly. Still, it was enough for Casimine to crumple in defeat.
“I’m not fine,” he said with another tired sigh. “I can’t concentrate on finding a song in all this. I’m worried.”
“About performing in front of royalty?” Amer questioned. “Because, I can tell you, Casi, royalty is an illusion. It’s just a bunch of parchment that’s declaring some made up importance.”
Casimine shook his head. Ameriden had a peculiar dislike of nobles—though he could never get him to elaborate more on that.
Truthfully, Casimine had suspected that Ameriden might have been the son of some kind of nobility, but he would never push the other bard for an answer.
Patience was another gift Casimine had been blessed with, and he intended to wait for as long as Ameriden needed him to.
“I don’t care about whether the king likes our songs—or even the princess, surprisingly enough.” Casimine bit his lip. “I’m worried about our bodyguard.”
The admission brought a lilac hue to Casimine’s cheeks.
He knew that Amer was on a similar path as him.
They had even confessed to one another that they were besotted with the woman, but this felt different.
Affection for past bedfellows had never went further than the bedroom.
Once they were out the door, outside of fond memories, the pair rarely mentioned them in passing.
Ameriden stopped plucking at his instrument and lowered it into his lap. Close enough for the bard to rest his chin on the side of it as he considered Casimine’s words carefully.
“She’s strong, Casi. She can take care of herself.”
“Can she?” Casimine retorted without meaning to. “I know she’s capable enough to be our bodyguard, but that doesn’t mean she’s invincible, Amer.”
“Seira wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t tough enough to deal with our fans, Casi,” Amer replied, brows furrowed. “What’s this about?”
“I—” Casimine licked his lips. “I don’t know. She was supposed to be back hours ago. Even Seira went to the tailors to book our fittings and she’s returned before Tala has. I just—I can’t shake this feeling that something bad has happened.”
The admission felt bigger than Casimine expected it to.
Even if he wasn’t saying it outright, Casimine couldn’t deny that his worry was deeper than just the surface level.
This was more than just his concern for Tala—both as a lover and a bodyguard.
No, Casimine could feel something deep in his bones.
The same way his ability to scry rattled his insides and left his lungs shaking in the spell’s wake.
“Wait—” Ameriden scanned him. “This is more than just being a worry wart, isn’t it? Is this your—”
“I don’t know.” Frustration laced Casimine’s exhale. “I don’t know if this is me being worried or if it’s my weird intuition, but I can feel something isn’t right.”
Intuition.
Foresight.
Magic.
Casimine didn’t have a word for it. He only knew that his family had always been in tune with the unsaid.
In a similar vein to scrying, his mother and sisters were able to tap into some kind of divination.
The ability to know secrets, reveal hidden truths—it was all so vague that it was difficult to explain to others.
Casimine had kept the ability close to his heart, knowing it was one of the only reasons he had survived for as long as he had.
It had kept him from danger, kept him safe, and now the more he thought on it, the worse the sensation grew.
There was something wrong and it involved Tala, but Casimine didn’t know what it meant.
“Okay.” Amer stood up, dropping his lute onto the table. “Let’s go get our girl.”
“Wait, you—”
“Five minutes,” Amer said, already moving to their bedroom. “Grab anything that’ll help us search—”
“Amer, we can’t leave. Seira will—”
Ameriden whipped around, expression serious. “You can feel she’s in danger, right? You feel that in your gut?”
Casimine nodded.
“Then that’s reason enough. Seira can get over it. This is important—”
A knock on their door cast the room into silence.
Casimine exchanged a look with Ameriden, a feeling of dread crawling up his spine.
Ameriden dropped his hand onto his shoulder, squeezing gently.
A gesture promising that he would take care of whatever was on the other side of it.
That didn’t still Casimine’s nerves as he wrapped his arms around himself, eyes trailing Ameriden as the bard crossed the threshold.
“Who is it?” the taller man asked.
There was a mumbled answer that Casimine couldn’t hear clearly, but it was enough for Ameriden to jerk the door open.
Tala’s body tumbled forward and Ameriden just managed to catch her before she hit the floor.
Casimine let out a distressed sound—one he would have been embarrassed by if he wasn’t already falling to his knees before them.
“Hey, hey!” Ameriden’s large hands cradled Tala’s weak form. “Tala!”
She was soaked through her traveling clothes and when Casimine brushed the wet hair from her forehead, her skin was burning hot. A shiver ran through her frame and Casimine felt panic grip him the moment he saw the angry wound along her ribs.
“She’s burning up,” Casimine said. “We have to get her to the bath—we have to close this wound—”
“On it,” Ameriden said, gathering Tala close.
Casimine bolted to his feet, running to the ornate bathtub that had been afforded to their lush suite.
The pipes were as good as most, but the water was running too slowly.
Casimine reached into the growing pool of water, and with something innate to his nature, he forced the water to come to him.
A call that any water hanfen could do from the moment they were born.
“I don’t want a bath,” Tala managed between chattering teeth.
“Tough shit, princess,” Ameriden said, plopping her onto the table next to the water basin. “We gotta close this thing—”
“Water’s not gonna—”
“Our water will.”
Together, they managed to pull the wet clothing from her body—her bracers catching on Ameriden’s shirt again— but eventually those came off as well. Shivering, naked, and clearly unwell, Tala weakly protested their movement.
Stubborn, even when injured, Casimine thought as he turned off the water.
“Okay, in we go—”
“No,” Tala moaned.
“Just for a moment,” Casimine assured. “Just enough for us to heal you.”
Ameriden knelt at the head of the bathtub, supporting Tala’s head and shoulders with his arms as she cried from the abrupt temperature change. Casimine took her hand, dipping his free hand into the now red water toward her wound.
“The water accelerates our ability to heal the injured,” Casimine explained. “But you have to hold still, so I can—”
“No! It’s not the cut, it’s—”
Tala let out a shout. The healing magic—while warm and comforting—didn’t make the act of healing any less painful. Beneath the warm glow of Casimine’s hand, the wound had stopped bleeding, but the act of knitting muscle and tissue back together was uncomfortable.
“Shh,” Ameriden hushed, pressing his cheek against hers. “Shh.”
Whether he was aware of it or not, Ameriden began to hum.
Casimine recognized the tune immediately, a lullaby from their people.
A story about a mother who longed for her children—the story of a goddess trapped between Ordia and the moons.
Even in the midst of channeling magic through his hand, the words to the song spilled from Casimine’s lips.
Echoes and bubbling, words of ancestors that knew how to communicate entirely under water was as familiar as Casimine’s magic.
When the last lyric was sung, Casimine removed his hand. While the water was cloudy, he could feel Tala’s skin whole and new. Delicate, but stable enough that they didn’t have to worry about her bleeding out.
“It’s done,” Casimine said, softly.
She was safe… and yet—
“Casi, Casi, something’s wrong!”
Tala was gritting her teeth, shaking even more violently within the water. Confusion filled Casimine as he reached back into the water, searching for any wound that he might have overlooked. His efforts were met with Tala flinching from him—as if his touch burned her.
“What’s happening?” Ameriden asked. “Why didn’t it work?”
“I don’t—” Casimine shook his head. “I don’t know!”
“Can’t heal,” Tala managed with a shake of her head. “Can’t fix!”
That wasn’t possible, and yet even when Ameriden reached into himself and pooled healing magic into Tala’s forehead, there was no visible improvement. A fever unlike anything Casimine had seen had left their bodyguard weak and defenseless.
How? What could be stronger than our healing magic?
“Why isn’t it working?!” Ameriden shouted.
Casimine stared at the cloudy water. “Lift her up!”
Without protest, Ameriden pulled until Tala was propped up on the lip of the bathtub. The water slid down her skin, and that’s when Casimine saw it. While her flesh had healed, the area where the wound had been was bright red. Casimine ran a finger across it, felt how hot it was, and cursed.
“It’s poison.”