30. Casimine
Casimine
Casimine dropped onto the nearest stone bench he could find in the king’s garden. A fist pressed against his chest, his breath shaky as he tried to collect himself. Shame colored his cheeks a bright lilac and stung his memories as he closed his eyes.
He had been speaking with a small gathering of nobles, polite conversation at the height of Eshorion splendor.
The topics weren’t complicated, barely even touching on political, yet the moment someone had inquired about Ameriden’s betrothal status, Casimine had felt his world drop out from beneath his feet.
It wasn’t the first time someone had asked.
In college, Casimine was usually the person his fellow classmates would go to with questions about Ameriden.
They were close enough that people knew that it was easier to come to him than the man in question.
Blushing students would inquire about Ameriden’s likes or dislikes, trying desperately to pull any information they felt would give them the advantage of winning his roommate’s affections.
When they had started traveling the road together as bards, Ameriden’s admirers had grown bolder.
That hadn’t lasted very long the moment they reached a new level of fame and the culture of bard and fan had taken over.
Fans could flirt, could follow them on the road, and maybe if they were lucky, sleep in their bed…
But marriage?
That would never be a possibility as long as Cashmere Fantasy continued touring Ordia.
For the question to be asked about Ameriden’s hand in marriage—the noble was completely out of touch with the bard community, or they believed themselves above those silly cultural expectations.
Either way, it had left Casimine open and vulnerable in a sea of bodies.
Suddenly, the room was too small, the people too loud.
It should have been easy. Why does it feel like I can’t breathe?
Casimine had politely excused himself and the moment his feet touched the floor of the hallway, he fled in the direction of the garden.
Hands clutching the bottom of his robes as his feet carried him past the curtain of a veranda and into the open space of the garden.
The beads in his hair delicately clinking with every step he took until Casimine found himself lost within the deepest parts of a hedge maze.
His heart was still beating wildly, as if he was being hunted by some unseen creature.
When had he become so fragile? He and Ameriden had an understanding when it came to their bed—more than that, they were in love.
Yet every admiring eye, every question about Ameriden, suddenly felt like a threat to Casimine, to their relationship.
A stark contrast to how Casimine felt when he thought of Tala beside him. Beside them.
Tala was now in his heart, slowly molding herself inside a space he had long reserved for Ameriden alone.
She didn’t perfectly fit in there—not yet—but the only difference between new love and old love was time.
Casimine knew she would become so entwined with them both, that it would be impossible to let her go.
But what then? Will I collapse into tears if someone comes to take her, too? What if her friend shows up and Tala decides she doesn’t want us anymore? What if she doesn’t want ME?
The despair overwhelmed Casimine and he buried his head into his hands, wishing desperately to disappear into nothing.
Even if it was for just a moment, being anywhere but at the king’s castle was preferable.
Yet, the urgent need to escape—both his surroundings and his own mind—conflicted with why Casimine had worked so hard to become a bard in the first place.
Faces obscured by time danced behind his eyelids as that horrible rumbling of earth echoed in his ears—
“Casimine.”
He tensed, recognizing the voice immediately and wishing he had gone deeper into the garden.
Unlike Ameriden, who would have rushed to his side immediately, Tala was slower to approach.
Even in the dimly lit garden, Casimine could see her shadow stretching toward him in the small space between his fingers.
The shadow was replaced by the material of Tala’s pants.
“Casimine?”
“I’m fine,” he said, a slight tremor to his voice.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m fine.”
Tala sighed and for a moment, Casimine hoped she would go away. It conflicted greatly with his desire for her to touch him. How selfish was he to want her comfort and to deny it? Still, she decided for him as Tala’s hands enclosed around his wrists and gently pried his hands away.
Casimine’s vision was blurry from tears he had done his best to keep at bay.
He had always been emotional—a trait his older sisters had teased him mercilessly about until…
until they didn’t anymore. Whatever judgmental stare he had been expecting wasn’t there to greet them.
If anything, the worry on Tala’s face suited her even less than her angry one.
“Your eyeliner’s gonna be ruined if you keep this up,” Tala said, reaching up to clean his face.
He shrunk away, realizing she meant to use her sleeve to do so. It didn’t deter Tala in the slightest as she held him still. Regardless, the guilt of ruining her lovely outfit fell onto Casimine’s already defeated shoulders.
“I didn’t even get to say how beautiful you look and you’re already ruining your clothes,” Casimine said with a pouty sniff.
“Wow,” Tala chuckled with disbelief. “You’re out in the king’s garden crying and you somehow still have the energy to put on that prince act of yours.”
“It’s not an act,” Casimine protested, albeit a bit weakly before admitting. “Most of the time…it’s something I just naturally started doing from a young age.”
“You were a heartbreaker even as a kid?”
Casimine shook his head. “No, nothing like that…I…my mother used to read fables to me as a child. A lot of them had stories of princes. Some of them were good but an awful lot of them were bad. My sister’s would complain that they weren’t very princely, and we would argue what it even meant to be a prince.
I don’t know when it happened, but I remember wanting to prove them wrong.
That anyone could be a prince, even a poor boy like me.
They didn’t believe me, so I swore to my mother that I would show them. ”
“Did you?” Tala peered up at him, dropping her hand to her side. “Did you manage to show them?”
Casimine stared at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t talked to them in a while?”
The question wasn’t invasive, but it still made Casimine tense.
Fans and bards alike had asked Cashmere Fantasy about their upbringing.
Curiosity was normal, especially when people wanted to know where their talent came from.
The misconception that creativity and skill were inherited and not something bards and artists had to actively work on wasn’t new either.
Yet, whenever those questions came up, Casimine always avoided them.
It had helped that Ameriden had been just as vague—though Casimine still had his suspicions when it came to his partner’s background.
Ordinarily, Casimine would find a way to continue the story without ever mentioning his family.
But Tala wasn’t ordinary, not even in the slightest. She was strong, beautiful, and whip smart whether she believed it or not.
No amount of self-deprecation from her lips would ever convince Casimine otherwise.
Beneath her tough exterior was a heart that was learning to be vulnerable.
It only required someone to be vulnerable first.
“I talk to them all the time,” Casimine said. “They…just don’t talk back…because they’re dead.”
The last time Casimine had admitted it out loud, it had been to Ameriden.
They had been living together on the streets for a year at that point.
Casimine singing for gold while Ameriden hummed a melody and hoping that one day they would have enough to pay for college.
Young, hopeful, and scared of being caught for sleeping in stables in condemned shacks outside of the city.
“Shit,” Tala said. “Casi, I’m—”
Casimine shook his head, “You don’t have to say it…I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t want people’s sympathy.”
Anyone could give sympathy. A few words of comfort that did nothing but remind Casimine of what he had lost. Sympathy was for other people, not people like Casimine.
“I’m sorry” didn’t mean anything when it was a greedy landlord kicking his mother out of her ancestral home.
It didn’t help when she had been forced to take a less than desirable dwelling, and it didn’t help when the earth rumbled beneath their feet in the middle of the night.
Not even when his mother had brought her concerns to her new landlord, all she got was an, “I’m sorry”.
Nothing could be done about reinforcing their home.
Nothing could be done about the sense of unease that fell around them days before it happened.
Nothing could have been done when the earth finally tore through the land and buried his mother and sisters beneath the rubble.
And every sympathetic glance and word spoken since Casimine woke up at the local orphanage had never brought him comfort.
“How…”
“Earthquake,” Casimine said. “I was eight.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
The silence that followed felt as suffocating as the looks of pity Casimine would receive whenever townsfolk passed by the orphanage.
More sympathy, more empty words of comfort, more broken promises.
Casimine hated all of it. He wasn’t prepared for Tala to press up onto her heels and take him into her arms. He wasn’t prepared for how tightly she squeezed his shoulders, or how the familiar scent of saffron and spices could so easily unwind the tension in his body.
Casimine sank into her, clutching the fabric and lace at the small of her back.
The overwhelming chaos of emotions were still there, but so was the love he felt for Tala.
The longer she held him, the more Casimine wanted nothing more than to stay with her.
To keep her with them, to keep her forever.
Selfish, he thought. I’m so terribly selfish. I want them both and I want to keep this dream alive.
“I feel like an asshole,” Tala said against his shoulder.
“What?”
Tala pulled back and it took everything in Casimine’s body not to prevent her from leaving.
“I feel like an asshole because here I am, thinking about all the ways my family fucked me over while you’re dealing with losing family that loves you.”
Tala hadn’t needed to tell him that her relationship with her family was strained.
Casimine had realized it when she parroted the near exact same sentiments that Ameriden had when it came to family.
Although he didn’t know the exact details of either of their situations, he didn’t fault them for having living relatives.
“You’re not an asshole for having family issues, Tala,” Casimine said.
“Your problem is just different than mine. The same way Ameriden’s is different.
I don’t like talking about my family because it hurts, so I try to put that into my songs.
I try to keep their memory alive by being the person I promised them I would be.
I’ve dedicated my life to becoming a world famous bard and I can only hope they’re proud of me. ”
The sudden press of Tala’s lips left Casimine surprised.
He wasn’t sure what he said that warranted her risking it, but he was thankful for it just the same.
In the quiet of the garden, Casimine angled his head to kiss Tala properly.
Here he wasn’t a bard mourning the loss of his family, but a man enjoying a moment with a lover.
A secret meeting that was just for them and no one else.
“I’m not the wisest person around, but I’d bet money that your family is damn proud of you,” Tala said against his lips. “You’re a good man, you know that right?”
“Careful, Tala. You’re beginning to sound awfully optimistic,” Casimine teased.
She rolled her eyes, “Yeah, you can get that thought out of your head right now.”
Casimine hummed, fingers teasing the small sliver of skin between her vest and belt. “Dare I ask what would happen if I refuse?”
“Yeah, I’ll punch your lights out.”
Casimine laughed.