In Which Casimiro Comes as He Is

August 23, 1180

Casimiro found Ellona in her bedroom, just as Neilor had said he would. The children weren't there, which first struck him as odd--wouldn't she have wanted every last minute with them, if she thought there were no minutes to spare?--but then again she might have wanted them to live out their last days of freedom as usual, or she might still have been contemplating just how to tell them.

Not being a parent, he supposed it wasn't his place to guess. He was here as what he was--her friend. "Ellona?"

Her head barely tilted, her eyes still set firmly on the folded hands in her lap. She looked somehow younger, stripped of her tough exterior and apparently several years as well, small and hopeless and exposed. Casimiro stiffened. Some men--though none he'd ever cared for--liked their women stripped of all adult agency, but he'd never understood it. There was nothing beautiful or ideal about breaking someone's spirits, taming another human being like some animal. Such was the work of those who found pleasure in cruelty. "I can't believe they did that to you."

He sat down next to her and she held back what he guessed to be a whimper, what he guessed he never would have heard out of her. At least he could help, if she'd take it. "Marry me."

She looked up, an amber eye peeking out between strands of black hair. Her face was half-hidden more often than it wasn't and he'd never thought much of it. He didn't like to think she styled herself out of fear or shame or any such bitter emotion. "I couldn't ask that of you."

"You would be asking nothing." She knew he'd planned on marrying someday. She was more than clever enough to figure out that he wouldn't have come to Naroni if he hadn't had a shot at Lady Rona's hand, for all it wasn't Lady Rona himself that he wanted. It was a horrible thought, that Rona or Ellona or any woman would have done just as well as any other, but perhaps it wasn't quite true. He didn't want romance, but he did want a friend. Ellona already was one. "If anything, it would inconvenience you after this is taken care of."

She sniffed. "I don't care about being inconvenienced."

"Then marry me."

Ellona dragged her foot back across the floorboards. "I don't want to be the person who ruins your life."

"And you won't be. What, did you think I was planning on marrying Searle?" He'd meant that as a joke, but she didn't laugh and neither did he. It wasn't funny anyway. "You won't be the person who ruins my life, Ellona. I don't want to be the person who could have stopped yours from being ruined and didn't."

"Casimiro--"

"Please. I'll be a good father to Kaldar and Ella." And after what Ietrin had done, it was all too apparent that they needed one. "And maybe we'll have some more of our own, if you like. And if you meet a man who makes you happy, you can have him too--sauce for the gander and all that." He bridged the gap between them with a hand atop hers, the same insignificant comfort he'd once offered his sister as her little baby fought over every last breath. "We'd be an odd sort of family, and I know that. But we'll work, somehow. I promise."

Her eyes fell briefly to the site of his touch, following as he stroked her fingers. A half-minute of that and she wilted to the side, her body light against his side, her hair soft against his neck.

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