Destinare: A Destined Tale Of Time

VIII First Times

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 “You look just like her,” he said.

Azmeralda held her head up awkwardly, looking oddly at the man hovering over her. The world seemed to stop as she stared back at the man she clearly didn’t recognize. ‘Does he know me from somewhere?’ she wondered, tilting her head to the side before she disregarded the thought completely. After all, there is no way he would have met her as she never left The Royal palace of Kemet.

Azmeralda felt a hand grab her forearm, pulling her a step away from the mysterious man from the Arman family. She jolted her head to glance over her shoulder, Tiberius still holding on to her nervously.

“Prince Iraj!”

The man turned around to face emperor Petrus, who tore through the crowd with his knights on his tail. Iraj, the man hovering over Azmeralda, took a long moment before he finally walked on to greet the emperor and leave Azmeralda. For a minute there, it was as if he didn’t want to leave her.

“Odd,” Azmeralda muttered under her breath.

“Do you know him?” Tiberius asked, her hand still in his grasp.

“No,” she replied, glancing down as the senses returned to her arm and felt the hand holding her.

Tiberius followed her line of sight and yanked his hand away quickly. “S-Sorry…I didn’t mean to…”

Azmeralda chuckled, thinking how cute he was as his cheeks flushed. Tiberius turned his head away, feeling too frustrated to look her in the eyes. The grin on her face spread further.

They stood there, two tiny children amid the huge columns of the foyer hall. Nobles drifted around them to leave as the event came to an end. They stood still and watched as if waiting for all of them to leave.

“Wait a minute…” Azmeralda said, breaking the silence as the whole space around them went quiet despite the commotion a minute ago. However, it was too empty…

“Where are Victor and Romanus?” she asked.

Tiberius blinked oddly at her before he turned to scan the foyer hall. Seeing nothing but the servants and guards lined up against each wall, there was no sight of his two half-siblings. Nevertheless, his expression was relaxed.

Azmeralda tilted the corner of her lips down awkwardly as she took in the relaxed expression of the boy before her. “You are too calm when your brothers have disappeared?”

Tiberius turned his head back at her with wonder. “It’s not like they got kidn*pped,” he said. “This is the imperial palace after all.”

Azmeralda blinked a couple of times, feeling stupid as Tiberius stated the facts. “Y-You are right.”

“They probably went back to their rooms,” Tiberius said. “To get ready for the banquet.”

“Oh – oh…” Azmeralda stuttered, her eyes blew up with realization. “Oh God, I need to go as well! Canaria must be looking all over for me.”

Tiberius stood still, finding it amusing to watch her panic in tiny. A hint of what seemed to be a smile on his face. Azmeralda was lucky enough to catch it before it was gone. She let it slide, already imagining the frustrated look on his face if she were to tell him of his grin.

“I’ll have to go now,” She said, taking a step forward. “But promise me one thing!”

Tiberius stumbled back in surprise. “What…What is it?”

He felt the leap of his heart. ‘Promise’ the word sounded so foreign to his ears. He has never promised anything to anyone before, and in turn, no one has promised him anything. This was the first time. As a matter of fact, he found himself doing many things for the first time, in the short while he had come to know Azmeralda…not that he was complaining.

“Tonight’s banquet,” she started. “Promise me you will be there.”

Tiberius flinched. ‘When was the last time that I went to such a gathering?’ he asked himself. The answer came instantly to his mind, in the form of his worst nightmare, Queen Blandia. He clenched his hands painfully.

His head was dangling low on his neck as he thought about the queen. The sounds of the tiny excited breaths the Princess was taking forced him to look up. All his worries seemed to vanish as he gazed at her crystallized pupils. That shimmer in her eyes was so bright, he couldn’t dare to break it because of his fears.

A shameless smile danced on his face as he nodded his head firmly. ‘It’s an important gathering…father will be there. I have nothing to fear,’ he consoled himself. Truth be said, it was enough to soothe his mind.

“Really!?” Azmeralda exclaimed. “This is a promise!? You can’t break it or you will eat a thousand needles!”

“Eh?!”

“Oh…it’s not literally…” she rattled quickly, not having the time to explain the expression from Kemet. “Anyway, you have got to be there!”

She turned on her heels to return, leaving Tiberius standing alone in the hall. His small frame was contrasting with the huge domes loaming over their heads. His heart was loud inside his small chest. He took a hand over his heart, feeling the steady loud beats under his palm. This sensation was the first for him to feel. The only time his heart gets so loud is with the loud bangs on his chamber’s doors.

Those thundering bangs rattling the door, the hinges clattering on each other to the point of breaking. The Queen. The reminder of her never failed to make his bones shudder, but not this time.

This time, his heart was beating for another cause. He couldn’t help but smile like a fool.

“I guess a heart can beat like his too…” he said, a grin lingering on his face as his heart kept beating on.

“TIBERIUS!”

He snapped, his head jolted up.

Azmeralda dashed towards him, the force of her momentum never allowing her to stop. Instead, she crashed into Tiberius as he brought his arms around her from the shock.

“Princess?” he said oddly, still questioning if she really was in his arms. “W-What’s the matter?”

“Ouch…” she mumbled, stepping back, scorching her nose that turned red from the impact.

“S-Sorry,” Tiberius said in a panic. “I should have…”

“I don’t know the way.”

“Pardon?”

“I don’t know the way to my chambers.”

At this point, Tiberius couldn’t hold back his laughter.

~~~~

Throughout the way, Azmeralda tried to stick as close as she could to Tiberius. She realized how horrible she was at keeping up with others. She either found herself daydreaming in front of a statue or barely had the sight of her escort at the same moment he took a turn left.

‘I have been getting lost these days more than I have ever done in my entire life,’ she sighed. Nevertheless, she is barely the one to blame when the only place she has been to were the mansions of the nobles. Not that she could call them fun either, but it was what she had at the time. There was hardly room for Azmeralda to be blamed for the overprotective father she had.

“More like an introverted father…” she mumbled under her breath.

“Pardon?” Tiberius puzzled, glancing over to her side.

Azmeralda realized that she had said the words aloud. She sighed, wondering when she would save herself the embarrassment. “Nothing you should concern yourself with,” she finally said, faking a smile.

“Please forgive me if I’m rude, but,” Tiberius said. “Have you always been this bad at direction?”

Azmeralda felt the heat travel to her cheeks tinting her caramelized skin with red. “It’s not that I'm doing it on purpose!” she snorted, avoiding his gaze. “The palace is big and I haven’t been here for long…” her voice faded gradually as her head dropped low from her neck.

Her gesture made her miss the smirk that loamed on Tiberius's face for a moment. “I guess you have a point,” he said, looking back ahead of him.

He knew the palace like the back of his hands. ‘Being left out gave me more free time than I knew what to do with,’ he thought. He was reminded of the times he would always wander after class. His feet sometimes carried him to places he never knew existed in the imperial palace. Tiberius believed this to be the only advantage he had over anyone in the palace; his own little secret.

“I used to wander these halls whenever I had time before my lessons,” he breathed out, feeling the urge to share the information with her. After all, it was the first time for him to speak so openly with someone. “I know every cranny in the imperial palace.”

“Oh, oh,” Azmeralda said, forcing her voice to sound funny. “I smell assassin material, you can sneak upon anyone with that advantage.”

Tiberius sneered, the corners of his lips turning up into a faint smile. “I guess you could say it’s my only advantage here in the palace.”

There was no need to ask him what he meant by that. She could only imagine so much that Tiberius was able to do when Queen Blandia had him by the throat. The remainder of the woman’s cold and hard eyes made her bones shudder.

“It’s so hard to imagine that Roman and Victor are her sons…” she mumbled under her breath before she gasped and placed a hand over her mouth. “S-Sorry…I’m not supposed to say things like that out loud.”

Tiberius couldn’t hold back his laughter. Azmeralda glanced over her shoulder, oddly wondering if that was supposed to be fun.

“I can see where you are coming from,” Tiberius said, catching his breath from the laughter. “It is hard to believe…”

He paused. In the corner of his eyes, he noted one of the maid’s lingering eyes and figured that she must be eavesdropping as well. He sighed and stopped in his tracks. Azmeralda stopped and turned to look at him but he was already leaning on to her to whisper in her ears.

“However, you should be careful when you are in the palace,” he whispered. “The maids all work under the Queen’s command.”

Azmeralda drew in a harsh breath, her pupils dilating. “Oh God, I was almost caught!”

Tiberius blinked in ignorance, wondering if he had delivered the news too seriously when he never intended to.

“It’s too easy to read your expression, Princess,” he chuckled lightly, his eyes wrinkling at the corners.

Before Azmeralda could ask him anything else, he already started moving and she decided to follow him silently this time.

Before long, Tiberius took one last right before he came to a halt. “This is supposed to be your chamber,” he said, pointing to the door behind him.

“Thank you for escorting me, Prince Tiberius,” she grinned.

The two children stood before the door, staring at each other in the awkwardness that suddenly surfaced. Tiberius rubbed the back of his head as Azmeralda fumbled with her fingers before her.

“I guess I’ll see you later?” She muttered.

Tiberius nodded. “Yes, I’ll see you later.”

~~~~

“You are back sooner than I expected, Princess?” Canaria exclaimed, watching Azmeralda shut the door after her. “I was just about to go and look for you.”

“What do you take me for?” Azmeralda scoffed, heading to her bed and collapsed with a loud thud.

“Did you enjoy your adventure?”

Azmeralda replayed the moments one after the other, a grin appeared on her face before she nodded her head. “Yes, I enjoyed it.”

“Lucky you, Princess,” Canaria exclaimed. “The day is yet to finish and you still have time for more adventures!”

The joy in Azmeralda’s handmaid’s voice was genuine. It brought joy to her heart to know that Azmeralda was having the time of her life and creating memories that are forever to linger inside her.

Azmeralda jolted up to her feet in excitement. “Canaria! Help me get ready!”

“My pleasure, Princess!”