"Liniana, hi," Sage said as the guilt swarmed his gut. I kissed someone else. Lady Liniana had been pushed towards him for years, as much as he had been pushed towards her. Their statuses were perfect for marriage, but Sage had never played along. Now he wished he had been blunt from the beginning, though at the start, he didn't know what he really wanted.
He glanced back to Taro and with a tight tilt of his head, Taro weaved through the crowd. "I need to talk to you outside," he said to Liniana and guided her to the glass doors at the other side of the room.
Her lace purple gown tickled his hand as they walked. She grabbed his arm, so they didn't separate in the growing crowd. Everyone swarmed around Sage, even if they had nothing to say to him. He already felt suffocated, and the event was only just underway.
Taro was right behind them, discretely parting the crowd of puffy ballgowns and squeaky polished shoes.
The glass doors led to a lit-up courtyard of yellow fairy lights embedded among the orange roses and the large-leaved bushes. Sage thanked the sky that nobody else was outside, apart from his personal guard who stood by the door, watching them very, very closely.
"Liniana-"
"Isn't it just a perfect evening?" she said, embedding a curl over her ear and peering up into the sky.
Sage looked at her basked in a silvery moonlight, with a glow in her eyes and a smile on her lips, and a dress that gleamed brighter than the stars. He hoped that one day, she could be in love with someone who could love her back just as much, but that wasn't him.
"Liniana, we have to talk," he said in a tone that dragged her eyes from the black night.
"What is it?"
Sage very nearly said that everything was fine, just so she could enjoy her night, but then his gaze locked with Taro Vinea, the man he had kissed earlier that evening. He not only owed Liniana the truth, but he owed Taro the reassurance that whatever was happening between them was real and he cared enough about it to take it seriously.
"You know everyone always talks about how we're born to marry each other, and how our parents are always trying to push us together? And how the tabloids always conspire about us, and how they always assume we're dating when we're together?" Sage said, feeling the sweat on his palms, and the anxiety twisting his throat.
Liniana nodded. Her eyes only beamed brighter.
Oh no, she looks hopeful. "Well..." Sage dropped his shameful gaze to his shoes. "I want to make it obvious to you first that-" he cleared his throat. "I'm not interested in being more than friends."
And just like that, the brightest star was killed. The light dimmed in Liniana's eyes. Her breath stalled, and her glossy lips tremble. Then her eye twitched and her perfect brows scowled. "After four years, you say that now and here?"
"I'm so sorry," Sage whispered. He had never seen such anger and sorrow fighting to front such kind eyes. He had a million other things to say. Four years of endless flirting and getting nowhere should've been a sign that I wasn't interested. My silence and discomfort should've been a sign. But I should have said something sooner. I should have been clearer. I shouldn't have hidden behind my secret and stayed quiet because being with you made it less obvious that I didn't like women at all.
Sage couldn't bring himself to speak. He just wanted their conversation to be over.
"I've made it so obvious to you that I've liked you, and you decide to reject me now?" Liniana stepped back, blinking to stop her tears from ruining her makeup.
"Liniana, I'm not the only one who hasn't been clear. Yes, you've flirted, but you have never openly told me how you felt. We've been such good friends to each other. I don't want to lose that friendship." Sage looked around. Nobody other than Taro Vinea was watching them.
Taro's face was blank, but Sage knew him well enough now to know that he was relieved.
"Your father has been telling my parents that you were keen. They were setting up a date for us, a big date. Your father said that you wouldn't turn the date down," Liniana explained through a cracking voice. A tear dribbled miserably down her cheek. She made no attempt to wipe it away.
Sage was angry. "I've told my father that I'm not interested in you. He had no right to-"
"So, you told your father before you told me?" Liniana rose her voice. A few heads turned in their direction. "Didn't I have the right to know before him?"
"Liniana, please don't shout," Sage said with a frustrated sigh. "I've told you now because the guilt gets stronger every time that I see you. I know I've not been fair. I'm sorry that it took me this long to tell you, but I've been terrified of your reaction. I don't want to lose you as a friend."
"I don't care for your excuses. You've had every opportunity to tell me you weren't interested. Why did it take you so long? Have you found someone better?"
I'm telling you now because I'm starting to believe that being myself is better than a future full of lies. One day I hope you'll understand, one day I hope you'll forgive me. Sage accepted that she'd be angry for a while, and he accepted that he deserved it, but he didn't owe her an explanation.
"You should go back inside, it's getting cold."
"So, you have found someone else!" Liniana faced the darkness when her voice attracted more attention.
I have, Sage thought, fighting the urge to look at his guard, the person who was stealing his heart. "Please go back inside," Sage whispered. "Forget about me. You deserve someone better."
"Sage, I don't think you realise how much I'm in love with you!"
Sage closed his eyes to stop them from turning wide and scared. He wanted the ground to swallow him so badly, he wondered if he could get away with simply bolting into the darkness and hopping the fence like his brother.
"And you don't realise that this causes problems between our families!" Liniana continued. "They've been pushing us together forever because you're the future King and I'm in the perfect position to be married to you. I have the status and-"
"But you don't have my heart," Sage said lowly. The silence that followed spoke all the words they needed to hear. "I'm very sorry Liniana, I just don't feel the same. Now please... stop." Everything would be easier if Sage could just say that his heart would never belong to any woman. But despite kissing a man, he was not yet ready for the world to know.
Liniana stared at him with hard eyes, then they softened as another tear fell. Then her mouth opened and closed, and her hand reached out to touch his arm, but she stalled, sighed, sucked in her composure, wiped her tear, and entered the party as if her heart hadn't been left in the cold night, broken and bruised.
Sage pursed his lips and turned his back to the party. He stared across the dark field. The impulse to run was as strong as the compulsion to breathe after holding a breath for too long. You have to stay. You can't always avoid your problems. Don't run, don't run.
Taro didn't approach him when all Sage wanted was a strong hug and some words of encouragement. Too many people were too close. Sage calmed down on his own, only to turn around in time to catch his brother vomiting onto the neat gravel.
"Oh shit." Sage hurried to him. Oxley almost fell in his own sick but had enough strength to hold himself up in time for Sage to yank him onto the grass. "Sit down," Sage ordered. A waiter brought them a jug of water, but Oxley refused to drink it and curled up on the grass.
Annoyed and cold, Sage found someone to look after Oxley and entered the party for a strong drink. Taro returned to his post with eyes as sharp as the knife used to cut the lime that was plopped into his glass of vodka and sparkling water.
"Where are the appetisers?" he asked the nearest servant. "There's more than fifty guests here now, they need to be here."
"Oh, um, I-I don't know Your Grace, your uh, Royal Highness!" The servant ran out of the room, only to return ten minutes later with news that the entire servants' quarters were suffering a power cut and none of the ovens were working, and none of the appetisers were ready.
The anxiety that stemmed from his confession with Lady Liniana was only growing and weighing down on his chest. He turned to ask for another drink, and he overheard a panicked bartender saying that they were already out of the Queen's favourite wine, and the Queen hadn't yet arrived.
"Oh god, this is a disaster," he muttered, wishing he could crawl into bed and sleep through the chaos.
To make matters worse, Sage spotted one of Oxley's friends, a son of Lord Coniferous, his father's grave enemy for a reason unknown to him. His son's name should not have been on the guest list. He glanced around for his father, but instead, the cameras were rushing to him. Sage noticed Liniana leaving the room with a hand over her mouth and two very, very angry looking parents.
"Sage!" a photographer yelled and rudely shoved the camera into his face with a blinding light. "How do you feel after breaking up with Lady Liniana?"
Sage should have known that her parents wouldn't keep their mouths shut. They didn't care about him, they only cared about marrying their daughter to the future King. "We were never dating, so how could I have broken up with her?" he blurted, then regretted it. He could already see tomorrows headlines: 'Prince Sage's heartless statement after ruining Lady Liniana's future'.
More cameras rushed to him and flashed in his face. More and more people were accusing him of hurting Liniana and being cruel and making her cry. The flashing didn't stop, and the cameras got closer, and the voices got louder.
Sage struggled to see, and he struggled to hear one voice from the next. Everything was one colossal catastrophe, and he couldn't escape, even when he tried to push through the crowd.
Then there was a voice he recognised shouting at people to move. Taro Vinea was coming to save him. Sage opened his eyes and reached out. Taro grabbed his wrist while his father sprinted to their aid and helped to shove photographers out of their way.
At what point Sage had started to panic, he wasn't sure. Though the stress was all over him, clawing at his senses, he could barely breathe, even when they were out of the room and hurrying down the corridor. He wanted to collapse onto the grass like his brother and curl into a ball and disappear into the darkness.
The room he was dragged into was empty, so he collapsed like he wished, and pulled his knees to his chest. His father was in front of him, telling him to breathe, and grabbing his trembling hands that were trying to grip fistfuls of his curls.
Sage could barely hear him. His ears rang loud and pulsed to the fast rhythm of his heart. His breathing was sharp stuttering gasps. He could barely get air in, never mind words out. His chest hurt and refused to relax. He could only think of the worst, only the worst, the very worst...
Sage was having a panic attack because he had broken a woman's heart, and now the whole world would spend the next few weeks questioning why he had turned down such a beautiful person, and they would speculate, and he was so sure they would start rumours about women not being his type. That would escalate until he was forced to come out, and his parents would disown him, and Taro wouldn't be able to cope with the publicity, and Sage would end up alone, all alone, so alone.
"I'm not ready," he breathed, clutching his chest. "Please don't hate me!"
Then Taro Vinea was leaning in front of him, and slotting hands under Sage's armpits to get him to his feet. "Let me take you to your room," Taro said softly. "Your parents are dealing with this."
Sage allowed himself to be taken through the painfully long corridors, and up the many flights of stairs, and around a dizzying number of bends, through his carved wooden doors, and into his safe place with the one person who he could trust enough to lean on and cry.