He was being sincere.
“That makes two of us,” she said.
He smiled.
“Did you cry? Tell us a story where you cried,” said Cordy.
“Cordy! That’s so mean.”
“I’m not telling him to cry again. I just want to hear a sad one. Don’t you?”
Em reluctantly nodded. “I do want to hear a sad one,” she said.
“Okay,” said Drystan. “But we’ve got to get to shore before it’s dark. Can you listen and kick at the same time, like before?”
“Yes, sir!” said Em. She made a silly little salute and resumed, her sister not far behind.
“I was seventeen the first time I fell in love,” said Drystan. He looked at Rinka, and she wasn’t sure how to react. She wanted to listen, wanted to hear more about him, but she was worried, too, about what she might hear.
“Was she pretty?” asked Em.
“Beautiful,” he said. “To me, at least. I was wildly in love with her the way you can only be when you’re young, when you’re so excited that it’s finally happening for you that you don’t notice all the things that are wrong. When you’re blind to everything that isn’t exactly how you wanted it to be, how you pictured ityour whole life. It was a deep, all-consuming love that almost drove me mad.”
Rinka flushed. She had never felt anything like that. There had been men, but it truly had been one disaster after another for her. Her own childhood sweetheart had been a young orc her mother had encouraged her to see who kept her from her friends and treated her more like a slave than a partner. She had never loved him, and although she’d felt the promise of it once or twice since, it had always ended in disappointment.
The girls were entranced. “How did you meet her?” asked Em.
“Did you get married?” asked Cordy.
“Almost,” said Drystan. “We were engaged. We met at a ball—she wasn’t the girl I was supposed to go for, but she was from a good family, and my mother wanted me to be happy, so she helped broker the engagement after we’d spent the season getting to know each other.”
“Why didn’t you get married?” asked Rinka before she could stop herself. The girls nodded at her. It was a good question.
Drystan sighed, looking out over the water. “I got so swept up in at all—I went from barely speaking to any girls other than my sister to engaged in a few short weeks. I didn’t notice how she felt. Or if I did, I wrote it off as nerves. Gods know I had plenty of them myself.”
“What was wrong? She didn’t like you?” asked Em.
“She did, but not because of who I was. She liked me because of what I had. Because my family was rich, and she liked beautiful things. It took me a while to see the difference. It was ultimately when I saw a pair of servants together—they were really, truly in love—that I realized she didn’t love me at all. And I didn’t love her, not the person she really was. I didn’t even know her.”
“What did you do? I thought you said it broke your heart, but it sounds like you broke hers,” asked Cordy.
“No,” said Drystan. “I broke my own heart. The love was real, and it was intense. But the person I loved didn’t exist. I told my mother I couldn’t marry her. She was furious, but she understood in the end. My father, on the other hand…”
“My father would skewer me if I did that,” said Cordy. “But what about the girl? What happened to her?”
“She was humiliated. Angry. She avoids me to this day. But she went on to marry well, and as far as I can tell from a distance, she’s happy. Happier than we would have been together.”
“That’s sweet,” said Em. “You’re holding out for your true love.”
“That’s stupid,” said Cordy. “You hurt that girl for no reason. What if she would have grown to love you?”
“I guess I’ll never know,” said Drystan. “But I don’t regret it. And I don’t believe in true love, but once I’d realized the woman I loved wasn’t real, I couldn’t stay with someone else. It wouldn’t have been fair to her either.”
Rinka had watched him closely during the entire exchange, and she could tell there was more to the story, something he wouldn’t say. Maybe it was because of the girls, or maybe it was something he didn’t want to admit to her, but there was something left unsaid.
The girls asked a few more questions but were disappointed with his responses as they finally rounded the cliff, bringing the river into view.
“Well, I’ve heard better stories, but we’re here,” said Cordy.
