“Oh, we have the full collection in Iseldis.”
“No!” she cried, disappointed. “I was so close! I wasjustin Iseldis. I knew I should have skipped the ball and gone in search of the library instead of wasting my time dancing.”
“You don’t like dancing?” Aden was intrigued. He hated dancing, a trait his siblings had always teased him about.
She shook her head again. “I like dancing, just not the crowded rooms and constant noise and obnoxious men.”
Aden nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. The strain of continually trying to make out the features of her face was making his head ache and his eyes sore. He looked back at her so it would appear as though he was listening intently, but he let his eyes relax until she was merely a blur.
“You are distracting me,” she said. “Tell me how it ends! No, wait. I’d rather read it for myself. Let’s go to Iseldis, right now. We can jump over the canyon and be there in two days!”
He laughed at her eagerness. “Do you want me to tell you or not?”
“Tell me. You said it was your favorite part, so it can’t be disappointing.”
“Favorite might mean something different for me.” Aden did not know this young woman well, but he realized that what he was about to say would probably ruin her excitement. “Wouldn’t you rather read it yourself someday?”
“Yes! And I will. But tell me. Do Amelya and Andrew defeat the evil invaders and finally come back to each other to spend the rest of their days together?”
“They do defeat the invaders,” Aden confirmed, speaking slowly.
“And?” She was leaning over the table again.
Aden realized that his eyes had refocused so he could better read her body language. He picked up his wine glass. He needed to relax his eyes and ease the growing pain in his head. Having deftly practiced how to get liquid from a cup into his oddly shaped mouth, he expertly poured the wine onto his scooped tongue.
“Rude,” she said dismissively.
Embarrassed at his clumsy workaround, Aden brought the glass back to the table with more force than was necessary.
“I am sitting here waiting for the most exciting moment of my life,” she continued, “and you are rude enough to pause for a drink. What do they do after they achieve the victory?”
Aden exhaled in relief. She had not been reacting in disgust to his body—just impatience for the story. “Well,” he said, “Andrew is deeply wounded during the final attack, but he goes back to the battlefield to search for Amelya while their army is celebrating victory. He finds her... but she is dead. She died a hero’s death defeating the enemy general. In his grief, Andrew collapses on top of her and dies from his wounds while their people are shouting in victory.” Aden had forgotten the melodramatic tone of the great saga, and recalling the heroic actions of the final chapters had stirred his own appreciation for the work. “It really was poignantly beautiful, the way they had sacrificed their time together in order to bring about peace for their people. It seems fitting that they died in the end. They had committed their lives to this war already. It really would have cheapened the whole story if they’d gotten to live in happiness after all they went through.”
“Fitting?” Isa said, incredulous.
Aden snapped his mouth shut.
“Sacrificed?” Her voice was dangerously high pitched.
Aden resisted the urge to cover his poor ears.
“Cheapened?!?” She was standing once again. “They died?! After all they went through to achieve a state of peace, they died?!” She threw something down at her plate. It must have been a piece of bread, as it bounced up lightly and fell off the table.
Aden brought his eyes back to her fuming face.
“They died.” She sank into her seat. She had seemingly forgotten he was there. “He should never have left her to seek out the magician. She wouldn’t have been forced to lead the army, and then they could have lived—happily and in love. That would have made such a better story.”
“More satisfying in the moment, perhaps,” Aden said, attempting to offer some consolation. “But then you would never have heard the story at all.”
Her head didn’t move, but he thought he saw her eyelids flick toward him.
Hoping that he had her attention, he kept talking. “It’s a legend, a saga. A story that is told for the purpose of passing on wisdom from one generation to the next.”
“I know what a legend is!” she said. “Enough with the literature lecture.”
Aden clumsily continued making his point. “It was only because of the bittersweet ending that the story became a legend at all.”
Isa pushed her bowl of stew toward the center of the table. “Thank you for ruining my absolute favorite thing in the entire kingdom and beyond. I find that I have quite lost my appetite. Goodnight.” She stood.
