“After that, it was different. I was cautious, and I believe that he was afraid to chance too much, but in time we came to know one another. All my life I have been courted, and promised, and drawn back from a chorus of suitors and swains that sometimes seemed to stretch from my home to the moon itself. I found them all much alike: vain, unambitious, conceited, too much in love with themselves to love another.” She rested a hand on the exposed, thickly bearded chest. “Here I found something—different. If your journey homeward should take you back through Laconda, please assure my family that I am well, and content with my lot.”
Simna finally stopped laughing. Shaking his head at the irony of it all, he gave his tall companion a friendly slap on the back. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. All this way to rescue a princess who doesn’t want to be rescued. Let’s have a look around for the treasure and then I suppose we’ll be off. There’s nothing to hold us here any longer.” He started past the herdsman, heading for the main entrance to the audience chamber.
For the second time that remarkable night, Etjole Ehomba said, quietly but firmly, “No.”
“No?” A querulous Simna turned. “No what?” He gestured toward the toppled Hymneth and his angelic attendant. “You heard what she said. She wants to stay here.”
“Nothing has changed, Simna. You heard what I told him. It does not matter.” Walking over to where he had earlier dropped his spear, Ehomba recovered the weapon. Returning to the prone form of the Possessed, he brooded aloud over his lack of options.