“It’s an old tale,” Mina said, lowering herself into a chair. “Are you sure you’ve never heard it?”

“They don’t tell the old tales so much anymore, ma’am,” said Anim. “Perhaps you could enlighten me.”

“The story is about a prince who loved to go out among his subjects in disguise, to learn things that they would never have told him to his face,” said Mina, her face dancing in the lamplight shadows. “One day he returned infatuated with a peasant girl whose beauty, kindness, and intelligence had captivated him.”

“And they married, and lived happily ever after?”

Mina laughed. “The old tales rarely have such an ending, child. They have been…sanitized…even when they are occasionally related. The prince’s chancellor investigated the matter and found that the peasant girl was very much in love with, and betrothed to, a local lad.”

“What happened next?” said Anim.

“The chancellor appeared before the king with a choice: he could let the girl marry her love and live a life of happy and ignorant obscurity, one which would likely lead her to fade and her virtues to falter. Or he could exercise his autocracy to marry the girl himself, ensuring her beauty would be immortalized in oil and sculpture, that her kindness would advise the highest in the land, and that her intelligence would be nurtured, even at the cost of a broken heart. The chancellor represented the choice to his prince with two items: a simple molded clay pendant, and a beautiful necklace with a cracked diamond.”

“Which…which one did the prince choose?” Anim breathed, clearly riveted by the tale despite himself.

“The prince chose the cracked diamond,” Mina sighed. “The former peasant girl put up with ten years of luxury before stepping out a window in the highest tower of the hold.”