Aideen's Answer

~Chapter Three~

"That certainly did not go as I had hoped," Aideen murmured to herself, now it was she staring into the flames, instead of her mother.

 She sat alone in the library, her family having left her alone with her thoughts, their meeting over.

 The throbbing in her head was getting worse, but she refused to give up. She simply had to find a way to make her father see reason. Surely he wouldn't want his only daughter in a miserable marriage, right? And that's exactly what it would be if she were forced to go through with this, miserable. Any marriage would be miserable if it were with anyone but Kevin!

 "Oh, Kevin," She whispered. "What are we going to do?"

 How she loved him! With his boyish good looks, curly blonde hair and laughing forest green eyes, he had easily captured her heart the day she'd first locked eyes with him. She let her head rest against the couch and closed her eyes, allowing her mind to drift back in time to that fateful day. Months ago now, the day she first met Kevin, her knight.

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 Clang! Clang!

 The sounds of the knights training filled the air as Aideen and her closest friend and cousin, beautiful Samantha, tried in vain to find her brother. They made their way across the field on a path long familiar to her. Aideen had come to the training field many times since she was a child, delivering messages from her father or fetching her brothers. Today, they were on a mission to do just that, find Jayden.

 However, it was taking much longer than she would have liked, for Samantha kept pausing to look at this or admire that. Especially handsome knights.

 "Would you keep up?" Aideen finally said.

 "Oh, stop being so impatient! This may be the millionth time for you to come here, but I only visit rarely. Can't I enjoy watching knights train?"

 "Maybe you could, if the training is what you were really watching," Aideen mumbled as she began walking away.

 Samantha gasped, "Did I just hear what I think I heard?"

 Aideen kept her face as straight as she could as she looked over her shoulder towards her cousin.

 "Do you think you heard me tell you to hurry? Because yes, that's exactly what I said."

 Her straight face routine failed the minute their eyes met and both of them burst into laughter.

 "Oh, Addie," Samantha said, using her nickname for Aideen, "I shall miss you when I leave tomorrow!"

 "And I, you, dear cousin, you simply must visit me more!"

 "Yes, well, tell that to Papa," came the usual answer, along with a roll of her gorgeous brown eyes.

 Aideen knew very well that the eye rolling was only an act, Samantha loved her father fiercely, the two of them were very close. She watched her graceful cousin for a moment, thinking it was no wonder the girls in her village were jealous when Samantha came to visit. Straight, silky brown hair reached to her waist, which she had done up so only a few strands framed her beautiful face. Her big brown eyes were framed by incredibly thick lashes. She was tanned from her many hours out in the sun on her horse, Strike, which she loved like family. They'd been inseparable since his mother had been killed in a sudden storm, causing her to go out and save him. They'd almost been hit by lightening on their way back to the barn, hence his name. That was just her character. When she heard that foal cry out in the night, it never occurred to her to do anything but save him. She joked around a lot, loved making people laugh, and had a heart bigger than the castle, only hers was made of solid gold.