"It's not the same thing," she says after a moment of looking conflicted, "but sure."

And he starts singing. 

The story is that there is a hidden kingdom in the mountains, enchanted so that none who haven't been there can ever find it, and none who have can ever leave. The kingdom's princess is restless and unhappy, and she demands leave to go free, and the King grants this with strict instructions and an escort. She loses the escort on the first day and fights her way through the forest of giant spiders and comes to another kingdom, where an old friend lived. He is absent but his people know and welcome her, and she rides the countryside, going farther and farther, seeing more of the world.

And then she wanders into a magical enchanted forest, and the man who designed the forest decides that he does not want her to leave. So he turns all the paths until none lead out, and she wanders until she is frightened and hungry, and then he welcomes her and invites her to join him and they are married that evening.

And for fifty years her friends search for her fruitlessly, and eventually they learn she is in the enchanted forest but not how she came to be lost there, or that she cannot leave, and it would start a war if they invaded so they don't, and she bears a child and the child grows up and when he is grown he asks his mother if together they might be able to break the enchantments and leave.

And they do. 

And she flees to the home of her friend, and this time he is present, and she says only that she requires fast horses, so he gives her fast horses and bids her farewell. When her husband comes dashing across the land after her, her friend strongly advises him to go home but does not draw his sword. And traveling faster with magic, he catches up to her as she reaches her secret city, and tells the guards of the secret city that he is her husband, and he is brought with due honors before the King, who welcomes him as a brother but explains that he may never leave.

And in anger her husband draws a weapon and throws it, saying that if only by his death he will depart this place then he and his son will die here, but the princess protects her child and is injured in the shoulder and dies in the night, as the weapon was poisoned.

He stops there. "This is the friend I want you to bring back," he says, "and it's my fault because I didn't kill him when I had the chance."

She is quiet for a long moment.

"I guessed that it was a true story when the giant spiders came into it. I'm...not sure that was the best story to tell if you don't want me working myself into a frenzy trying to get strong enough to raise the dead. Is her son okay?"

"Yeah, I meant to share a happy one but don't have any. He is by all accounts doing as well as one can when they watch their father executed for killing their mother while trying to kill them. The King named him his heir."

"Doesn't the King have sons? I'm pretty sure he has sons, one of them found my sister. Also that is kind of depressing and at some point I'm going to have to tell you some stories just so you know ones that don't end with people dying."

"Wouldn't all Men's stories end with everyone dying definitionally? And the High King isn't the only one who claims the title of King, or he wouldn't bother having to be High King. There's a King of Gondolin and a King of Nargothrond, they just answer to the high king. In some sense there'd be nothing wrong with Maedhros calling himself King of Himring for the same reason. In practice that'd probably start a war."

"Oh, a different king. No, the stories end before the people die," she explains. "And we don't actually have anything other than Men but sometimes we make them up anyways and have stories about them."

"I can tell you stories and end them before anyone dies. Once upon a time a great many people lived happily in Valinor and Morgoth was in jail."

"And we all know how that one ended. I think the difference with made-up stories is that if you end them before anyone dies nobody really does die, because none of it actually happened."

"Yeah."

She sighs and gets up to head back to her room. "I appreciate the story regardless. Good night."

"Night."

When Odette wakes up the next morning she isn't really sure just how late she was supposed to be sleeping in. She rolls over and manages to get back to sleep a few times, but ultimately she can't get any more sleep right now.

When someone comes to fetch her, later, they will find her sitting upright in bed, staring intently at a pair of perfectly still human figures.

"Hey. You okay? All's well out front, there are people for you to heal downstairs but they're not dying. What are those?"

"I'm fine. they're illusions of my parents," she says, dismissing them and hopping out of bed. "Or a best guess at what they'd look like, with these eyes; obviously I've never seen them like this. I feel much less guilty about missing them with a decent plan for bringing your dad back."

"I hope that it works. How - long do you have to get back to your home realm while your parents will still be alive?"

"Well--they were mages, when they were younger, and there's lots of mages around--it could be indefinitely. It could be that our friends from the mage university decide to honor our memory by taking care of our parents like that. It could be that I come back in four hundred years or a thousand and they're still there." Her voice chokes a little. "Or they could react very, very badly to our presumed murder, and I could make it back in a month and find that it had been too late for at least one of them."

"Hug?"

She hugs him.

"Do you want to talk about what happened/? I have lots of questions but do not really need my curiosity satisfied."

"I don't mind talking about it, but I'm not sure where to start."

"I'm curious specifically what kind of assassination attempt leaves it obvious that an assassination was attempted. Was he not planning to survive the aftermath? Heroic sacrifice for what he thought was a noble aim? Or is he powerful enough to get away with it?"

"I think he thought he could get away with it. I don't think he could get away with it. If--if he had tried to murder, some other student--there are enough mages in Genosha that maybe no one would have gotten around to checking him. It's not usually hard to catch a murderer with magic, if you already suspect the right person. But--he wasn't overt about it, most people didn't know, but Atennesi Cohen, the Great Mage who runs the city--he's, sort of taken an interest in me, ever since it became apparent I was going to be his peer someday. He could past-scry the entire city to find out where we went. And if we just disappeared when he was blatantly trying to kill us--that's a thing you can do, is make things just disappear. And even if he confirmed that I had teleported us away--if we never came back--that I accidentally teleported us straight into another lethal situation somewhere else on the planet, maybe even in the planet--it's a much more likely idea than that I somehow managed to teleport us into a different universe."

He holds her closer. "I see. I'm sorry. And why was he trying to murder you?"

"Because I'm going to be a Great Mage and he thinks no one should have that kind of power. Even if I didn't have more than enough reason to teach your brother magic, fuck that guy would be sufficient unto itself."