Crossing Boundaries

Chapter 5

Luin

"You can come home."

The words echoed in my mind as I struggled to process them, but they were too immense and my head hurt too much for any of this to feel real.

Once you were exiled from Alterra, there was no going back. Or, there never had been before. When I left, I had accepted that I would cut all ties of family, friendship, and loyalty. Fen shouldn't be here, shouldn't be speaking these horrible, impossible, wonderful words.

But...

But I would have to sever my soul bond. I could make my choice again, Fen had said. As in, the original deal still stood: exile or life without my soul mate. It was an agonizing choice for so many people faced with my situation, I knew, but for me it had been so simple that first time. I had felt no doubt, no hesitation as I signed away my citizenship and stepped through the gate to the human realm. I had been too full of hope and, yes, no small amount of grief, but there had been such a sense of conviction and rightness that the choice had been easy. Even in all these years, I had never regretted it. Sure, I had wondered whether a life alone in Alterra without hope or a life alone here with a dying hope would make for a happier life... but that was just wondering. A way to keep my mind at work and a way to steel my resolve when I came up with the inevitable conclusion: of course I was better off here.

But that was back when the questions that circled my mind were purely hypothetical, with no way of ever acting on them. It's easy to decide you made the right choice when it's impossible to take it back.

"Luin?" Fen said gently.

I shook my head. "I apologize. That's a lot to take in."

Fen grimaced. "I know."

I needed to think about something else, just for a little while. "My family?" I asked.

"They're okay," Fen said, but the sympathy in his eyes had my chest twisting in dread. I watched him and waited, even though that dread escalated every second until I thought I might choke on it. Finally, one corner of Fen's mouth twitched upward and he shook his head, affection mingling with the sympathy in his eyes. "You always were good at waiting me out. It's your dad. He got sick a couple of years back, and... he didn't make it."

I shut my eyes against words that hit me like a physical blow. I was suddenly glad for the ache of depleted magic throughout my body. It seemed fitting, in the face of such news, that I should hurt. My father had been gone for years and I'd had no idea.

It was always a possibility, I knew – a real Schrodinger's Cat situation. I had always known that someday, my parents would die and I would be none the wiser. Someday. But I never thought I would feel the sharp grief of knowing that it had actually happened.

I sorted through questions in my mind – how long was he sick? What killed him? How had my mother and sister taken it?

Did he suffer?

But when it came down to it, those answers weren't what I really wanted to hear about. "Tell me more," I asked. "What do you know of my mother and Corrin?"

Fen brightened now and some of the weight eased from me. They must be okay, or he wouldn't look like that. "Corrin and her bond mate are expecting their third child. Your mother is loving being a grandmother. She bought the house next door to them, and I think that bothered Corrin at first, but they seem really happy now."

"I'm an uncle?"

"Rin is five and Sula is three," Fen supplied.

Somehow, having more information on them made me feel worse. Did they know their mother had a brother? Did they know my name? Even if I went back, I would be a stranger to them. What would my life look like?