She gasped so sharply it actually made me look over. Her red and hazel-gold eyes were wide and brimming with unshed tears. Her bottom lip trembled. “You have not called me that since⁠—”

“I know.” I smiled through the pain and tightness in my chest. “Too long.”

She wiped a tear then sighed. “Felt nice to hear it.”

“Felt nice to say it.” I reached up and wrapped my hands around her arm stretched across my chest. “I told her your real name before she left.”

“Why?”

“So, there would be no question in her mind who you were when she first saw you . . . standing over her—” my voice broke. I had to clear my throat a few times. “She does not remember your face so she would not have realized that was you. It was important she know, as she saw you, who you were.”

She nodded and let out a shaky breath. “So, she knows now.”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes and tried to just breathe. “She came back here . . . to me . . . and I had to send her back into the tunnel . . . to her quest⁠—”

“She has to finish her task. We already know that.” She squeezed me tighter, resting her face on my shoulder the way she’d always done since she was a little girl. “I wonder . . . I wonder which part of her journey she was on when she returned here⁠—”

“Her funeral pyre. The scent of that night is a memory I have never been rid of. It clung to her hair. The ash lingered on her clothes⁠—”

“Father.” She cried. “I’m so sorry. I do not know how you have survived eight hundred years without her. I am a mess without Akecheta by my side and I know he breathes our very air.”

“I knew she would return to me and when, that made all the difference.” I rested my head against hers. “And for the days in between I had you . . . and yours.”

“You still have us,” she said softly.

It was the tension in her voice that reminded me I wasn’t the only soulmate hurting in our family. “How is he today?”

“The same, essentially.” She groaned. “I heard you tell the others . . . he’s not going to survive if we don’t block the Unseelie out.”

“No, he is not.” I took a deep breath then slowly let it out. “But none of us will.”

“She will come back. I have faith in her.”

That made me smile. “Your mother has always been a force to be reckoned with.”

“It’s nice to see she didn’t lose her rage.” She pulled her arms from around me then bumped her shoulder into mine. “I couldn’t have handled a passive, calm version of her.”

“You should’ve seen her with that bat in the frat house, a real work of beauty.”