They led me inside, where Joss stood next to the same scarred wooden table she’d once sat me at. Without saying a word, she lifted my hand, tears flooding down her cheeks at the sight of my blackened bonding marks. “I’d thought maybe…” She scrubbed a hand across her face, wiping away the damp. “It’s good that you’re here – it will mean everything to her.”

Sabine took my arm at the elbow. “She hid it well, but we all knew she never recovered from losing you,” she said. “And of a surety, she never stopped loving you. Not for a moment.”

My chest tightened, and for a second, it hurt to breathe. “She never lost me.”

Boots clattered down the stairs, and my son stepped into the kitchen. “Aunt Joss–” he started to say, then froze, his inability to use his own magic doing nothing to dampen the sense of mine.

“Alex, this is–”

“I know who he is,” Alex said. “I’ve seen his portraits, and even if I hadn’t… Well, I do own a mirror.”

“The ego does not fall far from the tree,” Chris said, but I ignored him, knowing well what my son’s wit was hiding.

“If you’re here, then…” Alex looked away, jaw tightening as he struggled to contain his emotions, wiping a hand across eyes that were more blue than grey. So like his mother.

I nodded, confirming his fears. But what was there for me to say in this short moment when I was allowed in this world? I’d watched him born, watched him grow from a boy into a man under his mother’s guiding eye. I knew him, but to Alexandre, I was a stranger. Little more to him than the sum of the stories told about me. He was older than I’d been when I left – than how I appeared to him now – somewhat shorter, but filled out by his adult years and hours spent training with his uncle. Though he was everything I could have wanted in a child, sentiment between us would be awkward and strange.

But neither could I leave having said nothing. I was not my father.

“When you are playing cards,” I said, “you might consider losing from time to time. Especially when you’re playing against your Uncle Fred. He takes great offense to cheating, and he’s starting to become suspicious.”

His eyes widened, then he crossed his arms. “I don’t cheat.”

I laughed. “All trolls cheat at cards – it’s in your blood. The lying on the other hand, that came from your mother.” Clapping him once on the shoulder, I started up the stairs, goodbyes seeming unwarranted now that they knew I could see them when I wanted.

Her labored breathing filled my ears before I even entered the room, and for a long time, I stood with my hand on the handle, searching for the courage I needed.