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She started to shovel more of her breakfast into her mouth, the strain from using so much galder already weighing on her. She had entirely new limits she needed to learn, and it seemed earth was not her strongest element. Her father spoke again as she ate the rest of her food.

"Like any muscle that needs to be exercised to build strength, galder needs just as much practice," he mused.

"Like with humans, it will till react to your emotion and feed off its heightened state, but being part Elven means you have more control over your galder than your emotion does.

I can help you if you'd like, or perhaps one of your friends? "

Maude heard the quiet request her father was making, the real one beneath the offer of training. Her instinct to push away anyone willing to help her surged in her, but she forced herself to swallow that initial rejection.

This is a second chance , Herrick had said to her, and he was right—the bastard.

"I would like that," Maude said quietly, avoiding her father's eye as she spoke.

When he didn't answer right away, Maude thought she had said the wrong thing, so she looked at him.

What she found could have brought her to tears if she didn't have such a tight grip on herself at the moment.

Aeric was looking at her like she was the beginning and ending of his world, his silver eyes glittering with hope as he nodded quickly.

The only other person to have looked at her like that, with such unconditional love, was her mother .

"How did you know that my mother was your hjartpar ?" Maude asked, the question falling from her lips unfiltered as she thought about a life she had missed out on where both her parents were alive and in love.

Her father was silent for a moment before he answered slowly.

"We didn't exactly meet under the greatest of circumstances," he said with a smile.

"It took a long time for us to trust each other.

Your mother struggled with it more than I did, but she had lived in a different world than I had.

It wasn't until we started meeting regularly in that clearing that the pull between us became tangible and living.

She knew before I did, but Sylvi was always very observant of those around her.

A natural chameleon; she could blend into any crowd if she wished, and when it came to the people she loved, there was no hiding what one felt or thought around her. "

Maude smiled as she listened to Aeric speak about her mother so fondly. Even decades after he had last seen her, he still spoke if her with such loving words.

"Once I realized what a stubborn fool I was being, I invited Sylvi to Nida where we finally secured the bond in front of a seer in the temples hidden in the mountains," he explained as he started to unbutton the top of his tunic before removing the gloves he wore.

Extending his bared left hand to Maude, he flipped his palm down so she could see the thin line of golden runes that flowed together so seamlessly that they appeared as an uninterrupted thread of ink.

It circled around his fourth finger before extending over the top of his hand, up his arm, and over his chest until it merged with the fatemark over his heart.

The gold outlined the tattoo of Yggdrasil — the same as her own.

Around his fatemark, the runes from his fate telling gave her a glimpse of what he was destined for. Starting in the order they would have been pulled, she spied the runes gebo , tiwaz , and uruz , but the last two were hidden by the linen of his tunic.

Her eyes traced over the gold ink that complimented his bronze skin, the pigment she had inherited from him, as she marveled over the beauty of their commitment to each other .

"But she didn't have the same mark on her, I would have remembered," Maude mumbled as her confusion flared.

"I glamoured it before she returned to Hallifell. Any time she stepped foot in Nida, the glamour would fall and reveal the identical mark on her left arm," he explained as he pulled his hand back and started to button his tunic again. "It tore me apart, but it was necessary."

Maude snorted as how he growled the word "necessary."

"I am an imperfect male," her father chuckled in response. "But I respected Sylvi's choice to complete her mission. There was more at stake than just our bond."

Silence lapsed as Maude tried to phrase her question without insulting him.

"How did you know that what you felt for each other was real and not just because your fates made it to be that you were a perfect match?" she asked quietly, the vulnerability in her voice betraying what she was really concerned about.

As soon as hjartparan had been confirmed as real, Maude had suspected it. The very concept threw everything that had happened into doubt.

Aeric, seeing all of her fears play out on her face, answered kindly, "It was real because we chose it to be real."

She nodded, not entirely satisfied with his answer but choosing to let it go for the time being. They had bigger worries at the moment; her internal struggle against her fate and everything it chose for her needed to wait.

"When it is time for you to face that journey, you'll know what you choose."

With one hand, her father brushed her hair away from her face before leaning in to place a soft kiss on her temple as he held her tightly for a moment before releasing her. Unable to stop herself, Maude's eyes blurred even as her chest swelled at the parental affection.

Lighter than before, Maude gave her father a small smile that he returned before they each continued eating, their silence a comfortable one.

Spine a little straighter and her heart lighter than she thought possible, Maude felt an ease that she had never felt before.

Contentment spread through her like a wildfire on the bank of a deep-running river, like the wind that blew between the trees that bubbled with life, like the light that bursts through the shadows of doubt and grief.

She couldn't name the feeling, but Maude thought it might be a little bit like happiness.