Chapter 117

• I couldn’t process this. My father was alive. This entire time, he was trapped in another dimension. And my mother … was most likely alive as well. How? I never did get to see her body when she died. She had requested that my last memory of her not be of her being dead. Was that really all a lie? Did she fake her death and leave me? Where was she now?
• I sat down on the bed, trying to wake up from the shock. I told Darren to go and get cleaned up, that I just needed a moment to process everything. He hesitated, not wanting to leave me. I promised I would wait for him, that I needed a moment to think. I knew he was afraid I would be upset with him for leaving my father behind. Never. I’d lived without my father for years, but I couldn’t survive without Darren. I needed him back, and then we could go from there to free my father. Darren suspected that my mother might be in the elven forest, because that was where the watch had reacted. I figured we would start there.
• All this time … my parents weren’t dead. I didn’t know how to feel. I couldn’t be happy because my father was trapped, and who knows about my mother. I didn’t understand it. Why would the gods test them like this? What was the point? Was it really for their protection? Or was it for mine?