“Don’t you?”
Surely he does. Othrynn was his homeworld, the place he was ripped away from.
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is interesting. Because Varek is not usually a man who hesitates.
“I arrived in Terrafeara nineteen years ago,” he says.
I blink. I didn’t actually know that. “That long?”
“Yes.”
“Bloody hell.” I shake my head slightly. “But you must still think about going back?”
“Sometimes.”
The quiet honesty of it catches me off-guard.
I clear my throat. “Well. I’ve only been stuck here about ten.”
He tilts his head slightly in acknowledgement. He found me after I’d been dragged through a rift and dumped into this nightmare world for about three weeks.
Three very unpleasant weeks.
“You arrived shortly after your thirtieth year,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“From Earth.”
“Obviously.”
“You were born in the United Kingdom.”
I narrow my eyes. “How the hell do you know that?”
“You told me.”
“When?”
“While bleeding.”
“…Right.”
That tracks. Back then, I’d been badly hurt and, while healing, a little delirious at times. I didn’t realise I’d shared so much with him. Honestly, thinking back, I tend to only recall seeing blood and Thomas’s broken, prone form. And my rage, my fear that Varek had taken the one person from me who was meant to be mine.
“You moved to Australia as a child,” he continues.
“Fourteen,” I say almost absently, curious where he’s going with this.
“With your mother.”
“Yeah.”
“And your father remained behind.”
The words land oddly in my chest. I shrug. “Yeah. Well.”
Silence stretches.
