The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay
It went back too far beyond her, even with her own twinned soul. So she kept her peace, heard another pebble dislodged, another bird cry, farther away, and then listened as Matt Sören finally spoke, very softly, never looking around. "Loren, hear me. I regret nothing: not a breath, not a moment, not the shadow of a moment. This is truth, my friend, and I swear it to be such in the name of the crystal I fashioned long ago, the crystal I threw in the Lake on the night the full moon made me King. There is no weaving the Loom could have held to my name that I can imagine to be richer than the one I have known."
Ivor looked at Dalreidan for a long time without answering. Then: "No Chieftain can reclaim an exile within the Law. But nothing I know in the parchments at Celidon speaks to what the Aven may do in such a case. We are at war, and you have done service already in our cause. You have leave to return. As Aven I say so now." He stopped. Then, in a different voice, Ivor said, "You have leave to return to the Plain and to your tribe, though not under the name you have taken now. Be welcome back under the name you bore before the accident that thrust you forth into the mountains. This is a brighter thread in darkness than I ever thought to see, a promise of return. I cannot say how glad I am to see you here again." He smiled. "Turn now, for there is another here who will be as glad. Sorcha of the third tribe, turn and greet your son!" In front of Dave, Torc went rigid, as Levon let out a whoop of delight. Sorcha turned. He looked at his son, and Dave, still standing behind Torc, saw the old Dalrei’s begrimed face light up with an unlooked-for joy. One moment the tableau held; then Torc stumbled forward with unwonted awkwardness, and he and his father met in an embrace so fierce it seemed as if they meant to squeeze away all the dark years that had lain between. Dave, who had given Torc the push that sent him forward, was smiling through tears. He looked at Levon and then at Ivor. He thought of his own father, so far away—so far away, it seemed, all his life. He looked over and up at Rangat and remembered the hand of fire. "Do you think," Mabon of Rhoden murmured, "that that small expedition we were planning might just as easily be done with seven?" Dave wiped his eyes. He nodded. Then, still unable to speak, he nodded again.
"I should go," he said, wanting to be elsewhere before one of them said something that was wounding, and so spoiled even this goodbye. "I’ll see you this evening, I guess." He turned to the door. "Paul," she said. "Wait." Not Pwyll. Paul. Something stirred like a wind within him. He turned again. She had not moved. Her hands were crossed in front of her chest, as if she were suddenly cold in the midst of summer. "Are you really going to leave me?" Jaelle asked, in a voice so strained he needed a second to be sure of what he’d heard. And then he was sure, and in that instant the world rocked and shifted within him and around him and everything changed. Something burst in his chest like a dam breaking, a dam that had held back need for so long, that had denied the truth of his heart, even to this moment. "Oh, my love," he said. There seemed to be so much light in the room. He took one step, another; then she was within the circle of his arms and the impossible flame of her hair was about them both. He lowered his mouth and found her own turned up to his kiss. And in that moment he was clear at last. It was all clear. He was in the clear and running like his running pulsebeat, the clear hammer of his heart. He was translucent. Not Lord of the Summer Tree then, but only a mortal man, long denied, long denying himself, touching and touched by love. She was fire and water to his hands, she was everything he had ever desired. Her fingers were behind his head, laced through his hair, drawing him down to her lips, and she whispered his name over and over and over while she wept. And so they came together then, at the last, the children of the Goddess and the God.