Schism: Part One of Triad by Catherine Asaro

sat with Moonglaze. He was beginning to wonder if he, Shannon, was fully human. The emotions of people, even his own
     
    family, made so little sense to him. He felt painfully out of place here, until at times he thought he would die from a lack of air, or not air, but something more vital. He was suffocating and he didn’t know how to make it stop. He wanted to saddle Moonglaze and ride away, fly across the world until he escaped the hurt he never understood.
    Eldrinson stood in the window of his room on the third story of the house and looked toward the starport. Copious light from the Blue and Lavender Moons poured across the plains, their ghostly radiance silvering the Jag that crouched on the tarmac.
    “It is so strange,” he said.
    Roca came up behind him and put her arms around his waist, her front to his back as she looked over his shoulder. “What is?”
    “That my son should come out of the sky with flames and thunder.” He leaned his head against hers. “A war god, eh?”
    “Well, a fighter pilot, anyway.”
    “I wish he didn’t have to leave tomorrow.”
    Roca sighed. “I also. Part of me wants to keep them with us all the time. But we have to let them go, Eldri. They grow up and live their own lives.”
    “Vyrl stayed.” Eldrinson smiled. “All those fine grandchildren he and Lily have given us.”
    Her voice warmed. “They are beautiful indeed.”
    “Do you think Althor has a girl?” He had noticed his son’s silence on the subject.
    Roca turned him around so he was facing her, the two of them standing with their arms around each other’s waist. “Would it bother you if he didn’t?”
    “I suppose he has much to occupy his time.”
    “Yes. He does.” Roca hesitated. “What I don’t understand is why Colonel Tahota came with him. She isn’t an instructor at DMA.”
    Eldrinson didn’t know what to think of this female warrior. She showed impeccable courtesy, but she made him uneasy. “Women shouldn’t fight wars, Roca.”
     
    His wife frowned at him. “And what will you do next year when your daughter insists on enrolling at DMA, hmm?”
    He rubbed his eyes, feeling his more than five octets of age despite all the “nanomeds” the Skolian doctors gave him to keep his body young. “I don’t know, love. I’m hoping she will change her mind.”
    “Eldri.” Roca cupped her palms around his cheeks. “She isn’t going to change her mind.”
    “She cannot go.” The thought alarmed him even more than when Soz had challenged him to sword practice a few years ago—and bested him. That was the last time he had parried with her. “Lord Rillia plans to ask for a marriage with her.”
    “Our children don’t take well to arranged marriages. Look what happened with Vyrl.”
    “But, Roca, this is different. We wanted Vyrl to marry an offworlder. It’s no wonder he ran off with Lily. Besides, they’ve been in love practically since they were born. Soz has no young man, unless you count that scoundrel, Ari, who ought to have his backside paddled. Lord Rillia is a mature man of Lyshriol, a leader of our people. He will be good for her.”
    His wife had that look he dreaded, the one that meant he would never get her agreement. Roca said, “She won’t do it. Soz wants to go. We can’t hold her here. She will only hate us for it.”
    Panic at losing his daughter to an interstellar war swept over him. He covered it with anger. “She will do as I say. And I say she will stay here and marry Lord Rillia.”
    “Eldri—”
    “No!” He couldn’t bear to think that another of his children would leave for the stars, especially not Soz, his beautiful, brilliant, headstrong daughter. Gods only knew what would happen if she became a warrior. “My decision is final. I will hear no more.”
    Roca didn’t look the least bit cowed by his statement “If I know Soz, I suspect that when the time comes, you will hear a lot more.”
     
    He winced. “She is rather formidable.”
    ‘That she