Sometimes, he almost misses them.

On evenings like tonight—clear but for light clouds skimming at the horizon, balmy
before the night's chill off the strait really settled in, with the smell of salt
in his nostrils, waiting for his oldest and most constant friends to gather in the
sky above him—Carvallain remembers Ishgard, his father and younger brother, and he
can almost miss them.
Not as they are—or were—he acknowledges. Of course. Rather, he misses the dream
more than the reality. He misses the dream of Ishgard, the dream of family, the
dream of love, far more than the stark grey stone, the ancient Durendaire tomb, and
the stifling cloister of the manor.
(Sometimes he wonders if infusing, inflating his few memories of the city with
hatred is the only reason they've lasted so long).
That might have been the sort of thing his father would seek meaning in, in his
dreams—and his brother would join in, too. As they sought meaning from the stars,
guidance, so his father would examine his and his wife's and his sons' dreams,
seeking that greater significance (and Jannequinard was always so much better than
Carvallain at it, which a child resented). These were the memories that he almost
missed, the ones with the version of his family he almost cherished.
But while his father and his brother told fortunes, Carvallain made his.
He wasn't going back, he knew for certain. Ishgard may have birthed him, but it was
Vylbrand made him a man—and not just any old sea dog, but head of his own fleet.
Rich, important, powerful—once a castaway and now a privateer prince, beloved of
the Navigator. What did it stand to profit him, if he went back?
Back to the high walls of Ishgard would be akin to returning to a brig, Carvallain
thought. Leaning against the mast of The Misery, the stars winking above him by now
uncountable in number and the waves smacking her hull steady as any metronome...
This was where he held his court, where he was attended to, master and commander
and what about this was in any way inferior to inherited lordship? That his manor
was afloat, that his domain yielded not grain but salt and gold, that could not
make him less than an Ishgardian count. He was the one who would lose if he
reclaimed his birthright. Again, what would it profit, that reunion?
The profit would lie with and within the family, Carvallain could guess. He would
become the next Count de Durendaire, be celebrated through all Ishgard for his
return—and all he had gained by his own two hands, swept away for ever. And as he
found those terms unfavorable, why, he was exercising the freedom he'd found to
walk away from the table.
And if his father truly wishes to find him...
...Well, he could follow the stars above them both—above them all—just the same as
Carvallain had.