”I’m going to find him, I swear I… I’ll bring him back.” Kes told her, feeling the panic and urgency well up inside her. ”Take… just take care of Lanam while I’m gone, and try to quiet her. It’s… you know it’s not safe that she’s so loud.” She told her, though she hated that she had to say it.

”I will.” Anara told her. ”Please, Kes… save him for me, please…”

Kes was already up and getting her clothes on, finding her knives, and seeing that Tresit’s knife was missing. ”Just, this isn’t your fault, Anara. It’s not, and, and it won’t matter anyway, because I’ll bring – I’ll bring him back. I will because it, it just has to happen that way.” She told Anara, her mind denying that it could happen any other way, even though her heart knew otherwise. When she was dressed, she ran out of the house as fast as she could, her mind packed with not only her own fears and urgency and guilt, but Anara’s too. They were still bonded, and it was all Kes could do to focus through it on the thing that both she and her wife needed now… to have their child back – to have him still be alive.

As she ran, distance made the bond between her and Anara more distant seeming too, but it was still there, and Kes held on to it for strength. And more, Anara knew precisely where her wicked brother’s house was, and she knew the streets of the city better than Kes did, so Kes used Anara’s memory to guide her unerringly to her destination, and used her own telepathic abilities to warn her of anyone who was in her way so she could avoid them.

It was still early in the day and the sun was just starting to truly light the world again. She had no way of knowing when last night Tresit had left. Still, Tresit was younger, had smaller legs, and would have had to have moved much more slowly and carefully to avoid being caught than the quick and all but unceasing pace Kes’s longer legs, urgency, and preemptive telepathic scanning allowed her to move at, so she held out at least some hope of arriving in time.