Tresit was quiet for long moments. ”No… I don’t.” He finally admitted. ”I don’t know at all, actually.” He admitted softly, sounding relieved to have said it. ”If it was right or not… or what other choice I could have made. My father’s voice tells me that it was.”

”It’s not how you feel though, is it?” Kes asked softly, secretly relieved.

Tresit sighed. ”I don’t know.” He told her. ”Maybe I never will… I just know that my brother needs me.” He spoke quietly. ”I have a responsibility to my family. That’s what I do know.”

Kes reached over and took his hand, her son closing his fingers around hers and looking over to meet her eyes at last. ”For now, maybe that’s enough? There’s time to figure out the rest later. I just… I want you to know that you do have a choice in this, alright? About… about who you want yourself to be. You don’t have to be the son your father might have expected you to be… If he loved you like I believe he must have, I think he’d just want you to be happy and to have a prosperous life. The kind of man he was, to have gone against what his people expected of him and stay true to his family, despite Anara and Lanam’s supposed defects, I think he’d be proud of you for being strong enough to make your own choices. If you think about it, that’s probably one of his most fundamental legacies to you… Along with a good heart.”

He looked thoughtful at that, his gaze having returned to the desert. ”I’d thought that it would feel differently than it did, after he was dead. But I hardly feel anything, I just remember the sounds. More than that though, I just… I keep seeing Artem’s face when he saw me there, over his father… My uncle deserved the death I gave him. I know that he did, even… even if he didn’t kill my father and uncle Ralka, he deserved it for casting my mother and sister out to their deaths. He deserved worse than that for what he’s done… It doesn’t matter what I feel about it, that’s still true. But… Artem didn’t deserve what I did to him. Probably he didn’t anyway… But I remember thinking that maybe he deserved my death too. That mother and Lanam would have been alright, because they have you now.”