Silence.
I push my intunar outward as hard and as wide as I can, reaching through the snow and the cold and the fading chaos, reaching for the particular warmth I have been able to feel since the moment they were placed in my arms, that small bright presence I would know anywhere.
Nothing.
Colsar is beside me before I finish turning, his hand finding my arm, and I pull away because I cannot be held right now, I cannot be managed or reassured when they are not here.
"Where are they?” My voice has gone somewhere I do not recognize. "Colsar. Where are they?”
He does not know. That is the most terrifying thing that has happened today.
"Fan out." His voice carries across the entire line without breaking. "Every soldier. Now."
The Avanki spread across the terrain in every direction, their lightcraft rising as they go.
I am already moving, pushing through the snow toward the edge of the path where the ground drops and the shadows gather between the rocks, calling their names even though I know it accomplishes nothing.
I do it anyway.
"Saurin would not have left them," I say, and my voice breaks on the last word in a way I cannot stop.
"No," Colsar says. "She would not."
"Something came for them while we were fighting. They knew. Someone told them about the children, Colsar, someone knew exactly what was in that transport and waited until we were occupied and they?—"
"Asharin."
Colsar's voice. Different from a moment ago. Not entirely calm, but moving toward it.
I turn. He is standing very still at the back of the transport, his attention fixed on something I cannot see from where I am, and his expression has shifted by just a fraction, just enough.
I cross the distance through the snow. Then I hear her. Small. Furious. Entirely and completely herself.
Kiss.
I round the back of the transport and Kentan is standing there as though he has always been there, one child in each arm, both wrapped tightly, Cambra on one side and Saurin on the other with an expression that tells me the last several minutes have taken something from her she will not be getting back quickly.
Kiss is making quite a lot of noise. Ari is asleep, unsurprisingly.
I take them before Kentan can prepare, pulling one and then the other against me, and the sound that leaves me is not dignified and I could not care less. I press my face into the warmth between them and breathe, and I stay there until my hands stop shaking. Then I stay a little longer.
When I finally look up my eyes are wet and I make no effort to address it. Colsar reaches through my arms and finds them both at once, his hands moving over them the same way mine just did, and for a long moment the four of us are simply together in the snow while the mountain holds its cold indifferent silence around us.
I look at Kentan. “Where did you go?” I ask.
"Below the surface," he says simply. "There were too many creatures here, it was not safe.”
Colsar closes his eyes. When he opens them the roughness in his voice is audible even when he says nothing. He says something then, quiet and certain. "Thank you."
Kentan beams, which is not what I expected from a man who just vanished beneath a mountain with my children during a battle.
"I was made for this," he says. "Just allow it."
Colsar exhales once, long and slow. Then he looks at me, then back at Kentan. “You may discuss it with her. If she says yes, I will allow it.”
I look back at him over the children's heads and do not argue, because whatever Kentan has asked for, I will probably say yes.
He had kept them safe.
