Kaden looked over at the girl. She was hugging herself, shivering in the chill dark.

“All right,” he said slowly. “The vaniate.”

“I don’t know the vaniate,” Triste said, voice crumbling. “I don’t know how to slow my breath.”

Kiel nodded. “I’m not sure you’ll survive to the kenta, but the choice is yours.”

She turned to Kaden, eyes wide, pleading. “What do we do?”

He hesitated. He didn’t want the decision, didn’t want the responsibility that came with it, but wanting, as the Shin had told him hundreds of times, was just another way to suffer.

He set aside the fear and emotion both, tried to see the situation clearly, coldly. If they escaped, if he retook his throne, he could come back for Tan. More, if Triste was Csestriim, he needed her, needed what she knew, to understand the plot against his family. It was a hard choice, but Rampuri Tan had taught him something about hardness.

“There is a strength inside you, Triste,” he said. “Something even you don’t understand. It’s why they imprisoned you in the first place. You ran through the mountains. You passed the kenta twice already—”

Furious shouts split straight through his words, cleaving the calm he had so carefully guarded. He tried to count the voices. There were three, no . . . five, and loudest among them, Matol, bellowing his fury.

“. . . want them found, and I want them found now. Two men in each cell, take this fucking place apart. And someone find Rampuri Tan, that treacherous bastard.”

Boots clattered on the stone. Steel hinges screamed. Men barked commands back and forth.

“It’s too soon,” Kaden said, staring down the corridor. “They shouldn’t be here.”

“There is no should,” Kiel said quietly. “Only is. Prepare yourself.”

Kaden measured a long breath, holding it in his lungs, but before he could exhale, the first Ishien rounded the corner, blades bright with the light of their lanterns. For a moment, no one moved. Then the leader—Hellelen, Kaden realized, the same man who had first challenged them at the kenta—smiled.

“Here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “They’re here, cowering in a corner.”

“Quickly,” Kiel murmured.

Kaden reached for the vaniate, but it was like clawing at cloud. His mind passed through the emptiness, but failed to enter it. The gong of his heart tolled in his ears.

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head.

Triste had turned to face the men, teeth bared, hands twisted into claws as though she intended to rend the skin from their faces.

“They cannot follow us,” Kiel said. There was no fear in his voice, no urgency. “Find the trance.”