“Can we—” Triste began, but her mother cut her off with a tense shake of the head, waving them ahead into yet another room, this one away from the windows. A wide bed draped with fine silk stood against one wall. A pair of long, upholstered divans faced it across a rich, thickly piled rug. The leina shut the door behind them, slid a pair of locks into place, put her ear to the wood for several heartbeats, then finally turned.

“Please,” she said, gesturing to the divans, “be seated. I apologize for my haste in leading you here, but sometimes it seems Ciena loves secrets as much as she loves pleasure.”

“Can we talk in this room?” Triste asked.

Morjeta nodded. “There are listening holes in the other chambers, but I’ve found them here. Plugged them.”

She turned from her daughter to Kaden and Kiel, her gaze more forth-right than it had been in the garden pavilion. If that look were calibrated to put Kaden at his ease, it failed. He felt like a goat sized up before the slaughter, and had to keep himself from tugging his hood even farther over his head.

“Of course,” Morjeta continued, “there are already at least a dozen people who know you’re here.” She ticked them off on a manicured finger. “The guards outside Relli’s shop, Relli herself, Yamara, who greeted you, and any of the other women or men we passed on the way here. How crucial is your secrecy? Like the scent of lilac on the spring air, word is already wafting through the temple halls.”

Kaden hesitated, then pushed back his hood. “Important,” he said.

The leina’s eyes widened as she saw his burning irises, and her lips pursed. “Oh,” she said, staring for a moment before rising from her seat and dropping into a low curtsy. “Be welcome in Ciena’s innermost heart, Your Radiance.”

“Rise,” Kaden replied, gesturing, “rise.” Again he felt the weight of that single syllable, one he’d be forced to utter the rest of his life. Provided, he amended silently, that I have a life ahead of me. “I hope, someday, to sit the throne of my ancestors, but I expect someone else has beaten me to it. For now, please call me Kaden. Any further ceremony is only likely to get us all killed.”

Morjeta paused, then nodded as she rose. “As you say, Kaden.” She hesitated. “If I may ask, how—”

“It was a trap,” Triste burst out. “Tarik Adiv took me to Ashk’lan. . . .”

“As a gift,” her mother said, grief clouding her eyes. “I have not forgiven myself.”

Triste waved aside the objection. “Please, Mother. Anything you could have done would have ended in more misery for us both. The point is not that Adiv took me, but why he took me. He was laying a trap for Kaden.”

“Why?” Morjeta demanded. “Why did he need you?”

“He needed me,” Triste replied grimly, “for bait.”