“You mean he tortured and killed us,” Kaden said, thinking back to the lightless corridors of the Dark Heart.

Kiel nodded. “That was a part of his study, although not the entirety of it. The war lasted several human generations, and Tan’is spent that entire time, whenever he wasn’t actually leading the armies, in study, learning your peculiar use of the language, your physiology and limitations, your emerging social structures, your weapons and weaknesses, and most of all, your minds. He spent decades trying to discover what had broken inside you, trying to understand whether it had anything to do with the new gods.”

“What do you mean, the new gods?” Triste asked. Unlike her mother, she wasn’t as jolted by the sudden revelation. After all, they’d been discussing the Csestriim for weeks. Triste had suffered in a Csestriim prison and passed through the Csestriim gates. Somehow, she knew their language. As Kiel spoke, she leaned forward on her cushion, eyes bright, sweat sheening her brow.

“You call them the young gods,” Kiel said. “The children of Meshkent and Ciena.”

“Heqet and Kaveraa,” Kaden said, reciting the names as he had heard them recited a thousand times before leaving for the Bone Mountains. “Eira and Maat; Orella and Orilon.”

“And Akalla,” Kiel added slowly. “And Korin.”

Kaden frowned. “No. There are only six of them. Six children of Pleasure and Pain.”

“That is because we killed the other two.”

For several heartbeats no one spoke. Morjeta had retreated behind the stillness of her painted face. Triste’s mouth hung open, as though in mid-gasp. Kaden realized that he, too, was leaning forward on his cushion, legs tense, breath lodged in his lungs. He exhaled slowly.

“You’re saying you killed two of the gods.”

“Tan’is killed them,” Kiel said. “He captured them after the battle of Nimir Point. Captured them, studied them, then killed them. I was there as historian. It is how we learned, learned conclusively, of the connection between our children—between you—and the new gods.”

Suddenly, Kaden was sitting once more in Scial Nin’s study, looking across the rough wooden desk at the abbot, listening to him explain about the kenta and the Shin, about the purpose of Kaden’s time among the monks. The abbot was dead, one of the hundreds of robed bodies left on the ledges to feed the ravens, and yet Kaden could still hear his patient explanation: It could have been the birth of the young gods that led to human emotion.

“They changed you somehow,” Kaden said quietly. “The young gods changed the Csestriim into . . . us.”

Kiel nodded. “It was only a suspicion at first. The facts fit. We had theory and evidence, but no proof. Then they came down. Here. They breathed their own immortal forms into human bodies, all to help you in your fight against my people.”

“And you killed them?” Triste demanded, utterly aghast.