“And Adiv?” Gabril asked. “How did he come to suspect you were there?”

Kaden glanced at Triste again. She was staring at the blank floor where Tevis had fallen, but looked up as though she felt his eyes upon her. It was there, obvious to anyone who looked. The marvel was he hadn’t seen it earlier.

“Morjeta,” he said quietly.

Kiel frowned, then nodded. Gabril said nothing. Kaden kept his eyes on Triste. For a few heartbeats she just stood there, face blank.

“What?” she asked finally.

“Your mother,” he said, as gently as he could. “She’s the one who told Adiv we would be here. She’s the one who gave him the names, who told him the people he’d be looking for would be dressed as monks but bearing blades.”

Triste stared, then shook her head, slowly at first, then more violently. “No,” she said, eyes blazing. “No.”

Kaden nodded. “Yes.”

It had taken him longer than it should have to piece it all together: the tension in Morjeta’s face when Triste reappeared, her odd insistence on cooperation with the man who had seized her daughter, the very fact that she had allowed Triste to be taken in the first place. And then Adiv’s unexpected arrival in the temple itself.

Oddly, the key had nothing to do with Morjeta at all. The whole thing had clicked into place only when Kaden watched Demivalle face down the Mizran Councillor. He had expected Adiv, with his title and the armed men at his back, to crush any resistance by the priestess. After all, that was the story of Triste’s abduction: the councillor came, he issued threats, and the leinas handed her over. The story looked a good deal less likely after witnessing Demivalle’s unflinching refusal to accommodate his demands.

The question was why? Why would Morjeta willingly give up her daughter? Why would she betray Kaden to the councillor? The answer was scrawled across Triste’s face. Adiv’s blindfold had obscured the resemblance, that and the fact that his skin was a few shades darker than Triste’s, but when Kaden called those faces to mind, when he set them next to each other, there could be no mistaking the shape of the jaw, the elegant line of the nose. Adiv hadn’t wrested an innocent girl from the iron grip of the Temple of Pleasure; he had taken his daughter.

“I don’t think your mother meant to hurt you,” he said carefully. “Tarik Adiv is one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. . . .” He hesitated, wondering whether or not to reveal the whole truth, then plunged ahead. “And he is your father.”