Matol struggled and cursed and lost ground. She was forcing him toward the kenta, and for a moment Kaden thought he understood her plan, thought she intended to force him through into the hail of crossbow bolts as he had the other Ishien. The plan had worked once; it could work again. Only she was moving toward the wrong kenta, toward the gate that led back into the basement of the Shin chapterhouse.

“No, Triste,” he shouted, gesturing to the palace gate, “the other one. The other one!”

She ignored him.

“You gave up your soul,” she said. “You thought you had burned it out with your vicious rituals, your petty faith in the power of pain.” She laughed, a full, throaty laugh. “Pain is so limited.”

“I’ll show you pain, bitch.”

The two remaining Ishien moved toward the kenta and their commander, but Kiel was faster, stepping forward to block them, raising the naczal.

“I’ll show you pain like you’d never believe,” Matol snarled, dropping his sword, wrenching his hand free and scrabbling with it at her throat.

“You would be shocked, you weak little man, at what I believe.”

Matol’s fingers closed around her neck, but Triste just smiled, pulling him closer, then pressing her lips to his. Kaden stared as she wrapped him in her embrace, her eyes closed with something like rapture as she moved against him, hip to hip, mouth to mouth, like lovers in desperate ecstasy. The Ishien was still choking her even as his mouth opened to her kiss, responding to some animal call older than thought, older than hate. Triste clutching at his free arm, pressing it back, back through the space of the kenta . . .

Matol jerked as though stabbed, tried to shout, to pull away, but Triste’s hand was locked on the back of his neck. He yanked his arm from the kenta, only there was no arm left, just a blank slab of flesh with two circles of bone at the center, butchered as though with an impossibly sharp cleaver. Bone and flesh. Then blood in a fountain.

Triste pulled back a moment, smiling as Matol flailed. “Don’t think about the pain,” she cooed, “think about the pleasure. You thought you had burned it out of your soul, but I am returning it to you.” Then her lips were on his again, questing, probing, her chest pressed up against his chest as she forced him toward the gate once more. He took a step back, his leg passed the invisible plane, and he buckled, as though someone on the far side had kicked his foot out from under him.