Dread mounting, Kaden limped ahead, forcing down the pain in his chest, trying to still the battering of his heart, trying to think. They were in the Dawn Palace, or beneath it. Adiv had marshaled his men, but someone was killing those men. Kiel had proven himself capable with the naczal, but it wasn’t Kiel. Kaden stared at another corpse as he passed. The face had been utterly smashed, features caved into the back of the skull. No weapon could do that.

Triste. It had to be. When Adiv tried to tear down the tunnel, she had held it up. Like her father, she was a leach, a powerful leach, and something inside her had snapped.

He redoubled his pace, following the corridor around one corner, then another, pushing past dozens of bodies until the dank, cold scent of the stone began to give way to fresh air. He rounded a final bend and pulled up short. Thirty paces away, silhouetted by the bright blaze of the noonday sun, arms outstretched as though eager for some terrible embrace, Triste stood in an arch leading outside. Beyond her, Kaden could make out fire and smoke, could hear screams, but Triste herself remained motionless as stone. As Kaden stared, Adiv stepped from an alcove halfway down the corridor. He didn’t spare a glance for Kaden. All his attention was focused on his daughter, and as he moved, the bare knife in his hand glinted with reflected sunlight.

Kaden threw himself into a lurching run. There was no point shouting a warning any more than there was trying to cover the sound of his approach—the violence beyond the doorway was deafening even inside the hall. It was a race, pure and simple, with Triste’s life as the prize, and though Kaden knew nothing about fighting, nothing about war or politics, nothing about leaches or their powers, he knew how to run. He’d been running his whole life, running hungry, running in the dark, running hurt, and so, gritting his teeth, he ran.

He hit Adiv a few paces from the entrance, a few paces from Triste, slamming him to the floor. Agony scoured his back, but he ignored the agony. He had only moments, less than moments, before the leach turned on him and tore him apart. Kaden found the knife, tried to pull it to Adiv’s throat. He was stronger than the councillor, but the other man had an animal’s desperate tenacity, and Kaden could get no purchase on the handle.

He grimaced; then, steeling himself against the pain, he wrapped his fingers around the blade itself, feeling the keen edge bite into his flesh, tendon, bone. He ignored the blood and sudden stupid uselessness of the fingers, forcing the knife closer to Adiv, wrapping his legs around the leach’s torso, dragging it closer, and closer.