Kaden shook his head. “That’s what they were doing back at the Heart,” he said. “That was the whole point of the torture. Matol demanded to know who you were a dozen times, and all he ended up with was a broken hand.”

“But,” Kiel pointed out, “Matol was a foe. Tan was a foe. Maybe she would talk to us. To you.”

“Ask her,” Triste said.

“All right,” Kaden said, frowning. “The next time she . . . emerges, I’ll ask.”

Triste shook her head grimly. “Now.”

“It won’t work,” Kiel said. “You can’t just call her out.”

“Yes,” Triste said, seizing the knife from Kaden’s belt and pressing it to her stomach, “I can.”

Kaden and Kiel both started forward, but she was already driving the knife into her flesh, slowly but steadily, the cloth of the robe and the skin beneath parting under the pressure. Her face twisted in pain and Kaden extended a hand, but Kiel held him back.

“Come out here, you bitch,” she spat, voice hoarse and ragged. “Get the fuck out.”

“She’ll kill herself,” Kaden said, body tight as a bowstring.

“It is her mind,” Kiel replied, “and her body. Her choice.”

Kaden hesitated. The first inch of the knife had disappeared, and blood soaked her dress, drenching the gruesome fabric. Her lips had gone dark as night, and her eyes rolled in her head, but she kept her white-knuckled grip on the knife, the slow, relentless pressure.

It’s over, Kaden thought, horrified at what he had allowed to happen. It’s over.

Then the knife stopped, and her eyes, rather than lolling blankly in their sockets, went abruptly sharp as nails, driving into Kaden.

“Fools,” she spat, voice strong as a great river in full flood. “You must keep this child from her idiocy. If she destroys this body, you will, all of you, suffer beyond your paltry imagining.”

Kaden stared. “What . . .” he began.

Triste shook her head impatiently. “Your world teeters. My husband, power-maddened, roams nearly at will. An ocean of misery rises, and I am trapped,” she glanced down at her body, “inside this flesh.”

Kaden found himself shrinking before that gaze. He wanted to close his eyes, to cover his ears, to flee. Instead, he forced himself to lean closer.

“Who are you?” he asked softly.

The woman looked at him a moment, and then, to his surprise, released the knife, raised a hand, and ran a finger along his cheek. “The monks worked hard to cut you off from me, Kaden hui’Malkeenian. But you are a man, and even the Great Emptiness cannot sever you utterly from my touch.”