A welter of emotions rose up in Kaden, fear and wonder undiluted by his years of training, the feelings taking him in their grip as powerfully as they had when he was a small child. There was something new there, as well, something hot and cold at once, burning from the tip of her finger where it touched his skin down through his heart into his very core, filling him with heat.

“Who are you?” he asked again, his voice a husky whisper.

“I am the joy in your heart,” she said, smiling grimly, “and the pleasure in your loins. I am the mother of everything you have labored to deny.”

She held Kaden’s gaze a moment, then glanced off to the side, as though listening to a new wind approaching across the water. “She is as strong as she is foolish, this vessel of mine,” she said with a grimace, then locked her eyes on Kaden once more. “The obviate,” she said, voice bent with urgency. “You must perform it. Keep her safe until the obviate, for if she dies while I am trapped inside, my hand will vanish from this world and you will sink beneath a wide sea of suffering.”

“Who are you?” Kaden asked again, although a terrible thought was growing inside him.

The woman smiled, the moment suspended seemingly forever, then plunged her face into her hands, sobbing. When she spoke again, it was with Triste’s voice, trembling and terrified.

“Who is she?” she moaned. “Holy Hull, who is she?”

Kaden shook his head, the answer too large to voice.

It was Kiel who replied. “She is your goddess,” he said gently. “The one you have named Ciena.”

Triste stared. “That’s impossible.”

“No,” he said. “The gods took human form during the Csestriim wars.”

“But why?” Kaden asked, his voice hoarse. “Even if it’s true, why now?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What does it mean?” Triste demanded.

“It means,” Kiel replied, staring at the blank wall, “that something interesting has begun.”

Triste glanced down at her blood-slick hands, then up at the Csestriim, her eyes wide, terrified. “Interesting?” she demanded, voice fraying with panic. “How is this interesting? It’s horrifying!”

The Csestriim studied her awhile, then nodded. “Yes. That seems accurate. For those of you who can feel horror, it will be horrifying.”

52

Seamless dark.

Cold. Then creeping heat.

Low hum of insects.

Lapping water.

Pain like a blanket.

Then, worse than the pain, memory.

Laith holding the bridge, then falling.

Gwenna and Talal standing as they hurled a starshatter into Balendin’s prisoners, then falling.

Adare burying the blade in his side, il Tornja slicing him across the face, all sight extinguished, then Valyn himself falling, smashing into the water at the tower’s base.

Failure bitter as blood in his mouth, and the darkness, unrelenting and absolute, clamped down around him like a vise.