“Why is it here?” Kaden asked. He tried to dredge up what little he’d overheard about urban development during his childhood in the Dawn Palace. “There’s no port, no road.”

“That was the point,” Tan replied, seating himself cross-legged beside the sword. The monk considered it for several heartbeats, but made no move to reach out. Kaden waited for him to continue, but after a moment the monk closed his eyes.

Laith stared at Tan, looked over to Kaden, then back again before spreading his hands. “That’s the end of the story? Csestriim came. They killed everyone. Dropped a sword . . . time for a nice rest?”

If the gibe bothered Tan, he didn’t show it. His eyes remained closed. His chest rose and fell in even, steady breaths.

To Kaden’s surprise, it was Triste who broke the silence.

“Assare,” she said, the word leaving her tongue with a slightly different lilt than Tan had given it. She, too, had sunk to the floor beside the blade, her eyes wide in the lamplight, as though staring at a vision none of them could see. “ ‘Refuge.’ ”

“More leina training?” Pyrre asked.

Triste didn’t respond, didn’t even glance over at the woman. “Assare,” she said again. Then, “Ni kokhomelunen, tandria. Na sviata, laema. Na kiena-ekkodomidrion, aksh.”

Tan’s eyes slammed silently open. His body didn’t so much as twitch, but there was something different about it, something . . . Kaden searched for the right word. Wary. Ready.

Triste just stared at the blade, those perfect eyes wide and abstracted. She didn’t seem to realize she had spoken.

“Where,” Tan said finally, “did you hear that?”

Triste shuddered, then turned to the monk. “I don’t . . . probably at the temple, as part of my studies.”

“What does it mean?” Kaden asked. Something about the phrase had set Tan on edge, and he wasn’t accustomed to seeing the older monk on edge.

“No,” Tan said, ignoring Kaden’s question. “You didn’t learn it in a temple. Not any temple still standing.”

“She knew the language down below,” Valyn pointed out.

“She read the words down below,” Tan corrected him, rising smoothly to his feet. “It was unlikely, but possible. There are plenty of scholars who read Csestriim texts.”

“So what’s the problem?” Valyn pressed.

“She didn’t read this. She pulled it from memory.”

Laith shrugged. “Good for her. Jaw-dropping beauty and a brain to go with it.”

“Where,” Tan pressed, eyes boring into the girl, “did you come across that phrase?”

She shook her head. “Probably in a book.”

“It is not in the books.”

“This is all very dramatic,” Pyrre interjected from her post by the window, “but I could probably get more invested in the drama if I knew what the secret words meant.”