With the sound of marching soldiers filling the city outside the palace, Chloe thought about Tomarys and wondered if she could somehow immobilize her bodyguard and escape. She even considered somehow making him drink some of the tea, but discarded the idea. Not only would he be a difficult man to incapacitate, but she didn’t like the thought of hurting him. He had saved her life, twice over if she added the fact that he’d helped her obtain more soma flowers to appease the sun king. He was her only friend in this terrible place.

Continuing to grind, Chloe considered making the tea too strong, but she knew that if Solon fell into a deathly slumber after drinking the liquid her head would roll.

She needed Solon to live. And she hoped he regained his gold.

Hours passed, and the heat of the day slipped into warm evening and then the cool stillness of night.

Chloe had delivered her medicine. The sun king was gone and his soldiers with him. The ensuing silence was almost eerie in comparison.

Sleeping on his side on his mat near her pallet, Tomarys’s eyes slowly opened. ‘It is late. You should sleep.’

Chloe sat cross-legged, staring at the murals on the wall; she hadn’t even tried to sleep. Dark images swept through her mind: the knife pressed to her throat and the bloody fight . . . Princess Yasmina’s horrific fate. The girl had done nothing wrong, but she had been given one of the worst deaths imaginable just to send her family a message. One moment she had been a young girl living in a strange version of captivity, the next moment men were holding her down and cutting out her eyes, slicing off her ears and nose. Chloe felt ill just imagining it.

Again her thoughts mingled and shifted like a flurry of leaves under a tree. She touched her fingers to her throat and imagined the knife going in, cutting into her windpipe and jugular vein. She wondered what it must feel like to know that with the agonizing pain would come certain death. Loss of breath. Inability to speak. Lifeblood gushing out onto the dust. Darkness closing in.

‘Lady?’ Tomarys said. He sat up. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Tomarys,’ Chloe said, speaking softly, turning to gaze at him intently. ‘Solon is gone for a time. Will you help me escape?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Regretfully, I cannot. I have family who would be made to suffer.’

‘What if we could escape with them too?’

‘My mother is sick.’ He hung his head. ‘She would never survive a difficult journey.’

‘I understand,’ Chloe said. She knew she couldn’t ask so much of him. ‘But . . .’ She took a breath, releasing it in a long sigh. ‘Would you help me in another way?’

‘What is it?’