“I spoke with Warden Rooke,” Naari went on. She shifted on the ground, drawing her arms in closer to herself. Kiva had never seen her look so defeated. “I told him everything—all the tests you’d done, how nothing had been coming up. Then I told him what you’d said at the quarry, and what I’d learned about the so-called immunity boosters.”

Kiva waited, but when Naari said no more, she prompted, “And?”

Naari dragged in a deep breath. “And he already knew about them.”

Kiva’s stomach bottomed out. Denial hit her hard and strong. “No, he didn’t,” she said hoarsely, recalling how he’d found her holding a vial just before the Trial by Water. He’d looked straight at her and asked what it was.

But then . . . his eyes had narrowed at her answer, when she’d told him it was nothing important, and he’d refused to speak with her in private, even when she’d blurted out her request. If he really had already known the truth . . .

“Why didn’t he say something?” Kiva demanded.

When Naari remained silent, not looking at her, Kiva continued ranting, “So much wasted time! If he knew about the vials, why did he let us run around like idiots searching for the source? You could have been hunting down the supplier and I could have been working on a cure! There’s so much we would have done differently if we’d known! So many people who didn’t need to die! ”

Kiva was burning with resentment. If there had been room to move in her cell, she would have gotten up and paced. What had Warden Rooke been thinking, keeping that from her? How long had he known? After the Trial by Fire, he’d wished her luck. He’d told her that many lives were counting on her. Had he known then? Had he just been laughing at her as she met failure after failure?

Something like this went around years ago, soon after I first became the Warden. You were probably too young to remember—

“I don’t understand,” Kiva wailed as she recalled what he’d told her, knowing that he’d faced the same sickness—the same poison—years ago. “Why would he keep that secret, when it could have helped? He was at risk, too. Everyone was.”

Only, that wasn’t true, Kiva realized.

Because not a single guard had fallen ill.

A strange, tingling sensation began to spread through her insides, as if she were beginning to understand something that, once discovered, could never be unlearned.

Something like this went around years ago, soon after I first became the Warden.

Naari wasn’t meeting her gaze. The feeling within Kiva intensified into the roiling, bowel-twisting sensation of true dread.

“Naari?” Kiva said, her voice unintentionally quiet, as if she subconsciously didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know.