“What a terrible choice to have to make,” a voice echoed from the narrow hallway.

We turned around to see Uruku emerge, weakened with poison even more, it seemed, his face yellowish, wan, eyes sunk in his head. He was flanked by two burly guardsmen holding spears. But before anyone could react, those spears shot through the breezeway and landed squarely in the bellies of both Taram and Humusi, below their breastplates. The warriors fell to their knees, blood oozing from around their wounds, and Gudanna fled to her husband.

Dagan and Iltani both charged Uruku, daggers drawn.

“Secure them!” Uruku bellowed, and one of his guardsmen—a big, hulking man—was on Dagan in a flash, tying his hands with rope. Dagan thrashed, knocked the guardsman in the mouth, then received a headbutt in exchange. He growled and tried to rip his hands free. The other guardsman punched Iltani in the jaw and she screamed in rage, her blade clattering down the dark corridor. He snatched my dagger from my hand before I could conceal it.

“Run away!” Dagan yelled to me, eyes wild as he thrashed against his restraints, but I immediately fumbled over to Humusi, tripping on my own feet, slipping in her blood. I pressed my right hand against her abdomen, trying to staunch the flow. She twisted and lurched, moaning in pain, and fell backward at an awkward angle with a groan, eyes in torment, gory hands weakly tugging at the weapon.

“A-zu!” she gurgled as blood bubbled up into her mouth.

“No!” I screamed, but a guardsman hoisted me up and away from her. Iltani attacked again, clawing at his face, but he knocked her to the floor once more with an elbow to the side of her head.

The guardsmen pulled me and Dagan to stand in front of Uruku while the Koru warriors groaned in the background.

A sob in my throat, I stared hard at Gudanna.

She looked up at her husband. “Ahh, love, but you know I’d never choose anyone over you, even this child.”

With something like softness in his eyes, Uruku looked down at Gudanna and planted a kiss on her forehead, his face pale with pain. “Well, you don’t have to make that decision now.”

“Please.” I desperately tried to claw out of the guardsmen’s hold. “We only want Shiptu and we’ll be gone forever. Please.”

Gudanna smiled. “I understand wanting something you can’t have. My children, burning alive in the hut while I was on the other side of the city, still cry for me in my dreams. Your abum failed them, and they still scream my name when I close my eyes. But I can’t have them back any more than you can have what you want.”

She stepped forward, her eyes glittering. She smiled at me once, ran a finger down the smoothness of my cheek, authority in the tilt of her chin, her belly protruding out and hanging low in such a way that I knew, as any good healer did, her time to deliver was drawing nigh.