I gripped her hands fervently. “There you are. That’s my Iltani with the fire inside her.” But what could give her purpose until we could get her out? Give her a reason not to kill him?

“Keep your ears open when the guardsmen come to visit. Find out where Uruku goes outside the Palace and is exposed. With the support of the ensis behind us, we could seize him when he is at his most vulnerable and force the poison down his throat.”

A shout and a curse were followed by Dagan’s rigid form stomping around the house toward me, his face a thunderstorm.

Iltani’s right. He failed.

He nodded sympathetically at Iltani, then jerked his head toward the road. “We have to go, Kammani. And hurry. Gala said he’d win her to him with his love, but if I didn’t leave his home right now, our deal at the gate was off.”

“What?”

He looked at Iltani. “I made him swear as a favor to me that he won’t touch you unless you agree.”

Iltani barked a laugh. “Let us pray that he values your friendship as much as his reputation as a man. Now go. But you must promise me one thing.”

“Anything,” I whispered.

“When Uruku is unseated and Arwia restored to the throne, I will have my day with justice.” She gritted her teeth, her big brown eyes shining with tears she wouldn’t dare shed, not even in front of me. “Promise me!”

I kissed her hands and reached out to touch her freckled cheek. “You will have it and more, my friend. I promise.”

As we left Iltani, I swore on my life that I would take down Uruku, Gala, all of them. Dagan and I sneaked to the Palace, dark intention heavy on my heart. But when we arrived once more to check the doorway where the guardsman was to have met us, it was flanked by two guardsmen armed to the teeth, and the Libbu was bustling with people muttering something about Warad, Assata’s son.

Why is his name on their lips?

“You! Both of you!” One of the guardsmen, with long, matted hair and a mace in his fist, shooed us away from the Palace. “Get out of here! No begging near the doorways! You lot have been told before!”

“Go! Go!” Dagan murmured to me urgently.

“But we need to find another way in there!”

“Kammani, no. It isn’t safe. There’s something in the air.”

And I felt it, too. A strange tickling at the back of my throat, a whisper of dread across my brow. We melted into the crowds, sliding away from the guardsmen, but as we followed along to try to exit the Libbu, the crowds led us to a dais erected in the center of the Libbu, where once Nanaea had been chosen to die as a Sacred Maiden.

“It’s Warad!” I clutched Dagan’s arm.

Dagan sucked in a breath. “And he looks terrible.”