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“Where’s your gin?” she asked the guards, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the hammering of her heart.

“Who the hell are you?” one of them slurred.

“I am acting on the Cardinal’s orders. I visited this place with him a few weeks ago. Is your memory so feeble?”

The other guard waved toward the wooden crate beside the entry step. He either remembered seeing her here or decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to argue about the gin.

Some guards.

She collected a few bottles despite the first guard’s weak protests.

Gin burned hot and fast—exactly what she needed. Then she looked both men in the eyes, summoning every ounce of authority she’d learned to project.

“You need to go to the Cardinal immediately. Tell him that Leila’s mission is over.” She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in. “In about five minutes, this house will be engulfed in flames, and Wolverstone will be burned within it.”

The guards exchanged a glance, some flicker of sobriety cutting through their alcoholic haze. One of them straightened slightly, his hand moving instinctively toward the knife at his belt.

“Where is he, then? We are not leaving unless we see you do it,” the more sober of the two said.

“I didn’t expect anything less,” she replied, forcing herself to sound calm and professional. “But you’ll have to move fast if you want to get clear before the smoke engulfs the entire place.”

They all rushed back toward the foyer, and Leila’s mind raced through the final details of her plan.

It has to work. There’s no other way.

She opened the gin bottles, sloshing the alcohol as she moved. The liquid soaked into the ancient wooden floorboards, dark stains spreading like blood.

Then, moving as carefully as she could manage, she pulled the hairpin from her braid and dropped it through the trapdoor opening. It tumbled into the darkness below with the faintest whisper of metal against stone.

She pulled out a match she’d managed to snag from Gideon’s house and struck it against the stone walls.

“Alhamdullah,” she whispered a prayer under her breath. For one short moment, she hesitated. Once she threw this match, there would be no going back. Once the fire started, she would have committed them both to a course that might end in their deaths.

She threw the match onto the gin-soaked floor, and it caught immediately. Flames raced along the lines of alcohol she’d poured, creating a fiery barrier between the trapdoor opening and the exit. The old, dry wood began to smolder, then burn in earnest, filling the air with acrid smoke.

Gideon’s frame appeared in the opening below, alerted by the hairpin’s fall or perhaps by the sounds of fire.

“By God, it is Wolverstone,” the more sober guard exclaimed. Then an awful grin overtook his face before he slammed the trapdoor shut.

It was Leila, however, who secured the lock. She didn’t close it tightly; if jostled enough, surely he’d be able to escape.

She prayed again.

“There’s no way out from there,” one guard said with satisfaction, wiping sweat from his brow as the heat began to build around them.

“You have to go and report to the Cardinal now,” Leila urged, desperation creeping into her voice despite her efforts to remain calm. The fire was spreading faster than she’d anticipated, and soon the entire building would be consumed. “He needs to know immediately that Wolverstone has been eliminated.”

The guards exchanged a strange look—one that made ice form in Leila’s stomach despite the growing heat around them.

Before she could react, something heavy struck her on the side of her head. Stars exploded across her vision, and the world tilted sideways as her consciousness fled.

When awareness returned, the first thing Leila noticed was the smell of smoke, thick and choking. The second was that her hands were bound behind her back, rough rope cutting into her wrists. She was tied to the banister of the first-floor staircase landing, the flames below already beginning to lick at the bottom steps.

“Sorry, bird,” one of the guards slurred. “Our instructions were clear. If Wolverstone is taken care of, you’re to be killed as well.”

Leila cursed silently. No doubt every man working for the Brotherhood was alerted to this plan. The first one who sees her kills her. She wasn’t surprised. What she was, was furious.

Being tied up twice in the same day was bad enough, but this time she had no hope of getting out, especially without her daggers or even a hairpin to work with.