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would’ve risked a riot if he’d insisted on entering. For though he’d officially converted to Judaism when he took power, he was still considered an Arab by most of the local population.
    The temple was the grandest flourish of Herod’s grand flourishes. But while he publicly boasted of the house he’d built to honor God, he was privately fondest of the house he’d built to honor himself : his palace in the Upper City.
    Herod had palaces throughout Judea. In Caesarea near the Mediterranean coast and in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. In Masada and Jericho. Each one beautiful and grand. But even though some of these palaces were bigger than his home in Jerusalem, none of them approached its magnificence. Like the Great Temple, it was built on a raised platform, a rectangle measuring nearly 1,000 feet long and 200 feet wide, and surrounded by high walls and guard towers. Officially, it was built as a fortress to protect the Upper City, on Jerusalem’s west side, from invading forces. In reality, it was an offering from a mighty king unto himself. The towers were spaced evenly along the four walls. Each had a name. One for the king’s brother, one for a friend, and one for his beloved second wife, Mariamne.
    Mariamne…oh, what a beauty she’d been. Oh, how Herod had loved her. And oh, what a shame that he’d been forced to have her executed. And the man he’d suspected her of having an affair with. And her brother. And the two sons she’d borne him, lest they grow up to resent their father for having their mother executed. Mind you, it hadn’t given Herod pleasure to do this. Ordering one’s own children put to death was one of the more unsavory of a king’s duties. But, as Herod was fond of telling his remaining sons, “Emotion is emotion, and politics is politics, and one has nothing to do with the other.”
    Now all that remained of Herod’s favorite wife was a guard tower bearing her name above the north gate. The gate through which Balthazar was unceremoniously led into Herod’s Palace for the first and last time in his life. Backward. Covered in his own blood and vomit.
    Thirty-three years later, another man would be paraded through the same gate to face another Herod—also covered in his own blood, and also on the way to his death.

    Once Captain Peter and his men were inside the palace walls, Balthazar was finally untethered from his chaperone and lowered to the ground, still slightly dizzy and very thirsty. It took a moment to steady himself, especially since his hands were still tied behind his back.
    After gaining his balance, Balthazar turned away from the north gate…and found himself transported to another world. A world almost as surreal and infinite as the one he’d flown through in his dreams. It was a world of lush green and cool marble. A world of polished bronze fountains and meticulously groomed dogs. It was, simply, paradise on earth. The Garden of Eden, rediscovered at last.
    Inside the rectangular outer walls, the interior grounds were divided down the middle into two smaller, perfectly symmetrical rectangles—each half mirroring the other down to the smallest detail. And while outsiders probably imagined Herod’s Palace as a single structure behind those walls, just as Balthazar had, there were actually two identical, sprawling palaces inside—both facing each other across a vast rectangular courtyard.
    Running down both sides of the courtyard, covered walkways and rows of neatly planted trees offered shade in the hottest months. And when those weren’t enough, a pair of circular pools—each fed by identical bronze fountains—stood ready to provide relief from the heat.
    Balthazar knew at once why Herod had built two identical palaces. One of them undoubtedly contained his throne room, where he held court, threw official banquets, and greeted foreign dignitaries. And where he dreams up new atrocities to commit against his people and lives in fear of a man 1,000 miles away.