Slowly, he pulled himself away from the tigers and moved toward the door that led to the hallway. “Let’s keep going before all this noise attracts attention,” he said.

Dimic eagerly scurried after him.

Cion motioned for me to follow, but something tugged at me.

I spun around the room. Cion’s words from the desert came back to me. When you went so long without water, you learned to recognize when it was around.

The air down here wasn’t just cold.

It was moist.

I’d always thought the tiger cages had to be kept cool to keep the tigers from overheating. But what if that wasn’t it?

I scanned the room and came to a dead stop in front of the cages.

There through the bars, straight across from me, stood a small wooden door. The same door I’d thought as a child you’d have to be crazy to go through because you’d have to make it through the gauntlet of tigers.

I turned around to the wall, to the small keyhole.

But the trainers didn’t have the key to pull back the tigers by their chains. Only my father did, and it never left his sight.

He only used to come here to pick out which tiger he wanted present at an arena trial. But more and more recently, he and Rodric had been going together.

I wandered closer to the cage. A tiger leapt at me, but I ignored it.

If I didn’t hate him so much, I would be oddly impressed at how well my father protected his controls.

“Kateri,” Cion whispered. “The hall’s clear. Let’s go.”

“I found the controls,” I replied, pointing to the door.

Dimic peeked back into the room and shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m not going in there. I don’t look good with slashes down my body.”

I moved aside to reveal the keyhole. “Can you pick that?”

“And let the tigers free?” he asked incredulously. “I think the lack of water has gone to your head, Kateri.”

“This pulls back the tigers’ chains,” I explained. “We should be able to walk right past them.”

“You’re sure that’s where the controls are?” Cion asked, coming to stand next to me in front of the cage.

“If Latia’s searched as much as she can down here, this makes sense. She wouldn’t have been able to search back there. My father has the only key.”

Cion nodded and motioned Dimic forward. “It’s worth a try then.”

Dimic reluctantly knelt down, pulled out a bigger piece of metal, and went to work.

Cion took up position by the door leading to the rest of the palace.

The tigers paced the length of the bars, studying our movements. Their eyes sparked with intelligence, understanding. They knew what that keyhole did. And they were waiting, ready to strike, to fight for their freedom, before the chains dragged them backward.

The torches made the shadows of the tigers play across the wall. Up and up they rose, surging across the ceiling.