“What do you mean?” I said, my voice catching in my throat.

He shook his head. “I see now that Rodric has been right all along.”

“Rodric?”

“He’s said that while you are strong, you could be even more so if you were married to someone yet stronger, someone the desert hasn’t crushed.”

My stomach clenched together. The last person I wanted picking a suitor for me was Rodric.

“I will win the next fight for you, Father.”

My father took a step away from the cage and moved toward the door. “Only if the desert wills it. Come. It’s time to find out who your last suitor will be.”

His words burned through me as I followed him down the hallways and toward the great hall. I had never doubted that he believed I would win. Until now.

He’d invested so much time training me when I was little. This was everything we’d worked toward. Everything we wanted. We were supposed to avenge my mother together.

I’d always had visions of us striding out into the desert together after I was done training, after I’d won my place as the next queen—both of us chosen by the desert and ready to rid it of the plague of Desert Boys. I’d secretly thought the desert hadn’t allowed us to catch the Desert Boys yet because we were meant to do it together.

But as we moved down the hallway, him striding so far ahead of me, it didn’t feel like we were in this together anymore. It felt like there was a gap between us—a set of bars thicker than those on the tiger cages keeping us apart.

The only way to close that gap was to win my last fight, to show my father the desert chose me. It would put everything right. It had to. I fortified myself with that thought as we reached the large white sheets that hung across the entryway to the great hall.

He strode into the room while I waited behind the curtain, the same curtain that would reveal my new opponent later that night.

The crowd quieted.

My father’s voice rang out. “Our champion has arrived.”

The benches lining the tables moved backward in a loud squeak as the men and women rose and lifted their drinks into the air to salute me.

The curtains parted, and I stepped into the room. The grandeur of the space always took me by surprise. Tall columns rose up to the arched ceiling, carved with the same snakes that twisted their way around the columns outside. But unlike the outer pillars, these snakes hadn’t been pounded by the endless sheets of sand. Black-and gold-painted scales winked in the light. Eyes as green as any rumbler cactus stared out above a forked tongue.

Between the columns, sand dancers performed to the even beat of drums, swirling around and around, their feet weaving endless patterns in the sand they danced on. The celebration dance. I looked away. Their presence always reminded me of my mother’s absence, of how there was nothing to celebrate yet.