For the first time, the boy raised his head and faced the crowd. His eyes held my father’s for a moment before swinging to mine. There was a pleading weakness in them that made my stomach churn. How could he help bleed the Achran wells dry and then expect pity from those he caused to suffer?

He wouldn’t find any pity here. I leaned forward and stared him down until he turned away.

The boy focused on the doors in front of him. The chains fettering him to the post clanked together as he lifted his arm and pointed to the door on the right.

I snuck a glance at my father’s face. He always knew which door hid the tiger, and he couldn’t hide the upturn at the edges of his lips that would curl into a smile when the accused picked that door.

No smile played about his lips. My heart flipped faster than a dune in a sandstorm. I bolted up in my seat. Hot afternoon air grew unbearable in my lungs as I held my breath.

The door creaked open to reveal a cart piled with earthen jars full of still-living spiral snails waiting for nobles to use their shells to flavor their water, bolts of spider silk netting fine enough to catch sand and keep it from coming in windows and doors, and clay containers full of nogen nuts and spiked rainberries waiting to be crushed into spices and perfumes.

“No,” I whispered. And then I was shouting it over and over again. The cry was drowned out by the roaring of the crowd.

I shook my head in disbelief. The desert wouldn’t do this to me. It couldn’t. My heart pounded in my chest as my stomach twisted at the thought of the boy walking free. Free to raid our wells. Free to attack our guards. Free to cause suffering to those left in the city as water rations were cut more and more because of the never-ending drought that had started before I was even born.

The boy threw his arms into the air and stomped his feet into the sand in celebration, laughing uncontrollably.

It reminded me so much of my mother, of the laugh I would never hear again—the laugh the Desert Boys took away from me. And they would just keep taking things away unless we stopped them. Unless I stopped them.

I pulled my sword out of its scabbard.

I had one hand on the railing, ready to vault into the arena, when my father’s hand shot out to stop me. His fingers wrapped around my arm in an iron-like grasp as he gave me a silencing look.

I ground one palm against the searing metal of the railing while the other gripped my sword’s hilt. My chest shook with rage. “He’s a Desert Boy,” I said through gritted teeth. “We can’t let him escape.”

“Sit down.” My father’s eyes turned cold. When I was little, I couldn’t imagine how anything that icy could exist in the desert.