I threw my sword down in frustration and stalked around the perimeter again. I shoved my dripping hair from my eyes.

Finally, when I was too tired to keep trudging in circles, I sat down with my back against the wall, directly across from Cion.

“Is this some trick?” I called up to him. “Are you just toying with me?”

He stared, unblinking. Only the flame next to his head wavered.

I leaned my head back against the cool rock wall and went over Cion’s words again. He said I could use anything I could see to help me. But there was nothing in the pit. No rocks I could pile up. No rope. No handholds.

There were only the silent boys and their ever-watchful eyes.

I studied their faces. They were all too thin, but they each had a light in their eyes. Something that spoke to the fact they had more strength than I would ever know. These boys had been tested by the desert and lived to tell the tale.

That made them dangerous.

But I refused to admit that made them better than me. I just had to figure out what they had seen that got them out of the pit. What was there in this room that could help me?

And then it hit me. Anything I could see.

It was so devastatingly simple. So like what Cion had said moments before. I needed to think like them, act like they would.

I ignored my aching muscles as I rose to my feet and grabbed my sword from where I’d thrown it.

I moved until I stood below Cion.

“Help me,” I said. I stretched my arm up.

Cion stared down at me, and for a fleeting moment I thought I was wrong, that he was going to leave me in the pit. But he gave his torch to the boy next to him, knelt down, and pulled me up.

Sharp rocks ground into my knees as I clamored to my feet.

I couldn’t help the smirk that spread across my face. I’d beaten his little game.

But the smile disappeared in a flash when Cion pulled a dagger from behind his back. I scrambled backward. I eyed the boys around me, watching for more weapons to appear as I went for my sword hilt. Before I could pull it out, Cion flipped the dagger into the air and caught it, holding the hilt out toward me.

My hand froze. My heart drummed in my chest.

“The only way to survive as one of us is to help each other,” Cion said. “You have passed the test. Carve your name and take your place among us.” He stretched the handle closer to me.

I edged forward and grabbed the dagger. The blade had more nicks in it than there were desert boys, and rust clung where the metal of the blade met the hilt. Cion gestured to the wall next to us.

Every ounce of training I’d ever had screamed not to turn my back on them. Nevertheless, I took the dagger and jaggedly carved my name into the rock, not far from Cion’s. It looked like another name had been there, but it was scratched out.