I must have been staring too hard because I tripped in the sand. Cion’s arm shot out to steady me.

“We’re here,” he said. He pulled me to the top of a sand dune.

At first, it didn’t look any different from any other part of the desert we’d passed. Then, every hill in front of us shifted as a blast of wind tore through the area. Sand rolled and tossed. Buried cacti were exposed before being thrown back into a cyclone of sand. The hills would stabilize for a moment before once again spilling across each other and rearranging themselves as another gust of wind smashed into them.

Cion was right. The desert was a living, breathing creature. And it was vicious.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted at Cion over the rush of the wind. “We’ll be killed if we go down there. That’s worse than a sandstorm.”

“You’ll be killed if you go in the arena and face Rodric without proper training.”

“That’s not training.” The sand dunes heaved upward and rained back down. That was suicidal.

“It teaches you to watch for unforeseen opponents, to expect an attack from every direction. Watch,” Cion said. He took out a mask with two eyeholes and tied it across his ears so that his eyes were mostly covered and a flap fell around his nose.

Then he pulled out his sword and rushed into the fray.

“Stop.” I reached out to hold him back. If he wanted to die, he could do so on his own time, because there was no way I’d find my way back without him. He brushed past my arm into the spray.

Walls of sand pounded against his body. He pushed through them. The sand shifted again, dragging him forward. A cactus appeared through the draining sand. Cion sliced through the top of the plant before its spikes could impale him.

He’d mastered how to flow with the sand. His instincts were mesmerizing to watch. His sword swung forward before I even noticed the hint of a cactus peeking out.

Eventually, he somersaulted and used the waves to push him back to where I stood. He climbed up the dune and ripped his mask off.

The sky had only just begun to lighten but sweat dotted his brow. “If you can master that,” he said, smiling, “you can master anything.”

I forced my mouth closed, unaware it had dropped open. “I can’t do that,” I said.

“Learn to use the sand and wind to your advantage.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I scoffed. “You spend every day walking these dunes. You’re used to how the sand flows.”

“Don’t think of it as sand. Think of it as your opponent. You can’t predict where an attack will come from. These hills will hone your reflexes faster than any sword training exercise.” His dark eyes turned toward me. They had small flecks of gold hidden beneath the swaths of brown, almost as though sand had embedded itself there. Or as if he were slowly becoming one with the desert.