The next thing I knew, he’d pinned me to the ground and whipped out a knife, pressing the blade against my throat. “If you ever try that again,” he said, his eyes wild, “I’ll hang you from the tower of your father’s palace.” He eased off me and dropped the knife to the ground.

I’d lain there for a moment praying that sand hadn’t found its way into my new wounds and dealing with the stinging pain that swept through me every time I moved.

I wanted to pick my knife up to try again, but something in Rodric’s eyes made it clear he’d follow through on his threat.

As these weren’t normal training injuries, I’d started wearing a thick golden cuff around my neck after that to cover the scars. To keep my father from seeing, from knowing I’d failed to be the best. And it worked. My father saw me embracing my strength, not hiding my weakness, because he believed there was nothing stronger than metal in the desert.

But I hated how it choked me and slid like oil across my body when I sweat. It also fettered me to my father in a way that felt like I’d given up on my mother’s beliefs entirely, that I’d lost another part of her.

The cuffs were typically worn by the rich nobles as a symbol of their wealth—a show that they didn’t need that metal to bar their windows against sandstorms or to hold water buckets together. Some had ornate patterns scrawled across the metal with holes dotted across them like stars in the sky or depictions of flowers or thick, wavy grooves.

My father had given my mother many when she married him, but she’d never worn one because she said it weighed too heavily on her.

I’d always thought she meant its physical weight. It wasn’t until years after she died that I realized she meant it was because it was a waste to wear gold merely as a decoration when it could’ve been given to someone who needed it.

It was a stark reminder she hadn’t grown up in the palace. She’d been a poor but beautiful sand dancer when she caught my father’s eye.

She’d made me promise once that I wouldn’t wear one, that I’d look for strength in myself instead. I’d kept that promise until Rodric had made me break it, had made me so weak that I needed one.

My hatred for him burned brighter than the noonday sun.

As much as I wanted him dead, though, I needed him alive. He was the only one who’d ever been able to find a Desert Boys hideout. It’d been old and empty, but it was more progress than the old captain of the guard had managed.

And if Cion really did exist, I needed Rodric to help me fight. As well as to help me train for my final two bouts against suitors in the arena so I could secure my place as our next queen. Though once I became queen and the Desert Boys were destroyed, I’d send Rodric away. My father had been the first to teach me that you want strength to surround you, and Rodric was strong. But something about the way he’d shown up and killed the old captain of the guard made me uneasy.