I moved away. “Don’t touch me,” I growled.

I needed time to think. To find the lie in his words.

Tiny children slept all around us. I looked at all their miniscule forms as heat pressed in around me, making my skin sticky and unbearable. I paced the room, running my fingers through my hair. The room was too hot to think.

The children’s faces blurred together as I spun past, faster and faster. Who could kill such a small, innocent, defenseless creature?

I froze. Out of Cion and my father, who was more likely to kill a child?

I looked from Cion to the babies. We were here helping them, saving them.

No. I shook my head. Cion wouldn’t have cared about a royal baby. He wouldn’t have wanted another ruler on the throne like my father because . . .

I didn’t want to finish that thought. I clamped my eyes shut, hoping it would go away. It didn’t. They didn’t want another ruler on the throne like my father because he was cruel. Because maybe he had it in him to kill his own daughter to cover up a perceived weakness. Because there are no weaknesses in the monarchy. Isn’t that what he’d told me over and over again as a child?

I took ragged breaths. It was such an old belief that not fathering sons made you weak. Could my father really still put faith in it? Could he really have killed my mother and his own child? I cast around for some reason, some flaw in Cion’s explanation that would signal he was making this all up, but I just kept coming back to my childhood.

My father had barely tolerated me when I was little. It was only after my mother and sibling had been killed that he finally paid attention to me, turning me into a fighter. He’d thrown himself into training me. Because I was the only way to prove his reign was not weak.

I could still remember him standing before me, telling me the Desert Boys had killed my mother and brother. His hand had rested heavily on my shoulder. “You must not cry. Your strength will define you from this moment. You must not show weakness. You must be strong enough to help me find and kill the Desert Boys, and you must be strong enough to win in the arena, to secure our legacy.”

I had nodded numbly. But my father’s words spread through my body faster than scorpion poison. That was when I vowed I’d be so strong that no one could ever take someone from me again. In the middle of the desert, my heart had turned to ice. My father would never again have to tell me to be strong. I would be strong for my mother. I’d keep my promise to her. I’d be strong enough to fight back, to protect her people.

But if what Cion said was true, all those years I spent training to make my father proud meant nothing. I meant nothing to him. I was just his last chance at keeping his legacy alive. That’s why my father hadn’t killed me too. It would taint his own rule to lose both his children. Kings had been murdered far too often after failing to produce heirs or because they’d lost their heir to the desert. The traitor always justified their actions by saying if the desert had taken the king’s children, it must not want their line to rule. They would’ve come after my father next if I’d died, claiming the desert had already cut off his line. That’s the only reason he would’ve kept me.