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I do the movements, stamping and sliding my feet through the sand. I pause. Jackson glares at me. He's right.

"Gods damn this," I grunt. "I'm no dancer, who am I fooling?"

"You think I am?" Jackson says. "Hell no. I hid in the bathroom when The Electric Slide came on at my cousin's wedding. But I know you can memorize shit. We just need to not get in each other's way."

I use my foot to draw a line in the sand. "I will stay on this side, you'll stay on that side."

"Right. Okay..." He claps a beat with his hands. "One, two, three..."

An hour later, the line in the sand has been completely trampled. My robe hangs off my shoulder, torn from when Jackson caught himself falling. His face is sweaty and dirty, and both of us are exhausted. My legs and feet feel as though I’ve just sprinted from one end of the desert to the other and back again. We haven’t had any food since morning, and barely more water all day than what we drank with Azin and Onar, plus the small sip Niah provided us. The urgency of the situation and our fervor to overcome it had made us blind to our bodies’ needs, but it’s all caught up with us now.

"Where's that bladder?" Jackson mutters.

We both look around.

"It was here, was it not?" I say.

The rope snaps tight as Jackson tries to walk off, and I stumble after him.

"Where is it?" he repeats.

"She must have taken it with her," I say.

"No water? Christ."

I stare at my hands and watch as they split into four and swirl around my vision with flashes of starlight. It's worse than three wine gourds on an empty stomach. Jackson staggers slightly and I quickly catch him by the shoulders.

"I'm good," he mumbles, and brushes my hands away.

"You need water."

"Yeah, no shit. Both of us do. But something tells me we can't just waltz back into camp and ask for it. She took it with her for a reason."

He's right—this is part of the test. But we can't do this without water.

"Anything in there?" he asks, pointing to the wine gourd on my belt.

"Still just as empty as before," I tell him, and then I get an idea. "We'll go to the well."

"You know how to find it?" he asks.

I look up at the stars and try to focus my mind and think clearly. In preparation for a potential escape when Azin and his riders had first brought us to the camp, I'd made observations on the position of the sun. I just have to remember them.

"The camp lies in that direction," I say, pointing off to where Niah left. "And that means...the well should be in that direction."

We start across the spine of the dune with me in the front and Jackson behind me, but it quickly becomes obvious that walking in step with such a short leash between us is not much easier than trying to dance, especially with the undulating consistency of the sand. Jackson curses under his breath as he repeatedly trips on my heels and runs into my back, and when we reach the edge of the dune, I stop and he bumps into me again. I nearly lose my footing and fall down the slope.

"Careful," I say.

"I am being fucking careful," he says. "Try walking right."

My patience is almost nonexistent. "Wouldyoulike to lead this party?" I snap at him.

"Absolutely."

I hold up the rope to help it slide around my waist as he walks to the front.

"Alright," he says. "Thisis how this shit is done. Left foot first. And?—"