“The blood dried on his good hand, he passed his palm over her hair. It curled about his wrist and sprung back into displace as the breeze fluttered by. In the firelight, it was golden like the dandelions of which she’d spoken. The ones that had grown along the Franklin riverbank in late summer. The ones he had lost any faith in since he’d committed his first murder there.”

“After all, you are a hero and everything.”

“It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.”

“She thought she loved him. She was crazy.”

“And what was to become of what he had taken from her? He had dashed her heart to the ground and danced on it with combat boots. Did he sit in that seditious palace day after day and not even bother to scrape it off of his soles with a passing thought of her?”

“Just say, dakhilak.”Without hesitation, “Dakhilak.”He nodded. Her accent was getting no better. “Now, you can never take it back.”“Well, what does it mean? Thank you?”She should have asked sooner. He didn’t turn to meet the gaze he felt on him, his voice full of sand, his stomach sick. “It gives me charge of your life.”

“When silence greeted her question, she looked at Caine—for that was how he saw himself in that moment and in all the moments after: his brother’s murderer.”

“La mu’axsa, but I think I’ll just keep sliding down this greased pole to hell?”

“Anger swirled in him, a tempest readying her strike. And like a helpless vessel caught in her fury, he felt himself dashed against the rocks without mercy.”

“He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army’s nose. She’d taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She’d glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward? “Never,” he said again.”

“I’ve crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you. I love you. I’ve done nothing in my life worth more than that.”