“Remind me to thank God I don’t have a sister.”Caine eyed him critically. He was a filthy heap of blood and soot and sand stuck to the gun oil on his face. “Yeah,” without much enthusiasm. “I’ll thank Him for ya.”

“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.”

“Caine might have smiled at her, had his heart not been breaking to smithereens inside of him.”

“He heard the voice that had called to him in dreams, had saved him from the sands and from following his brother into the river.”

“Caine was a murderer. A liar. A cad. A skulker in shadows and a heartless wretch. What sort of woman or God would love someone like him?”

“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.”

“Shifting uneasily, Caine cleared his throat, left to wonder why her eyes would make him so unbelievably uncomfortable now after all that had already passed between them these past few weeks.“Caine?”That would be why. It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had—and every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She needn’t say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.”