She thought she loved him. She was crazy.
I’ve crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you.
He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.
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.
Kas was right: a woman could destroy a man. This one could do so, simply by knowing his name. She could do so, simply with her eyes.
She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an entirely different instinct, altogether: to fool her and anyone within a dart’s range... to protect himself.
He smelled the salt on his own lips and the orange blossoms in her hair. Real ones, he could see now, tucked into the curls with cheap, native combs. The sight of them gave him hope.
Caine usually woke from the recurring dream mid-air, having yet to be dashed upon the rocks, whimpering and panting like a child crying for his mother. Now he lifted his eyes to a dark, empty room in Jizan and the unusual, lingering scent of roses, and wept in his hands for his Father.
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?
Kent had begun sleeping with his good eye open, for he knew the mark of sedition when he saw it. Even partway blinded, who could see it better?
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.
She was an extension of his dreams. A sprinkling of magic dust, of unfeasible wishes, on his stable existence. The one thing-the one bright, marvelous thing-he wanted more than the world, but didn’t deserve. However much he was tortured for her sake, however much blood he had spilled to protect her, the bruises to his body and the thrashings to his sanity, it would never be enough to make a wretch like him worthy of such a miracle.