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.

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.

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.

Therefore, she hummed the provincial lullaby she had learned from the officers’ children in the English Quarter of Jerusalem, and watched in fascination while the savage radical’s eyes misted over with tears. For an instant, the prison bars melted away, and she felt God’s presence—for the first time since their imprisonment. She was not a captive, and this man was not her captor. Indeed, they were both merely God’s children.

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.

There are still many souls to be won for Christ,” she answered with quiet dignity, eyes downcast—but not, he figured, in humility. “Even here. Perhaps, especially here. Where better to spread his love, than a country just recently ravaged by war?”
“Where better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?” with a discernible sneer.