Page 25 of Dalla's Royal Guards

He attributed the huskiness in his voice to the climb. She turned her back on him and walked along the top of the ridge. He wasn’t used to anyone just walking away… well, except for his brother… and his father… and his sister.

Okay, enough!

She stopped at the edge and looked across the vast rocky valley to the next mountainous region. Frustration simmered—he needed to know what she was thinking.

“Where are you trying to go?” she asked.

“Narva,” he replied.

She chuckled. “It still exists? And Kashir? That is where we were?”

“You don’t know the country you are in?”

She shot him a heated glare before she shrugged. “I never know where I will reappear. This is the first time I have come back to a place I have been to before.”

“Reappear? You make it sound like you just pop into a place,” he said.

“You could say that,” she said with a small, sad smile that seemed to be for herself, uncaring if he believed her or not.

“And how does that happen?” he continued to ask, unable to believe he was engaging in this insanity but unable to stop. “You just think, ‘I’ll pop up in the middle of a firefight’ and snap, you do?”

“No, I’ve appeared many times before your guns were invented. I do not understand the complexities behind my appearance, only that I appear in times of need. When I appeared this time, I noticed a man defending a group in the center of it all. Nasser, he said his name was,” she began wistfully, her expression longing and sad. It caused an emotional storm in Musad that he could not interpret for the life of him.

“Yes, he’s my brother.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Your brother… he was in danger along with the woman, the child, and the other man—you called him Colin. It was not Nasser’s voice that called to me, though. Not Colin’s either,” she replied.

“Whose voice was it then?”

She shrugged, gaze drifting to the distant mountains. “I don’t know.”

“You called me by a different name earlier,” he said.

A flash of grief flared in her eyes before she looked away. “Pascal. You remind me of him.”

“And my brother reminds you of Gerold?”

She gave a short, sharp nod. It wasn’t the first time that a comparison had been made between him, his brother, and their ancestors. The bloodlines between the Al-Rashid and the Marchand’s had crossed many times over the centuries through marriages, much like his sister to Mario.

“Yes, but… you are different. Gerold was the more cynical one back then.”

Her glance into his eyes was intimate, and his lips twitched alongside hers at the keen observation before he looked away and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Why do you think I’m cynical?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe the way you have been asking questions, the not-so-subtle glares filled with suspicion, the little line right here.” She lifted a slender finger and rubbed a spot between her eyes.

His fingers rose instinctively, mirroring hers. “You haven’t answered my questions, and I wasnotglaring at you.”

“I have been answering your questions, you just don’t like my answers. If you ask more, you may not be happy with those answers either,” she warned.

“Will they be truthful?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Nasser’s gaze kept moving to the top of the hill across from the hut, his thoughts returning over and over to his brother trying to get information out of the woman who had mysteriously appeared. He smiled down at Cianna when she reached for his hand.

“I miss my mommy and daddy,” she murmured.