Guarding the Princess by Loreth Anne White

moment she wished she hadn’t witnessed this vignette. It was bad enough falling in lust with this man, but feeling this kinship, this compassion—it complicated things she was already struggling with in her own head.
    Omair might have sent the right man to save her life. But on some level Dalilah sensed Brandt was a game changer—he’d unleashed something in her that wasn’t going to be easy to put back into its box. Perhaps Omair had actually made a grave mistake.
    She should never have kissed Brandt back. But she had. Dalilah’s gaze lowered to the massive diamond on her swollen finger, a stone that could probably feed an entire Zimbabwean village for a lifetime. A stone that could buy access to clean water resources, to solar power. A stone that could help her do the good she craved. And Dalilah was suddenly overwhelmed. She felt like a hypocrite and it all came crashing down on her now, rapid-fire chunks of thoughts, images. Her life. Her duty. Her freedom. Why she’d been in Zimbabwe in the first place...how this had been her last big deal. How her brothers had lied to her by omission, trying to protect her by not informing her that they knew their family’s arch enemy—Amal Ghaffar—was still alive.
    How she felt nothing at all for Haroun—hardly knew him at all.
    And suddenly she was spent, in pain, beyond thinking, analyzing, didn’t even want to. She just wanted to get through this. Alive.
    Exhausted, Dalilah sat limp, staring at the coppery glow of the flames on the churning and swirling river, listening to Brandt moving in the shadows as he finished covering the grave.
    “You done yet?” he called out as he returned with the shovel.
    “I’m surprised you went to the trouble of burying it,” she said. “Why did you?”
    “Trackers would have seen it,” he said, voice clipped as he marched around to the rear of the truck, where he replaced the shovel.
    “They’re going to see our tire tracks here under the trees, anyway,” she said, reading more into his actions than he was admitting.
    Choosing not to answer, he sullenly dusted his hands off on his shorts and re-angled the headlamp on his head before reaching for the first-aid box. “So, are you done?”
    “Apart from the buttons and the bootlaces. I can’t do them with one hand.”
    He grunted as he ripped open a pouch containing a pad soaked in disinfectant and cleaned his hands with it. Then, climbing into the front seat next to her, Brandt regarded her, assessing her condition. Under the light coming from the lamp on the roll bar above, Dalilah noticed for the first time a tattoo of a lion on his shoulder.
    “Clothes don’t fit too badly,” he said, opening the first-aid kit.
    “Good thing the pants came with a belt.” Dalilah offered a tremulous smile, but he did not return it. A strange little sinking feeling went through her stomach.
    All business now, Brandt took her arm, felt for a pulse, before cutting off the sleeve above her elbow. Feeling carefully along her radius, he lingered, closer to her wrist, gently palpating where there was swelling. She winced, and immediately he released pressure.
    “Seems to be a fairly straightforward fracture. Best we can do is splint and stabilize it until we can get medical attention. Your fingers are quite swollen,” he said. “If you swell any more, Dalilah, we’re going to have to cut that thing off, okay?” He jerked his chin at her engagement ring.
    She moistened her lips, nodded, tears of pain and emotion filling her eyes. He glanced up at her face, forcing her to squint against the sharp light from his headlamp.
    “Sorry.” He lowered his head, averting the light from her face.
    “I’m okay. Just...tired.”
    He inhaled slowly, deeply, as he opened a packet containing a blue-and-orange splint. “SAM splint,” he explained. “Made from malleable aluminum lightly padded with foam on either side. It can be molded and shaped for various splinting tasks.”
    He bent the splint