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?

She’d said she loved him. She’d put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

La mu’axsa, but I think I’ll just keep sliding down this greased pole to hell?

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...