Simani parked the car some distance away from the school. Ruban frowned, glancing out of the window. The red-roofed school buildings were barely visible through a maze of concrete and greenery.

They’d decided to collect Sri and Hiya from school on their way back from the detention center. But the Holy Child Center for Primary and Secondary Education had a perfectly functional parking lot within its premises. There was no need to walk the last few hundred meters to the campus.

Before he could ask, the driver-side door clicked open and Simani stepped out into the scorching afternoon sunlight. Unlatching his seat belt, Ruban followed suit. After the air-conditioned car, the hot, humid air of the outside world clung to his skin and blocked his airways. With a sigh, he slipped his hands into his pockets and began walking towards the school premises.

Simani’s strong fingers dug into his biceps, pulling him back. Ruban yelped, but wasn’t fast enough to keep himself from being slammed against the hood of the SUV.

“Simani! What–” He planted both hands on the heated surface of the hood to retain his balance. “What’re you doing?”

“That’s exactly the question I want an answer to, Ruban.” Simani glared at him, leaning in until their noses were inches apart. “What are you doing? And don’t even think about lying to me this time.”

Ruban looked around, perfunctorily scanning the empty streets. The only people out and about at this time of the day were newly-liberated school children and the street vendors who sold them junk food and sweets. If this was an ambush, Simani had timed it well.

“Look, can we talk about this after we get the kids–”

“No. We cannot.” Simani’s fingers dug further into his arm, making him wince. Noticing his expression, she let go of him and took a tiny step back. “You won’t distract me again, Ruban. I won’t let you. I texted Sri; he and Hiya are having bhelpuri at one of the food stalls on campus. Believe me, they’ll be happy to wait.”

Ruban’s eyes narrowed. “You planned this.”

She smirked. “You’re not the only one capable of subterfuge. Now, back to business. How did you know Banki was lying about receiving help from Vaan?”

“What?”

“Back at the detention center, Banki said that the Aeriels were working with the feather mafia under orders from Vaan. You accused him of lying; threatened him into telling the truth. But how could you have known for sure that he wasn’t telling the truth already?”

“I-I didn’t.” Ruban straightened, moving away from the car. The hot metal had left blisters on his palms. “I was making an educated guess. I mean, why would Vaan support criminals whose entire business model is built around killing Aeriels and selling their feathers for a profit? Makes no sense. Besides, if Vaan was behind the rise of the Qawirsin, there’s no way they’d condone the branding of dead Aeriels. They think humans are below them. Even if they wanted to use the mafia as mercenaries to take out their enemies, they wouldn’t facilitate the humiliation of their own kind.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Simani sighed. “Not that it’d have killed you to share some of your insights before being slammed into a car. You’ve been acting weird since your uncle’s death. At first, I thought it was just the shock–”

“I daresay it was.”

“Maybe some of it. But that doesn’t explain everything. You’ve always been a good Hunter, Ruban. Great, even. But I’ve been your partner since the beginning and I know your limitations. Since Subhas died, you seem to just…know things. Information you shouldn’t have access to. You seem to think differently now; about the Aeriels, about Hunting. I don’t know how to explain it, but…”

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Ruban shook his head, trying to think of a response that would assuage her misgivings without being a complete lie. It was hard. Simani had been his classmate at Bracken Academy, although she was a few years older than him. She’d married early, and had had Sri at twenty-one. Hence, she’d joined Bracken in her mid-twenties, a few years later than most students. Still, they’d hit it off almost immediately in first year, and through a combination of luck and stubbornness, had been inseparable ever since. There wasn’t much she didn’t know about him.

“After that attack in North Ragah, how did you know when and where the mafia was going to strike next? If the IAW had any information, they’d have briefed us together. But it wasn’t the IAW, was it?” She held his gaze. “What are you hiding from me, Ruban?”

“Nothing. There were just some rumors floating around among the slum boys who run errands for the mafia–”

“Those are some incredibly well informed errand boys.” Simani laughed. “There’s a reason I made up all the excuses for our hijinks at Bracken, you know. You’re shit at lying.”

Ruban blinked at her, unsure of the appropriate response. She wasn’t wrong. Sometimes, he wondered why he was even trying to deceive her. She was his partner. If anyone deserved his trust and loyalty, it was her. Instead, he was lying to everyone he knew and loved, all for an Aeriel. Wasn’t that what Uncle Subhas had done? Wasn’t that why he died?

He suppressed a shudder and glanced away.

Watching him through narrowed eyes, Simani lit a cigarette and continued. “That Aeriel the mafia was Hunting out in those fields…awfully helpful, wasn’t it? Didn’t try to attack us; not once. Hell, if anything, it was trying to protect us. In all my years of Hunting, I’ve never seen anything like it. But you know what was stranger than the bleeding-heart Aeriel? It was the fact that you expected it to act exactly the way it did.”

Simani brought the cigarette to her lips. Ruban closed his eyes, fighting the guilt that threatened to rise to the surface and swallow him whole. He knew how she was feeling. He’d felt the same way when Ashwin refused to tell him why he spared the Aeriel that had killed his colleagues. Was it worth it, lying to her to protect Ashwin, while knowing that the Aeriel was deceiving him? What was he doing?

Simani tilted her head back, releasing tangy smoke into the humid afternoon air. “When I was cornered during the Hunt, you didn’t immediately jump in to help me. Instead, you remained focused on the offensive. At any other time, I’d think that was progress. But it wasn’t because you’d suddenly learned to follow protocol, was it? It was because you knew that Aeriel would come to my aid, so you didn’t have to. You were relying on it to help us fight the mafia. And not just to save itself, because it could’ve done that on its own. It held off two Aeriels singlehandedly and helped us kill the third. It didn’t need any help. We did. And somehow, you knew we’d get it.”

Ruban kicked a pebble down the street and bit his lip, forcing himself to swallow the words that sat at the tip of his tongue. He could tell Simani about Ashwin. Hell, perhaps he should’ve told her the moment he found out, after the clash with Reivaa at Zikyang.

But he hadn’t. Ashwin had been unconscious and Ruban hadn’t known if he would ever wake up again. And if he didn’t, he supposed he’d wanted the others to remember him as a friend, not a monster.

After that, it’d just been easier to lie by omission than tell the truth. It took Ruban months to really accept and internalize the truth about the Aeriels, about Ashwin. He still wasn’t sure if he’d managed it completely.

So how could he expect it of anyone else? Of Simani, who grew up in a family of Hunters and was perhaps even more distrustful of Aeriels than the general population. In fact, that was one of the reasons they’d gotten along so well together in the beginning.

When Ruban joined Bracken after the death of Miki and his father, his hatred of Aeriels had been fathomless. Simani was nowhere near as bad as he had been, back then. But she had understood him. She told him that if he couldn’t get back what he’d lost, he could at least fight to ensure that nobody else suffered such a loss ever again. She told him that one day, he would be strong enough to get his revenge. And he’d believed her.

So how could he tell her, after all these years, that not only had he knowingly worked with an Aeriel, he’d befriended one? Had trusted it with his life; with all their lives...

When Ruban learned of Ashwin’s true nature, he stabbed him with a sifblade. What would Simani do? And what right would Ruban have to stop her, if she did try to kill Ashwin?

After all, Shwaan was the very thing they’d all been trained to Hunt since they set foot inside the Academy. To Simani – to any Hunter – killing him would be natural. Righteous.

Ruban exhaled sharply, forcing a smile onto his face. “You’re mistaken,” he said, looking his partner straight in the eyes.

He couldn’t tell her. Not yet.