Ruban’s hands shook as he held the letter between his fingers. The envelope was old, fraying at the edges. Exactly eight years old. He was terrified that it would crumble if he touched it too roughly, and then he would be a fatherless orphan once again. All alone, forever and ever. Gods, I’m losing my mind.

“Open it,” Ashwin said, his voice uncharacteristically solemn. His fingers brushed lightly over Ruban’s trembling forearms. “Do you want me to do it?” There was an odd sort of compassion in his tone – like the empathy of a rock for a lame bird – uncomprehending, but sincere.

They had found the letter among the documents relating to the Surai investigation – the investigation his uncle had scrapped before it could even reach a conclusion. The investigation into the destruction of Ruban’s life, the annihilation of his family, of his dearest friend. Of the future he had once had, which had turned to ash along with the walls of his old home.

The envelope was addressed to Subhas at his residence in Ragah. The address of their home in Surai was printed in his father’s sparse, elegant script in the box where the sender’s information was supposed to be. The faded delivery stamp on the envelope marked the date of delivery of the letter as the third of March, exactly a week before Reivaa’s attack on their home. Exactly a week before his father’s death, Miki’s death.

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Ruban felt as though he was going to throw up, even as his vision blurred with unshed tears. He was in a nightmare he couldn’t escape, and his muscles refused to move when he told them to. He sat there on the floor of the dank storeroom, barely breathing, like a forgotten statue abandoned halfway by its maker.

Ashwin pried the envelope gently from his unresisting fingers, flicking the unsealed flap open to extricate the letter within it. Unfolding the withered old document, he swept his eyes over it in a few seconds that seemed to stretch like hours to Ruban. The sight of his father’s handwriting covering the paper made his throat clench as a single tear rolled down his face and into the collar of his shirt.

Gods, he was crying. Crying in front of a goddamned Aeriel. A goddamned Aeriel who pitied him, if the gutted look on Ashwin’s face was anything to go by.

“What is it?” he snapped, unable to bear that look any longer.

“He knew,” Ashwin murmured, looking away like he couldn’t bring himself to meet Ruban’s eyes. “Your father knew that Tauheen was planning to steal the reinforced sifblade formula, although it hadn’t yet been fully perfected at the time. One of his old IAW sources had alerted him about the possibility of a theft, of an Aeriel attack on SifCo. He wrote to Subhas to warn him about it.”

“A week before he was killed,” Ruban said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Exactly a week before he was killed.”