The master bedroom with its attached balcony, as well as the storeroom, was on the second floor of the villa. As the car turned into the grove, Ruban swept out of the room and into the hallway. If his uncle was here, Ruban would meet him. He wanted some answers, and he wanted them now. He was not going to run away like some thief, not when he was the one who had been betrayed.
A few paces down, the latticed wall on one side of the hallway rounded into a wide staircase leading down to the ground floor. The front door clicked – the sound of a key turning in a lock – just as Ruban reached the top of the staircase. Raised voices could be heard from the other side of the door. Someone was having an argument.
Ashwin’s hand shot out to wrap around Ruban’s bicep in a vicelike grip that belied his slender appearance. His wrists looked like they would snap at the slightest pressure, but he pulled the struggling man away from the stairs and pressed him against the latticed wall with the ease of someone manhandling a small child.
And then the front door burst open, throwing a man and a woman into the entrance hall.
Squinting through the latticework, Ruban recognised his uncle, his hair askew and hands balled into white-knuckled fists. He was breathing heavily, a thunderous expression on his face. With him was a young woman in a short green dress, unusually fair for these parts, her lustrous brown hair done up in an intricate coiffure atop her head, held in place by a pair of sunglasses. Her face was turned away from Ruban, but then he wasn’t looking at her anyway. All his attention was focused on Subhas.
“Let me go, dammit. I need to talk to him,” he hissed at Ashwin, struggling in the latter’s unrelenting grip.
“And what?” Ashwin snapped back, irritation evident in his tone. “Get fried alive by my mother? If you’re that eager to die, I promise you there are easier ways.”
“Your…mother?” Ruban whipped around just in time to see the young woman turn towards the staircase. Even if he had not recognised her face, there was no mistaking those unnaturally luminous eyes, silver flecks dancing against the black like starlight.
As they watched, Subhas slammed the front door shut and latched it from within, his movements abrupt and rather more aggressive than the task warranted. Then he too turned around, training stormy eyes on his companion. His voice, when he spoke, was brittle with suppressed fury.
“What more do you want from me, Tauheen?” he all but snarled at the young woman.
Despite the eyes, Ruban was having a hard time thinking of her as Ashwin’s mother. For one, they both looked to be about the same age – late teens to early twenties, if that. And dressed like this in human guise, she looked oddly girlish, like the thousand other young girls milling around Ibanborah in cocktail dresses and injudicious heels, weighed down by overstuffed shopping bags.
“You know exactly what I want from you,” Tauheen said. She had not raised her voice, she didn’t even look agitated, but something about her melodic timbre made Ruban feel an icy blade slash through his veins. It was the same feeling he got when listening to Safaa talk, or to a lesser extent Ashwin – perhaps because he was pretending to be human, perhaps because Ruban was so used to him by now – a vague sensation of underlying, otherworldly power. Only, in Tauheen’s case, it was somehow corrupted, twisted into something more chilling than awe-inspiring. Tauheen wasn’t shouting, but Ruban sensed repressed malice within every syllable that she uttered.
Subhas expelled a frustrated breath, turning away from her. “The Aeriel is dead, isn’t it? You killed it yourself with a single throw – an X-class at that! That proves that it works. The experiment was successful. What more do you want?”
“But it fought back!” Tauheen hissed, rounding on Subhas, her eyes flashing. “It was able to fight back. That proves the exact opposite – the experiment was an utter failure. We need more raw materials. More sif-ore. If I am to take Vaan, I don’t just need effective sifblades that kill quickly, I need infallible ones! I need weapons that give the enemy no opportunity to fight back; weapons that kill on contact. Instantaneously.” She smirked. The expression sat oddly on her face, like a stolen countenance. “Nothing less will kill my darling daughter.”
Subhas scoffed. “Well then you’ll have to find another way, won’t you? Do you think I have a sif mine in my basement? It is a precious commodity you ask for, Tauheen. More precious than my life, several times over. Do you think people haven’t noticed that I have redirected multiple consignments of enhanced sif-ores with no explanation? That these consignments are yet to reach any known treatment facilities or labs? How long do you think I can keep doing that without risking discovery? Without risking everything? Even now, my colleagues are starting to get suspicious. They’re asking questions. My hands are tied, Tauheen. I can’t get you any more of the ores than we already have.”
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Subhas sank into a nearby sofa, looking exhausted. After a moment’s silence, Tauheen sidled up to him, folding herself next to his body. Her voice went soft, cajoling; so much so that Ruban had to strain his ears to hear what she was saying.
“I understand what you have done for me, my love,” she said softly, her voice like warm honey, as her lips pressed momentarily against Subhas’s exposed neck. “But you have to do this one last thing, not just for me but for us. You must.
“We must win. We must defeat her, make her pay for what she has done to us. Both of us. You cannot abandon our cause, my love. Not now. Not after we have come so far.”
Subhas snarled, rounding on Tauheen and almost throwing her lithe form off the sofa. “I have sacrificed enough for your cause, Tauheen. Enough! I have allowed my own brother to die. Have in fact led your disgusting henchwoman to his door myself. I have done things for which I can never forgive myself. And now, now I almost lost my only daughter, my Hiya, to your blighted cause! So don’t you dare tell me what I must do, you damned witch. I will not do anything that’ll put my daughter at risk. Never again, do you understand me?”
Catching herself in one graceful move before she hit the ground, Tauheen whirled, fury etched into every line of her face. Then, as soon as it had appeared, the anger dissipated, leaving behind a tranquil mask that chilled Ruban’s blood in his veins. “It was a necessary risk, and you know it,” she whispered, her tone hypnotic. “We risked everything on this, both of us. And it is not only for me that you are doing this. It is for them too. Your wife and your daughter. Or have you forgotten it? Have you forgotten your vow of revenge?
“Besides, Reivaa repaid your debt when she sacrificed her own life to protect your daughter from Safaa’s soldiers. Can you imagine what they would have done to her had they taken her? What she would have done to her? Safaa would have torn her apart, Subhas. Torn her apart and used her mangled corpse to coerce you into betraying me. If that had happened, we would have had no choice but to go to war immediately, facing almost certain defeat because you were too much of a coward to bring me what I need to kill Safaa, to bring peace to earth and Vaan once more. To make both the realms safe again and to avenge those whom we lost.
“Reivaa’s sacrifice might have protected Hiya this time, but I know my daughter. She won’t stop until she has what she wants. She will try, and then she will try again. As long as she lives, neither you nor anyone you love will ever be safe.”
From behind the latticework, Ruban could see his uncle shaking on the sofa, his face a jumble of emotions the Hunter couldn’t read. He was too far away. And in that moment, he would have given almost anything to break free of Ashwin’s hold and rush down the stairs to the entrance hall, if only to see for himself, just this once, what his uncle was thinking. What lies, what treachery had driven him to do what he had done.
Even as they watched, however, Tauheen continued to speak, her lips spilling venom in an endless cascade. “Safaa murdered your wife nine years ago for the formula, because she had access to it at SifCo. What makes you think she’d refrain from doing the same to your daughter today, for much greater gains? You do remember how Misri died, don’t you? What my daughter did to her before ending her life. How many times have I told you?” Her lips twisted in a malicious little smile even as Subhas all but whimpered, his face turned away from the Aeriel. It was a sound born of pure agony; as basic as the wail of an animal in pain.
Tauheen continued, relentless. “Or do you just not care anymore? Do you not care that the creature that murdered your wife in cold blood, that tortured her until she begged for death; the creature that would do the same to your daughter, your only child, in a heartbeat…do you not care that she is still alive? That she rules one realm and prepares to rule the other even as we speak? As you act like a coward and refuse to bring me what I need to destroy the evil that is my own child. Because if that is the case, I don’t need you anymore. I never want to see you again. If that is the case, then Reivaa died in vain. She should have let Safaa’s soldiers do with Hiya as they pleased.”
As Tauheen stopped speaking, an oppressive silence enveloped the house. Ruban was almost afraid to breathe, fearing the echoes of his breath would be heard down the stairs. Beside him, Ashwin stood stock-still, like someone had replaced him with a sculpture in his likeness.
At length, Tauheen closed her unnatural eyes, releasing a shuddering breath in a way that was so human it almost fooled Ruban for half a second. Then she turned and folded herself on the sofa like an overlarge cat, draping half her body over Subhas’s motionless form. Gently, she ran a finger down the side of his face – part soothing, part seductive. Caressing him, she spoke in a voice that was – disorientingly – the tenderness of a mother wrapped in the sultry desire of an eager lover. It made Ruban’s skin crawl with the sheer wrongness of it, like a mannequin trying to mimic human emotions and getting it all wrong, mixed up and mangled beyond recognition.
“Safaa killed your wife, Subhas. And she tried to kill your daughter. And Reivaa may have stopped her this time but she will try again. Again and again until she has succeeded. Until she has destroyed you, destroyed the whole world and brought humanity to its knees. And the only way to stop her is to wage war on Vaan. To defeat her and to kill her before she can realise her dark vision. I made you an offer after your wife died, Subhas. I gave you a choice, and you chose of your own volition, did you not? You swore to kill Safaa, to avenge your wife no matter what the cost. Will you go back on that promise now? Will you betray your family, leave your daughter at Safaa’s mercy, to do with as she pleases now that no one remains to stop her?
“Will you watch as she rips your only child to shreds, my love? As she destroys all that you care about? Or will you stand up and fight? That’s the only question you need to ask yourself. And you should ask it now.”