Ashwin lay motionless on the bed, pale and unresponsive as the day they had dragged his unconscious body into the flat – although the pale part probably had more to do with him being a winged freak than with the condition of his health. Ruban sighed. He supposed he should stop obsessing over that particular fact. It wasn’t doing his already disturbed mental equilibrium any favours.

Besides, he had had the chance to ditch the guy. And the heavens knew, he had been tempted. So very sorely tempted. He had almost walked off with Hiya that night, after the check-up; almost left Ashwin unconscious in that alley, to do with himself as he pleased. There was nothing he had wanted more in those few minutes than to forget about the entire incident. To forget about Ashwin and all that he represented – Ruban’s stupidity, his failure to notice the obvious, his wilful fucking blindness towards everything that wasn’t what he wanted to see.

Ruban should have known that things weren’t as they seemed. From the very beginning, Ashwin had been stronger, sharper, more knowledgeable than he had any reason to be. On the day of the SifCo attack, Tauheen had spoken to him like a long-lost acquaintance, if not a friend. Not to mention Reivaa’s constant taunts from the moment they were face to face with her.

Ruban should have put two and two together a long time ago. But he hadn’t, because just this once, he had thought that the universe had genuinely cut him a break. Because somewhere in the back of his mind, he had wanted Ashwin to be who he said he was – an ally he could rely on in a time of need. A friend, an equal whom he could trust. And every time he looked at Ashwin lying motionless on the bed, it was a bitter, mocking reminder of just what a pathetic idiot he had been.

But he had retraced his steps to the alley – a decision he would forever blame on the effects of too much morphine in his system – and dragged the unconscious Aeriel onto the main road, throwing him unceremoniously into the cab he had hailed to take them home.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

So really, Ruban had made his own awkward, Aeriel-infested bed, and he supposed he shouldn’t complain now that he had to lie in it. At least the wings hadn’t made a reappearance after that night at Zikyang over forty-eight hours ago, which was a mercy, however small. Ruban wasn’t entirely sure how he would react to that visual reminder of Ashwin’s lies, his true nature. The reminder that Ashwin was the one thing that Ruban hated more than anything else in the universe, and that he had been fool enough to think of that monster as his friend. Ruban would probably try to kill him again, and he was fairly certain that that would upset Hiya.

Hiya lay curled up on the bed beside the Aeriel, reading a storybook out loud – whether for Ashwin’s benefit or her own, Ruban wasn’t sure. The girl had refused to leave Ashwin’s side for any length of time since she had woken up in the flat the day after Zikyang, and he didn’t have the heart to scold her for it. Not after he had come so close to losing her.

Seating himself in the balcony with a cup of much-needed coffee, Ruban wondered if he was making a mistake by not sending her back home. He had told Subhas that he was taking the girl to the Surai Fair over the weekend, and his uncle had agreed readily enough. The fair wasn’t due for another week, but Subhas would not know that.

It was clear as day, at this point, that the IAW had been compromised. Someone on the inside was feeding information to the Aeriels, and Ruban had no idea who it could be. There was no reason to involve his uncle until he had something more concrete to go on than a really strong hunch – plausible deniability had its uses so long as you could maintain it.

But until he knew where the leak was coming from, the Kinoh Residence wasn’t a safe place for Hiya to be. They had tried to take her once, they could try it again. She was a source of leverage over one of the most powerful men in the IAW, perhaps in the whole country, and he didn’t doubt that the Aeriels would leave no stone unturned to get their hands on her. No, he wanted Hiya where he could keep an eye on her, protect her if need be. And if that meant letting her read Black Beauty to an unconscious Aeriel, well, it was just something he would have to learn to live with.