A few seconds passed, a palpable, unsettling stillness enveloping the room.

Then, Ashwin laughed, the distant echo of tinkling bells a welcome distraction from the fraught atmosphere. “Vandrans think Aeriels are vicious monsters. Of course they do. If I’d been stuck for six hundred years with only my mother and her clique for company, I’d feel the same way.

“And there’s the solution to your problem.” His lips quirked into a self-satisfied smile. “Tauheen. Nothing unites people like a common enemy. And neither earth nor Vaan have ever had a greater enemy than my mother.”

“But Tauheen is dead.” Unnati cocked her head, frowning. “She is, isn’t she?”

“As a doornail,” Ashwin assured her, gazing longingly at the lone chocolate-chip cookie that remained on her saucer, untouched. “But that needn’t stop us from making good use of her…uh…reputation.”

Unnati sighed, extending an arm across the table to offer Ashwin her leftover cookie. “Explain yourself.”

Eyes glittering, Ashwin plucked the cookie from her outstretched hand and bit into it. “Well, it’s already common knowledge that Ruban killed my mother. And that I was there when he did it. What many people – including some of you, perhaps – don’t know is that I was sent to earth by my sister for the express purpose of killing Tauheen.”

Unnati waved a hand, dismissive. “So you keep saying. That Tauheen was planning to invade Vaan with reinforced sif and a human army. Say we believed you. I still don’t see how that helps us persuade the general public to accept this alliance. It was Ruban who killed her, after all. Not you. In fact, back when he was fighting Tauheen, Ruban didn’t even know your true identity. You were actively deceiving him, leading him to believe you were some helpless foreign dignitary, rather than Tauheen’s own son, the prince of Vaan.”

“Yeah, horribly rude of me, now I think about it.” He shook his head, voice heavy with sincerity. “The follies of youth, and all that. Let’s pretend for a moment that I hadn’t been so daft. That I’d revealed my identity to the Cabinet from the very beginning, and worked with the IAW to dispatch Tauheen—”

“That would never have happened,” Rifaq said, his tone abrasive.

Ashwin sighed. “Of course not. Ruban would’ve slit my throat the moment he laid eyes on me. That’s why we’re pretending. Now, where was I?”

“In a land far, far away where Aeriels and humans live and work together in perfect harmony,” Ruban prompted.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Right. So, if the IAW always knew of my true identity. And if the governments of Vaan and Vandram had been working together to sabotage Tauheen’s efforts to gain control of the reinforced sifblade formula. And if I played a vital role in helping Ruban kill my darling mother. Well, in that case we’d have some solid grounds for an alliance, don’t you think?”

“We would,” Jheel agreed. “The only problem – none of that’s actually true.”

“Except for the last one,” Ruban chimed in. “He did help.”

“Thank you.” Ashwin beamed at Ruban. “And it doesn’t need to be true. Only believable,” he continued, turning to Jheel. “If the governments of Vaan and Vandram have, in the past, successfully worked together to vanquish a common enemy, that would build a foundation of trust between our populations. It’d also prove that, if need be, we can do so again in the future – whether the ‘enemy’ is a renegade queen or a rabid cult.”

“Let me see if I understand you correctly.” Unnati reclined gracefully in her chair, posture exuding a relaxed self-assurance. “You want us to deceive our own citizens by claiming we always knew that the young man pretending to be ‘Ashwin Kwan’ was, in fact, the prince of Vaan and Tauheen’s own son. And, knowing this, we willingly agreed to collaborate with Vaan and partnered you with Ruban Kinoh to thwart Tauheen.”

“Yes, exactly.” Relief radiated from the smile that Ashwin directed at her.

Around the table, each face displayed some combination of outrage and disbelief. Rifaq was fuming, Jheel seemed resigned, while Hiba apparently found some humor in the catastrophe that this meeting had proved to be.

Unnati ignored them all. Her face devoid of any emotion, she turned to Ashwin. “I can see how this would help Vaan improve their reputation. Maybe even win some public support, if all goes according to plan. What I don’t see is why you thought the Cabinet would want any part in this deception.”

Ashwin raised an eyebrow. “No? I’d have thought it was in your interest not to trumpet the IAW’s failure to uncover my identity – which, in turn, put the country’s most popular Hunter in grave danger. As you said, Ruban had no inkling of my true identity until a few months ago.

“In all that time, I could’ve snapped his neck any time the mood struck me. Hell, I was living in his flat while he Hunted down my mother. I could’ve murdered him in his sleep and flown away, with none the wiser until it was too late.” He smiled brightly at Ruban. “And all because the former senior secretary of defence ordered him to take me on as a partner in the SifCo investigation, despite his own misgivings.

“If such a significant – and potentially dangerous – intelligence failure has gone unnoticed by the IAW for so long, then what else might they be missing? How many more innocent lives might their negligence imperil? That is to say, if it was indeed negligence. And not deliberate oversight. As I’m sure everyone in this room is aware, a bagful of undamaged Aeriel feathers will buy quite a few loyalties in this economy.”

“Are you blackmailing us?” Jheel asked, her tone incredulous.

Silver eyes wide and guileless, Ashwin shook his head. “Merely pointing out that revealing my…uh…unfortunate deception to the public mightn’t help with the…” he shot a brief glance at Hiba. “Prime minister’s approval ratings.”

“If he goes down, he’ll drag every last one of us down with him,” Ruban scoffed. “Why am I not surprised?”