“Abhijat!” Ruqaiya rose to greet him as soon as he walked into the café. Putting her hands on his arms, she pulled him close, stood on tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek.

Despite the situation, Abhijat couldn’t help the smile that rose to his lips. He hugged her, lifting her slightly off her feet. Ruqaiya squealed. He laughed. “It’s so good to see you again, Qia. I’ve missed you.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she pouted, her eyes twinkling. She flopped down on the sofa and waved him over to the chair across the tiny wooden table.

“There are no other girls like you,” Abhijat grinned, making himself as comfortable as possible on the squishy chair. As usual, there wasn’t enough leg room. He tucked his feet awkwardly under the chair and looked around.

They were in a sequestered little café with overstuffed furniture and cheery, pastel walls. Not the type of place Ruqaiya would usually pick for dinner. But nothing was usual about this meeting, anyway. And it probably wasn’t the best idea for her to be seen dining with the ex-Prime Minister’s son in public.

The waitress took their orders and wandered away. The café was empty enough and nobody looked like they were in a hurry to get anything done. Abhijat wasn’t expecting the food to arrive for another half hour or so.

“You’re looking good,” Ruqaiya said at length, surveying him with keen brown eyes across the table. “Looking more like your father with every passing year. Tall, dark, and dashing.” She chuckled, “All that’s left now is for you to bless your poor mother with a sweet daughter-in-law.”

Abhijat grunted. “Lead by example, why don’t you? You don’t look so bad yourself.” He wasn’t exaggerating. With a wide mouth and a strong, angular jawline, Ruqaiya was more handsome than she was beautiful. Her voluminous, silver-streaked, black hair was done up in a low, untidy bun just above the nape of her neck.

She had celebrated her fiftieth birthday just last month, but rather than making her look old, the lines around her mouth and eyes only added character to her face, giving her an air of distinguished stateliness.

Ruqaiya laughed. “You’re a charmer, aren’t you?”

“What can I say?” he shrugged. “I learned from the best.”

At that, Ruqaiya sighed, her smile fading slightly. “I’m so sorry, my boy. I couldn’t–” she shook her head. “I daresay you’ll think I’m making excuses. Half the time, I think so myself. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but when it happened…I didn’t know what hit me. I should’ve known, I should’ve been better prepared, of course. It’s my own fault. But it was all just so…”

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“Unexpected?”

She laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. I didn’t think he’d throw Badal under the bus like that. It doesn’t make sense. I thought he was working with Mehrin, that perhaps he’d been turned by one of the separatist groups in Zanya.”

“Jehan Fasih?” Abhijat raised a brow. “From what I’ve heard of him–”

“Well, everything you’ve heard of him, everything we ever thought we knew about him was a lie, wasn’t it?” Ruqaiya snapped, brushing a few stray strands of hair from her face. She was fuming. “Because we sure as hell didn’t know we were nurturing a bloody poisonous snake in our bosom!”

Abhijat didn’t know why, but Ruqaiya’s reaction gratified him.

His mother hadn’t said anything outright, but he had years of experience prying information about his father from her reluctant lips. And from what he’d gathered, Fasih’s betrayal had affected Rajat deeply. He was glad to see that Ruqaiya seemed to share Rajat’s feelings.

“Why do you think he did it, then, if it wasn’t a ploy to get the government under Zanyar control by removing my father?”

Abhijat had only met Jehan once before at his father’s office, almost a decade ago, when the boy had first joined the QRI. It was back when Rajat had only been a minor minister in his predecessor’s government, years before he’d been elected to the premiership.

Over the years, he had heard much about Jehan’s unbelievable brilliance and infuriating stubbornness from his father, not to mention all the media reports about the child prodigy who’d taken Qayit’s scientific community by storm. But the only memory Abhijat had of him was that of a tiny, pasty teenager with overgrown hair and no flesh on his bones.

He’d paid him little attention when they’d first met. At twenty, Abhijat had just joined the army, against his father’s wishes but much to his grandfather’s delight.

That’d been his last visit to his father’s office before he left the city to start his training. Making friends with some bookish, malnourished boy three or four years younger than him had been the last thing on his mind.

All he remembered was Jehan looking up from the pages of the huge tome on his lap, to stare at Abhijat like he was an interesting lab specimen.

But he did know how much Rajat had loved Jehan, how much he’d trusted him. Which was what made this situation so much worse. Skulduggery and corruption in politics was nothing to be surprised about. It was something they were all used to, much as his father liked to pretend otherwise. But to be betrayed by someone he’d loved like a son, someone he’d trusted blindly…

The thought made Abhijat’s blood boil, and he grit his teeth to keep himself from saying something he’d regret.

His father had taken a liking to the boy since the very beginning, had sponsored his education and gotten him a position at the QRI that people double his age would have killed for.

Though Abhijat didn’t for a moment believe that Rajat had not been motivated, at least in part, by the desire to irk Swamiran, Abhijat’s grandfather, by taking on a Zanyar boy as a protégé. His grandfather had had a great many qualities, but even he could accept that tolerance and inclusivity had never been Swamiran’s strong points.

Still, Rajat had always said that Jehan would play an instrumental role in shaping the future of Naijan.

Well, if that was true, Abhijat didn’t want any part of that future.