A Flight of Broken Wings: Aeriel Trilogy #1

Chapter 127

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."