Chapter 43
Rannora
Two weeks later
Ravi stood at the third-floor window of the nondescript building belonging to the DIA and looked down at the citizens below.
He saw children playing around a group of adults.
Two of them were scolded by a mother for getting too close to the street with the carriages.
His parents hadn’t known where he had gone or even cared.
They hadn’t been bad people. They had just been preoccupied with their work.
He had often wondered why they had wanted a child at all.
Things might have been different if he’d loved academia as they had.
They had clothed and fed him, but there could be an argument that they’d neglected him.
He was fortunate that Durga had stumbled upon him instead of some criminal.
A flash of dark hair caught his attention. Ravi’s gaze jerked to the side, frantically searching as he always did in hopes it was Yaz. But it wasn’t. He saw her everywhere since he returned. It was like a knife twisting in his chest each time.
He scanned the sidewalk for any humans. He spotted the children first. It was amazing the way elven and human children played together, oblivious to the fact that they were different.
As they grew older, it would be pointed out to them, creating the chasm that persisted and likely would for generations.
“Are you sure about this?” Durga asked from her desk behind him.
Ravi didn’t turn around. He knew he’d find her lips pinched with concern. “I’ve made up my mind. Besides, you’ve been after me for years about this.”
“For later. When you’re too old to go on missions. Not now.” She sighed loudly.
The chair squeaked as she pushed it back and rose. The thick rug dampened the sound of her approach. She stood beside him and sighed again. Two meant that she was trying to find a way to say something he wouldn’t like.
“Why are you grinning?” she snapped.
He gave her the side-eye. “I know you.”
“Oh?” she asked, the word both haughty and filled with doubt.
“You’re trying to find a way to say something I’m not going to like. You’re not particularly thrilled about saying it either. Hence, two sighs.”
She snorted. “Know-it-all.”
“That’s your moniker, not mine.”
They shared a smile before they went back to gazing out the window. After a long stretch of silence, Durga said, “You’ve changed.”
“That’s what we’re supposed to do, is it not?”
“It is. I’m just trying to sort out the reason. Was it Shaldorn? The mountains? Y—”
“All of it,” Ravi said before Durga could say Yaz’s name. “What’s the issue? You’ve always wanted me to train new recruits.”
She rested her hands on the windowsill. “You’re asking me to take my best agent out of commission.”
“Not completely. I’ll still be out there.”
“Searching for Gita and One. You may never locate them.”
An image of Yaz in the box flashed in his head. “I’ll find them.”
“At what cost to you?”
Ravi watched the children laughing as they ran around the adults playing tag. “Have you checked to make sure One doesn’t work for us?”
“I’ve found nothing about him. It would be better if you had a name.”
“In time,” he promised.
Durga drummed her fingers on the sill. She swallowed and faced him. “While you were on your mission and I had the children watched, I found out their names.”
Anger simmered in Ravi. Durga had promised to leave them alone. He turned to head to her. “Why?”
“I had to know the truth. The eldest, Sameer, is very protective of the others, but we managed to learn who they are. I reached out to a friend at the Ministry and discretely learned the names of the families they had been placed with.”
Ravi faced her now. “And?”
“Yasmin didn’t lie.”
He wished he could say that he’d never thought she had, but it would be a lie.
“If the Ministry had done even a single check, they would’ve learned those families weren’t the place for children. Abuse and neglect run rampant. I had them reported. Two of them had other children that have since been removed from the homes. Charges are being filed on all of them.”
“What of Yaz? What of the children under her care?”
Durga’s hazel eyes softened. “They know nothing of her, and they won’t. I told them I was investigating the missing children.”
Ravi lowered his gaze and nodded. Then he faced the window again. “Thank you.”
“Did I ever tell you about my brother?”
He glanced sideways at her. “You never speak of your family.”
“He was younger, and the sweetest person you would ever encounter. He loved everyone and everything. He had a way with finding hurt animals and nurturing them back to health. I never cared that he was human. My parents loved us both equally. He was a ray of sunshine on even the darkest days.
“As children, we had no idea of the differences between us. Our parents never said anything. We were around others who felt the same. It wasn’t until he began his learning that things changed.
He learned differently than others. My mum was a teacher, and she would spend her nights catching him up on what had been taught that day.
He was very smart. He just required a different way, something the school wouldn’t change for a single child. A human child.”
Ravi looked at Durga, her pain evident in her words and stiff posture.
“The older he got, the more his differences set him apart from others. He was teased mercilessly. Eventually, that turned into beatings and pranks that bordered on cruelty. My brother stopped smiling. He turned into himself and shut out the world. One day, I found a wounded animal and brought it to him. He had always found comfort in animals before. Instead of helping it, he broke its neck in front of me. He said that it was better off dead instead of living in such a world.”
Ravi watched a single tear roll down her face.
“He took his own life. It broke something in our family that day. My parents never fully recovered. It wasn’t until I was cleaning out his room that I found the notes written to him.
Every line was filled with such vitriol that it turned my stomach.
There were piles and piles of them, in different handwriting.
I was determined to find who had written those things to my beautiful, sweet brother.
It took me nearly a year, but I found the three males responsible.
I brought the evidence to the authorities, and they were arrested.
” She met Ravi’s gaze. “That’s how I found my calling. ”
“Why did you tell me that?”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Because some of us see everyone as equals. But there will always be those who see the differences in others and believe themselves better. I’ve seen you watching the humans since you returned. I see you scanning faces for her.”
Ravi turned his head away. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Too bad. You’re the one always running toward something, not away from it.”
“You and Dain are both wrong. I didn’t run.”
“Didn’t you?”
He ran a hand down his face and sighed. “I tried to do the right thing.”
“You should’ve talked to her. You still can.”
Could he? He had purposefully not sought out Dain to learn where he had brought Yaz. Ravi hadn’t even gone to her home, afraid to see it empty.
And terrified that it wasn’t.
Had he run? If so, it wasn’t far enough. He woke every morning clutching at air, aching for Yaz with a soul-deep longing that only became more unbearable with each passing day. He missed her.
He loved her.
Aye, he had finally admitted it to himself.
The pain of her absence intensified by a thousand once he did.
He found joy in nothing. The only thing that kept him going was tracking down Gita and One.
He would get his vengeance on the two. It wouldn’t bring him comfort—nothing but Yaz could do that—but it would make him feel better.
“I know where she is,” Durga said.
Ravi spun and strode away before he whirled back around. “Leave it.”
“We don’t get happy endings, Ravi. There’s always the next mission, until one day, our luck runs out. You found something special. You should hold on to it.”
“What about what she wants?”
“How do you know what that is? You never asked her.”
“I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t want me.”
Durga gave him a sad smile. “You’re not the running kind. You never have been. Stop doing it now.”
Yasmin hid in the alley, staring down the street while searching for a familiar face.
Her heart leaped when she spotted Ravi. She greedily took in the sight of his golden hair and full beard.
A small frown furrowed his brow as he wove around others on the sidewalk.
He was purposeful in his stride. An elf with a mission.
She could step from the shadows and call out to him, raise her hand and flag him down.
It was the same thing she had told herself each time.
Instead, she watched him march up the steps and unlock the door before disappearing inside.
The brief glimpse wasn’t nearly enough. Not when she longed to hear his voice, to have his incredible copper eyes on her once more.
There had been a hole in her chest since she’d woken to find him gone at Navara. Too many nights she had cried herself to sleep, wondering what she had done to drive him away. She wasn’t brave enough to confront him. He had changed her life—and her heart.
Obviously, he hadn’t felt the same.
It hurt. Probably always would. She had never thought to love anyone, not as she did Ravi.
Yet love had found her when she least expected it.
Or wanted it. The only reason she carried on was because the children depended on her.
It was because of them that she stitched up her broken heart and faced the day.