Echo

2. DEV MAHAJAN

He'd seen her today. After years of wondering where she could have gone, who she could've become, he'd been given answers to the questions that plagued his mind constantly-questions he hated, for they were daily proof to him that he still cared even though he wished not to.

There she'd been, in front of him, and he'd took in her appearance. Her short, wavy hair were now so long that the end reached her lower back. She'd worn harem pants with a sleeveless top that resembled the colour of the pants, something not much tolerated by the Brinn.

The side of her neck had caught his eye; a small dagger was tattooed there.

Realisation had hit him. Rage had taken over him at what she was now. Who she was now.

An Anahi.

His eyes had dropped to her hands, and his anger was temporarily replaced with confusion. The Anahi did not wear gloves. They did not cover their arms ... So why did she?

He'd looked at her again, his thoughts shouting in his head.

"Dev?" came the voice of his scholar friend from behind him. "You realise that if you keep standing in the kitchen and not pay attention to the eggs, we're going to have to eat burnt food, right?"

That brought his attention back to the present. Right. The eggs.

He scrambled the eggs some more, then served them to both himself and his friend.

An exhausted sigh left his mouth as he fell down with the chair he sat on, which was now broken. "You have to fix these, Suraj."

"I will when I have the time, Dev."

"You sit in here all day long, what could you possibly be doing to not be able to skip even an hour a day?"

Suraj raised an eyebrow, then looked towards his right. A long, heavy stack of books and parchment stood where his eyes pointed, and understanding made it's way through Dev's mind.

"I am a scholar. For your mother, of all people," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "If i skip an hour of studying the texts she needs me to every day, she would sell every organ of mine in the black market and keep my head as a souvenir and an example for her future scholars."

Suraj was somewhat a daily reminder of how terrifying Dev's mother was. He thanked the flames that he had the privilege of being her son, or he would have been ashes mixed with the sea by now ... If someone was there to mourn him.

"Don't you have to go for patrol?" Suraj questioned, head tilted to the left. "I'm sure your Brinn friends are waiting for you in Uttarpaar right now."

"They are not my friends," Dev rolled his eyes. They were merely acquaintances Dev patrolled with occasionally. He would make small talk with them solely for the purpose of winning the favour of their parents, who were trusted accomplices of the chief of Brinn House, who was in charge of keeping North Raijatya in their limits.

The men Suraj referred to as Dev's friends would hardly even work. They usually left Dev to patrol alone and went to visit the brothels in Uttarpaar.

He hated them, but they were Brinn. To them, he was not an equal. To them, he was a calm Raijatya 'animal' who they would gladly crush beneath their feet if he defied them.

"If I could, I would gladly stop being around them, but you know just as much as I that I cannot defy orders from the Brinn House."

Suraj raised a brow and Dev did not need to hear him say the words he was holding back. He already knew.