Page 66 of The Circle of Exile
“You don’t remember?”
“I mean… no dreams. None that I can remember.”
“Go back to sleep,” he glanced behind his shoulder. “It’s still night.”
“What are you doing here? Where did you go off to last night?”
He bit off his instinctive answer —At least I came back.
“I…” he huffed, unable to lie to her. His lies and secrets had started this entire mess. “Saba. You say she saw you.”
“Yes.”
“She never raised an alarm with us. I came back and interrogated each and every person who had come into your contact that day. She did not mention what you just said.”
“So you went to her to corroborate my story?!” Her eyes widened. He frowned.
“You don’t trust me, I get it. But I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this, especially about somebody whose life can be at stake! I am not lying. She was there, she was coming into the hospital, she was…”
“It is not you I don’t trust.”
She stopped short.
“There is nothing you say to me that I won’t trust.”
Her mouth opened.
“I went to Amaal, to inform her and get Saba interrogated first thing tomorrow. Also, to cancel all her access passes to the house and our private spaces.”
“Oh.”
He sat back — silent, still. She stood there — silent, still.
“Why are you not sleeping?” She finally broke the vacuum.
“I have to leave by 7.”
“There is still an hour and a half to go.”
He remained quiet.
“Because you don’t have somebody to wake you up,” she answered her own unasked question. He had alarms but he had given up using them during her pregnancy. She had woken up with starts with him and that had been bad for her heartbeat as well as the babies’. She used to wake him up instead because her night clock was anyway messed up.
“I will wake you up. Go and sleep,” Iram called him back from that time. It was a tough, trying time of their lives but she had been with him, their kids safe inside her. What he wouldn’t give to go back to that time and absorb some more of it. To wake up beside her, to touch her tummy, play with the kids, nudge where they kicked and run his fingers away to another side and nudge there. If he had known one of those kicks would be silenced forever, he would have played some more before getting up for his day.
Atharva hardened the armour around his weakest part that had begun to melt. He turned his eyes away from her and eyed the card in his hand. An Ace of Spades.Death.He smirked. Death of his daughter. Death of his faith in his wife. Death of the future he had envisioned. Death of the progress he had plotted for his state. It was all going to slow down. He could see it, feel it. As difficult as it would be to rebuild his marriage, holding Kashmir safe through this storm would be a feat in itself, forget building on the foundation of his two good years.
“Atharva.”
“Yes?” He did not look up this time, holding his breath and laying the final cards on top of the house.
“What are you doing?”
“Building a house of cards.”
A pause.
“You had promised to build a treehouse.”
