To see them again.
The feeling of hope that rises in his chest is an odd one—almost mechanical, like he has wished this for so long that the longing has simply become rote. What would he even say to his family, if they were on the phone? He knows nothing about how Kriti is now, whether her marriage has been happy or whether she has children, whether Dev has a family of his own, if his parents are healthy, what they are doing now. But he still yearns to see them, all the same, still feels a flutter in his chest at that possibility.
Ari thinks about the day Rudra had approached him on the warm streets of Surat, how he had handed him the transmuted ice cream bar. He probably hadn’t anticipated that he was recruiting his own replacement.
If Reed chooses Ari, it will destroy Rudra, and in revenge, Rudra will try to destroy all of them.
Reed leans back. His voice calms again, turns businesslike. “So. You’re going to accompany Rudra to this meeting. Make sure we drive home the point that they are to keep their fucking hands off our property.”
Ari feels the geometry of the mug in his hands and the heat of the water and then his soul pulsing bright in his chest. He is on the cusp of a transmutation, at the edge of a cliff of possibility. Everything is about to change.
“And how do you intend for us to drive this point home?” he asks.
Reed sips his tea and picks up his paper again. “See to it that by the end of the night, Will Taylor’s dead.”
[…] while the House on Thursday failed yet again to pass a resolution calling for a federal ban on the substance sand, which the FDA has yet to officially designate as an illegal drug. This marks the second failed attempt to regulate sand this year, with the latest effort drawing opposition from both parties in a rare display of bipartisanship. Arguments against the ban include the lack of evidence that sand is directly related to the recent rise in violent crimes, aggressive behavior, and suicides […]
“Resolution to ban sand fails again in House,” CNN, May 12, 2013
