Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(67)

Tanu didn’t laugh, deep vertical lines forming between her eyebrows instead. “Where’s Arvi? I tell him not to work so late, but does that dratted twin of mine ever listen?”

Ashwini sensed Janvier start behind her as he understood the true scale of the tragedy. “You know Arvi,” she said. “I bet you he took ‘just a glance’ at a pending operation as he was about to leave, and ended up spending hours mapping it out. He’s probably on his way here now.” A guess that had a good chance of being true . . . because her big brother spent more time in Banli House than in his own. Arvi had lost half of himself when he’d lost Tanu, would bleed from the wound till the day he died.

“That’s Arvi for you.” Sighing, her sister rubbed at her temple. “God, this headache.”

Ashwini didn’t offer to get medication. Her sister’s drug regimen was finely calibrated to make sure she didn’t become an addict or end up catatonic. Ashwini hated that Tanu had to be on them, but without the drugs, her sister became manic, prone to self-harm and nightmare delusions that left her screaming.

The aim of the medication was to give her as many minutes of clarity as possible during her waking hours. Banli House was a high-class facility, after all, one that took its responsibilities seriously. If Ashwini hadn’t been entombed here as a teenager, she might even have found it a soothing, caring environment.

Janvier moved from behind Ashwini’s chair. “I may be able to help,” he said and, hunkering down in front of Tanu, pressed his fingers to his own temples in an unusual pattern. “Try that.”

Copying the motions, Tanu sighed. “Where did you learn that?”

“From my ma-mere—my grandmother. Sometimes what is modern is not always the best, oui?”

“Oui.” Tanu laughed and patted his cheek, no indication of any tension on her face at the contact. “Yes, you’re definitely trouble. Pretty trouble.” Her eyes met Ashwini’s. “You should chain him up.”

“He probably has the key to the chains under his tongue.”

Tanu’s vivacious gaze dulled in front of Ashwini’s eyes, her head turning toward the window that looked out into the night. “I can hear them.”

“Tanu.” Ashwini touched her sister on the knee.

But Tanushree Taj wasn’t listening, wasn’t even aware of her or Janvier any longer, lost in the cacophony of phantom voices that followed her night and day.

Rubbing her knuckles over the heavy ache in her chest, Ashwini put her hand on Janvier’s shoulder, said, “We should go. She can stay like this for hours, sometimes days.” Ashwini had once returned from a hunt to find her sister hooked up to a feeding tube because she’d gone into a near-catatonic state two days earlier.

Arvi had been sitting at Tanu’s bedside, his voice hoarse from trying to talk her back to the world. “Please, Tanu. I don’t know how to do this without you. Please, Tanu. Please.”

Throat thick with the raw force of the memory, she wasn’t ready for the intense and painful tenderness she saw in Janvier’s eyes when he turned to her . . . but there was no pity. No horror. He looked at her as he’d always done when he was feeling protective, and the realization made her want to fall into his arms and ask him to never let her go.

Allowing him to tug her up once he was on his feet, she left Tanu with a soft good-bye. “She’s gone,” she told Carl as she and Janvier put their shoes back on. “Please keep an eye on her.” The voices could leave Tanu in agony, until sedation was the only way to give her peace.

“I always do.” The nurse walked with them to the front door. “Your sister is going away more and more. You were lucky tonight.”

“Do you think you can call me when she’s lucid? I’d like to spend more time with her.” Before there was no more time. “But only if Arvi isn’t here.” No matter her own need to see Tanu, Ashwini wouldn’t steal Arvi’s time with his twin. The two had never made her feel anything but included as a child, but nothing could alter the fact they’d been siblings for nineteen years before she came on the scene.

Unlike some male/female fraternal twins, Arvi and Tanu had never drifted apart, despite living vibrant, individual lives of their own. Tanu had gone to a different university from Arvi’s, her social life an active whirl. Arvi, in contrast, had buried himself in medical school, his girlfriends long-term, where Tanu’s boyfriends changed with the moon.

However, when the two came home for vacations, it was obvious they’d kept in constant contact. They’d make comments about small incidents in each other’s lives, laugh over secret jokes, tease each other mercilessly over their love lives, give their excited little sister gifts that complemented one another.

The only time Ashwini had seen Arvi laugh in the past eighteen and a half years was the day five years ago when she’d arrived for a visit to find Tanu coherent and herself. Her sister had been doubled over in a fit of giggles, Arvi’s head thrown back in untrammeled joy as he sat on the floor with his back to the window. When Ashwini would’ve backed away, Arvi had called for her to come in, open affection in his voice.

Ashwini had walked inside, all the pain that separated them buried beneath the wonder of that timeless instant when everything was as it should be. Her brother had held her by his side with his arm slung around her neck, and for a single magical hour, the three of them had been as before, Ashwini quiet and happy just to be in the room with her older siblings while they bickered and talked and made fun of the world.