dare let myself feel in the twenty years since the massacre. The hope that my brother was alive. Now, after all these years, he was alive.
“Miss?” Avto, my protector and minder, pushed, but I was frozen on the spot. My legs were numbed in shock. Zaal, my Zaal, was alive.
Water blurred my eyes as I looked to Avto once more. “And Anri? Is there news of Anri?”
Avto’s face fell with disappointment. “No, miss. There is no word of Anri. But our source got word of a Kostava arriving in the city. They watched him; they watched him and watched him. And—”
“And what?” I interrupted, hanging on every word Avto said.
“And it is Zaal, miss.”
A sob ripped from my throat and my hand covered my mouth. I pictured Zaal in my mind. His eight-year-old face looking at me as he held me in his arms, walking us from our estate’s forest toward the house. His smile was wide as he looked at me counting the three moles on his left cheek, “One, two, three.” I remembered long black hair hanging down his back and his green eyes bright with life. And I remembered Anri walking beside us, his frame and hair the exact replica of Zaal’s, but his eyes were a dark brown, like mine.
A hand landed on my shoulder pulling me from the memory. Avto was looking at me in concern.
“Miss, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered, then shook my head, “I don’t know. It’s just all so … I had hoped and prayed that he had survived, that both of them had, but when nothing was heard in all of these years, I had lost that hope. It, it is all too much to take in.”
A sinking feeling hit my stomach. “Are you certain, Avto? I’m not sure I could take it if this was a mistake. My heart has been broken for over twenty years; it cannot take any more pain.” Avto’s gentle brown eyes softened. “We are sure, miss.”
I frowned. “But is he in hiding still? Who has been protecting him all of these years? How has his identity been found out? Is he in danger?”
Avto’s soft gaze turned sorrowful. My hand jerked out and wrapped around his arm. “Avto? Tell me. Where has my sykhaara been?”
Avto sucked in a long inhale and said quietly, “Miss, the Jakhua took your brothers and used them.”
“Used them? How? I don’t understand?” I wanted answers.
Avto tensed and said, “Miss, there are things in our world that you are unaware of. People that exist, places that exist, only in the underworld. Only in secret.”
My eyebrows pulled down. “Avto, what are you trying to tell me? Where has my Zaal been? What did that man do to my brothers?”
Avto’s arm muscle was rigid under my hand. Taking a deep breath, he explained, “Zoya, the Jakhuas were developing drugs.”
“What kind of drugs?” I asked.
“Obedience drugs, miss. Drugs that wipe the memories of the victims, coerce them into doing horrific and despicable acts.”
I swallowed, my chest tightening. “Like what?” I whispered.
Avto’s shoulders slumped. “Killing. Murdering. Doing anything their Master asks of them. And I mean anything. No matter the moral implications.”
Bile built in my throat, but I choked it back down. “And Jakhua.” I swallowed again when my voice broke. “Jakhua used this drug on my brothers?”
Avto nodded, but his face blanched.
“What?” I probed.
“Miss,” Avto rasped, “Masters Zaal and Anri were not simply put under the influence of the drug. It was on your brothers that the drug was developed.”
I stared. I stilled. My hands trembled. My throat closed in, but I managed to ask, “He, Jakhua, he used my brothers to test his drug on? He experimented on them like laboratory rats?”
Hot tears streamed down my cheeks when Avto answered, “Yes, miss. Since they were twins he used them to test all the stages of the drug’s development. He compared the results.”
Jumping to my feet, I ran to the wastebasket and threw up.
Avto followed behind, his old hand gently pressing my back in comfort. But there was no comfort to be found at the thought of my brothers, my strong and brave beloved brothers, being injected with that, that poison, for years and years, until they had no memory—
Gasping, I wiped my mouth and turned to face Avto. “Their memories? Zaal’s memories?” Fear filled me as I confronted the possibility that my brother would not know who I was. It had to be the cruelest of God’s jokes, my twenty-year wait for their return,