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Once, she’d surprised Arvi by turning up to take hio Tanu didn’t leave the grounds now, didn’t trust herself to reh The voices were too loud

Janvier held her gaze “Your sister appears at peace”

“So her head, she said, “I have to start at the beginning”

Janvier turned sideways, placing one of his legs behind her, his knee bent so she could lean against him, and his hand warm on her nape “I ath fro support, “thinks my parents and Tanu all died in that car crash when I was nine The truth is, only my mother and father died on impact Tanu was badly injured but she survived”

“That is the cause of the wounds to her mind?”

“No” Terrible as that would’ve been, it wouldn’t have torn what remained of their family to shreds “Before I tell you about Tanu, I have to tell you about our mother”

Grief pulsed in her heart at the memory of her parents; it had dulled with time, but it would never leave her Because while they had hter as so different fro they knew, her mother and father had loved her, loved all their children “You know my mother was a professor of literature—what I didn’t tell you is that she was likeone hand on Janvier’s thigh, the muscle warm and taut beneath her hand, she anchored herself “Tanu had it, too No one in our faed it, ever even joked about the way they’d both occasionally know things they shouldn’t There was always a tinge of fear beneath the surface I didn’t understand at the time”

“Wait” Janvier ran his thumb over her nape, a scowl on his face “Were you and your sister both in that place at the same time?”

Ashwini shook her head “She was rew up thinking she was dead, it was decided thata shock” Everyone had already thought her unstable

“But the thing was, a couple of the people who regularly interacted withinsane when I started getting flashes of her as if she were still alive” For a while, it had convinced her to take the medication that made her feel so fuzzy and lost

Unlike Tanu, she hadn’t needed the drugs The s worse “Then,” she continued, “I realized I only got the flashes near certain people and it began to make a terrible kind of sense”

She’d confronted Arvi once she was free of Banli House, made it clear she knew the truth “Arvi eventually told me Tanu had had a psychotic break a hts under psychiatric hold She said the voices wouldn’t leave her alone”