The image faded.
Aru couldn’t shake it from her thoughts. She had done something so bad that her own sisters had turned against her. Why were they on a battlefield? What had happened?
“You think your partial divinity is a blessing,” said the Sleeper. “It is a curse.”
“You’re lying,” said Aru, but her grip on Vajra had slackened.
When she blinked, she saw them—all of them—turning against her. Rejecting her. Abandoning her.
Where were they going?
Why were they going?
Nausea jolted through Aru. She thought of every time she had rushed out of her bedroom and run to the window, only to see her mother leaving for the airport and Sherrilyn giving her a sad smile and offering to take her out for ice cream. She thought of every day she had walked through school filled with dread, knowing that all it would take was one word, one gesture out of line and she’d lose it all: the friends, the popularity, the belonging.
The lights that Vajra had cast into the museum lobby had dimmed. Mini and Boo were still out cold. It was just Aru and the Sleeper.
“Kill me, and that is the future you will face,” hissed the Sleeper. “You think I’m the enemy. Do you even know what that word means? What is an enemy? What is evil? You are far more like me than you realize, Aru Shah. Look inside yourself. If you hurt me, it will mean losing everyone you ever cared about.”
In the stories, the Pandava brothers fought an epic battle against their own family. But they never turned on one another. In the vision the Sleeper showed her, Aru saw something else: her family turning against her.
Tears ran down Aru’s cheeks. She didn’t remember when she’d started crying. All she knew was that she wished the Sleeper would choke on his words.
But he kept talking.
“I pity you the most, little one,” he said. “For you think you are the hero. Don’t you realize the whole universe is laughing at you? That was never meant to be your destiny. You are like me: a hero draped in evil clothing. Join me. We can wage war on fate. We can break it together.”
He walked toward her. She raised the lightning bolt a little higher. He stood still.
“Your mother pays no attention to you,” he said. “Don’t you think I’ve sensed it through the lamp? But if you’re with me…I will never leave you, child. We can be a team: father and daughter.”
Father and daughter.
Aru remembered her mother’s face in the vision from the Pool of the Past. The way she had talked about the three of them being a family. She had shared her husband’s idea of people defying their own destiny.
Her mom had lived with only half of her heart for eleven years.
Eleven years.
And only because she loved Aru that much.
“Kill me, and your sisters and family will grow to hate you,” said the Sleeper. “You will never be a hero. You were never meant to be a hero.”
Hero. That one word made Aru lift her chin. It made her think of Mini and Boo, her mom, and all the incredible things she herself had done in just nine days. Breaking the lamp hadn’t been heroic…but everything else? Fighting for the people she cared about and doing everything it took to fix her mistake? That was heroism.
Vajra became a spear in her hands.
“I already am. And it’s not hero,” she said. “It’s heroine.”
And with that, she let the lightning bolt fly.
The moment the bolt left her hands, doubt bit through Aru. All she could see was the image of her sisters lined up against her. All she could feel was the shame of being hated, and not knowing what she’d done to deserve it. A single dark thought wormed into her head: What if the Sleeper was telling the truth?
Her fingers tingled. The bolt cut through the air. One moment it was spinning straight at the Sleeper. She watched his eyes widen, his mouth open up for a scream. But the next instant, everything changed.
That tiny, needling doubt shifted everything. The lightning bolt stopped just short of hitting him, as if it had picked up the barest whiff of Aru’s misgiving.
The Sleeper stared at the lightning bolt poised an inch from his heart. Then he glanced at Aru. He smiled.
“Oh Aru, Aru, Aru,” he taunted. It was the same voice she had heard when she lit the lamp. What have you done?
“Vajra!” called Aru.
“One day, you’ll see it my way, and I will welcome you, daughter.”
“Strike him, Vajra!” shouted Aru.
But it didn’t matter. When she looked up from the spear of lightning…the Sleeper had vanished.