She thought of all the times she’d seen Mrs. Acharya with Aiden. She was always protective of him, always brushing the hair out of his eyes, and smiling at him even when he didn’t see it. Aru knew that the nextthing she said was not a lie. “And she’d say you’re worth it.”
Aiden really looked at her then. His eyes were wide and dark, but not pure black. There were flashes of blue iridescence in them, like in Urvashi’s eyes. Maybe it was an apsara trait. It made sense to Aru. Apsaras spent so much time dancing in the night skies that maybe their eyes eventually mirrored them.
Aiden took a deep breath,and Aru drew back her hand.
“I like you, Shah.”
Aru’s eyebrows shot up. Her heartbeat jittered and she felt a not unpleasantswooshlow in her stomach, like butterflies taking wing.
Aiden panicked. “But not like, uh—”
Aaaand all the butterflies died.
“Like friends,” finished Aru, her voice sounding a touch too bright.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Like friends.”
Aru would never say no to havingmore friends, even if she thought, for a second … Well, it didn’t matter.
“Just so you know,” she said, “being friends with me means that on Wednesdays we wear pink.”
Aiden sighed and muttered something under his breath. It sounded a lot likeI need to get more guy friends.
By now, the landscape had shifted. A tunnel made of pale-green sea glass rose out of the sand. Beyond it appeared a flat,shimmering wall of magic. It looked like a recent addition totheOcean of Milk, something intended to hide activities from sight. Aru and Aiden saw someone racing toward them from inside the tunnel. They instinctively held out their weapons, but it was just Mini.
“Guys!” said Mini, heaving. “Oh my gods, my dyspnea is out of control. I think I’m dying.”
“Dip-what?” asked Aiden.
“Dyspnea,”correctedMini, adjusting her glasses. “It’s when you have labored breathing.”
“Right. Obviously.”
“You guys don’t have it because you’ve been walking so slow,” grumbled Mini. She pointed toward the tunnel. “C’mon. You’re going to want to see this. Luckily, Brynne turned into a gnat right before they saw her.”
“Who’sthey?” asked Aru.
Mini just shook her head. “You’ll see.” She held her finger up toher mouth as they walked briskly into the tunnel. Inside, the Ocean of Milk and the treasures pushing out of the seabed were still visible, but they looked hazier through the sea glass.
The farther they went, the darker the glass became, until it was pitch-black and they had to rely on Mini’s Night Flame. The floor changed from soft white sand to slippery gray rock. The passage veered to theright, and Brynne was waiting for them at the turn, her mace up and powering a vortex of air. “The wind is white noise—it covers other sounds,” she explained loudly. She pointed down to the right. “That way we can talk to each other without them hearing us.”
Mini turned off her Night Flame and, using Dee Dee, surrounded them all with an invisibility shield. “Or seeing us,” she added. “But westill have to move really carefully.”
“I know, I know,” said Aru impatiently. “I’m, like, the definition of stealth.”
She took a step down the passage, slipped on the slick rock, and skidded forward, straight through the barrier Mini had put up. Aru went sprawling. Brynne must have dropped her vortex defenses in surprise, because Aru heard the unmistakable sound of Aiden’s camera clicking.
She didn’t even have time to properly nurse her bruised nose or ego, because Mini darted forward and quickly cast another shield to make them all invisible again. The end of the black rock passage opened up to a vista the size of three football fields placed together. Gone were the bits of treasure and snake skin. Instead, looming out of the sand was the legendary golden dome—the labyrinth that protectedthe amrita. Aru felt a quick thrill—they’d found it! Now they just had to find Surpanakha and jab her with an arrow, and they’d be out of here!
Then her gaze fell from the top of the golden dome to its base. There, surrounding it like a terrible army, were thousands of Heartless lined up in neat rows.
Technically, all that separated them from the dome and the Heartless army was a pair of glassdouble doors at the end of the tunnel. But there was one problem: in an alcove right next to those doors were two naga guards wearing helmets and carrying sharp tridents. Their muscular serpent tails were painted, one with a red stripe, the other a yellow one.
The red-striped guard slashed his trident toward Aru and sneered, “Got any last words?”
