Worry flitted across Nikita’s face as she turned to her twin. Sheela appeared nervous for a moment and then she concentrated, closing her eyes tight and furrowing her forehead. When Sheela’s eyes flew open, they looked frosted over as she said, “Look for the crack and the sparkle—one to welcome, the other to spend. And ahead lies something new. No way to avoid the fire and pain, but at least now you know that you are true.”
Aru’s dream shifted abruptly, bleeding at the edges until Sheela and Nikita disappeared.
In her next dream, her mother was shaking her awake. The apartment was totally dark, and a little cold.
“Aru?” said Krithika. “Wake up, beta.”
Aru blinked.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Mom!” cried Aru.
Krithika wrapped her in a hug.
Aru had fallen asleep on the floor next to the couch. She sat up, her eyes adjusting to the light. It was a new day already, and the room was empty. “Where are Mini and Brynne?”
“I sent them home. They’re just as distraught as you are, and besides, you and I need to talk,” said Krithika. “I owe you an explanation.”
“Yeah,” said Aru, climbing onto the couch. “You do.”
Krithika sighed. “Let me get some tea.”
It seemed to take Krithika forever to go to the kitchen, fill the kettle with water, and light the burner under it.
“Start with Kara,” said Aru.
Krithika rummaged in the cabinet for her box of tea. Finally, with her back to Aru, she began to talk.
“Before I met your father, and when I was much younger, I fell in love with someone who later died in a car accident. It was only afterward that I found out I was going to have Kara. I was young—too young, I felt, to handle a baby on my own,” said Krithika. “I’d known before then that I was apanchakanya, destined to carry a future Pandava, but I wasn’t expecting it at that time. I didn’t know what that would mean for me or for…for Kara. In the end, I went to the edge of the Otherworld, where there are yakshas capable of keeping people frozen in a moment of time. I asked them to preserve Kara as a newborn until I could return, and they promised to hold her for ten years. If I didn’t come back by then, they would place her with someone who would take care of her and raise her as their own.”
The kettle whistled loudly. Krithika startled, then reached for a mug. She dropped in her tea bag, poured boiling water over it, then slowly and carefully made her way to the couch.
“I thought I’d easily be able to get back to her before my time was up,” said Krithika, sitting beside Aru. “But then…so many things happened. I met Suyodhana. We learned of the prophecy…and then I found out I was going to haveyou. Suyodhana left, and when he returned, I…I trapped him in the lamp. When I finally had the chance to go back to the yakshas, it was too late. Kara had been adopted by a wonderful family in California who loved her.” Krithika stared into the steam rising from her tea. Her gaze looked faraway.
Aru was vibrating with rage. So the Sleeperwasn’tKara’s father? And if she was with a loving family, then all that stuff about rescuing her from a bad situation was alie. Kara had betrayed them for a lie. And maybe she never would have betrayed them at all if Krithika had just told Aru the truth about everything from the start.
“I went to visit Kara and her new family,” Krithika continued. “I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. Over a week’s time, I never even summoned the nerve to knock on their front door. I ended up just watching them take walks and play with her outside.”
“You mean youstalkedthem,” said Aru. Her mother was surprising her more with every sentence.
Krithika winced. “What I did wasn’t right, but at least I saw she could be happy there. I knew she’d have a chance at a normal life, one I couldn’t give her.”
Did that mean Aru’s life wasabnormal? Well, yeah, it was, pretty much.
“Kara said the Sleeper wiped her memories so she wouldn’t have nightmares about that family,” said Aru.
Krithika’s grip on her tea mug turned white-knuckled and her lip trembled. “Don’t listen to him, Aru. He may remember who he once was and what he once dreamed of, but he’s gone over the edge. He’ll say anything now,doanything to get what he wants.”
Aru believed it. She remembered the look of pain that had crossed his face before he said,I promised that, if I had to, I would break the world in half to make our family whole and happy.
Aru thought back to the man he had once been, the man who’d traveled the world looking for a way just to be her dad….
That man was still inside the Sleeper, but he wasn’t strong enough to come out.
Aru felt a fresh burst of pain—for herself, for her parents…and for her sister. All this time, Kara had only wanted a family. She’d actually had two—one adopted, and one biological. But the Sleeper had stolen both from her.
Krithika brought her shaking mug to her lips. “If I’d thought for aninstantthat my daughter was in an unsafe home, I would’ve done something.”
