Sheela fidgeted with the end of one of her braids before shrugging. “Because you needed to see it.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Kara angrily.
“What doyouwant to do?” responded Sheela.
What Kara wanted to do had never changed. She wanted to do what was right. It was the reason she had taken the astra necklace and destroyed the other Pandavas’ weapons. But now, when she thought back to that moment, she felt nauseated.
Kara had a way with light. Whether it was because she was the daughter of the sun god or something else, she usually had good instincts when it came to telling what was true and what was false. But, unfortunately, that didn’t make the world any easier to navigate.
True: Her father loved her.
True: Her father had lied to her.
True: Her mother had given her up.
True: Her mother had never given up on her.
Suyodhana did love her. Kara knew that in her bones. And she knew that he loved Aru, too. He even loved Krithika Shah. It was a truth he’d let fester inside himself like a poison he couldn’t get rid of. But those things he had said about her mother…and about Aru pushing Kara away…and about Kara being unwanted…all that was false.
“But he saved me,” said Kara.
Part of her thought she was saying those words just to see how they felt on her tongue. They felt sticky. Slimed.
“From what?” asked Sheela, tilting her head.
“A bad childhood,” said Kara automatically.
“Is that what you saw?”
Kara blinked. She’d seen her mother, Krithika Shah, touching a tree and watching Kara play in the large backyard of a low-slung house. A younger version of Kara squealed with delight as she picked up limes that had fallen from a tree. The little girl also gathered kumquats and jacaranda blossoms and piled them in the lap of a large woman whose face was out of focus.
“I was happy,” said Kara softly. “Wasn’t I?”
Her hands curled into fists in her lap. For some reason she couldn’t get past that image. Once upon a time she’d had a lime tree in her backyard, and she’d picked purple flower blossoms knowing there was someone to give them to. A smiling adoptive mother.
Kara should have been able to remember how that lime had felt in her hand, whether it was cool from the shade or warmed by the sun, whether it was fragrant or rotting, whether it was later used for sugary limeade. But she couldn’t remember, and that lack of knowledge, which had once felt like a sweet mercy, now turned sour.
“You’re lying,” she said to Sheela, ice in her voice. “It’s not real.You’renot real.”
If the images Sheela had conjured were true, then…
Then her father was every bit the monster Aru had said he was. He had stolen her memories, but not to protect her. To manipulate her.
Kara blinked and felt the cold chain of the astra necklace as she’d yanked it off Aru. She saw Aru’s heartbroken face, heard the way Brynne’s voice broke and Mini called out,Kara? Wait! No, no, no!
What had shedone?
“I don’t know what real is,” said Sheela, looking around them in the dream world.
A jellyfish pulsed gracefully alongside the tunnel. The sea anemone cushions beneath them shaded from pink to a vivid blue, and Sheela giggled.
“Like, none of this was here before, but I believed it and now it is,” said Sheela. “So, I guess that makes it real.”
“What are you saying?” asked Kara. “That the only thing that matters is what I believe?”
Sheela began to dissolve at the edges. Her voice seemed far away. “Uh-oh, gotta go. Nikki’s going to be mad at me. She hates it when I’m gone too long.”
“Wait!” said Kara, reaching for her, but Sheela was transparent now. It was this sudden fading that let her cry out loud, “I don’t know what to believe!”
