Aru Shah and the City of Gold - Roshani Chokshi Page 0,84

good look at her face. One moment she was there, and the next, she’d been swallowed up by the mirror’s mist.

“Let’s…Let’s get moving,” said Aru, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

She turned Vajra into a sword and kept a tight grip on it as they marched down the hall. Even though the space was open and light-filled, the air smelled musty, like the basement of an abandoned house. Aru tried to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, but small flashes of movement to her left and right kept stealing her attention.

Don’t look, she told herself.

To avoid glancing anywhere else, Aru started reading what was written on the pillars surrounding them. She discovered they weren’t just columns, but slender storage units labeled with rare things Surya had seen or heard on his travels.

One held:

BLACKBIRD LULLABIES

A BABY’S FOURTH YAWN

Another held:

A POLITICIAN TELLING A TRUTH

THE LAST WORDS OF THE DECEASED

Aru read the labels aloud, forcing one foot in front of the other. Up ahead was a pillar that looked slimmer than the rest….

PROPHECIES UNHEARD AND UNWANTED

Yikes, thought Aru, giving that one a wide berth. She’d had her fill of prophecies.

Just a few yards past it was the end of Surya’s long hall. Nearly there, thought Aru, adjusting her hold on Vajra.

That was when Aru heard her name being called.

It wasn’t one of them, but someone beyond the pillar of Prophecies Unheard and Unwanted.

Aru?

She froze. She knew that voice—it was her mother’s! Mini and Brynne had said that Krithika had disappeared, but no one could hide from the sun. Aru remembered Chhaya’s warning: No mortals are meant to witness them…. But what if Surya had seen that her mother was trapped somewhere? Or wounded? If Aru looked, then maybe she could rescue her mom!

“HEY!” Mini shouted from behind her. “Why are you slowing down?”

“Not because something’s after us, right?” asked Rudy. “RIGHT, ARU?”

She turned. In the mirror’s reflection, she saw her mother waving her hands to get Aru’s attention. Her clothes and hair looked wet, and droplets of gold clung to her skin. Aru noticed that her face was gaunt, as if she hadn’t eaten in days, and there were dark smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes.

Help! Krithika Shah croaked out.

“Mom!” cried Aru.

In that second, everything else in the hall fell away. It was as if Krithika were no longer trapped in the mirror but standing right before Aru, shivering with cold, her hands outstretched…

Aru, come back to me….

Then Krithika’s eyes widened. She seemed to be gaping at something vast and terrifying right over Aru’s shoulder. Aru jumped into action, spinning Vajra out to full length and whirling around, her lightning bolt clashing against something heavy.

“It’s me, Shah!”

Aru blinked. She looked up to see Aiden glaring down at her, his scimitar raised to eye level and Vajra angrily pulsing against it. Shock rippled through Aru, and she turned to check the mirror again. The image of Krithika was gone. What had happened to her mom? What had she seen behind Aru?

“This place is playing tricks on you, Shah,” said Aiden, grabbing her shoulder. “Focus on me. Look at me.”

Aiden was using that hypnotic voice on her, the one inherited from his apsara mother. Aru could feel it working its way through her brain. She felt herself getting lost in the fathomless dark of Aiden’s eyes.

“It’s going to be okay, Shah. I know you’re scared, but we’re here for you. We’ve got you, and we’ll fix this…together. But first we have to get out.”

It felt like her soul was warming itself by a nice fire. Aru’s senses began flowing back to her.

Maybe Surya’s hall noticed, too.

Because, just then, Krithika Shah’s bony face once again loomed in front of her. Her smile was a rictus. Aru lurched backward and pushed up with Vajra just as Aiden brought his scimitar down defensively.

“Stop, Shah! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

The problem was, she thought she did.

Worry for her mom bubbled in her veins and coursed through her lightning bolt, making Vajra glow with a strange new radiance and fury. The force of her uppercut shattered Aiden’s scimitar and threw him backward. A flash of violet light fell over Aru, and she looked up just as the last drop of the Krithika illusion faded from sight.

“Aru…what did you do?” asked Mini, breathing heavily while holding out her Death Danda.

Aru realized that the shield wasn’t to protect Aru from some unseen force…it was to protect the rest of them from Aru. Mini lowered the shield, and Aru