Aru Shah and the City of Gold - Roshani Chokshi Page 0,99

true, then how could the Sleeper have taken it from you?” asked Aru.

Kubera sighed. “Through a loophole. Ages ago, only a few of the gods could remember the weapon’s true name, and we did not know who might need it again and why. So we decided that only those gods who knew the weapon’s full name could ask for it. But we also allowed for some discretion on the gods’ part so it wouldn’t be denied from worthy mortal heroes.”

“Or heroines,” said Aru.

“Or heroines,” conceded Kubera. “You were the first people to ask for the weapon by the correct name in, oh, I don’t know, three thousand years? Give or take? You reached me before the Sleeper did, and I have deemed you worthy of wielding it. So now it’s your turn. Speak now, Pandava.”

“Uh,” said Aru, panicking for a second.

She definitely didn’t want the Sleeper to take it. Or the gods. Or demons. Or, honestly, anyone who wasn’t—

“No one except another Pandava sister can take the astra from me,” said Aru, glancing at Brynne and Mini.

They bowed their heads. Beside Aru, Kara nodded encouragingly. But when Aru looked at Kubera, he closed his eye and frowned for a moment. Annoyance prickled at Aru. Why did he seem regretful suddenly? Had she said something wrong?

“Very well,” he said. “On to our next, and last, order of business. Biju?”

The mongoose, who had been greedily—and somewhat smugly—eating all the broken samosas in front of Brynne, looked up. It chirped, and a bright peridot gem clattered to the ground. Biju scampered up to Kubera’s throne, disappeared behind it, and then emerged a couple of moments later carrying something in its mouth. The object’s color was beautiful, like flames glimpsed through a ruby. But it was too round and smooth to be a precious stone. It looked a lot like…

“Is that an egg?” asked Mini.

“Yes,” said Kubera. “Biju was most excited upon finding it. Mongooses love eggs, you know. I myself can’t stand the texture. But Biju brought it to me when he figured out what it was. Or rather, who it is.”

The animal laid the deep red egg on the ground before Mini.

She picked it up and gasped. “It feels…familiar,” she said, weighing it in her hand. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Mini passed it to Brynne, who also looked stunned.

“I mean, that’s impossible, right?” asked Mini.

Brynne handed it to Aiden. A slow smile spread across his face as he placed the egg gently into Aru’s palm. The moment Aru touched it, a memory flared inside her skull: a pigeon preening its feathers and tucking its head under its wing to sleep.

“Wait,” she said. “This…This is Boo?”

“Well, he—or she or they; one can never tell what souls want to be—may want a different name once it hatches,” said Kubera. “You were the ones who freed Subala, after all. Perhaps he will want nothing to do with the life he previously had.”

“Freed him?” repeated Aru, shocked. “But he was cursed! Only a wish could free him….” Aru trailed off, as the exact words she’d said floated back to her: I wish you would just get out of our lives.

The words had been so ugly that Aru had felt nothing but guilt over what she’d said. She hadn’t even considered that it was the first time she’d said I wish to Boo. It was a cruel twist to his curse.

If she’d known that was all it would take, she could’ve freed Boo ages ago. Maybe all she’d needed to say was: I wish you were free. But she’d never thought of that, and Boo, panicked and trapped, had ended up going to the worst lengths imaginable to try to save them.

“Whatever hatches from that egg will no longer be Subala,” said Kubera. “But it will contain his soul. And a new chance.”

Biju crept a little closer to Aru, as if stalking the egg.

“Stop that!” snapped Kubera.

Biju scowled.

“We don’t eat our friends!”

Biju huffed, and a round opal fell from its mouth.

“Unless they become enemies…in which case, fair is fair,” said Kubera, shrugging.

Mini looked horrified, and Kara giggled at her expression. Brynne stared hungrily at the empty platter while Rudy kept trying to snatch up the little gemstones Biju dropped whenever he opened his mouth.

Aru caught Aiden glancing at her. For the first time since the nightmare of everything that had happened in the House of the Sun, he smiled. She smiled back, then peered down at the flame-and-ruby-swirled egg in her hands. She pulled it