Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes (Pandava Quartet #3) - Roshani Chokshi Page 0,227

be your regret, the thing you must always carry should you decide to use Kalpavriksha’s power.” She pointed to the necklace. “You are too young to bear such burdens, and I can remove that last vision from your memory. I can take you back to your friends. I can even have the grove swallow up the Sleeper’s army, though I cannot stop the war. It’s up to you. If you choose to bear this weight, go ahead and speak your wish.”

Aru didn’t care if it was cowardly—she almost grabbed Aranyani’s hand and begged her to take this piece of knowledge away, to hide it from her forever. It was too much to hold—her heart didn’t have the room. Her friends would be okay. The Otherworld would survive. No one needed her to carry this. They’d all stay safe….

Safe for now, whispered a voice in her head. And after that?

Aru remembered the venomous words Opal had spat at them, telling them they weren’t good enough, hadn’t proven themselves yet. Aru thought of the doubt that had been growing in her heart—the doubt she’d pushed aside because she thought it made her untrustworthy, the “untrue” sister. All this time, it hadn’t been she who was untrustworthy, but them. The devas. The Council. The teachers—Urvashi, Hanuman, and Boo—who had held her hand and promised not to let her fall.

She didn’t want to fight for them.

But the Sleeper was no better. She’d seen the bleakness in his eyes, the ruthlessness of his army, and the pain and destruction they’d wrought on the mortal realm and the Otherworld. What had happened to Suyodhana wasn’t his fault, but what he was doing now wasn’t right either.

More than anything, she wanted the world to be uncomplicated, for right and wrong to be as easily divided as the black and white sections of an Oreo. But the world was not a cookie. And sometimes right and wrong was nothing more than a frame held up to the eye, the view always changing depending on who held it.

Only one thing felt right to Aru.

Her sisters and friends. Strong Brynne and her fragility. Shy Mini and her secret strength. Nikita and Sheela, who didn’t deserve to be abandoned or treated like puppets by the Council. Aiden, who only tried to capture beauty in the world. Even Rudy, who had so much more to offer than what his family believed.

She would fight for them. She would wish for them. No matter what that meant for herself.

Aru wrapped her hand around the little golden tree once again. She looked up at Aranyani, her gaze unflinching and her voice steely as she said, “I wish we win.”

The Word Aru Never Spoke

The Sleeper’s army was winning.

Aru did not know how she had arrived back on the battlefield, but she was there. As she surveyed the scene, she fiddled nervously with her necklace and found that a third bead had been added to it, containing all that she had seen in Aranyani’s Grove of Regret.

Beneath her, the ground was splattered with paint and broken tree limbs. She looked to her friends, her stomach sinking.

Brynne swiped at the air with her wind mace, but her movements were too slow. Mini cast a force field, the light weak and wavering. Aiden was limping and down to one scimitar. Sheela crouched on the ground, one hand on Nikita, who was slumped over unconscious. Rudy slithered this way and that, blocking onslaughts with his tail, blood oozing from his arm.

“STOP!” she called out.

At the center of all the destruction writhed the dark mass of the Sleeper. The shadows paused at her voice, twitching with awareness. His army of demons and rakshasas halted, panting and turning their gaze to her.

The shadows knitted themselves into a pillar, and then peeled back to reveal the Sleeper standing in a charcoal sherwani, with dark pants that ended in coiling wisps of smoke. The sight jarred her. She couldn’t look at him without seeing Suyodhana, like two semitranslucent images stacked on top of each other. One was the father who had loved her. The other was her greatest enemy, the primary threat to the world she loved and the people in it.

“I was willing to let you all go…to let you live,” he said. “But I find my mercy has run dry.” The Sleeper raised a hand, and Aru sensed that a part of him knew what she was going to do even before it happened.

She snapped her fingers, and Vajra flattened into a