ru paused, her mind running through the different options before them. She weighed Vajra in her hands, wondering if there was some way around the conditions Chandra had set. Could her lightning bolt somehow zap all the doors open at once?

Beside her, Aiden stared at the nakshatras.

“I can’t believe he made all of them look like Rohini,” he said, disgusted.

Rudy winked at the goddesses. “That one just smiled at me.”

Aru followed his line of sight to a goddess whose lips were curled over her teeth, her smile wolflike. “Uh…sure.”

“Which door do we pick?” asked Mini.

“If we open a bunch of them at once, it won’t matter,” said Brynne, rolling up her sleeves.

“Whoa, Bee, what are you doing—” started Aiden.

“CHARGE!” she yelled.

In a flash of blue light, Brynne changed into a ram with huge curling horns and hurtled toward one of the doors.

Aru, Aiden, Mini, and Rudy looked at each other for a moment and then ran forward, too. Aru knew in her bones it wasn’t the right move, but she didn’t want to just stand there when everyone else was doing something. She flung Vajra toward a door, but the god of the moon was faster. He flicked his wrist, and a silvery rope lashed out like a snake, knocking her lightning bolt to the floor. Aru skidded to a halt, gathering up the weapon in her arms. It was limp and gave a weak shudder.

“Vajra?” croaked Aru.

The bolt buzzed faintly, and Aru pressed it close to her chest.

“BAAAAA-TRAYAL!” hollered Ram-Brynne as she was lassoed by the whip and pulled backward. She changed back into her usual form, stepped out of the loop, and started to swing her mace, only for it to be snapped out of her hands. It skittered across the floor.

When Mini tried to cast a spell with Dee Dee, Chandra’s whip struck again. There was a sad violet spark as the danda shrank into compact form in Mini’s grasp.

Rudy was holding one of Aiden’s scimitars, but it didn’t seem like he knew how to wield it. He lowered his arm and the weapon scraped the ground.

Aiden darted out of the way just as the moon god’s whip thrashed. Aiden spun, ready to slice it with his scimitar, but the rope swept his feet out from under him and knocked him onto his back.

Chandra’s throne broke away from its podium to float far above them.

“Playing dirty, are we?” he called down, making a tsk sound. “That seems unwise.”

Chandra snapped his fingers. The ground beneath them began to quake and tremble, and the mirror floor shattered, the pieces drifting apart like giant ice floes. A giant fissure opened beneath Aru’s feet and she made an awkward hop to the right. Her arms pinwheeled as she fought for balance, and she glimpsed what lay between the cracks in the floor….

Nothing.

Just the night sky and the promise of hard ground thousands of feet below. Her stomach swooped uncomfortably.

“Since you insist on playing unfairly, I shall raise the stakes!” called Chandra.

His twenty-seven wives now stood on a crust of unbroken floor that was so narrow the tips of their toes peeked over the edge and their long flowing gowns hung over the dark abyss below. They weren’t bored or annoyed anymore, but scared. A couple of them tried to inch back against the wall, but there wasn’t space for them to move.

Aru looked around, panic swelling in her chest. Beside her, Aiden and Rudy were huddled precariously on a mirror floe no bigger than a chair seat. On her right, Mini sat clutching the edges of a piece the size of a bedroom pillow, and Brynne balanced one-legged on a shard no larger than a serving platter. Fortunately, she’d been able to retrieve Gogo before it fell.

“This is hopeless!” said Mini.

“Hey! Don’t forget about us!” called Rudy frantically from the other side of the room.

Brynne wheeled her mace high above her head. A mini cyclone burst from the tip and traveled downward. She expertly guided the wind around the space, pushing the floor shards closer to one another until some of them came back together like a grand jigsaw puzzle. The kids leaped from one piece to the next until they all met up on the largest one.

“Clever!” said Chandra, clapping. “I’ll have to remember that trick when I possess the wind mace.”

“We can’t plan anything with him listening,” said Aru.

Mini nodded. She changed Dee Dee into a danda and raised it. A burst of violet light formed a bubble over them. Chandra scowled and seemed to call out something….

But they couldn’t hear a thing.

“Our weapons aren’t going to work against him,” said Aiden. “Fighting isn’t how we’re going to win back Nikita.”

“So, what do you suggest?” snapped Brynne.

Aru tightened her grip on her lightning bolt and felt its strength course through her. Vajra was still weak, but it was slowly regaining power. In the back of her mind, Aru heard Boo’s voice, the words he’d drummed through their skulls in every practice fight:

“We are more than the things we fight with,” Aru said firmly.

The other four fell silent, and Aru felt that—for once—she’d come up with the 100 percent right thing to say.

“I want to believe that,” said Mini. “But say we don’t fight and somehow reach the other side—how are we going to know which door to open?”

“Remember what Sheela said?” asked Aru. “You can find her behind the favorite star of the moon. That’s gotta mean Rohini is guarding Nikita’s door!”

“But they all look like Rohini!” said Rudy.

“And yet he only loves one of them,” said Aiden.

That, Aru realized, was the answer.

“We don’t have to figure out which one Rohini is—we just have to make Chandra reveal it by accident,” said Aru. “Then we’ll know which door to open.”

“How’re we going to do that?” asked Aiden.

At first no one responded, and then Brynne cleared her throat. “Chandra reminds me of Anila,” she said, staring up at the moon god.

Aiden’s face darkened. “I can see that.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” asked Rudy.

“No,” said Aiden and Brynne at the same time.

“Someone like that only shows you what they care about when it’s in danger,” said Brynne.

She rubbed at a spot on her arm neatly covered by the stacks of bracelets she was wearing. Aru saw the shiny patch of scar tissue left there from a nasty kitchen accident. When a boiling pot of water fell off the stove, Anila had been standing right beside Brynne, but instead of pushing her daughter out of the way…Anila had saved her purse instead. The patch on Brynne’s skin wasn’t the first scar Anila had left, but it was the most visible one.

“So does that mean we have to go after the star goddesses?” asked Rudy, shocked. “That’s horrible! Plus, what if they get mad? They could curse me!” He paused. “I mean us!”

“It’d be horrible if we actually went after the goddesses.” Mini smiled and twirled Dee Dee. “But we’ve got illusion on our side. Good thinking, Brynne.”

Brynne beamed.

Boo was right—they were more than just the items they fought with. Sometimes a weakness felt like a blade turned inward, but that meant it was sharp enough that when turned around, it could be a weapon. You just had to be willing to face it and adjust your grip. And that made it a magic far more powerful than any celestial weapon.

“So what do we do?” asked Rudy.

“What you do best,” said Mini, pointing at his orange messenger bag. “Cause a distraction.”

A cautious smile slipped onto his face. “All right. I’m on it.”

“We’ll play defense,” said Aiden, looking at Aru.

She nodded and transformed Vajra into a flashing spear.

Mini said, “Lowering the shield in three…”

Rudy reached inside his messenger bag, his face tight with concentration.

“Two…”

Brynne took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Aru reached for her hand, and Brynne squeezed back so hard that Aru temporarily lost feeling in her fingers.

“One,” said Mini.

The force field dropped, and Chandra’s voice rushed into the void:

“Given up already?” he asked, sinking into his pale throne. “How utterly boring…”

Aru’s hair lifted off her shoulders in the sudden wind. Beside her, there was a burst of violet light. Twenty-seven silver arrows with cruel tips hovered in the air above Mini’s hands. Rudy crushed a jewel under his heel, and all the noise in the room got sucked into silence. A beat later, a hypnotic rhythm took over, as lulling as rain on a roof. Even Aru felt the magical music tugging at her senses. On his throne, Chandra reached for his whip, but his gaze became unfocused and he stilled.

“Now, Brynne!” yelled Rudy.

She raised her wind mace high above her head. In a rush of air, she picked up all twenty-seven of Mini’s arrows and sent them hurtling toward the constellations. “Run!” Brynne yelled.

The five Potatoes raced across the room, leaping from one piece of the floor to the other as a bottomless abyss yawned beneath them. The arrows sped toward the constellation-wives. Aru looked up and saw their eyes widening, flicking between the weapons and their dazed husband. They tried to get away from their assigned doors, but their feet were stuck fast to the floor. Fury swept over their faces, and a chorus of different voices yelled out “Chandra!” and “This has gone too far!”

The moon god finally snapped to attention. He whirled around in his seat, appraising his wives and then the arrows as they zoomed closer. Twenty feet away, then fifteen…now ten.

Chandra fused the floor and dove to the fifth door, wrapping himself around the woman in an effort to protect her. Rohini, thought Aru.

Mini snapped her fingers, and the arrows vanished.

Chandra looked up, stunned.

Aru and Aiden kept barreling toward him. In Aru’s hands, Vajra’s weight became more solid. More powerful.

“Open up,” she commanded, taking aim with her spear and letting go.

Vajra smashed into the fifth door and it swung back, creaking loudly. Mist poured out from the room. Aru’s heart beat frantically. Had they made a mistake? Had they somehow gotten everything all wrong?

But when the mist thinned out…

There was Nikita, asleep on the ground.

Bent over, with her hands braced on her legs and heaving with every breath, Brynne grinned at Chandra.

“We win,” she said.