Jojo wheeled himself to a bow and a set of crooked arrows on one of the lower shelves, while Suki snatched up a rusty woodcutter’s axe and Samara picked up a simple knife. Pip debated for a while between a sword and a witch’s wand before finally settling on the wand.

Suddenly, my heart felt odd and heavy, like someone had dropped a stone into the middle of it and made it sink. This was the life I had given them?

Battles and swords and rebel kids had seemed like such cool ideas when I was putting them in a sketchbook, like I was creating my own version of a Teen Titans movie with a heaped tablespoon of my own family’s folklore, but it didn’t feel cool in real life. The silver sheen of sharp steel was scary, not exciting. The violence wasn’t fun.

I had made Ashwini an Asura slayer because it had seemed like a fierce, adventurous life for her on paper, but now she was stuck in that life. They all were. I loved that they were all so brave, but it didn’t seem fair that they had to be brave every single day of their lives.

“What’s the matter?” Ashwini said, coming up beside me. Her face, which had the Kallira nose and Gramps’s straight, dark eyebrows, was anxious. “Are you okay?”

“You’re real now,” I said. “I picked this life for all of you, but I’m not the one telling your stories anymore. So how come you can’t choose something else? How come none of you have picked a different life to live? You can’t actually like this?”

“Of course we don’t like it,” she said, and her tone sounded so much like Mum when she was telling me off that I felt instantly chastised. “But we’ve never known any other life. We were all little when we lost our families. For years, all we’ve had is each other and all we know how to do is fight back.”

I noticed that she kept saying we. “What about them?” I said in a low voice. “Have you asked them if this is what they want?”

“I’ve looked after them for years, Kiki,” she snapped. “You’ve been here for a few hours. What makes you think you know what they want?”

I flushed. “I’m sorry. You’re right, that wasn’t fair.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, her face crumpling. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I know you’re only asking these questions because you care about us, but I need you to trust that I’m doing what’s best for all of us.”

“I do trust that! And I shouldn’t have said what I did. It’s a good thing, that you fight back. It’s brave and wonderful of you.” I bit my lip. “I just wish there was a way to beat the monsters without a sword.”

“Well, I can tell you this much,” she said more cheerfully. “When you’re up at the top of Mysore Palace, trying to break the gandaberunda’s golden eye while Asuras surround you and try to stop you, you’ll be glad you have a sword in your hands.”