Nobody answered their daughter's question directly, and after a moment she seemed to decide the silence itself was answer enough, wandering off toward the courtyard bench with the wooden bird still in hand, humming something tuneless under her breath as though she hadn't just upended both her parents' understanding of what she was.
Sekar waited until she was settled outside, safely out of easy earshot, before she spoke again, her voice low and controlled in the way Rama recognized from every difficult briefing she'd ever delivered under pressure. "She's never met him. Never heard his name from us. We only learned it ourselves yesterday, from Yudhistira, in a conversation she wasn't even in the room for."
"I know."
