Parvani flushed. Still, she found herself in awe that Hades, ruler of the dead, found some small solace in this task, when the living gave themselves over to sleep and the night, which was a gentler sort of death. Perhaps this was Hades’s way of repenting for her grim existence.

And then she understood. “You’ve been giving me my dreams,” Parvani whispered. “That’s why I haven’t suffered nightmares in this place.”

Hades did not look at her, but her silence was enough. Parvani felt something welling in her, a tender gratitude that took her by surprise.

“Everything else too,” Parvani said. “The food and clothes and tea.”

“Shouldn’t I wish for my queen to be comfortable?” A hint of wryness in her words.

“I’m sorry. I tried to use you, and that was wrong. It’s just . . . I’m desperate to help my people.” Parvani swallowed, still tasting the remnants of the river in her mouth, wondering if it would simply be easier to forget. “To avenge my friend.”

Hades kept looking at the archway. She reached out and touched one of its columns. “Would you like to see?”

Parvani nodded.

The empty space between the columns shimmered and warped. Parvani made a small sound of amazement as it cleared into an image of her city, the quaint downtown sectors and the markets highlighted with bright awnings, the sandstone palace that, by its beauty, seemed to ignore the disease hidden within it.

The image shimmered again, and Parvani took an involuntary step forward. Mother. She was there, asleep in her bed, the lines at her eyes deep and cutting. Parvani brimmed with tears, which she furiously blinked back.

Hades touched a pale fingertip to the center of her mother’s brow. Then they were somehow inside an abstract space, a place of light and dark, shapes and sounds and color. Hades pressed her palm to the barrier of the archway, and the dream spun out of her like wool. Parvani and her mother walking hand in hand through the saffron fields, laughing as the wind tried to tease away her mother’s scarf.

Hades withdrew, watching her reaction. Parvani managed to smile, a shaky thing that was nonetheless true.

“Thank you,” she whispered. The god, looking a little flustered, simply nodded.

On their way back to the palace, an idea tapped its finger on Parvani’s shoulder—a sudden, sickening idea that made her stop in her tracks. Hades turned back to her.

“I know what to do,” she said. “About Hajan.” Hades waited, so Parvani took a deep breath. “We give him dreams. Bad dreams, nightmares, the kind you can’t shake off in the morning. The kind that haunt you throughout the day.”

“What would this accomplish?”

“It would make his life difficult. I want to make him as miserable as he’s made my people. It’s not much, but it’s something.”