Obviously, Jaya didn’t believe in the legitimacy of the curse. She was a child of the twenty-first century. Still, her great-great-grandmother’s generation had believed in it, and for many years Jaya hadn’t understood why her relative would curse an entire lineage to end. Yes, they’d stolen a ruby, but that had been in the 1800s. Why, in the mid-twentieth century, would her great-great-grandmother have done something so cruel?

Then Appa had explained to Jaya how much pain and suffering there had been during the British Raj. By stealing the ruby and then refusing to return it, the Emersons hadn’t just taken a jewel. They’d seized a piece of vital Indian history they had no claim to. Then, even when the British finally gave India back to her people, the Emersons had kept the ruby as a token of their superiority, of their arrogance, of their ultimate victory. It was this final insult that Jaya’s great-great-grandmother had been unable to abide. Remorselessness was absolutely cause for execration.

Now Jaya finally understood her great-great-grandmother’s rage. It was nearly impossible to look the other way when someone hurt something you cared for so deeply and refused to atone.

She set her bag down like Isha had and forced herself to smile. “How do you do? We’re new this year.”

“Oui, I thought so!” The boy slung an easy arm around Isha, and Jaya struggled not to tear it off. Isha hated her overprotectiveness, and Jaya was trying to be better about it. “It is no problem at all. I shall get you very comfortable. I’m Leo Nguyen, a senior as well. And this”—he gestured at a scrawny, short Indian boy who was intensely focused on his phone and refused to look any of them in the eye—“is my good ami Rahul Chopra.”

Jaya studied Rahul’s snub nose, the fringe of his eyelashes, the hint of stubble at his chin. Leo seemed friendly and outgoing, properly socially groomed by his parents. Rahul, on the other hand… His shirt was baggy, his pants were too short, and the colors clashed, as if he’d just picked clothes at random.

Something about him seemed familiar to Jaya; she was sure she’d met him before. Thanks to Amma’s gentle but insistent coaching on royal etiquette, she’d made up a visual cue to remember him. “Rahul Chopra,” she said slowly as it finally came to her: a shy boy in front of the winglike building of the Delhi Secretariat. “Is your mother Mukhyamantri Arti Chopra? The chief minister of Delhi?”

Rahul nodded and sneaked a glance at her before looking down at his phone again, his fingers tapping rapidly at the screen. With a slight prickle of sympathy, Jaya remembered his awkward fidgeting from their previous meeting. It wasn’t easy to forget someone who drew as much attention for being different as Rahul did.