Nausea roiled in Tanvi’s stomach, and she grabbed for the edge of the desk to keep from passing out. She missed and crashed to the cool marble floor. The sound reverberated through the huge hall.

The voices she’d heard somewhere deep in the archives broke off, and suddenly Madhu fumed before her in full human form. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her contempt a whip flogging Tanvi’s ears. “Have you not done enough damage already?”

Tanvi had to go. Now. But she stayed sprawling where she’d fallen. Moving wasn’t an option.

Because Madhu wasn’t alone.

Looming behind her were two garudas and a garudi. Their brawny arms ended in golden talons long enough to skewer even the most massive naga. And their feral brown-gold eyes settled on Tanvi from over curved beaks that might as well have been meat hooks.

As one, they smiled—rapacious smiles that cornered her. Reduced her to prey. Tanvi’s muscles turned to pudding. If they wanted to kill her, she couldn’t do a thing to stop them. But at a signal from Madhu, the garudas returned to the pots of vermilion they held. As Tanvi watched, petrified, they glamoured themselves into naga servants and stole out through the archive doors.

“You will not utter a word of this to Lord Nayan,” Madhu said, having shifted into her own serpentine shape, and now her tone matched it, low and dangerous enough to pass for a naga’s enraged hiss. Her eyes constricted to gashes, deepening the grooves in her face.

She looked, Tanvi thought, like a peach pit come to life. A terrified squeak escaped her: “Why not?”

“I know where your sister lives.”

The air leaked slowly out of Tanvi, like a balloon that had been untied. Asha had seen an eagle’s nest in the tree at Nitya’s house. At Tanvi’s house. “You were spying on us?”

Madhu only laughed. “You comprehend nothing, runner. And Asha should have known better than to select a twin to begin with. Close connections prove the most difficult to eradicate.”

“Leave her alone,” Tanvi muttered, pushing herself to her feet. She didn’t know how else to protect Nitya, but if there was a chance Madhu might listen, she had to take it.

Madhu’s long white braid lashed like a serpent in midspring. “Then keep still. This need not affect you.”

It hit Tanvi like a slap. You were spying on Asha. Not on us.

Madhu and she stared at each other, locked in a contest Tanvi knew she’d already lost.

The doors opened, and Venkat entered. He made her think of a dreamstone in his chrysoprase-green kurta pajama, the way he was radiant from the inside out. What possible reason was there to be happy?

“Remember,” Madhu whispered, “no one must know. If they do . . .”