The bracelet sat in the cup of her palm, a thin gold squiggle like a snake. Tanvi gobbled up the sight of it, dying to saturate herself with every single detail. She was actually holding her bracelet. The only thing she wanted.

Fireworks burst in her chest.

The glittering charms. The tiny, delicate links. The gold, the brilliant, beautiful gold . . .

Her breath hitched. Something wasn’t right.

The metal was dull, even scratched in a couple of places so grayish nickel showed through. Nickel? It should be twenty-four-carat gold, the kind a princess would wear.

And the charms themselves were clunky, not really defined. She took a quick inventory: the carousel horse, the quarter note, the toadstool, the unicorn’s head, the open book, the intertwined hearts. Where was the daisy?

The jump ring where it should be hung broken from the tarnished chain.

Tanvi’s euphoria clouded over, and her throat rebelled. This wasn’t at all how she remembered the bracelet. It was supposed to be pristine, like the ones the boons had granted her.

But it was still her bracelet. She pasted on a rubbery grin. As long as she had it, Asha and Venkat and especially Nitya could never hurt her.

She rubbed one of the remaining charms between her fingers and thumb—the rearing unicorn’s head.

It just felt like a piece of metal, and the rusty tang stung her nose.

Where was the delight? Tanvi gripped the bracelet tighter. The completion that was supposed to fill her until there was nothing else?

Doubt needled her. Why was the daisy missing?

Dad was supposed to fix it, I think, but then you disappeared.

Leave me alone! Tanvi squeezed the charm, desperate to smother the voice. She squeezed harder, until the metal cut into her skin. Then harder still.

The charm stabbed her, and she cried out.

A drop of blood, so red against the junk gold, bloomed on the unfinished edge of the unicorn’s stumpy horn. Tanvi wiped it on her thigh. It didn’t mean anything. She shouldn’t have pressed so hard.

She draped the bracelet around her wrist and waited. The joy would come now. It had to.

Nothing. The scratch on the quarter note only mocked her.

Hot tears pooled in her eyes. The bracelet was a lie, just like everything else.

This “treasure” she’d spent her life yearning for? A cheap toy among other cheap toys. A worthless trinket her ten-year-old self had reimagined as a talisman.

Against all the colors of the gemstone workshop, under the unforgiving spotlight of the sun, the bracelet looked like the piece of trash it was, something to be thrown out without a second thought.