Nayan let out a surprised laugh. “I daresay a multitude of omelets!” He clapped Venkat on the back. “I am proud of you, my son. Your craft shows assurance and inventiveness both. And the resolve you soldered into your latest pieces—including the sofa—will sustain their integrity, ensuring they last. Without a doubt, you have come into your own these past few weeks.”

Venkat couldn’t help the grin spreading over his face. “Really?”

“More than that,” Nayan continued, “you have thrived under pressure, and we are well on the way to completing our project on time. What we are doing here involves healing. The rejuvenation of our people.”

“You’re finally going to tell me what we’re doing?”

“I know how frustrating it must be to wait for the specifics, but bear with me just a little longer. At present, I would tell you a story.”

As desperately as he wanted to hear everything—after all, this was his project, too—Venkat bit down on the urge to protest. He’d been lucky to get off with a scolding, and he wasn’t about to risk Tanvi’s safety.

“A story I have, until today, never told another person.” Nayan led him onto the balcony, where another table had been set up. The completed sections of their project glistered over its surface, phantasmagoria that shifted with each blink. Nayan must have assembled them while Venkat was in his trance.

Faint music drifted from below, as merry as the ringing peals of laughter that accompanied it. It all felt so surreal to Venkat, that anyone could be so carefree while he was trying so hard not to disappoint everyone who depended on him.

“Have you ever wondered where dreamsmithing originated?” Nayan asked. “Or how I knew what to look for in you?”

“Of course!” When he was a kid, Venkat had badgered Nayan with exactly those questions and received no answers. Now it appeared he might actually get them.

“The wanderer I met in the forest while in the sage’s hut was not the only person to mold my view of the world, you see.” Nayan adjusted his dupatta around his shoulders and tilted his head up to the teal-toned heavens. “I loved a woman once, and though circumstances forced us apart, my devotion to her remains true. She was brave. She was virtuous. She loved me truly. Alas, she suffered dreadfully at the hands of cold-hearted tyrants, and in her name, I swore I would find the means to bring justice to us all. Our people have waited long enough.”

A lover? Venkat wondered what kind of woman could catch Nayan’s eye and hold it for so long.