A means to an end. Venkat wanted to refute the ugly words, to deny he’d heard them. But Asha was right. For Nayan, caring for the nagas was paramount, and whatever it took to secure that, whether marrying off Asha or sacrificing the dream runners, it was a price he was willing to pay.

The emptiness yawned in Venkat’s chest. Nayan had been everything to him: his foster father, his home. How had things between them changed so much? Or had it always been this way, and Venkat had never noticed?

This must be how Tanvi felt, like she’d lost everything twice.

Shame heating his neck, he remembered how Nayan had left Jai to wander the streets of Prithvi with just a purse full of bills and no family to greet him or memory to guide him. Why had Venkat ever thought that was okay?

“How?” he demanded, knowing it was reckless. “You still haven’t even told me what we’re doing. Healing. What are we healing?”

Nayan’s brows drew together. “I think perhaps you are correct,” he said, “and I have, indeed, waited too long to show you the truth. I was wrong in expecting you to share my perspective on this when you did not have the full story. Let us finish up here, and then I will explain.”

They spent the next half hour completing the section, Venkat doing his best to concentrate. Though ice didn’t exist as such in balmy Nagalok, the air between them had grown glacial. When the trance came over him, it was a relief.

Once he emerged from that other space, he’d created a forest hut, the kind an ancient rishi might have lived in. Another egg, too, this one enormous.

Venkat didn’t even care. He gave Nayan no time to praise the results. “So? What is it we’re doing here? Why are you having me make you eggs and huts and all the other stuff?”

His hands behind his back, Nayan began to pace. “Family has always meant much to you, has it not, my son?”

Venkat nodded. What did that have to do with anything?

“It does to me as well.” Nayan gestured to the hut. “That is the dwelling place of Rishi Kashyapa and his wives. Do you remember their story?”

“The story of how the nagas and the garudas came to be?” Venkat echoed. “Of course I do.”

“What we are doing here is recalling an era of harmony. Our people and the garudas have both forgotten that we were not always at war. Acrimony has become baked into our societies.” Nayan sighed. “War has become our way of life. You and I will remind our people that it was not always so. Nay, not remind but truly revision our future—by writing in peace over the once-immutable imprint of hatred. If we do not, the fighting will never cease.”