“Is that him?” Nitya called.

“I’m sorry I’m so late.” Venkat’s hair was rumpled, and the shadows under his eyes alluded to a sleepless night. “There’s been another breach. I should actually be at the council meeting right now, so I can’t stay, but I had to come by and try this first.”

His words cast a pall over her jubilation at seeing him. Madhu, she thought again. The breach was happening because of Madhu, and Tanvi couldn’t tell anyone. “Nitya wanted to meet you.”

“Me?” Venkat sounded surprised but also pleased. “Well, let her watch, then.”

“Watch what?” Nitya asked from the feather, which Tanvi propped up against the vase on the table. “Are you going to help my sister? If you’re as great as she says, you’d better be.”

Tanvi glared at her. “I never said that!”

“You didn’t have to.”

Venkat smiled in the direction of the feather. “I’m going to try.”

“Garba’s this weekend,” Nitya chattered. “Why don’t you come back for it? Venkat, my sister needs to come home.”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I told you, the borders are closed.” Nitya hadn’t pushed like this since their first call, and now Tanvi wanted to hang up on her again. “Also, people would see me. Do you get that?”

“Asha could glamour you,” said Venkat, whose opinion no one had asked for. “I wish I could go.”

“See?” Nitya looked smug. “No one would have to know. I like him!”

Now Tanvi’s glare included Venkat. Unfazed, he pulled a boon from his kurta pocket, round and radiant like the moon in her vision at the Lake of Lovers’ Tears. “Speaking of Asha,” he said, “if this works, we’ll have to thank her. She’s the one who suggested it.”

A boon. Tanvi’s entire body flooded with recognition—with yearning. All her old lust for the bracelet crashed back over her in a tsunami of need.

It didn’t matter that she knew the truth. She craved the boon all the same.

“Ooh, is that a moon lamp?” Nitya asked. “I have one.”

“It’s a boon,” Venkat said.

“Like a real, actual boon?” Nitya managed to sound both awestruck and dubious. “If you’re handing them out like candy there, maybe I should go to Nagalok, too.”

“What do you mean?” Tanvi asked crossly. Letting Nitya see any of this was a mistake. It was Tanvi’s, just Tanvi’s.

“In all the old stories, it took rishis lifetimes of meditation and prayer to earn a single one of those. Don’t you remember?”

Nitya’s tone was teasing, but Tanvi bristled. She exchanged a troubled glance with Venkat. “I’m going to go now, okay?”

“Come home for garba, Tanvi. We’ll tell Mom together.”

Nitya waited, her smile hopeful, but when Tanvi didn’t reply, her face closed off and she hung up.