She remembered Nitya and the dreamstone, how its supernatural radiance had briefly transformed her twin into a pari. How awed Nitya had been. How she’d trusted Tanvi with her own secret.

Slowly, the sky-toned light of the memory burned off Tanvi’s fog of despair.

She and Nitya couldn’t recover what they’d lost, but who said they couldn’t build something new in its place?

Tanvi traced her fingertips over the familiar contours of her pendant. Venkat and Nitya might think they were being noble, giving her a chance to go home for real, but they’d misjudged her completely. Venkat especially, if he believed she’d turn her back on all of them and disappear into Nitya’s life.

After all, he’d been the one to return her pendant.

Sneaking past the sentries was going to be hard, but she could manage that. And then she’d puzzle out the rest. She had to.

At least, Tanvi thought, examining her filmy dupatta’s subtle, kyanite-like shimmer, she was already dressed for Asha’s wedding.

Part Three

Once, so long ago even the wisest of rishis himself, the eminent Valmiki, could not determine when, a brother and his dutiful sister came into possession of a handheld looking glass. The mirror, as clear as polished crystal, gleamed from a round golden frame encrusted with vines of emerald, blossoms of ruby and sapphire, and curving onyx thorns. A beatific serpent spiraled about its handle, each scale lovingly rendered. It was a gift designed to enchant its recipient.

It happened that a multiplicity of gilded mirrors already graced the family’s hall, for it is a simple truth that all nagas are a joy to behold. As a result, the siblings were scarcely strangers to their own winsome beauty: the boy knew well his finely etched cheekbones and roguish smile, and his sister had, in stolen moments, glimpsed the sparkle of her gemlike eyes.

Yet the girl, soft of speech and manner, found herself ever obscured by her elder brother’s ebullience. She was the faint moon to his effulgent sun, echoing but the slightest portion of his light. Eager for another reflective surface in which to see herself, to know she had not been erased, she reached for the unexpected gift.

Her brother, however, snatched it up. His expression promptly darkened. “The glass grows misty!” he groused. “What manner of gift is this?”

He cast aside the useless mirror and glided toward the door. “Come, our companions await,” he urged, impatient to join the games in the metallic fields of gold and platinum, silver and palladium, where he would be applauded and adored.

Her cheeks aflame, the girl trailed behind. Of course the gift had been for him. How foolish of her to imagine otherwise.

Thus the looking glass languished where they had abandoned it, forgotten.