There were two women, one with a boy on her hip and a giant egg at her feet. Venkat had seen enough illustrations in the books he’d read as a child to recognize her.

He squinted to be sure, but that woman was Vinata beyond a doubt. Younger, in her prime, vivacious. On her hip was Arun, who would later mature into Lord Surya’s charioteer. Her sister Kadru stood beside her, surrounded by a thousand naga eggs. Venkat could feel the fleeting truce, a fragile pause in the sisters’ age-old rivalry.

As he watched, the nagas hatched in unison. At the same time, the giant egg cracked, and a baby Garuda emerged.

Then the sequence shot forward to the bet.

“Guards!” Queen Naga Yakshi called. “Seize him!”

More sentries charged at Nayan. With lazy flicks of his taloned fingers, he flung them across the turf. “I do grow tired of violence, but if you insist, you shall have it.”

No. Venkat dropped to his knees in the grass. He could finally hear what the tapestry was saying. Nayan wasn’t just going to undo the wager. He was going to invert it.

The bumps on Nayan’s back burst into wings, the legendary wings that had once blotted out the sun.

And in a final flash of gold, he was no longer a naga but a garuda. The garuda. Garuda himself.

Venkat’s hands shook. How had he not realized?

“With this dreamsmithed tapestry,” Garuda concluded, as though he were simply wrapping up a presentation, “I will go back in time and so restore justice. My dearest kin, it is your turn to know the pain your wickedness caused.”

“Now!” Madhu shouted.

She gave a flip of her wrist, and the sentries around her transformed. Garudas and garudis all, they ambushed the retreating guests and naga forces alike.

In the same breath, a trio of garuda soldiers leaped toward Asha. Before Venkat could blink, two of them had incapacitated her bodyguards even as they raised their swords, while the third apprehended her.

Madhu’s own skin grew smooth and taut, while her white locks darkened to a lustrous black. The planes of her face shifted into the bloom of youth, and like Garuda, her tail divided in two, until a beautiful human woman stood there, clad in a white sari of mourning.

“You’re not Madhu,” Venkat said. “You’re Vinata. Garuda’s mother.”

Old mother, he thought bitterly. How many times had he heard Nayan call her that? Of course.

Gray clouds scudded across the aquamarine river sky. More and more garudas flooded in—so many that even the heightened security wouldn’t be able to stop them. The nagas fought valiantly, but no one had foreseen this.

Venkat felt like a total fool. No wonder Nayan—no, Garuda—had dismissed his warning. Behind the scenes, Garuda and his mother must have downplayed the need for the naga army’s reinforcements.