Garuda and the nagaraja still grappled, locked in their death embrace. It was so huge and so frightening that it almost became too much to process.

But Venkat still had Tanvi and the other runners.

“Well, boy,” said Vinata, “do you want your family back or not?”

Venkat considered her. Nothing was stopping him from simply invoking the revisioning as Garuda had planned it—allowing Vinata to win as she should have. Hadn’t the nagas and the garudas already endured enough, all because of one foolish wager their mothers had made in a moment of boredom? First the enslavement, then the retaliation. Again and again and again.

But Kadru’s spite seethed from within the tapestry, a noxious brew that perfectly matched the hatred that had so embittered Vinata until vengeance was the only thing she cared about.

Like Tanvi had said, Garuda and his mother didn’t even really understand what they were asking for. Kadru had wronged Vinata, so now Vinata in her righteous rage would wrong Kadru—and then Kadru would lash out again. The cycle would never break.

Plus, Venkat had no desire to carry out Garuda’s bidding.

Tanvi watched him with undisguised hope, while Vinata sneered. She might be objectively beautiful, but Tanvi was the one with the light. In her single-minded search for retribution, Vinata had become hollowed out.

“I do,” Venkat told her, “but I want something else more.”

Brushing his fingertips across the tapestry, he let the trance come over him. It was hesitant at first, inconsistent—until Venkat realized the uncertainty came from him. He’d been waiting for Nayan to instruct him. To direct the flow.

But the Nayan he’d known, of course, had never existed.

In his mind, which filled with anguish like spikes and shards of broken glass, Venkat opened his fists and splayed his fingers. Raw power streaked through him, power so strong it threatened to devour him. It had been there all along, he saw, but Nayan—Venkat winced—Garuda had kept it carefully leashed. Defanged as one might do to a cobra. He had never let Venkat truly explore the extent of his dreamsmithing abilities. Even Venkat’s experiments had been subtly reined in, because otherwise, he might have discovered that he didn’t need direction and gone off on his own. He wouldn’t have been so malleable, so easy to manipulate.

The wrath and sorrow blurred together into a conflagration of pure fury, blue-white like the hottest stars. Venkat pushed past it and toward the goal: a new story.

Garuda wanted a reversed wager. Vinata wanted to destroy her sister’s progeny.

Well, Venkat was going for a third option.

What he tapped into now was on another plane altogether.