Venkat hid his amusement as he uncorked the vial. Bharat said the same thing about every dream he harvested, and at this point, his overconfidence had worn as soft and reassuring as an old letter unfolded and reread over the years. It proved he was still functioning, still nowhere near burnout. “We’ll see about that.”

A gaudy color palette and fuzzy texture brushed past Venkat as the reel began to play, revealing human-sized cats dancing in a musical number punctuated by a chorus of mews and yowls. The whole thing was very strange and off-putting, even what he would qualify as a nightmare, but the joyful haze surrounding it indicated the dreamer had felt very differently.

Then the dream stage went up in flames. Through their caterwauls of dismay, the cats donned top hats and mourned the black lump of a theater. In the next scene, they’d gathered a pile of sticks and, still singing, prepared to rebuild.

Venkat mulled over the vision. He wouldn’t have conceived of a use for warbling felines anywhere in Nayan’s scheme, but the second half was a nice surprise—it had exactly the feeling he’d been looking for. “I’ll give you a fifth of a boon for this,” he said.

“A half,” countered Bharat, his passion sparking. He sounded like Asha and her friends when they talked about their current crushes. But his eagerness only made him seem even younger than almost fifteen.

Guilt smoldered like cobra venom in Venkat’s veins. Bharat and the other runners might not make it to his age, and that was his fault as much as anyone’s.

The initiation all dream runners underwent—the one Venkat himself had failed—silenced their traumatized hearts and eased their suffering. He’d seen it for himself: whenever a recruit arrived, they’d been heartbroken or terrified or both, with no one to turn to. Asha deliberately limited her invitation to candidates trapped in miserable situations, and only if they were under the age of twelve and still able to adapt to their new role. But once Nayan had guided the poor kid through, rooting out the memories that had tormented them, their face inevitably relaxed. Their back grew straighter, and their chin lifted. Harvesting dreams filled the hole where their past had been, giving them a purpose, something stable they could count on.

Venkat’s heart rallied every time, too. While he’d never have the option not to remember losing his family, at least he could see how much lighter the candidates were after being initiated. Bharat’s previous home life had been horrifying, just like all the runners’, and forgetting it was a gift. But knowing they’d been spared more pain didn’t mean Venkat could accept them burning out.

Especially considering he’d almost been one of them. How was he not supposed to care?